Human society is also a level created by the Dafa, so within this level there are bound to be standards of existence that the Fa has at this level for sentient beings, as well as principles for human conduct at this level. However, the Three Realms are the reverse of everything in the cosmos, so the Fa’s principles have also provided beings at this level with reversed principles suitable for the existence of everyday people, such as conquering the world with military force, the victor governing the country, acquiring food by killing, the strong being heroes, and so on. Along with concepts of a good person, a bad person, war, etc., all of these things have given rise to ordinary humans’ principles and human understandings. All of these are wrong when judged by the righteous Fa-principles at high levels in the cosmos. So a cultivator needs to let go of all the notions and principles of everyday people, and only then can he cultivate to a high level and break out of the Three Realms, the reverse of the cosmos. But if everyday people also reverse all these understandings and use the righteous Fa-principles of high levels in the cosmos to set requirements for and evaluate humankind or everything in the Three Realms, then the Three Realms would be governed by the righteous Fa-principles, human society would cease to exist, and the human condition would no longer be there, either; it would be a world of Gods, and, along with this, human illusions and the opportunity for humans to cultivate would disappear. That isn’t allowed to happen, because high-level beings’ garbage has to drop down, and human society is the garbage dump of the cosmos. For the beings here to exist, there has to be a way of existence for this level, which is also requirements and conditions for existence that Dafa created for the sentient beings here.

In high-level cosmic bodies, Great Enlightened Beings’ paradises and lives are born of righteous Fa-principles or are consummated through cultivating with righteous Fa-principles. Everything of theirs conforms to the righteous Fa-principles. An Enlightened Being is also the King of his paradise, but he doesn’t rule in the way humans think of ruling—he benevolently takes care of all sentient beings in his paradise with the Zhen-Shan-Ren righteous Fa-principles; whereas humans’ conquering the world with military force and the strong being heroes are the principles that the cosmos’s Dafa has for this human level. Since the Three Realms is reversed, so too are humans’ principles reversed understandings when compared to the righteous Fa-principles of the cosmos. So this kind of violent behavior—"conquering the world with military force; the strong are heroes"—has become righteous human-principles. Because Gods control everything of humankind, and wars, the strong, and victory and defeat are objectives that Gods want to reach, the strong and the heroes are also anointed by Gods as "heroes" and "the strong," and they enjoy human honors, which are also rewards for humans. Only cultivators who cultivate a righteous Fa should break out of these principles. So how should a Dafa cultivator who cultivates in the ordinary human society handle all the specific things he encounters? If Dafa is being cultivated in the ordinary human society, and the number of cultivators is great, they have to maximally conform to the ways of the ordinary human society while cultivating; not doing so would change the ordinary human society. However, even though you’ve understood from the Fa-principles that I taught you that you should cultivate while maximally conforming to the ordinary human society, when you come across certain specific matters, you still don’t have a clear understanding of many things, such as the matter of being a soldier. Soldiers go into combat, and going into combat requires training. What they are trained in are ways to kill people, and in real battles they do kill people. You need to understand that this is wrong by the righteous Fa-principles, but it’s not wrong by everyday people’s principles, or else human principles would be righteous Fa-principles. Without suffering, people wouldn’t be able to eliminate the karma they have generated among humans. If humans didn’t kill, humans would have no meat to eat; and humans need to eat meat. So humans create karma in the process of acquiring food, yet meat-eating is only one way they generate karma. Just by merely living in this world, humans generate karma—it’s only a question of how much. But in the human world there are also factors that allow karma to be repaid, such as disease, natural disasters, and war. A person’s painful death in war can eliminate karma for that being, it can eliminate sins, and in his next incarnation he won’t have karma and will enjoy a good life. An everyday person’s kindness isn’t manifest in his not generating karma when acquiring food for survival, but rather, it manifests in not keeping count of others’ wrongs, not holding grudges, not getting jealous, not deliberately seeking revenge, not killing people, not taking innocent life irrationally, and not harming life intentionally. If someone’s acquiring food is merely for survival, he generates karma but is not at fault. And wars are arranged by Gods. But if someone takes an innocent life for some other reason, then neither the cosmos’s righteous Fa-principles nor human principles will allow it; with such violations, Gods will use humans to punish those who irrationally take life. If a large being is killed by someone, then that person’s sins and karma become enormous, especially when it’s a human being who is killed. So when someone has generated such karma he has to pay it off. As for cultivators, when they painfully temper themselves in arduous cultivation, they too are paying off the karma they generated in the past. The sins and karma from the being’s mental suffering can be paid for through the difficulty and pain of cultivation. But as for the very real, awful situation the beings are in, their painful enduring, and their material loss after they are killed, the cultivator will have to, in the process of consummating everything of his own, save those beings or repay them with blessings using the fruits of his cultivation. Then from that perspective, the compensation the killed beings receive far exceeds what they would have received among humans. And this has thus settled malevolent predestined relationships with benevolent solutions. On the other hand, if the cultivator cannot achieve Righteous Attainment and doesn’t succeed in cultivation, in the future he will have to pay with his own life, via awful retribution, for all the beings he killed. So the first condition is that the cultivator has to be able to reach Consummation. For those who cannot reach Consummation, if they take life while claiming, "I’m releasing them from purgatory," they will be in fact doubly guilty. At present there are Dafa practitioners who are soldiers. Being a soldier is a human profession, too; governments of some countries, notably, require men of age to serve in the military. Because you are cultivating among everyday people, you can, unless you have a special reason, in this situation go along to the maximum extent with what ordinary human society requires of you. There might not necessarily be any wars while you are a soldier. There is no kindness (shan) in the battle cries shouted by soldiers during their training, so a Dafa disciple can just think of them as aimed at the evil that persecutes Dafa disciples. If a war really breaks out, Dafa disciples might not necessarily have to go to the front lines, since they have Master looking after them. If you really have gone to the front lines, then perhaps it is like the karmic relationship in which Milerepa’s¹⁴ master had him do bad deeds to obtain benevolent results. Of course, I’m discussing Fa-principles here; normally that won’t happen. But the Fa is all-powerful, and with everything It is perfectly all-encompassing. And after all, cultivators have Master looking after them. Everything you, a cultivator, encounter is related to your cultivation and Consummation, or else those things absolutely would not exist. Doing your job well in the ordinary human society is not only for the sake of cultivation or to display Dafa disciples’ goodness among everyday people, but also to safeguard the Fa-principles that Dafa has created for ordinary human society.

A stable job also prevents a cultivator from being held up, due to problems of food and shelter or survival, in his cultivation, in his spreading the Fa without worries, or in his clarifying the truth and saving the world’s people. In every one of society’s professions a person can cultivate, and in each there are also people with predestined relationships waiting to obtain the Fa.

Li Hongzhi
July 30, 2001

14. Milerepa—the founder of the White Sect of Tibetan Buddhism.