(Clearwisdom.net) I am 61 years old, and I began to practice Falun Dafa in 1996. I went from a person who had been struggling in pain all of the time to a practitioner who has been assisting Teacher to rectify the Fa and walking a sacred path of saving sentient beings. It was our most wonderful and benevolent Teacher who gave me a new life. It was also under Teacher's protection that I was able to walk a righteous path during the past ten years of cruel persecution, and I have walked my path well. My path includes many stories. I kept falling down, and then climbing up again. There has always been one thought on my mind which has given me support, which is: "Believe in Teacher and Falun Dafa."
1. Studying the Fa, Cultivating Myself, Making Improvements as a Coordinator
Before the persecution of Falun Gong began, I was an assistant for new students. After the persecution started, practitioners in the neighborhood and I formed an environment for Fa-study and cultivation. In the beginning, we were short of supplies for truth-clarification materials, so I had to think of many ways to satisfy the needs of practitioners in this regard. At that time, I thought, "I am a practitioner who assists Teacher in validating the Fa in the human world, satisfying the needs of practitioners is what I am supposed to do." In time, I naturally became a coordinator. In order to have practitioners receive Teacher's new articles from the Minghui website and truth-clarification materials in a timely fashion, I had to overcome many difficulties and I always treated getting the materials passed on as top priority. I tried not to delay delivering them no matter what the situation, and passed them on to practitioners in a timely fashion. There was one instance when a new article was published, in which all the practitioners received it except for one. A practitioner tried to deliver it to her home four times, but she was not home. In order to have this practitioner not miss the new article, I made great efforts to find her daughter's home. She was there, and I finally managed to pass the article on to her.
At the time when the persecution first began, the truth-clarification materials were very limited. So I began to make my own truth-clarification materials. I handed out some and put up some. One practitioner pointed her finger at me, saying, "Only you are so active. So what if we just passed out whatever we had on hand (instead of making our own)!" At that time, I was not angry at all. I understood that it was for me to improve my xinxing. I said to her, "We are all practitioners. In order to validate the Fa, and to clear up Teacher's reputation, we can't wait. We have to figure out a way ourselves." Therefore, we made it through the most difficult time in clarifying the facts to others. We did very well.
During the Beijing Olympics, I went to a practitioner's home with a big bag of truth-clarification materials. As soon as I walked in, she said to me worriedly, "Did you see anyone standing in the street searching others' bags?" I said to her that I didn't. She asked, "I'm concerned about this. What should we do about getting materials next week?" I said, "Why don't you come to my home to pick them up?" She replied, "There must be someone searching bags nearby your home as well." I said, "There isn't anyone. We haven't seen anything." But she said, "Sorry, I don't feel like going." I said, "I'll still bring them to you. We should be fine. We'll ask Teacher to help us eliminate the interference and send righteous thoughts."
After I got home, unrighteous thoughts popped up. I was berating her in my mind, "You already knew that there was someone close by searching others' bags, why didn't you tell me beforehand? And when I asked you to come to my home to pick them up, you refused." While I was thinking about it, suddenly I thought, "What am I doing? Why didn't I look inward when running into problems?" I was only looking at others' shortcomings. Right away, I began to send righteous thoughts to eliminate the unrighteous thoughts. Later, I thought about it: Why was this happening to me? What did I do wrong? Teacher said,
"Everything you, a cultivator, encounter is related to your cultivation and Consummation, or else those things absolutely would not exist." ("Dafa Is All-Encompassing" from Essentials for Further Advancement II)
I came to realize that this thing happened to get rid of my fear and resentment so that I could improve myself. I immediately sent righteous thoughts to break out of the old forces' arrangement. Ever since, I have been delivering materials to her home every week, and there has been nobody on the street nearby her home searching people's bags.
2. Eliminating the Old Forces' Arrangements, Walking Our Cultivation Path in a Righteous Way
One day in the fall of 2001, when my husband came home, he started shouting at me, "Hurry up and write your guarantee statement!" He mentioned that my manager had talked to him and said, "It's the order from our superiors that one must write a 'guarantee statement,' otherwise one will be taken to a forced labor camp." Without a second thought, I said to him, "I can't write the statement. I already made a mistake once, and I won't do it again. I'm a practitioner. I should only follow Teacher's arrangement." He said, "I'll let you think about it." After lunch he began to yell at me. I didn't budge. Seeing this, he started throwing things around. Then he said angrily, "They will throw you into jail. You just wait and see!" After my husband left, I made up my mind: I'd firm up my belief, and only follow what Teacher said. After my husband came home in the evening, he didn't mention anything at all. The next day at noon, he said, "I wrote the statement for you, that's why they haven't done anything to you." I was alarmed right away. "How can you do that without my consent? I won't acknowledge it." He started shouting, "You are not appreciating what I have done for you at all?!" I said, "I didn't want you to do anything bad." After a while, I found out that he actually didn't write the statement. Through this event, I came to understand: Only when our righteous thoughts are firm enough will Teacher be able to eliminate the interference for us.
It's such a wonderful thing to be a practitioner. However, in the first few years of the persecution, my husband didn't talk to me at all. He was someone who was deeply poisoned by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). His philosophy was: If they didn't allow you to do it, don't do it. Therefore, during those few years, he was angry with me. The evil environment made me feel like I couldn't breathe. One time I had dinner with my son's in-laws. When they were giving a toast, I used tea to toast with them instead of wine, because I do not drink. By doing so, my husband felt that he lost face. After we came home, in front of my son and my daughter-in-law, he swore at me very hard. However, all of my children understood that Falun Dafa was wonderful. They knew what was going on. By continuously reciting Teacher's articles, such as "Tempering One's Heart and Will" from Hong Yin, I passed the trial.
With Teacher's saving grace, I have been holding myself to the standards of Falun Dafa. As a result, my husband gradually came to understand the truth. One time, I had him watch the DVD of the facts of the staged self-immolation incident at Tiananmen Square. He said, "This is truly a poor act made up by the CCP, and they are still using it to fool people." When the movement to quit the CCP started, he said, "I want to quit, and I'll use my real name." The transformation that happened to my husband has truly demonstrated the great power of Teacher saving sentient beings.
3. Through Cultivating Xinxing, Dafa Has Helped With Solving Resentment Between Me and Other Family Members
In the summer of 2000, my daughter-in-law's brother punched and injured someone. In order to protect her brother, she took all the responsibility for it. As a result, the police were trying to arrest her. My husband had to travel between the police station and hospital. It was too much of a hassle for him. That's why after he came home, he was very grumpy. During that period of time, police often guarded certain areas and searched for practitioners in every household. Some practitioners were arrested. My husband was scared. After the victim of my daughter-in-law's brother survived, his family withdrew their appeal to the police. However, they were asking for 140,000 yuan as compensation. In order to settle it as soon as possible, my husband agreed to provide 100,000 yuan. My daughter-in-law's mother said her family was not as well off and could only come up with 40,000 yuan. At the time, I felt so unbalanced in my heart, but my husband insisted on paying the bulk of the compensation. I didn't stop him. In the evening, I cried. I thought to myself, "I'm a practitioner, why have I run into such a tribulation? Was it because I owed someone, or was it for the purpose of eliminating my attachment?" I would have to follow what Teacher said in Zhuan Falun,
"It is said in religion that regardless of how much money you have or how high your position ranks, it is good for only a few decades."
Later, my daughter-in-law's mother surprisingly said to me, "If you hadn't offered the money back then, my brother would have been able to pay it." I understood that this happened because I couldn't completely let go of this attachment, so she said this to me to test me again. I said to her calmly, "It's only because I'm a practitioner, otherwise we wouldn't have offered it to you so easily. Since it was not my daughter-in-law who did it, even though we offered the money, I would have asked for repayment somehow later on. That's what I would have done if I were not a practitioner." She had nothing more to say after that. My relatives were upset with her, and couldn't understand why I didn't hold a grudge. I said to them, "I'm a practitioner. Practitioners do not resent others. Our Teacher is the best person in the world." All my relatives have come to understand the injustice of the persecution. All of them have withdrawn from the Party. In addition, my daughter-in-law's mother has helped people she knows to quit the Party.
Earlier on, we lived very closed to my uncle's family. We didn't get along with them very well. I had sworn that I was not going to talk to them any more. After I became a practitioner, I came to realize that for us to be able to live in the same neighborhood meant that there was a close predestined relationship. Saving them was my responsibility. With the improvement of my xinxing, I began to care for them. When their children wanted to start their own business but lacked money, I supported them. My uncle had many illnesses. My husband and I often went to his home to visit him and help him in his day-to-day life. I often talked to him about the wonderfulness of Falun Dafa. As to the transformation that happened to me after I became a practitioner, they have all seen it. Therefore all of his family members have withdrawn from their memberships in the CCP. One time his second daughter said to me, "My dad developed brain atrophy, and he has had incontinence (inability to control one's bowels). I had to wash his pants for him every day. He's been suffering too much! I suddenly recalled what you have told us about reciting "Falun Dafa is wonderful, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good" with a sincere heart, so that Teacher would help us. So I told my dad to listen to you, seeing as he has a lot of free time anyway. So he has been reciting these phrases, and reading the materials that you passed on to him. After two days, he was healed suddenly. Not only can he take care of himself now, but also his temperament has changed for the better." His children said to us, "This is truly amazing. This practice is so wonderful, we want to learn too." Then I gave them Falun Dafa books, truth-clarification materials, and DVDs. There are four people in their family reading Falun Dafa books, and his third daughter has also begun to practice. She said, "Since I've begun to practice Falun Gong, everything has been going well." I replied, "It's Teacher who has seen your true heart and has been taking care of you."
4. A Particle in Dafa
There is only one other practitioner and myself at the material production center I go to. We do not show ourselves off. We follow Teacher's words, so that our center can run smoothly. We are busy every day. In the mornings, we study the Fa together or do our individual Fa-study, then we begin to produce materials at 1 p.m. Sometimes we go out to hand out materials, and occasionally we have to take some time to go out to get toner. After the Shen Yun DVDs came out, we were more occupied. In order to save more sentient beings, we treat each piece of material as precious, which saves us from making mistakes. In addition, in order to satisfy practitioners' needs, we seldom take a lunch break. After we come home, we still have house chores to do. Even though we are very busy and have gone though a lot of hardship, both of us are very happy, as we are doing the most sacred thing. We are assisting Teacher in validating the Fa in the human world.
5. Validating the Fa and Cultivating Myself Solidly through Saving Sentient Beings
Since the beginning of the persecution, we have been participating in the wave of validating the Fa and saving sentient beings. Under Teacher's protection, and also by using the compassion and righteous thoughts that we have cultivated from Falun Dafa, we have been able to walk through the more than ten years of hardship. There were times that I was arrested and my home was ransacked, or I was found by security personnel who were ambushing us while we were handing out materials. Yet I managed to escape eventually. When clarifying the truth and helping people quit the CCP, I have run into all kinds of people. One time I ran into a relative whom I had not seen for years. I started talking to her by checking her attitude first, "Aunt, did you know that Falun Gong is being persecuted?" She replied right away, "Don't even go there. I don't believe in anything, no matter if it is Catholicism, Christianity, or Falun Gong, I don't believe in any of them. You people, you just don't want to live a peaceful life, do you?" I knew that she was deeply poisoned by the atheism promoted by the CCP. After dinner, I began to talk to her again. I talked about health, cultivating the mind, family, and the current social environment. I clarified the truth to her about the wonderfulness of Falun Dafa, as well as the truth of the staged self-immolation incident, and the organ harvesting done by the CCP.
She then raised two issues. One was that one of her neighbor's entire family was sentenced for practicing Falun Gong. They were dismissed from their workplace, and their lives were ruined. Another case was that there was a practitioner who refused to take medication, and refused to go to the hospital. He ended up dead. In reference to the family who was sentenced, I talked to her about why people would be so firm in practicing Falun Dafa. I also talked to her about the Udumbara flowers blossoming in different areas of the world. According to Buddhism, this flower blossoms once every three thousand years, at a time when the Falun Holy King would ascend to the world to spread the Fa and save sentient beings. Through cultivation, practitioners have improved their mental and physical health. For them to follow Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and be good people, what's wrong with that?! Therefore, they firmly believe in Teacher and Dafa, which can't be seen in any other cultivation practice. As far as the other person, Teacher has clearly said that those who do not follow the cultivation requirements of Falun Dafa will be no different than a non-practitioner and they may end up having ordinary problems; and besides, Teacher has never said that people cannot go to the hospital. My aunt said, "You said it. This person had been playing Mahjong every day. When he came home, he fought with his wife. I didn't really see him as being a practitioner." After she learned the truth, I began to talk to her about the inevitability of heaven eliminating the CCP, and told her about quitting the CCP. She agreed, and happily said to me, "I will also help all of my family members to quit the CCP when I get home."
Clarifying the truth and saving sentient beings are practitioners' responsibilities. However, I haven't done well enough. In the future, I'll have more of a sense of urgency, and seize the time to save more sentient beings.
The cultivation path I have traveled for the past twelve years has been a path of eliminating my attachments. I still have more to get rid of. Sometimes I would not look inwards when I ran into trouble, and I felt that there was a gap between myself and the requirements of Falun Dafa. I will continuously purify myself, continue to cultivate more and more diligently, study the Fa more and study well, cultivate solidly, and walk well every step in assisting Teacher to validate the Fa. I hope to meet Teacher's expectations, and I will follow Teacher home after reaching consummation.
I appreciate Teacher's saving grace and other practitioners' assistance, which has helped me greatly.
