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My Experience with Falun Dafa and Its Practitioners Inside and Outside of China

October 22, 2008 |  
(Clearwisdom.net) The Chinese have an old saying: "Good is rewarded with good and evil meets with evil." But now most people don't believe that there is such a heavenly principle, so they try to take advantage of good people. I think it's not that the heavenly principle doesn't exist, rather, that people are not good anymore and in turn, gods and Buddhas don't protect them anymore. Only those who are righteous and kindhearted are truly good.

The following is part of my story before I became a Dafa practitioner.

Once on a train I saw a thief quietly trying to cut a hole in a farmer's pocket with a knife. Many other passengers saw this, too, but they just watched, smiling slyly. I didn't know what to do at first, but finally, out of sympathy for the farmer, I gathered up my courage to shout at the thief, "What are you doing?" The thief ran away, and the farmer thanked me for saving him trouble. Everyone else around us all lowered their heads, embarrassed. This experience proved to me that righteousness could be powerful.

Later I was sent overseas for work. To my surprise, Westerners were very friendly and nice to me, a foreigner who had no friends and was unfamiliar with the local area. Once when I was walking to an agency to do something, a car stopped and the driver offered me a ride. After I was done with my business and stepped out of the agency, I saw that the car was still there, waiting for me. I wondered why she had waited for me. She told me that she had planned to go to her office to finish reading some files, but she did it in the car while waiting for me because she wanted to give me a ride home after I was done. I was very grateful, but she did this so naturally, as if I were a member of her family. I also noticed that people would offer help to a driver if a car was pulled over, in case something was wrong with the car. I witnessed many similar incidents of people helping others unconditionally. They did it simply out of the goodness of their hearts.

I remembered once in Beijing I saw a woman fall on the doorstep of a supermarket. It was a Westerner who first ran up to help her. This incident impressed me so much that I can still recall every detail.

I enjoyed the fresh air and clear blue sky in the Western country. I admired freedom, especially when I saw Falun Dafa practitioners doing their exercises so peacefully and in unison in the park. My lovely landlady studied Chinese whenever she had time because she wanted to be able to read Zhuan Falun in Chinese. She said to me, "It's a pity that one able to read Chinese hasn't read Zhuan Falun at least once." Her three-year-old grandson would read aloud, "Falun Dafa Hao, Zhen-Shan-Ren Hao" (Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good) when he saw any Chinese characters, which was really cute.

One day she showed me a video that analyzed the staged self-immolation on Tiananmen Square. I started to wonder whether the Chinese Communist Party had lied to the Chinese people about Falun Dafa, as well as many other things.

In a free environment, I wanted to learn about Falun Dafa and see what it was, and why I had heard two such totally different stories about it.

I went through a reading list on the Falun Dafa website that I found on the video, and I started reading Zhuan Falun. When I read the first paragraph, my heart pounded with joy, and in the following two days I finished reading the whole book, in which Teacher teaches people how to be good. Later, I read some of Teacher's lectures from different places over the years. Everything I have read is the opposite of what the Chinese Communist Party has said about Falun Dafa, such as practitioners committing suicide, self immolation, superstition, theories about the end-of-the-world, etc. In turn, I also understood why Falun Dafa has spread to over 80 countries around the world since 1992. It is practiced by millions of people who have obtained mental and physical health through cultivating Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.

I really liked the idea of cultivating both body and mind in Falun Dafa and that it was taught for free. However, I felt that the requirement of letting go of desires and attachments was too hard for me.

Falun Dafa teaches people to follow Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I thought that I might be closer to Truthfulness than to Compassion and Forbearance. I should keep the principle in mind and try to follow it in my daily life. I must also try to get rid of selfishness to reach a higher level of benevolence. Falun Dafa also teaches people to look within when conflicts arise to see if they have done something wrong, instead of pointing fingers at others. Moreover, Dafa also reveals the meaning of life and the purpose of living in this world.

From a higher point of view, human beings are viewed as having dropped from a holy and clean space to this secular world. Through cultivation, we can upgrade our characters and return to our original home. Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is the way for cultivating.

I noticed my body was cleansed while I was reading Zhuan Falun. After vomiting and having loose bowels all in one day, the stomach problem which I had suffered from for years was gone, and the serious pain in my lower back also disappeared. Both my physical and mental health are much better now.

I think that all true practitioners of Falun Dafa must have their own experiences of how they have benefited from Dafa practice.

I also understand now why practitioners overseas have been taking part in all kinds of parades to promote public awareness of the persecution against Falun Dafa, even though they have the freedom to practice their beliefs in those countries. Even in severe weather conditions, practitioners have been practicing the exercises and distributing truth clarification flyers in a peaceful way in front of Chinese embassies for nine years. They were misunderstood by some Chinese people as being "anti-China" or "unpatriotic." However, their righteous actions and words help people finally realize the truth. The power of the believers of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is much stronger than what people could imagine.

What people know about Falun Gong after 1999 is mainly the human rights activities that Falun Dafa practitioners have taken part in. Sometimes people seem to forget that those activities were a response to the unfair and brutal persecution. Frankly, practitioners would rather enjoy the peacefulness of meditating under a tree in a park.

Before I left China, I had found a letter exposing the persecution of the practitioners in Zhongyuan Piston Field., Ltd, at the door of my home. The letter also asked the persecutors to stop doing evil because good is rewarded with good and evil meets with evil. The tone of the letter was both compassionate and powerful. What impressed me the most from the letter concerned two practitioners, Ms. Jiang Zhaofang and Ms. Ju Lili.

Ms. Jiang Zhaofang was employed at the Accounting Center of Zhongyuan Oil Field. In 2000 she was illegally arrested and taken to Xinxiang Mental Hospital by the company's 610 Office personnel and the police because she didn't want to be "transformed" and renounce her belief. During a whole year of torture in the hospital, she was shocked with electric batons until her flesh was burned. When she refused to take harmful medication in the mental hospital at the Electricity Factory of Zhongyuan Oil Field, they pried her mouth open with a metal rod and force-fed the medicine through a tube down her nose, injuring her. Family members and friends were not allowed to visit her. In 2005, she was sent to a forced labor camp in Zhengzhou for another year and a half and endured all kinds of torture. When she was released, she was too weak to manage even daily activities for herself. Her daughter couldn't concentrate at school because she missed her mother; her 80-year-old parents passed away as a result of grief from missing their daughter.

Another practitioner, Ms. Ju Lili, was an employee at the Distance Education Center. She was also sent to the mental hospital to be tortured like Ms. Jiang Zhaofang. Instead of saving people's lives, hospital personnel collaborated with the persecutors by torturing Falun Dafa practitioners. The hospital staff knocked out Ms. Ju Lili's front teeth and all her other teeth were loosened. She was taken to the detention center many times by the company's 610 Office personnel and police. In 2005, she was sent to Shibalihe Forced Labor Camp in Zhengzhou. She often fainted in the camp, but when her family asked to bail her out for treatment, camp officials refused.

I went back to China and started to think about the situations of the Falun Dafa practitioners at Zhongyuan Oil Field. Finally I was able to meet Mingyu (a pseudonym), a practitioner, and learned more.

Since July 20, 1999, personnel with the company's 610 Office have persecuted practitioners severely. Lately their tactics have become more covert. They have arrested more than 20 practitioners and another person that didn't practice Falun Dafa have been arrested since August 2007.

Ms. Liu Shaoping (retired from the Construction Section), Mr. Li Jiangxiu (employed at the Oil Field Drilling Department), and Mr. Ding Fengge (retired from of the company) were sent to labor camps because they didn't want to give up their beliefs. When Ms. Liu was being arrested in a public place, she cried out for help to the people around her, and seven or eight policemen hit her to keep her quiet. Her face became swollen from the beating, and no one was allowed to visit her afterward when she was under detention. Later, she was sent to Shibalihe Forced Labor Camp in Zhengzhou.

Ms. Zheng Xiaoli, a former employee at the General Hospital of Zhongyuan Oil Field, recovered from tuberculosis and other diseases after she started practicing Falun Dafa. However, she was taken away to a detention center and forbidden to practice, which caused the recurrence of her illnesses, and her health is very poor now. Breathing is so difficult for her that she can't move around by herself, and her lungs are full of fluid.

A 70-year-old lady had become healthy after she started practicing Falun Dafa, but she was detained and questioned by the 610 Office and police, and her home was searched illegally. She passed away a few months after the incident.

A retired professor was forced to write a guarantee statement renouncing his belief after his home was illegally searched by the police. The older man couldn't bear the pressure and had a stroke. Now he is paralyzed from the stroke. The persecution has caused him and his family great mental and physical pain.

A house maid from out of town worked for a family with a disabled family member, and she was taken away to the detention center, too.

Ms. Jiang Zhaofang was sent to the detention center in October, 2007 and then to a forced labor camp. Right now she is out on bail to get treatment for a serious pustule on her leg.

Besides the cases mentioned above, 610 Office personnel and the police extorted money from many practitioners. What I know is only a small part of the persecution.

Recently, the 610 Office ordered all work units and neighborhood committees to force Falun Dafa practitioners to sign guarantee statements that they wouldn't go to Beijing or go to the Olympics. Those who refused to sign were threatened with being laid off. Even practitioners' family members were threatened or deceived into signing the letters.

A new wave of persecution against Falun Dafa practitioners began due to the Beijing Olympics. Many practitioners were "illegally arrested" and detained in the courtyard of the Electricity Factory to be brainwashed. They were not released even after the Olympics were over.

Ms. Ju Lili had been tortured for three years in a forced labor camp and was released a few months ago. Even though her health was still very poor due to the torture, she was also detained for brainwashing in the courtyard. In the end, she couldn't even get out of bed, but was still being forced to be brainwashed and write statements of renunciation.

Ms. Zheng Xiaoli was also forced to submit to brainwashing while she was trying to recover from tuberculosis. Of course her health declined again. The 610 Office people cared more about working towards a promotion than other people's lives.

Over one thousand people at Zhongyuan Oil Field used to practice Falun Dafa. Because of the government's propaganda defaming Dafa with lies, many of them went to different levels of the government to appeal and try to clarify the truth to them. However, the doors to government offices become doors to jail. Distributing flyers revealing the truth about Dafa and the persecution turns out to be the only way that Dafa practitioners can let their voices be heard.

All they want to do is let more people know the truth.