Matt and Emily

(Shared at 2001 New York Conference)

Emily: Hello, Master! Hello, everyone! We are Matt and Emily. We're from Philadelphia, and have been practicing Dafa for a little over 2 years now--we obtained the Fa about 2 weeks after we began dating, so our cultivation and our relationship have been intertwined from the beginning. On January 14, 2001, we were married. Because we placed ourselves in the Fa, and saw the wedding as part of our cultivation, our wedding turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for many people to position themselves on the side of Dafa. Teacher's articles and ClearWisdom articles inspired us to do things in a special way for our wedding. The first thing that stemmed from our understandings involved a special gift request.

Matt: Emily and I were chatting with an older friend one day about two months before the wedding. Our friend, who's not a cultivator, was terribly excited about our wedding, particularly about buying wedding gifts for us. She went on and on about this possible present, that possible present, and kept asking what we'd really like. I began to feel kind of sick--these thoughts of hers were just soaked in emotion (qing) and hard to stomach. I began to look within and reflect on why this was. I kept thinking that we're cultivators, and don't want anything from this or other persons; we want to give to others, especially the gift of Dafa or a better future position. That's when I realized that we hadn't been thinking about our wedding in an extraordinary way, that is, according to the Fa. We had been forgetting that it is but another form in the human society created by the Dafa of the cosmos and, therefore, it's for utilization by cultivators. I kindly told her that maybe she didn't need to spend money on us. Instead, I said that maybe she and our other guests could write a letter to their government representatives asking them to support the suffering Dafa practitioners in China. This way our guests would be doing something righteous, even part of the Fa-rectification, and thereby giving themselves the greatest gift. She quieted down, reflected, and agreed to the idea. I can't describe how very right it felt beginning to see our wedding in terms of the Fa and the rectification of the human world.

So in the invitations we sent out to guests, instead of asking them for gifts, as is usually done, we asked them to just spend 33 cents on a stamp to send a letter to their congresspersons about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. We enclosed a letter from us, to each guest, telling a little about how good Dafa has been for us, and telling about the persecution; we also gave them some statistics and information we suggested they include in their letters to congresspersons. Lastly, we told them that this is the greatest gift they could give to us, as it would be helping other people who are in greater need.

Emily: Matt was the one who suggested this originally, and when he suggested it, I told him that the same idea had crossed my mind. But my attachments came up, and I thought, "What if they think we're strange, or zealous?" and "What about all of the things and money we'd otherwise get, and which we really need?" It was my selfish, human, uncultivated side not wishing to be transformed. And it was the evil trying to take advantage of gaps in my mind. But then I thought of Master's great compassion for us, and I thought of how we wouldn't be asking from people, but instead giving to them, as telling people about Dafa is offering people salvation. I thought of how a being's one thought towards Dafa can save them, and how a beings' xinxing needs to be revealed in order for them to be positioned, and I realized that this would help allow them to be positioned. Lastly, I realized that these people are in our lives for a reason. So, after realizing and thinking over these things, I asked myself what a particle of Dafa would do, and my cultivated side said, "Of course we should do this." So we did (you can see the letter posted on ClearWisdom at http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2000/Dec/15/VSF121500_3.html).

The response from people was just incredible. It made me weep a number of times. Some people wrote numerous letters, not just one or two. One couple wrote not only to their congresspersons, but also to Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, and others--all of their own initiative. Other people wrote to us to express their heartfelt admiration of us and of our virtue and selflessness in doing this. It was amazing. We lost a few transient things, and gave to people something that will last forever. We allowed others to participate in the Fa-rectification, including many professors and other important figures in the society. Many have sent us the responses they've gotten from congresspersons, and they've been very positive. Moreover, these letters were written at a time when congress was making some very important decisions related to Dafa and human rights in China.

One practitioner we invited even sent our wedding letter to local newspapers around the city where we grew up (and where we were to hold the wedding), and it was run by every single local paper, reaching hundreds of thousands of households. The headline the papers put on the letter was "For Our Wedding, Make a Plea for Freedom." We would guess that in total well over 100 letters were sent out as "wedding gifts" to us.

After the invitations were sent out, we had to plan the ceremony. That was a little tricky, because we tried our best to conform to the society and to the ways of our families, while at the same time following only one cultivation way. My father is a Protestant minister, and Matt's family is also Christian, so we weren't sure what to do about the style of the wedding, which in our family and in the majority of our culture, is expected to be Christian. We mentioned this one evening after group study, and we asked the other practitioners what they thought of us having our wedding in a church, and having a fairly traditional Christian wedding. Our assistant said, "Why not?" so we then thought, "Yeah, why not?" We realized that it was conforming to the society, and that it might be a good way for people to feel good about us and about Dafa's harmony with the way of the society and with other faiths. We thought that this was a matter of thinking about the form of doing something versus what's within a person. But our hearts are fully devoted to Dafa and only to Dafa, and it's not the form of doing things that we put emphasis on in Dafa. We thought of how "Buddha Law is Boundless," and that everything is created for and by it. We decided to use a human form and the Fa at this level to share something of a higher level with people. So we decided to do a fairly traditional, Christian wedding. We asked my father, the pastor, to do the wedding. He is an open-minded pastor and already very supportive of Dafa; he's learned the exercises even and found them to be good.

Matt: That was our thinking at first, that Dafa is huge and encompasses all so we can of course conform and use this form. In time, though, we realized this understanding was too shallow. We began to think: Why not go further to use this form to validate Dafa and share the Great Law of the universe with people? Why not seize the opportunity of this happy occasion and allow people to feel good about Dafa? With Emily's father performing the ceremony, we felt especially at ease doing things a little different. We eventually decided to write the ceremony ourselves, with Emily's father's approval and help. We fashioned the words after a traditional ceremony, but put in some of our understandings from Dafa, making the ceremony deeper and more meaningful to us. We also mentioned Zhen, Shan, Ren many times, and wrote this summation of the Buddha Fa into our vows. We asked some practitioners to perform PuDu, or "Universal Salvation" at the wedding. Lastly, we had a practitioner read a couple passages from Master. Of course, we also had the traditional Bible passage read, and we talked about God and other common things; this wasn't a problem and would make people feel at ease, as using these forms is expected to a certain extent. Writing our vows was an especially good opportunity to express things from the depths of our hearts, and enabled people to have a better understanding of Dafa and how it manifests in a person's life; we also felt sincere in our words this way. The vows turned out beautifully. They said, "In taking you as my wife, Emily, I vow to be a source of goodness and strength in your life, nurturing your desire to embody the Great Law of Truth, Compassion, Tolerance. I will honor, love, and care for you, in gain and in loss, in comfort and in hardship, for better or for worse, as long as we both shall live." So we used the traditional form to express something and do something of a higher level. Many many people commented afterwards that the vows were just so beautiful and meaningful, and that they could tell we were so sincere in saying them. Some told us the vows brought tears to their eyes.

The actual wedding went incredibly smoothly, from start to finish. Not one thing went wrong and we were both relaxed throughout. Many practitioners came to the wedding, and with but one glance out into the audience we felt part of our cultivation community. The whole event had an air of solemnity. What was most surprising and wonderful about the ceremony was the sermon Emily's father gave. He compared the 3 Christian principles of faith, hope, and love, with the Dafa's principles of Truth, Compassion, Forbearance. He talked about the virtues of Dafa, and about how he and Emily's mother are delighted to see the changes in us since we began the practice. He also said that all the great people and teachings he's ever known have been based on simple principles. After he heard PuDu he shook his head and said, "My! THAT is Truth!" He even suggested by way of a quote that we were already well on our way to sainthood. This was a very well respected pastor saying all of these things to a chapel full of 150-some people. It was very touching, and we were happy both for him and for the people in attendance. Later he told us that the morning before the ceremony he still wasn't quite sure what to talk about, but that when he sat down to write, "it just flowed out of him."

Emily: After the ceremony, people's comments were overwhelmingly wonderful. Many many people said it was the most beautiful wedding they had ever been to, including one person who rarely has anything nice to say at all! One woman remarked at how the three principles of Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance are so beautiful. Another person said that they could tell that we really meant what we were saying and doing, which meant a lot to them. The organist for the wedding said with great sympathy that she would pray for the practitioners in China. Others said they'd never seen a couple so calm and collected--"it must be your practice!" they said. Still others said that the energy there and the atmosphere were so wonderful. We weren't surprised, as there were some 25 practitioners in attendance.

Then came the reception. In preparation for the reception, we also did a lot of things to incorporate Dafa into the event so as to give people a chance to know It. One thing we did was to arrange who would sit at what table with whom. We tried not to have too much intention in doing this, while at the same time considering it carefully, and "minding minor details." We tried to put practitioners at every table so that people could learn more by talking with a real, live Dafa cultivator. We also put out our guest book, surrounded by newspaper articles that our names or pictures have appeared in, all of which "happened" to be related to Dafa; this was actually my parents' idea, as they are proud of the work we've done. Also near the guest book area our families had put up photos of us growing up, and naturally, among those photos were some of us doing the exercises. It was all very natural.

Matt: We had asked my father to say the blessing before the meal was served. When he did, he asked God to bless the food, and asked people to remember those around the world who don't have food. Lastly, and most importantly, he prayed for practitioners in China and that their human rights would be restored. My best man, too, when doing the toast (non-alcoholic, of course), mentioned Dafa, saying that "Matt and Emily are two of the most Truthful, Compassionate, and Tolerant people I know." We were touched by his words, especially because he wasn't usually supportive of Dafa in the past.

Again, the results of proceeding from the standpoint of the Fa were beyond anything our human minds could have imagined. One older woman, a Christian psychiatrist, seemed to obtain the Fa right on the spot--she asked the practitioners about Dafa during the whole reception, and begged them to teach her the exercises right there in the reception hall!! She later couldn't remember the name Falun Gong, but came up to us at the head table and said, "I'm a total convert to this--how do you say the name again?" She asked the musicians if she could get a copy of PuDu, and said, "I could listen to that forever." The most remarkable thing about her was that she said it's amazing how all this worked out, "God planned this for me." We thought, yes, he did. Another great thing was that the husband of a veteran practitioner finally opened up to Dafa at the wedding. He hadn't opposed it before, but wasn't very positive about it either. When the practitioners played PuDu, he cried. In addition, when he was there signing the guest book, he felt the urge to read every newspaper article that we had put there--again, all of which were about Dafa; he came back later in the reception to read them a second time. His wife, the practitioner, told us that she had been pushing articles on him for years now, and he never wanted to read any of them, but that for some reason, this time of his own initiative he decided to read every word of every single one! At another table, a chaplain and her husband were fascinated and so happy to ask the practitioners questions about Dafa for the whole evening. One of my aunts was interested in Dafa the moment she heard the name, and ended up going home with a copy of China Falun Gong.

Emily: The last very interesting part of our wedding day was that we found out that that day, Christians around the world were reading a Bible passage about Jesus' first miracle of turning water into wine--which happened at a wedding! So all over the world that day people were reading about and having services about a miraculous wedding. It was actually my father, the pastor, who pointed this out during the ceremony.

Matt: It would be impossible to explain fully all the wonders that Dafa performed during the time of our wedding, but it was truly an incredible experience and lesson in using the forms of the society, and using the things people are familiar with and can accept so as to allow them to feel good about Dafa. It was also a good lesson in using every opportunity to let people know about Dafa, and to set all attachments aside so that we can act as particles and do what we're supposed to do during this Fa-rectification.

Emily: Thank you, and please point out anything you think we could improve upon.

Matt: One last thing before we finish. We'd like to recite one of Master's poems from Hong Yin for you. We've both really enjoyed memorizing some of Master's poems in the Chinese. First, so that English speakers will understand in general what the poem is about, we'll give an ad lib translation, which is not official, of course. The poem is entitled, "The Difference Between a Human and an Enlightened Being." The first line says something like, "What is a human? One whose body is filled with emotion and desire."

Emily: The second line says, "What is a God? One with no trace of human attachments."

Matt: The third line says, "What is a Buddha? One in which only goodness and virtue reside." And the fourth line says, "What is a Dao? A pure and tranquil True person."

Matt and Emily:

Ren Jue Zhi Fen

He wei ren? Qing yu man shen.

He wei Shen? Ren xin wu cun.

He wei Fo? Shan de ju zai.

He wei Dao? Qing jing Zhen ren.