Cultivating Diligently by Memorizing the Fa

(Minghui.org) I am a young Falun Dafa (also called Falun Gong) practitioner. When I was in primary school, I heard about the persecution of the practice from my schoolteacher. That was the first time I’d heard about Falun Dafa. At that time, although I was young and knew nothing more about it, I had a heartfelt yearning, and I hoped that I could one day practice it.

Master said,

“Before each of you here in the audience came to the human world, sometime in the past the seeds for you to obtain the Fa today were sown in the depths of your heart and soul. I have looked for and found you many times in human society and conferred markings on you. All of these things play a strong role...” (Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Switzerland)

I think that was when the seeds of hope were planted in my heart.

I went to another city for junior high school. When I was home for the holidays, I ran into my primary school teacher, who helped me secure a copy of Zhuan Falun. I remember that I ran home, so I could start reading the book.

I went to high school and university, got married, and had a child. I was far away from my hometown and met no other practitioners. Immersed in worldly affairs, 10 years passed. During those 10 years, sometimes I would read Zhuan Falun. However, I was “loitering outside the gates of Dafa.” 

Sometimes, I dreamed that I failed my exams because I did not study diligently, and I was filled with neverending regret. At other times, I dreamed that while my other classmates were studying diligently, I was still playing outside. Sometimes I thought that this was a reminder from Master for me to cultivate and not miss this opportunity, so I would not regret it later.

I did not know any other practitioners and could not get the latest Dafa publications. I often begged Master to let me meet practitioners. Our benevolent Master saw that I still had the wish to cultivate, so he arranged for me to meet a local practitioner in June 2015.

Getting Rid of Thought Karma 

After coming into contact with local practitioners, they told me to study the Fa more. Because my son was still young, it was not convenient for me to join a small group to study the teachings, so I had to study the Fa alone at home. However, thought karma disturbed me when I studied the Fa alone at home. When I picked up Zhuan Falun, my mind was not pure and serene. Even when I did not think about anything, my thoughts would start to run wild and overwhelm me! Often, when I finished studying, I would not know what I studied, and I would feel very distressed. 

Later, I read many articles on the Minghui website about practitioners memorizing the Fa, and local practitioners had started to. I thought, “That’s true! Such a precious Fa! I really should memorize it!”

Thus, I made up my mind to memorize the Fa, no matter what. My initial plan was to memorize Zhuan Falun in a month. It was winter then and very cold, so I seldom took my son outside. At home, apart from meals and naps, I spent the rest of the day memorizing. My son is very obedient. He will play by himself, sleep by himself when he is tired, and does not disturb people. When we make up our minds to memorize the Fa, Master will help us.

When I first started memorizing, I went sentence by sentence. I read every sentence slowly and tried to understand the surface meaning. I then read every sentence twice and recited it from memory twice. Then I did the same thing for the paragraph. After doing this for some time, I realized that the disturbance from thought karma had decreased quite a bit, and the Fa that I memorized entered my mind and stayed.

Through memorizing the Fa, I sense that Master’s lectures are really very simple in terms of theory and language. Master is able to explain very difficult problems very clearly in just a few sentences. After I finish all my chores and get ready to memorize the Fa, it is as if even the cells in my body are excited. It is a kind of heartfelt happiness.

Sometimes, I hit a bottleneck. Some paragraphs seemed difficult to memorize. No matter how many times I tried to commit them to memory, I just could not get them right. I got upset and more and more anxious, and my thought karma conjured up all sorts of messy thoughts. Actually, this was a chance for me to get rid of my attachment to impatience along with the thought karma. Whenever I ran into this type of interference, I reminded myself to get rid of the thought karma and let my main soul govern my mind, to calm down and not be impatient. I slowed down, read every word slowly until each one was firm in my mind, and then started memorizing the Fa again.

I sometimes hear practitioners say that memorizing the Fa is very difficult and they can’t do it. Once they memorize it, they forget what they memorized. I discovered that some practitioners are not memorizing the Fa properly—they just try to memorize it as if it were a text. Some are used to reading the Fa very quickly instead of studying it, so they are also very quick about trying to memorize it. They read every sentence quickly from three to five times before closing the book, but they still find it difficult to memorize. By just memorizing the Fa as a text, even if they manage to, they will forget it easily.

It is just like studying in school: we study some things just to pass the exams. We have no interest in those things nor do we really understand them. Once the exams are over, we immediately forget them. People are usually able to remember things more easily if they understand them. If we read it slowly and understand the surface meaning of each sentence before we put our heart into memorizing it, the memorizing will not be as difficult, and what we have memorized will not be as easily forgotten.

Actually, the reason why we memorize the Fa is to become one with Dafa. We memorize the Fa so that we can use it to guide our behavior. We do not memorize it for the sake of doing so.

Getting Rid of the Mobile Phone and the Internet

Before I started to memorize the Fa, I was able to study a chapter of Zhuan Falun as well as some of Master’s lectures he gave in other countries every day. When I was tired, I rested. Sometimes, I picked up my cellphone to see if my friends had posted anything or took a video of my child and sent it to the group to show off. Sometimes, I logged onto the shopping apps to see if there were any promotions or sales. At other times, I looked at entertainment news and filled my head with a lot of rubbish.

As I continued to memorize the Fa, the laws of the Fa keep showing up in my mind. I realized that I had many attachments such as being lazy, desire for personal gains, lust, and curiosity.

I do know that it is so difficult to obtain a human body, and Dafa is so difficult to obtain—I am so lucky to have obtained the Fa. Thus, I should be diligent and persevere in cultivating. The internet is really an evil den that uses fame, personal gain, relationships, and lust to confuse us. It lures us in until we can no longer extricate ourselves. It gradually increases our attachments and whittles away our determination, so that we gradually drop in levels and finally get destroyed—it is so dangerous!

Through memorizing the Fa, I realized that I needed to get rid of these attachments. The first thing was to get rid of the mobile phone. Initially, I tried hard not to look at it. But sometimes it was so hard to resist the temptation. When I saw my cute child, I really wanted to send a photo to the group chat. When things in the house needed to be replenished, I wanted to go online to see if I could find them at a cheaper price.

Sometimes when I picked up the phone, it was another half hour wasted, and I regretted it afterward. I hated myself for doing it, thinking about how much Fa I could have memorized in that half an hour. I knew I had to change my mobile phone to the type that the old folks use that doesn’t go online. At the end of 2015, I switched my mobile phone to one with no internet capability.

After trading my phone, I really saved a lot of time, and many of my attachments were eliminated. In fact, after I did that, I was able to memorize the Fa much better. As I continue to memorize the Fa, I feel that time is really too precious, and I am not willing to waste a single second of it.

During the process of memorizing the Fa, I have really felt that time is much more precious than money. I hope that all of us can memorize the Fa, especially young practitioners. They should make use of all of their available time to memorize the Fa, even if it is just for an hour a day.

Strengthening Righteous Thoughts

After I filed a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin in July 2015, I heard that many practitioners were arrested. That was also a test for a new practitioner like me.  Because I had never been stopped by police, I did not know how to deal with such a situation or if I would have righteous thoughts. 

Master said:

“The Fa can break all attachments, the Fa can destroy all evil, the Fa can shatter all lies, and the Fa can strengthen righteous thoughts.” (“Drive Out Interference,” Essentials for Further Advancement II) 

Therefore, I increased my intensity in memorizing the Fa. The first and second time, I memorized the Fa paragraph by paragraph. The third time, I started to link up the paragraphs when I memorized them. 

Sometimes, I would not remember the next paragraph after memorizing the first one. When that happened, I read both paragraphs slowly one time. By understanding the relationship between the paragraphs, the memorizing becomes less difficult. By the start of 2016, I’d memorized Zhuan Falun for the third time and started on the fourth.

My father-in-law came to my house with the village cadres and three police officers at the beginning of March 2016. They asked me if I was practicing Falun Gong, if I had written a letter suing Jiang Zemin, and if there was someone who had instigated me to do it.

I admitted that I practiced Falun Gong, that I wrote the letter, and that no one had prompted me to. I told them that the Tiananmen self-immolation was a hoax and that Jiang Zhemin’s persecution of Falun Gong violated the law. The constitution guarantees us freedom of belief, so practicing Falun Gong is legal. Those who persecute Falun Gong will meet with retribution. Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, and others already have. They asked me questions such as my birth date and so on. I answered but thought that if they told me to sign a document, I would not cooperate. In the end, they left without asking me to sign anything.

Before the 19th annual meeting of the CCP in 2017, my father-in-law came to my house with two police officers. One of them had a notebook and the other held a video recorder. I told them that they were not allowed to record any sound or video as that would infringe on my privacy. I held my tablet and said that if they took photos of me, I would take photos of them. The one with the videocamera stopped recording, while the other asked me if I was still practicing Falun Gong. When I said I was, he said that Falun Gong was a cult. I told him that Falun Dafa is being practiced by people worldwide, that China is the only country persecuting these good people. I also warned them not to persecute Falun Gong.

He asked me for my name and I said, “Don’t you already know it?” He asked me about my academic qualifications, and I told them that I was a university graduate. He said, “You are a university graduate. Why are you practicing Falun Gong?” I replied that Falun Gong teaches people to be good and that many teachers, doctors, and professors practice it. He asked me for my identification number to record in his notebook. Just then, I caught a glimpse of his notebook and the word “cult.” I said, “I cannot cooperate with you and answer your questions as this is not good for you. Falun Dafa is not a ‘cult.’”

I told them that I would only continue the conversation if they wanted me to clarify the truth. But if they were here to cause trouble, please not to come back, as they would be trespassing on private property, and I would not welcome them. He insisted that I complete his document, but I refused, even when he threatened to report it to his superior and have him talk to me.

When my husband returned in the morning at the end of his night shift two days later, he told me that the police had come back. I went out and saw about seven police officers. One of them had his video recorder on. I told him to turn it off and he did. They asked me if I really did not intend to fill out the form and I told them, “That’s right!”

“After the vindication of the Cultural Revolution,” I said, “the police officers who participated in it were all taken to a secret location in Yunnan to be executed by a firing squad. In the future, when the truth comes to light, who will take the blame for all of you! Your superior? Persecuting Falun Gong creates a lot of karma, and there will be retribution. So please do not persecute Falun Gong.”

The policeman who had talked to me the last time stood at the back this time and told the others, “Let’s go if she doesn’t want to fill out the form.” And they left. I also told them not to look for my father-in-law again and not to frighten him, since he was already so old. They said that they went to look for him because they did not know where I lived. They would not look for him next time.

When I knew that I might need to face the police, I was afraid and my righteous thoughts did not seem to be strong enough. In the moment, however, I could face them and clarify the truth. After the police left, I was scared again, as though my righteous thoughts were not strong enough again.

I understood later that it is due to my memorizing of the Fa. When I face such situations, the power of the Fa is taking effect. The power of the Fa and Master fill me with righteous thoughts at the crucial moment. That shows how important it is to study the Fa and memorize the Fa well!

Getting Rid of Jealousy Through Memorizing the Fa

During the three years when I memorized the Fa, I memorized Zhuan Falun about 50 times. The way I study the Fa is to memorize the Fa. Sometimes, I read the heading once before memorizing the entire section below that heading. Sometimes, I copy the Fa. I will read a paragraph, write it, and cross-check it with Zhuan Falun to see if what I wrote was correct. I use correction fluid to correct any mistakes and memorize the areas where I made mistakes again.

Before memorizing the Fa, I did not realize that I had the attachment of jealousy. I thought that I was doing rather well. My jealousy gradually got exposed when memorizing the Fa.

Once, when we went to my father’s house, my sister went ahead of me to clean it. When she said that she had been busy the entire morning cleaning, I replied without thinking, “It’s just cleaning house, what’s so great about that? Who hasn’t done that before?” Once the words were out of my mouth, I immediately realized that I’d exposed my jealousy. Wasn’t this just like what Master said about being jealous of other people’s children scoring full marks on their exams?

When cooperating with fellow practitioners to clarify the truth, my jealousy was also exposed. An older practitioner could not bring herself to open her mouth to clarify the truth and asked if she could tag along with me. Sometimes I did the talking and she listened next to me. Sometimes, we cooperated and both spoke. She finally was able to clarify the truth by herself, but there were still times when she asked me to do the talking.

Once someone was sitting by the roadside. The older practitioner said,“He’s waiting for you. Go talk to him.” When I tried to clarify the truth, the man said that he had been told the facts about Falun Dafa, but it didn’t seem to be related to him in any way so he wasn’t interested.

I told him that Falun Dafa teaches people to be good and then about the persecution, organ harvesting, corruption, the poisoning of food, and why people should not hate each other. I told him that if we do not punish those who commit crimes, Heaven will.

I let him know that the CCP killed 80 million Chinese in its different campaigns, and now it is even persecuting people who live by Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. It is important to understand that whoever is still a member of the CCP will perish when the Party is eliminated.

After listening to me, he agreed to quit the CCP and its youth organizations. He even said that I spoke well. The older practitioner also told me, “You spoke really well. It made me want to listen more.”

I usually do not have any thoughts in my mind before I clarify the truth. But as I speak, I feel Master’s empowerment, and the right words seem to just come out of my mouth and I can engage the person's attention.

Encouragement from Master

Because I did not realize that when people and practitioners praised me for clarifying the truth well that it was encouragement from Master, and I became a little conceited. Although I know that Master is the one saving people, and I am just a medium in the process, I still felt I was better than other practitioners.

The older practitioner also became very good at clarifying the truth. Sometimes, when she persuaded more people than me to quit the CCP, I would feel unhappy and upset. I knew that this was jealousy and thus wanted to get rid of it, but it was very difficult, as though the jealousy wanted to control my emotions, especially when people did better than I. At those times, I would feel unhappy or unbalanced.

Now when I clarify the truth with fellow practitioners, I refuse to let my jealousy govern me and remind myself that I should be happy when they do well. We are all Master’s disciples and are saving people as one body, so there should not be any competition between us. We must cooperate well with each other to do better! They also have a lot of strong points that deserve my respect.

Sometimes I hate myself for still having the attachment of jealousy. Actually this is a wrong mindset, as it is acknowledging the attachment of jealousy. When jealousy appears in the mind, one should not acknowledge it!

Every day when I leave the house, I remind myself that my basis for going out to save sentient beings is to assist Master in rectifying the Fa—it is not for myself. Therefore, I must let go of my selfishness and think of others’ needs. Jealousy is evil and poisonous, so I must get rid of it. When I am on my way to Fa study, I still recite Master’s lecture about jealousy.

As I continue to memorize Master’s Fa, I can feel that the attachment of jealousy is getting weaker and weaker. Although sometimes it still disturbs me, I am able to reject it. Now when I see that fellow practitioners persuade more people to quit the CCP than I, I no longer feel jealousy arise in my heart. Instead, I feel happy for them.