Every Day of My Cultivation

(Minghui.org) I live in a small city in Northeast China, and I started cultivating Falun Dafa in April 1997. Although my wife does not cultivate, she supports me in my cultivation.

I follow a strict routine every day, so whatever I do in every segment of the 24 hours is basically fixed. I wake up at 3:10 a.m. to do the exercises and send righteous thoughts, then I study one lecture in Zhuan Falun from 7 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. After that, I go out to clarify the truth for about two hours. In the afternoon, I study two more lectures of Zhuan Falun. After that, I go out to clarify the truth again at 3 p.m. for another two hours.

My wife goes to work every day, so I do all the housework, including buying groceries, cooking, and tidying the kitchen. It takes quite a lot of time to do these things well. In the past, I didn’t put much effort into them. I thought that they wasted too much time and it wasn’t worth it, so my wife kept complaining, saying that I was not being responsible about doing the housework.

I later came to understand that these tasks are a reflection of my cultivation, and that I should treat them seriously. I must treat the small things in my daily life, including every thought and every sentence that other people say, with righteous thoughts, and correct myself based on the Fa. There are only the two of us in this house, so if my wife does not give me feedback, how am I going to cultivate myself and how am I going to be able to see my own attachments? After understanding all of this, I tried my best to do better and to treat doing the housework well as part of my cultivation.

I would like to share some situations that I have faced as I have done the three things.

Studying the Fa

I usually study the Fa for more than four hours a day. I mainly memorize the Fa, usually three lectures of Zhuan Falun every day. I have done this for many years. I usually do not need to look at the book. I only need to open the book when I am not confident about a particular word, phrase, or sentence. I started memorizing the Fa in 2001. The first time I memorized Zhuan Falun, it took me seven months. I have persisted in memorizing the Fa ever since.

Memorizing the Fa is only a method of studying the Fa, but no matter how familiar or how fluently I can memorize the Fa, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I have studied the Fa well. I must attain the state of studying the Fa with a calm mind, where every word goes into my heart. If I cannot reach that state, it is useless even if I am very familiar with the Fa, as I am not truly obtaining the Fa.

Attaining this state has been difficult. As long as I am determined, I can memorize Zhuan Falun. But when I feel so familiar with memorizing the book, I can still face the problem of losing my concentration and focus while studying the Fa. This is actually a matter of whether I have put my heart into doing it. Of course, memorizing the Fa has its benefits. I can study the Fa no matter where I am as long as I have time.

This was especially true when I was illegally detained and persecuted. Through memorizing the Fa a lot, I was able to maintain very strong righteous thoughts to disintegrate the persecution. A few years ago, I was illegally detained and persecuted twice. While I was in a detention center, I still memorized three lectures of Zhuan Falun every day. With Master’s protection, I quickly disintegrated the evil’s plans to persecute me more seriously.

I also study Master’s other lectures for an hour every day. I keep gaining new understandings from these new lectures about important heavenly secrets of Fa-rectification, Master’s benevolence, and the important responsibilities of Dafa practitioners. These understandings have helped me to rectify my cultivation path during this Fa-rectification period.

In the past, I had always liked to look at the news and self media in Freegate when I had spare time, but I no longer find it meaningful to look at all that. I understand that the Fa-rectification and the renewal of the celestial bodies, the universe, and all things and matter are all under Master’s control, so all that news is just a small part of the natural phenomenon in this mundane world.

Sending Forth Righteous Thoughts

I remember reading a sentence in a practitioner’s sharing article, “Studying the Fa and sending forth righteous thoughts with a calm mind can resolve all problems that occur in one’s cultivation.” I fully agree with this sentence. Master has bestowed us with the ability to disintegrate evil, so all the more should we place emphasis on sending righteous thoughts with calm and focused minds. Only then can we send forth strong righteous thoughts that can disintegrate the evil’s interference and persecution.

My house is located near the municipal government, so within a few hundred meters of my house there are all sorts of government units, including the municipal government, district government, public security bureau, procuratorate, court, neighborhood committees, residential communities, and police stations. This means that my house is located at the center of where the evil gathers. This also means that it is convenient for me to eliminate the evil at a close distance.

To eliminate the evil factors in these government departments that persecute Dafa practitioners, I send forth righteous thoughts at 7 p.m., 8 p.m., and 9 .p.m, do so for additional five minutes at 6:10 a.m., and at noon after the scheduled global time points. I send forth righteous thoughts to specifically target these government locations five times every day, and I have been persisting in doing so all year round for years.

I don’t know how effective sending forth righteous thoughts like this is, but I have two observations. The first is that the persecution has been less in my area for the past two to three years. I seldom hear news of fellow practitioners being harassed or persecuted. The second is that I basically have not experienced any harassment. There was only one occasion when a police officer called me two years ago, saying that he wanted to have a talk with me so I could sign some documents. I told him, “We can talk, but I definitely won’t sign any documents.” He said, “I also knew that this would be the outcome, that you won’t sign them.” And he hung up the phone. They haven’t called me again, and no one has come looking for me either.

Sometimes when I step out of the house and see a mass of police cars in the parking lot in front of the municipal government’s auditorium, it means all the city’s police are holding a meeting. In this case, I will sit down and send forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil factors behind the police officers who participate in persecuting Dafa and Dafa practitioners.

I had just arrived home once when I saw hundreds of police at the municipal government’s square. The words on their banners indicated that it was the swearing-in meeting for some movement. Just then, there was a loudspeaker broadcast saying that the police chief was going to speak. I went over to send forth righteous thoughts. Within less than five minutes, the loudspeaker stopped working. It was only when the police chief finished speaking that the loudspeakers’ sound came back.

Clarifying the Truth

There are many parks, squares, and green spaces around my house, and there are many retirees spending their time in these places every day. So I chat with them to find a suitable chance to clarify the truth to them. Using this method, it usually takes longer to clarify the truth to each person, but the truth-clarification can be more thorough. I can do so from different perspectives based on each person’s different situation, and go deep into resolving some of the problems in their thoughts. There are not many people who successfully quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations every day. Usually, about one to three people agree to quit.

In this aspect, I lag behind some fellow practitioners, so I really admire those practitioners who can successfully persuade dozens of people to quit the CCP every day. As a Dafa practitioner, I must attain two things. The first is to take the matter of saving sentient beings as the most important task to fulfill. The second is that I must try my best to do it every day.

A person was sitting on a chair in the park once, and I went over to greet him, sat down, and proceeded to chat with him. I started talking about natural and man-made disasters, the corruption in society, and my personal experiences. I shared about how I managed to overcome difficult situations by studying Falun Dafa’s teachings and cultivating myself. I told him that Falun Dafa is a highly virtuous practice, and I finally mentioned quitting the CCP to attain peace and safety. I asked him if he was willing to quit the CCP. He told me that he was a member of the CCP, and he agreed to quit it. He said that four times before this, at this same spot, people had come to persuade him to quit the Party, but he had not agreed to do so. It took me more than an hour to manage to clarify the truth to this one person, but I truly felt that this encounter was beneficial.

Some people seem to require a process to change their notions. They are not able to change their mind immediately, and it seems difficult to make them decide to quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations. A retiree I once spoke with fully agreed with what I talked to him about, but when I spoke about quitting the CCP, he immediately stood up and left. I felt so sorry for him. Just as I was about to leave, he came back and said, “I thought about it, and think that what you said is correct. I agree to quit the CCP and its youth organizations.”

I met a person one day and felt that he seemed a little familiar, but I couldn’t remember if I had clarified the truth to him before. I thought that I should still talk to him in case he had not heard the truth. So I clarified the truth to him and he listened seriously to what I said. In the end, when I mentioned quitting the CCP, he said that he was a CCP member and he agreed to quit it.

He said, “This is the third time that I have listened to your clarification, but I did not quit the first two times.” I suddenly understood what had happened. If someone has told me that he was a CCP member but he did not want to quit it after I tried to persuade him to do so, I would have a deep impression and remember him. However, if someone did not want to quit and said that he had never joined the CCP or any of its affiliated organizations, this meant that he was playing tricks and did not want to talk further. This was actually the case for this person during my first two attempts.

I once saw a person circling around the park. I went up to strike up a conversation with him and then clarified the truth to him, and he was in full agreement. When I started to persuade him to quit the CCP, however, he did not take a stand. I kept accompanying him on his walk and continued talking. When I changed the perspective to talk to him, he also fully agreed. But when I approached the topic of quitting the CCP, he did not take a stand again. So I continued to speak and accompanied him on his walk further. I wanted to give up a few times, but did not do so because he had never said that he did not want to quit or was unwilling to hear my words. He had not given up, so how could I give up? I thus continued talking. He finally agreed to quit the CCP. He even gave me a round of compliments, saying, “The way you are doing this is very good. You can save people while being safe.” He said, “I have a colleague who also practices Falun Dafa. He was sentenced, fired from his job, got divorced, and lost his house. He is in a really bad state.” I said, “Cultivators do not place so much emphasis on their own life, property, and personal gains. We think more about the safety of other people.”

Of course, I have also met with danger a few times. I once saw a person whose health was in quite a bad shape. I told him to recite the two phrases “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” He asked me, “Are you a Falun Dafa practitioner?” I replied yes, and he said, “Don’t leave. I will call 110 now and you can tell the police when they come.” He started dialing the police on his phone, but I just left.

One day two years ago, hundreds of people were queued up in a park to take COVID nucleic acid tests. I clarified the truth to a person, and when he heard me trying to persuade him to quit the Party, he raised his mobile phone and said loudly, “I can send you to jail with a phone call.” His words drew a group of people, who came over to watch. Under Master’s protection, I survived the danger with a bit of a scare. When these types of things happened, my mind was also disturbed, but I thought that Dafa practitioners need to have a compassionate heart. Thinking of that calms my mind.

Eighteen years ago, I moved from another city to my current place and got to know more than ten veteran practitioners who lived around me. They were all older than me. We formed two Fa study groups. I joined both groups and provided them with truth-clarification materials.

These veteran practitioners were relatively good at clarifying the truth and saving people. A few years ago, some of these practitioners were arrested and their houses were ransacked. Some were illegally detained, and I was one of them. The materials production site which had been in operation for more than a decade was damaged, and the equipment and supplies were all snatched away. These veteran practitioners lost their group Fa study environment due to the persecution, and some started having health problems. Some of them passed away, while some others suffered from serious sickness karma tribulations. They could not step out. It was really heartbreaking and regrettable to see them not being able to keep up at this critical moment in saving people.

I tried to help them, but to no avail. That is also because I did not cultivate well enough, as I also faced the same problems. I can now see clearly that there were mainly two problems: One is that we have many attachments that we fail to overcome. The second is our attachment to doing things. We treated doing things as cultivation. Therefore, only by doing the three things well at the same time does it count as being truly diligent in our cultivation. Only by doing so, can we meet the Fa’s requirements for us. Only then can we keep up with Master’s Fa-rectification process.

I’m grateful to Master for his benevolent salvation! I feel very honored to be able to cultivate in Falun Dafa. I think that I should not worry too much about anything, but just put in all my effort to do the three things well every day.

The above are my limited understandings in my cultivation. Kindly correct me if there is any room for improvement.