(Minghui.org) Greetings, revered Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I’d like to share with practitioners my cultivation experience after I obtained the Fa and my journey of clarifying the truth.
In Teaching the Fa at the Conference in the Midwest-U.S., Master said:
“Every one of you could write a book about his cultivation process, some of which you know about and some of which you are not yet clear about or aware of, as there are other factors at work behind the scenes. After you have reached Consummation, you will see that every person’s cultivation process is a process in which one establishes his own mighty virtue. Only then is it possible to see a being’s magnificence.”
Letting Go of Glory in the Human World and Walking Toward Godhood
I taught at a prestigious school in China. I was a sought-after senior teacher, highly regarded by parents, the community, and other schools. I thought I was a good person who had contributed greatly to society.
Only after I obtained the Fa in 1998 did I realize I had been contaminated by many habits of modern society. I then understood that I could become a genuinely good person only if I held myself to the requirements of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
However, I was attached to comfort and could not let go of the fame and fortune it brought. I subconsciously put my career and reputation first and placed cultivation in second place, so it was very difficult to strive forward.
Tribulations came one after another. One day in 2000, after the persecution had begun, a security official stopped to talk to me. He tried to make me give up cultivation and wanted me to persuade my daughter to do the same.
Faced with this situation, I experienced my first test of life and death: do I hold onto fame and fortune, or do I continue cultivating? After a week of difficult and bitter reflection, I made a crucial decision. I would let go of everything and continue to cultivate.
When security officials were not on guard, I left my home and headed to Canada, setting foot on a new cultivation path.
When I first came to the free country of Canada, I felt great. I could do the exercises freely and study the Fa freely. I could do whatever I wanted. During those years, I went out to clarify the truth every day, and I spent many Christmases and New Year’s Eves in front of the Chinese consulate.
It was not smooth sailing. My attachments to comfort, vanity, fear, and reputation made me feel that cultivation was very difficult. I clarified the truth every day, but I was unhappy inside. With this attitude, I was often sworn at when I clarified the truth.
When I was sworn at, I would argue with the other person. Because I had fear, tourists would ask me where I was from almost every day. Secret agents photographed me. They sent the photos to my former employer in China and to the national security bureau.
I was fired from my teaching job. School administrators pressured my relatives in China. I still held on to my fear and just wanted to hide. The more I wanted to hide, the bigger the obstacles became. This was another test of life and death. I could not let go of ordinary people’s desire for fame and personal gain. I was afraid I would lose everything I had in China.
Through constant Fa study and sharing, I was deeply touched by Master’s Fa. Gradually, I understood that there was no way I could overcome tribulations by hanging onto human things with one hand and divine things with the other.
If I gained in human society, I would lose more in cultivation, and the path to godhood would be even more difficult. When I recognized this and let go of my baggage, I felt light from head to toe. It was as though I had shed a layer of humanness.
Compassionate Master constantly eliminated my karma. During that time, I often experienced cramps as though my skin was being torn apart. Sometimes I was in so much pain that I was rolling on the floor.
One night, I was awakened by pain. I saw one of Master’s law bodies sitting on the TV that played the Nine Lectures. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I sat there quietly, rubbed my eyes and looked again. It was crystal clear. Master’s law body was sitting opposite me.
Through teary eyes, I looked at Master’s law body. When the sun rose, Master’s law body slowly disappeared. I suddenly realized that Master was taking care of me during all my tribulations. Master had endured everything for me. I was deeply grateful.
In this test and under Master’s care and guidance, I had taken a step towards godhood. I felt I had moved up. From then on, I felt at ease when I clarified the truth, and rarely did Chinese tourists ask me where I was from. It is so true that:
With attachments left behind, the lightened boats sail swiftly,With a preoccupied human heart, crossing the ocean proves arduous.(“The Knowing Heart”)
Cultivating Compassion While Saving People
Sometime later, there came another test related to clarifying the truth. After I had left China, I experienced how Chinese people had been deeply poisoned by Party culture. They had a lot of karma, and their words and actions made me uncomfortable. I really didn’t want to acknowledge them.
Whenever I talked to Chinese, I felt like I was going against my will. I felt exhausted. My compassion could not come forth.
As I studied Master’s lectures in various cities, I felt Master’s immense compassion. Master doesn’t look at the manifestation of sentient beings in this lifetime. Benevolent Master constantly gives beings opportunities, even for policemen, security officials, and secret agents who have participated in persecuting Dafa disciples. It was up to me to awaken their conscience and kindness.
In “Fa Teaching Given at the Epoch Times Meeting,” Master said:
“…once a human being gains salvation, it will lead to the countless sentient beings behind him gaining salvation in turn, and so too would it mean salvation for all of those sentient beings and earthly peoples of the ethnic group for whom he once upon a time served as king. Thus, a Chinese person’s gaining salvation would result in the sentient beings of many ethnicities in this world gaining salvation.”
When I understood the importance of saving the precious Chinese people, my compassion expanded. Regardless of how bad today’s Chinese people have become, regardless of how hostile they have become towards Dafa in the midst of the Party’s lies and propaganda, Master only looks at their firm belief in Dafa when they descended to the human world. Master compassionately urges us to save them.
In Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference in Australia, Master said:
“If you cannot love your enemy, then you cannot reach Consummation.”
Wouldn’t it be even more so for my fellow countrymen?
When Master fills my heart with compassion, I feel as though I am being remade. When I have the genuine heart of saving people with compassion, I feel those precious Chinese people can be saved, and thus the sentient beings in their cosmic systems can be saved.
This is a great mission that Master has bestowed upon Dafa disciples. I could not miss this precious opportunity. From then on, I felt a sense of warmth whenever I saw them. I found that the Chinese people I came across also changed their attitude towards me as I changed my mentality, whether it was at the tourist attractions or the booths for promoting Shen Yun.
I was very warm towards them, and they were also very warm towards me. Sometimes, practitioners next to me thought that we were old friends, but in fact we’d never seen each other before. This is how I bridged the gap between myself and the Chinese people.
Many Chinese were able to understand the facts easily and quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations. I gradually realized that I have a deep predestined relationship with the Chinese people. As I clarified the facts, I made friends with many Chinese people. Thank you, Master, for helping us establish these good predestined relationships for which we have been waiting millions of years.
Their understanding of the truth and their salvation brings me joy and happiness. When Chinese people understand the truth one after another, I am overjoyed, as if I had scored a 100 on a test. Amid the hardship of cultivation, there is great happiness that money can’t buy.
I experienced this many times. At a tourist attraction, a group of tourists got off the bus and took many Epoch Times newspapers. One tourist asked me, “Those newspapers you have, are they all the same?”
I said the content was different for every edition. “If you’re interested, you can take two.”
He then went sightseeing. About a half hour later, a Chinese man came running towards me from the Sydney Opera House. He smiled cheerfully and said, “Do you have any more of the Epoch Times’ 25th and 26th special editions?” He said he had just finished reading the 27th and 28th editions.
“That was quick,” I said. “Do you now understand the truth that can’t be heard in China?”
“Yes, and I want to know more.”
I gave him a copy of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party. “Senior government officials are reading this eagerly,” I said to him. “Have a look. There’s a lot of in-depth analysis on the nature of the Communist Party.” He took it.
“Since you’ve understood the facts, you should quit the CCP to ensure a safe future for yourself.”
“I’m neither a Party member nor a Youth League member. There’s nothing for me to quit from,” he said.
“Didn’t you join the Young Pioneers?”
“That was when I was young. It’s long over.”
I patiently explained to him why he needed to quit the Young Pioneers. After he understood, he nodded happily and said, “Oh, so it is important that I quit the Young Pioneers. Please help me quit, then.”
He then turned and headed towards the Sydney Opera House. A little later, he came up with his daughter. He had met another practitioner who was clarifying the truth and asked her to speak to his daughter.
His daughter readily quit the Party after hearing the facts. Shortly afterward, he brought his wife and asked a practitioner to clarify the truth to her. At first, his wife said she didn’t believe these things.
The practitioner said, “Both your husband and your daughter have agreed to quit the Party. Why don’t you quit, too? Wouldn’t it be great for your whole family to live in peace? There’s nothing to lose. When a true calamity strikes, your entire family will be safe. Wouldn’t that be great?”
With this, his wife agreed to quit the Party. At that moment, the man came running over to us and expressed his sincere thanks to Dafa disciples for helping his whole family quit the CCP.
Another time, I was handing out flyers to some tourists who had just gotten off a bus. I told them about the messages written on our banners. They were shocked to hear the facts. The tour guide was rushing them, and they started to head towards the Opera House.
Suddenly, a tourist waved for me to cross the road. He said he was afraid that people in his tour group would see that I was speaking to him and that they might reprimand him for speaking to me. He had asked many questions about Falun Gong and the “self-immolation” incident on Tiananmen Square.
I answered his questions one by one.
The anxiety on his face disappeared. He said happily, “So this is what Falun Gong is about. It’s welcomed all around the world. It’s truly good to be a good person of Zhen-Shan-Ren. This is what’s missing in China. People don’t trust each other. They build walls between each other. The social climate is in chaos. I really want to be with Falun Gong practitioners. It’s a pure land. The self-immolation incident turned out to be a lie. When I go back, I will tell my friends and family that the self-immolation incident was a lie.”
As he was about to leave, he gave me his phone number and WeChat details. He hoped that we would stay in touch and that I would keep sending him truth information.
From then, I could see that these Chinese people are like family. In a very short period of time, we had established mutual trust. Master’s Fa and the principles of Zhen-Shan-Ren dissolve the gaps between people.
In clarifying the truth, I set a goal for myself: to enable Chinese people to feel the compassion of Dafa disciples and to help them see that what we do is truly for them.
I do my best to clarify the truth with wisdom and in ways that ordinary people can understand so that they can see that Dafa disciples possess knowledge and high moral values and that those who cultivate in Dafa are respected by others. Through Dafa disciples’ words and actions, Chinese tourists have experienced the beauty of Dafa.
Over the last two years, I have also been utilizing my spare time to clarify the truth over the Internet. Through this, I have come in contact with mainland Chinese from all walks of life. When I clarify the truth to them, I feel that many predestined sentient beings are waiting to hear the truth.
It’s as though they once were my relatives. When they understand the facts, they place great trust in me. They tell me about the hardships in their lives, the downward spiral of human morality, and even how they were deceived by friends.
Once they understand that the hardships of the Chinese people come from the CCP, they ask me if there is a way out. I tell them that quitting the CCP can save them. When I encounter influential people, I make an effort to find relevant information, and I send them posts that relate to their situation, taking into account their level of acceptance.
As we become friends, I take another step and tell them about the persecution. I send them news about Dafa spreading around the world. They can feel my kindness and sincerity. They can feel their souls being purified. They can feel that Dafa disciples’ understandings are a cut above the rest. They want to talk to me.
Once, I was chatting to a provincial department-level cadre from Xibei. He wanted to do a voice chat with me. During our chat, one of his subordinates came into his office to seek his approval of certain documents. He asked me to wait until he signed off those documents before we continued chatting.
We talked for a while, then he said, “I promise that I won’t take part in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners ever again, and I won’t create trouble for the Falun Gong practitioners who work here.”
He also quit the CCP. He sent his address to me in good faith. He hoped that we could stay in touch and invited me to visit him if I ever returned to China. He said that he wanted me to come and visit his hometown.
Sometimes, I would encounter people who didn’t understand the truth, who would swear and say all sorts of foul things. In these instances, I would speak to them calmly and gently.
Just as Master said in “Teaching and Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference,”
“Actually, with a lot of things if you calmly and gently talk to people and handle those things rationally, you’ll find that your wisdom will flow forth like a spring, and every sentence of yours will get right to the point, and every sentence will speak the truth. As soon as you become attached or anxious, though, or have some strong intention, your wisdom is gone, and that’s because at that time you’ve come over to the human side again, right? You should try your best to use righteous thoughts and try your best to be in the state of a cultivator, and the results will be excellent.”
Through more than ten years of clarifying the truth, I can see the enormous changes in the precious Chinese people. Thank you, Master and Dafa, for giving me kindness and compassion, enabling me to establish good predestined relationships with these sentient beings, and allowing me, a being with great karma, to walk on the road to return to my original true self.
The Fa rectification is now accelerating. We Dafa disciples must treasure the remaining time that Master has extended to save more people.
This is my cultivation experience of clarifying the truth and saving people over the last few years. Please point out anything inappropriate.
I would like to share with everyone Master’s poem “Plum Blossoms” from Hong Yin Volume II:
Like pure lotus in the muddy world—millions and billions of plum blossomsIn the bitter wind, looking more lovelyDay after day, it snows and rains—tears of Gods and BuddhasLonging for plum blossoms to returnDon’t get lost in worldly attachmentsBe steadfast in righteous thoughtThrough the ages to the presentJust for this one time
Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.
(Presented at the 2016 Australian Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference)
