(Minghui.org) I started to practice Falun Dafa in 2012 and am now 37. Dafa has taught me to be a good person and to be considerate of others in all circumstances. I evaluate my conduct using Dafa's principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
Letting Go of the Attachment to Self-interest
Everyone knows that corruption is very common in China today. It was easy for me to go with the flow when I didn't have any moral restrictions. I used to acquire 10,000 yuan extra income every month by unscrupulous means. After I became a Falun Dafa adherent, I corrected my behavior based on Dafa’s requirement and no longer accept a penny that I haven't earned.
I work in foreign trade sales. Nowadays, companies’ sales departments in China are a mess. It is common for salespeople to fight over profits. After I started practicing Falun Dafa, I didn't compete for such benefits. My colleagues' relationships in the office became more harmonious when they started following my example.
At a trade show I was assigned a client who later contacted my manager using WeChat. I told the manager that I didn’t want to use the WeChat app (because it is used by the CCP to spy on us), so the manager asked another employee to contact the client. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t strike a deal with the client. Another buyer for this client emailed me, and after consulting with my manager, I communicated with the other employee to see what he thought. They unanimously agreed to put me in touch with the client. The client later placed an order for 1.1 million yuan, which was the largest single order in the history of our company.
At another trade show, I learned that the client I was hosting had a very large business, and an order from his company could be worth a million yuan a month. Sealing such a deal would mean 30,000 yuan a month income for the salesperson. The boss assigned this client to a colleague who was his relative. As a Dafa practitioner, I have my standards and didn't dispute my boss's decision. Instead, I was happy for all involved. My boss trusted his relative to handle this significant account. Also, his relative had a hefty mortgage on her house. She had elderly parents and children, just like me. I would be happy for her if she could pay off her mortgage faster. Just like that, I easily let it go.
I was working for a Korean company. My new general manager, a graduate of a technical secondary school, used to be self-employed. Because she had a good relationship with the boss, she was hired to run the company. The company had lost a lot of money due to mismanagement by her predecessor, but she did even worse. She set up several companies of her own using the Korean company’s client relationship. However, her employees were paid by the Korean company.
I didn't approve of her behavior and really looked down on her. Then it dawned on me: Why was I disgusted? Society is a mixture of good and bad. That’s the way the world is now.
One of her companies needed foreign trade sales, so she transferred me to that site. However, she was too suspicious to trust anyone and often read my emails. Because she did not understand English, she had me translate the emails for her. She asked me to send her a copy of every email and to include in my email responses that she was the general manager. She was afraid I would take clients away from her. Her behavior disgusted me.
As a Dafa practitioner, I did everything honestly. The principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance are far above professional ethics. But she still suspected me. So I sometimes intentionally didn't copy her when emailing my responses to the clients.
I knew this wasn't in line with Dafa’s requirement. I was being small-minded. I had to think about it from her perspective. She did not know much about the business and was afraid she might be cheated. So she was suspicious. Realizing this, I felt sorry for her. I am a practitioner and take self-interest lightly. Why did I care that she read my emails and kept an eye on me? I decided to let go of everything. I would follow her orders whether they were reasonable or not.
When I recently secured a big client, my boss arranged for her brother to be my “apprentice.” In fact, I heard that she had let her brother read my emails. On the surface, she arranged for her brother to be my “apprentice” to help me with my work, but, in fact, she’d told her brother to learn from me, so that he could take over the big clients later.
Of course, I understood her intentions and thoughts, so I arranged a training program for her brother and told him my email password so that he could read my emails at any time. As a cultivator, I didn’t care whether this would affect me negatively. Instead, I was willing to help both of them.
Colleagues, friends, and relatives all knew how the manager treated me. They knew that I did my job well, and they often tried to persuade me to become self-employed. One colleague said that her friend had a trading company, wanted me to help her with her business, and would share the profits 50-50. My relatives especially wanted me to go to work on my own, independently, so that I could work from home and have more time with my children.
Working from home had always been my dream. I have two children, my mother-in-law passed away early, and my father-in-law was not well. No one could help me look after the children. The temptation was great. If I took my clients from the company, as many salespeople did, it would undoubtedly be a huge loss to the company. As a cultivator, I couldn't do that.
The Fa-rectification period is approaching the end and time is so valuable. If I worked independently, I would have to put more time and effort into the job. As a cultivator, this was not my pursuit. As long as I could earn a basic living at my current job, it was enough. Cultivation is letting go of personal interests. How could I indulge my attachments to greed and desire?
No matter how great the temptation may be, I do my job according to what Master requests. That's all I need to do. I should focus my main energy on cultivation.
Insisting on Clarifying the Truth
For the first two years of my cultivation, I clarified the truth about Dafa using my phone. I later saw my aunt talking to people about Dafa in person and told her that I needed to do the same. From then on, I went out to tell the people facts about Dafa on the weekends. I helped them distance themselves from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by quitting the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
I started bleeding when I was pregnant with my second child. For about a month, I stayed in bed and didn’t go anywhere. My aunt shared with me that a Dafa practitioner has to fulfill her mission. I felt ashamed and the next weekend rode my electric bike to talk with people about Dafa so they will have a better future. But after about an hour, I was exhausted, dizzy, and nauseous. I couldn’t go on, so I went home. The following week, I went out again, but this time I didn’t feel tired at all. From that day on, there was no more bleeding. I knew Master was encouraging me.
When I was about four months pregnant, members of our Fa study group decided to send righteous thoughts near to where a practitioner was going to be tried. I took a half-day off and drove us to the site.
I parked the car right outside the prison gates. Later, we saw that people from the 610 Office and the local police station were also there. They probably recognized us as they walked around our car.
A plainclothes officer knocked on my window and said he wanted to check my ID. I said I didn’t have it with me. He ordered me to show him my driver’s license. I told him I would only show it to a traffic officer. The other plainclothes officer was exasperated and said, “Well, you wait,” and went to an unlicensed BMW parked across the road. He got out a traffic cop’s jacket and put it on. Then he walked over to my car, and said, “Is this good enough?” I said, “You cannot switch your identity from a police officer to a traffic patrolman, can you?” I ignored him.
I had never been in a situation like that before and was a little nervous. But I kept one thing in mind: I would not cooperate with them. They told me to open the car windows, so I opened them a tiny bit and locked all the doors. When they saw they could not reach us, they parked two cars in front of mine to block our way.
When hard tactics fail, soft methods are used. One of the officers greeted the practitioner in the passenger seat and told her to get out of the car for a chat. She didn’t move. The police ran out of options. Approximately seven people, including the head of the 610 Office and the local police station chief, came over to my car at the same time, taking pictures and video and threatening us. It was very tense.
I said, “We will cooperate, but you people have a bad attitude. If you all leave, we will talk to him,” and I pointed to the nearest plainclothes officer with a slightly better attitude. To my surprise, they agreed, retreated, and stood at a distance. The passengers in the car were sending righteous thoughts while I spoke to the officer.
Then the lawyer and the family of the detained practitioner came out of the prison. We went over to explain the situation to them, and the lawyer reasoned with the police. The lawyer pointed out that they were driving an unlicensed BMW and told them to move the cars that were blocking us. At that point, the families of other practitioners also came and reasoned with others in the group, so that I was able to drive away.
We returned home safely. Later, we learned that several practitioners in other cars were helping us with righteous thoughts.
During my pregnancy, I kept clarifying the truth until the weekend before the baby was born. One month later, I asked my father-in-law to look after the baby for two hours a day, three days a week to give me time to go out and tell people about Dafa.
When my baby was six months old, local practitioners planned to go to a rural area about 20 miles away to distribute informational materials about Falun Dafa. It was December and would be too cold to ride electric bikes there, so I handed my baby to my father-in-law and drove us in my car. We handed out the brochures from house to house.
One practitioner and I saw several people sitting, enjoying the sunshine. We went over and talked to them about Falun Dafa. They were happy to learn the facts. Then we all said together, “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” It was an unforgettable moment.
One day, my husband's cousin said that she had heard her mother comment that “people were saying” I was listening to Falun Gong radio at home. She said she would call the police and have me arrested. I told her facts about Falun Gong, but she didn’t really listen and left.
I thought it was time to talk to her mother, my husband’s aunt. In the evening, I went to her home. Her face fell when she heard that I wanted to talk about Falun Dafa. She said, “Don’t tell me about Falun Dafa. I used to have a colleague who practiced Falun Dafa and was arrested. Don’t practice it. You will bring trouble to your family.”
I said, “A mad dog bites a man, but you can’t say the man did wrong.” I told her about Falun Dafa and the persecution. Finally, she said, “Now I know. I will never again say that Falun Gong is bad.”
That night, I dreamed that a large phoenix carried my fellow practitioners and me up to the sky. I think Master wanted me to know that I did the right thing.
