03/22/1998

(Atlanta, GA, U.S.A.)

Since I learned Falun Dafa eight months ago [in 1997] my view of life has greatly changed. The change is so profound that it is beyond what I can here express with words. From a scientist's viewpoint, my first step in Falun Dafa cultivation was to break the pre-conceived barrier, which the rules and logic of modern science had planted deeply in my mind. Falun Dafa's explanation of the roles and limitations of modern science deeply convinced me of the fallacies of modern science and made me realize that the wisdom of an enlightened being far surpasses the knowledge of human society. Here I would like to share some of my experiences, especially those that changed my view on modern science and how that came about.

I regret that I did not have a chance to learn Falun Dafa earlier than July 1997, when I began to practice cultivation in Falun Dafa. I was born into a poor, rural family in China. For kids like me to finish middle school was considered a next to impossible luxury. As it turned out, however, I was lucky to gain a formal education and study for more than twenty years. Good fortune always knocked at the door at the right time. The year I finished junior middle school, China made a great change to its education policy, which enabled me to study in a technical school. Five years later, I was placed successfully in the national college entrance exam. In college I happened to meet several professors who guided me to win a scholarship for graduate study on experimental physics in Princeton University where I got my Ph.D. Since 1993 I have been working at Bell Laboratories. Even though there was a lot of tedious work, I consider my education and career unbelievably successful. Whenever I think back on those past years I feel as if it were a dream. Most of my teenage playmates are still poor peasants in rural China. Actually, whose life is not like a dream?

My educational opportunity did not come easy. I have therefore always considered making it my life's responsibility to make great achievements in science. I heard the story of Newton conceiving the theory of universal attraction between celestial bodies while watching apples falling from trees; and explaining the orbiting motions of the planets around the Sun. I always had great respect for such scientists. I also wanted to unveil such break-through truths, and even dreamed of winning a Nobel Prize. My initial objective was relatively good compared to what it became later. My job was interesting and stable, and provided enough challenge, as I always hoped for. But soon I became dissatisfied and wanted to change my job. I wanted to become a professor, because I realized that, lacking the quality to go up the management ladder, I would otherwise remain a research engineer for the rest of my life. Whatever I would discover is company property and my career prospects would be very limited. I therefore took a lot of extra time and effort to go to conferences, to publish papers, and to get to know famous people in academic circles, attempting to pave the road towards a professorship. Later I learned that many people of my age made big money starting their own businesses. They were their own bosses, having their own secretaries, traveling around the world, and so on. I thought that now, since I have learned some industrial skills over the past few years, I should also watch for an opportunity to start my own company. After all, I still could not yet afford the big house and fancy car I wished for. I needed to make more money in order to do that. At the same time, with the improvement in my living status, my original diligence and self-control I was proud of were gradually replaced by pursuit of luxury and comfort. I started to seek excitement in TV sets and computers, always chasing the most fashionable sound systems, TVs, karate, satellite dishes, electronic gadgets, and so on. I often stayed up overnight to watch TV, being especially attracted to those ridiculous violence-sex-and-thriller-programs. But every time afterward I always felt lost, unsatisfied, or even guilty for my indulging behavior. At the same time I started to do other bad things. I even found an excuse: A person should live like that, telling myself that the purpose of life appeared to be to strive for money and enjoyment as much as possible. This is exactly the mighty tidal wave, which everyone in society rides without being aware of it.

My goal of becoming a professor or starting a company was obviously for fame and luxury, but I always told myself, and others, that I worked hard only because I loved my job and that I, like others, should be competitive in my career. After learning Falun Dafa I decided that I would no longer work for fame and luxury, and abandoned my plans for a professorship and my own business. I thought that maybe I was no longer attached to fame and luxury. But some small incidences in my work made me realize that the attachment was still deeply rooted in my heart. I once made a new scientific discovery and told one of my colleagues about it. He made a further investigation and presented his findings in a company meeting. Normally he should have acknowledged my discovery and given me credit, but he did not. If I had not learned Falun Dafa, I would have stood up in the meeting and pointed out that I was the one who initiated the work. But because of Falun Dafa, I held back and complimented him on his work after the meeting. However, the scenes of the meeting floated in my mind for several days and I could not control them from coming back. If I no longer had any concerns for my ego and personal gains, why should I feel taken advantage of? In retrospect, I can still trace my daily emotions to many of these small incidences relating to petty gains and losses.

I knew a professor whom I considered as my role model. Before becoming a professor, he had made a successful career at Bell Laboratories. I saw myself mirrored in his life. He could be regarded as one of those who devoted themselves to science and education. He was a perfectionist in academic research, put strict requirements on his students, and regarded teaching as his social responsibility. Seemingly, because of the constant hard work, his health badly deteriorated recently. I paid him a special visit and suggested that he retire a few years early. Then, I introduced Falun Dafa to him and left him a set of Dafa books. But a few months later, he told me that he had been too busy to have the time for the books, for he had to teach and to apply for funding. He would not consider retiring either, because he said he had the responsibility to teach, and when he was young, did not know to save enough money. This incident showed me that many scientists, including myself in the past, aside from pursuing fame and gain to bolster their professional ego, devote themselves to academics and research out of professional dedication. All believe that they are making honorable and necessary contributions for the evolution of human civilization. Even though they are good scientists by ordinary standards, their pursuit is not meaningful and, in the eyes of Dafa cultivators, they are wasting their lives. From my standpoint, after I learned Falun Dafa, the career pursuit by ordinary scientists, in my view after is little different from children who are addicted to electronic games. Electronic games are nothing more than computer programs, but some children would sacrifice their sleep and meals to get a high score when following the rules of the games. The most fashionable electronic games nowadays are called "virtual reality," which means false reality, or illusion. Ordinary people cling to the material world in the same way, just like Master Li said: "All the ordinary people living in the world are unable to find themselves." "Look at those ordinary people! They even don't know what they are doing all day long and for what they live." (Unofficial translation of Zhuan Falun, vol. II) "People think that the renowned persons, scholars, and different sorts of experts in human society are great. In fact, they are all really insignificant, for they are everyday people. ("What is Wisdom" Falun Buddha Law Essentials for Further Advancement). This description fits, because the scientists cannot release themselves from the petty fighting over fame and money among ordinary people, cannot give up their greedy pursuit, and cannot reach a higher level of being.

On the surface, modern western science based on human observation-verification provides people with a tool to know nature and humanity. In reality, it gives people a false perception of the world. My profession is telecommunication technologies. I once said that the telephones today only transmit voice. Soon picture phones will become popular. Eventually people will be interacting with intelligent networking robots. The robot not only can speak in place of your partner, but also reproduce your partner's feelings and emotions in a life-like manner. You may even hug it and it would respond as if your partner were with you. I even thought of applying a patent for the idea. I regarded human beings as no different from complicated robots, and believed that robots could have human feelings and emotions. Now I realize that my idea was simply ridiculous, and my understanding of human body and life was just skin-deep. Unfortunately, many scientists don't share the same understanding as me, and many even believe that someday they can directly read the logic of human brains into robots. Isn't this an illusion caused by modern science?

Let me give you another typical example that I thought of. All scientists know that the natural oil supply on earth is very limited. But who can guarantee that before the oil is exhausted another source of energy will be developed? Everyone thinks there will eventually be pies falling from the sky, but who has realized that what heaven offers to humans depends directly on the virtue and karma of humans, and that the plans of humans can never surpass the plans from heaven? Disney World showed an interactive video, asking what the form of energy will be used when natural oil is exhausted. The answer was "brain power." I then joked that human brains will be pumped into automobiles as power. How can human beings possess such infinite capability to get whatever one wishes for? This indicates how conceited and ill-informed ordinary human beings are because of the illusion of modern science. People always believe that they are great; that no one should limit their behavior and that they will eventually control society and nature. In reality, even if, as modern scientists claim, our thinking comes from the flesh brain and is free from control by superhuman forces, how can our finite brains accommodate everything in the infinite and boundless universe? As for modern science itself, Master Li said, "The foundation of its development, as well as the foundation for its understanding of humankind, nature, and matter, are all wrong. And this has resulted in damage to morality in today's human society." ("Teaching the Fa at a New York Meeting" Falun Buddha Fa Lectures in the United States) This viewpoint resonates with my experience. People believe in modern science as the way to gain absolute truth; if not absolute truth itself, because they believe that today's material civilization as well as democracy and freedom result from the development of modern science. However, the promoters of modern science believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. Modern science is unable to prove the existence of Buddhas or Gods. More and more people therefore do not believe that there are superhuman laws to govern the behavior of humans. Under the guise of liberation, the standards of morality, society is deteriorating everyday. As I understood from Falun Dafa that the modern science is destroying humanity from its very essence. I saw first or second graders telling their parents that humans come from apes when the parents said humans are children of God. Even little kids carelessly spit out words like "God" and "Jesus," and "I hate this and that" all the time. Because of the downfall of morality, modern science is in turn controlled by money and fame. Isn't it terrifying? Science gave human beings atomic bombs and H-bombs, but who can say that these are not disasters for us? Who knows where technologies such as genetic engineering, cloning, computer and telecommunications are pushing human society?

Falun Dafa is the ultimate science. It brings its cultivators the ultimate wisdom. As I perceive at my level, it shows us the true meaning of life - ascending above the level of ordinary people and returning to the original true self through cultivation, i.e., upgrading oneself from an ordinary person full of selfish desire and personal spite, to an enlightened being, quietly watching ordinary people being misled by illusion, surpassing the misery of death and recovering all the supernatural capabilities. Is there anything else in the world this profound and worth pursuing? The theories and philosophies of math, physics, chemistry, biology and so on, cannot even in the least explain the relationship between matter and spirit, let alone shed light on the fundamental problems of life and death. Many people with severe diseases, incurable in hospitals, are automatically cured in a short time after they began to cultivate Falun Dafa. This is only a manifestation of the supernatural powers of the infinite Dafa on an elementary level, which is already beyond what ordinary people can believe. More advanced aspects of Dafa, e.g., the immortal body and the supernatural capabilities of cultivators, and the true revelation of matter, life, and universe, are far beyond what modern science can ever include, prove or embrace.

Let me mention a few examples. If the flesh eyes of every human could image objects as far as distant galaxies and as small as atoms, and could receive any waves from infrared to X-ray, the world we would perceive would be quite different from what we see today, and science would have been much closer to the truth. But the supernatural power of Falun Dafa cultivation can make people see not only far smaller than atoms and far beyond galaxies, but also the forms of matter beyond our three-dimensional space, and forms of life beyond this physical manifestation of life we are familiar with. Ordinary people do not know the fate of tomorrow after living today. They do not know when they will get into disasters or diseases, and indulgence and surety become main aspects of modern civilization. Falun Dafa, however, can let cultivators know the activities of the whole world without leaving their homes. They can see the past and future of anything from a person to a society, and the predestined relationships among people and all the happenings. Modern science labels all life processes with such terms as "protein" and "metabolism," and believes further that there are few planets have water and the strict condition to support life. But Falun Dafa reveals to cultivators that there are different forms of life and intelligence everywhere in the infinite universe. Most forms of life simply do not depend on the low-energy protein metabolism. Their intelligence and capabilities are far greater because they assimilate high-energy substances, which are more microscopic or macroscopic. Human beings originally also belonged to these high-level lives, but were dropped to our three-dimensional space on earth because of selfish attachments. Falun Dafa reveals the origin of human life and the path of cultivation to the true self. How can we even compare modern science with Falun Dafa? Therefore, I see Falun Dafa as the ultimate science, but it is only what I see at this stage of my cultivation. Master Li said: "The Buddha Fa is the nature of the universe. It is the factor that created the origin of matter, and it is the reason for the genesis of the universe...Without this enormous Buddha Fa there would be nothingand this includes everything in the universe, from the most macroscopic to the most microscopic, as well as all of human society's knowledge." ("Validation" in Essentials for Further Advancement) So the extensive and profound contents of Falun Dafa are simply beyond the comprehension of ordinary people.

Then, as a scientist cultivating Falun Dafa, how should I treat my scientific work? I found the truth and wisdom worth my lifetime pursuit, and realized that science will always remain the collective, limited knowledge on the level of ordinary people. As a result, in my heart, modern science lost its sacred appeal. I am naturally able to put down the fame, gain, and emotions associated with it. But scientific work is my profession, and therefore, as my job I will do it well. I also want to use science to promote Dafa, to make it known to others, and to help others to benefit from it. Most of all, I am ready to devote my whole life to following the path of Falun Dafa cultivation.

Yuan P Li