Cultivating Compassion During a Great Tribulation

(Minghui.org) I was able to overcome one tribulation after another when I was persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I know I survived because Master protected me and I was guided by Falun Dafa’s principles. I also felt these were opportunities to eliminate my resentment and cultivate my compassion. Looking back, I’m deeply moved by the greatness of Master and Dafa. No words can truly express my gratitude.

I would like to share the process through which I transformed from harboring hatred toward those who committed evil deeds against Dafa to selflessly helping them.

Discovering Dafa

I was 18 years old in 1997. Just before I took the college entrance exam, I was fortunate to learn about Falun Dafa. I felt like a lost child who’d finally found their way home. The excitement was so overwhelming that I often skipped when I walked. By studying the Fa and doing the Falun Dafa exercises, my mind quickly opened, and I began my university life smoothly. That was 28 years ago, yet the joy I felt when I began practicing Dafa remains deeply etched in my heart, and it will never fade.

Even I was young, before I began practicing I often felt an inexplicable emptiness. I didn’t know where I came from or where I was headed. I wondered what the true meaning of life was. I searched textbooks, asked every teacher, practiced various qigong, and I was even baptized in a Christian church. Yet no one could answer my questions. Falun Dafa lit a bright lamp in my heart. It revealed to me that the true purpose of life is to return to one’s original, true self. I was filled with confidence and hope for life and for the future.

Falun Dafa Is Persecuted

In 1999, Jiang Zemin, then head of the CCP, launched a senseless, full-scale suppression of Falun Dafa. I was still attending university. Having grown up in an environment filled with praise, I rarely experienced hardship. Faced with this sudden, overwhelming pressure from the CCP, I remained calm, because the profound principles of Dafa were already rooted in my heart. No external force could change my belief in the truth of the universe.

However, simply because I continued practicing Falun Dafa, my life was completely overturned. I lost a promising job and I never had the chance to start a family. Instead, I endured years of hardship and spent countless days alone and under pressure while maintaining a material production site. I lived under the constant threat of being arrested and imprisoned. But because I read the Fa every day, had Master giving me strength, and participated in assisting Master in the Fa-rectification, I felt happy and fulfilled.

Whenever I saw reports about the cruel persecution suffered by fellow practitioners, I deeply resented those who participated in it. Although Master repeatedly taught us that those who persecute Dafa practitioners are the actual victims and are the ones we should save, I still struggled internally. I never doubted Master’s teachings, but my human emotions and attachments, along with my human thoughts about right and wrong, kept me from letting go of my resentment. These thoughts became ingrained notions that were hard to eliminate.

I was imprisoned and subjected to prolonged physical torture, brainwashing, and emotional torment. This was a comprehensive, all-encompassing, and unrestrained assault meant to destroy my faith. For a month, I was constantly brought out and interrogated. I was illegally sentenced to a long prison term and admitted one of the most evil prisons in China. I was in close and continuous contact with the many kinds of people involved in the persecution, and I witnessed their shamelessness and despicable behavior firsthand. I felt disgust and contempt for them, and I viewed them as ridiculous clowns. With such an impure mind, it was impossible for me to develop genuine compassion, and precisely because of that, I suffered greatly throughout the long ordeal.

Dafa’s Principles Guided Me Through My Imprisonment

I continued to look within according to Dafa. Throughout the entire ordeal, I never lost my righteous faith in Dafa. On the contrary, I saw even more clearly the evil nature of the CCP. I learned to measure things with Dafa’s principles and I gradually realized it was not these people themselves who wanted to persecute me; instead, they were being controlled by the evil elements behind them. Little by little, my resentment for them weakened, but I still couldn’t develop true compassion.

During those long years of imprisonment inside that dark den of evil, I often wondered how to judge right and wrong using Dafa’s principles and how to see the true nature of those involved in the persecution. Many of them were more contemptible than one could imagine, and the environment there was so evil that outsiders could never comprehend it. Guided by Master and Dafa, I gradually learned to distinguish between the people themselves and the evil forces behind them. As a result, I became less and less afraid of them, and eventually, they began to fear me and dared not persecute me further.

When the years of unjust imprisonment finally ended and I returned home, I was physically strong, my spirits was high, my hair was glossy and black, and my face was glowing with health. When I saw my aging parents, it almost felt as if I had just returned home from traveling.

Continuing to Reflect and Enlighten

After I was home for a while, I began to reflect. Having endured such severe persecution, which would be considered an immense tribulation by ordinary standards, I was still myself. I was even more steadfast in cultivation and clearer in seeing the true nature of the evil. Did the evil get what it wanted? No. What did I lose? The comforts of a worldly life. But those were not the things I came to this world to pursue. From Master’s teachings, I understood even more clearly that no matter what we go through, what we ultimately gain is the best.

I thought about those who participated in the persecution. They’d lost their true selves and were being manipulated by the old forces to harm practitioners. They face a terrifying fate and are truly pitiable. They are facing such tragic ends because they persecuted me, and I knew this was because they had some karmic ties to me. In that sense, shouldn’t I be concerned about their eternal future?

I began to recall everything I’d endured. I wrote down every detail, organizing it carefully without adding in any emotion. During this process, I saw many of my shortcomings, and my compassion grew. After I finished, a fellow practitioner asked, “Aren’t you afraid that the CCP will retaliate against you for writing this?” I replied calmly, “Everything I wrote is true. Even if those very people stood before me today, I would still say every word of it.”

By writing my article, I also sought to expose the evildoers’ wicked methods, so they could see for themselves the inhumane things they’d done. I wanted to help more people with predestined ties see the true nature of the CCP and help fellow practitioners strengthen their righteous thoughts and faith in Dafa.

As I continued to look inward, came to understand at my cultivation level what Master said:

“But I knew that they would do things this way, so I was left with no choice but to go along with their ploys and turn their ploys against them.” (Teachings Given on Lantern Festival Day, 2003).

I realized that Master arranged everything in the best possible way so that, through genuine cultivation, practitioners can remove their attachments and cultivate compassion.

Thank you, Master!