The Path I Walked (Part 7)

(Minghui.org) Ms. Li Li was a native of Heilongjiang Province. She had a difficult life, losing her mother to an unknown illness in 1992 and her brother to a brain tumor in 1994. She married in 1981 and was a victim of domestic violence throughout most of her marriage. Her husband had extramarital affairs, eventually divorced her in 1996, and soon married the widow of her late brother.

Despite the hardships and heartbreaks, Ms. Li held herself to Falun Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and even her ex-husband protected her after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began the persecution of Falun Dafa in 1999. A TV reporter, a friend of his, intended to interview him and have him blame Falun Dafa for breaking up his marriage to Ms. Li. He firmly turned down his friend's request for an interview. While Ms. Li was being detained for her faith, he kept her Falun Dafa books in a safe place. After she was released but forced to live away from home to avoid further arrests, he took good care of their son.

Ms. Li later died as a result of the persecution. This 10-part series was her own account of her story.

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Although I experienced misery and unhappiness, I remained cheerful, and was kind to those that mistreated me.

(Continued from Part 6)

Dafa Gave Me Strength

Right after the 1994 Chinese New Year, I received a letter saying my brother’s cancer had relapsed. The doctors could only remove a small section with the Gamma Knife radiosurgery—he would not survive the operation if they removed more.

I took a train to Harbin Cancer Hospital to take care of him. The doctors said they could not do another operation. My family agreed to continue with conservative treatment. I brought with me Master Li’s first book, Falun Gong, which had already been published. Another practitioner also gave me a book of a different qigong, asking me to take it with me just in case it could help my brother.

After two major surgeries, my brother was already disfigured. Hormone supplements had increased his weight by nearly half. Because the tumor was pressing on a nerve, one side of his body was paralyzed. Adding that to incontinence, he could not take care of himself. My sister, sister-in-law, and I took turns looking after him. Probably because he was so tired in the face of all these problems, my father only came occasionally. I did my best to take care of my brother.

Basing My Behavior on the Fa

In a tribulation, I understood that I should behave according to the Fa teachings. Whenever I had a little time, I would read the Dafa book, and it helped me understand what to do. Dafa gave me infinite strength and courage. I was in a good mood and was able to interact with our family members with an optimistic and peaceful mind every day.

I also wanted to reduce their fatigue by taking on more of the workload. I tried to negate all the bad things in my mind, including the trap of sentimentality. I tried to fill my mind with the Fa. Even in tribulations, as long as my mind was filled with Dafa, I would find I was no longer the person I used to be. Although I weighed only a little over 45 kilos (99 pounds), I was tireless and very strong. This was incredible. In the past, other people needed to take care of me, but now I could look after others without flagging.

My mood also influenced others in the family, making them less stressed out. Sometimes I was able to do the sitting meditation for a while. I also helped my brother sit up and taught him the exercises. I told him how good Falun Gong is and the great physical changes I had experienced. My brother tried to learn, but he was weak, and he had to lie down every now and then. My brother could not speak, but I knew he was willing to try.

No Second Cultivation Way

Suddenly I remembered the book I’d been given about another qigong system. Holding both books, I thought, “Isn’t this a test? One is a book on Dafa and the other is a book on qigong.” There was no need to wonder which one I would choose. I had been reading Master’s books all along. All my changes and strength were from reading these books. I would not let the issue of “no second cultivation way” interfere with me again. I put the other book in a bag, planning to return it later.

Why not read the Master’s book to my brother, then? There was nothing better than this, so I began to read it to him every day. I read through all the books in several days. When I asked him if he wanted to read himself, he nodded yes. I helped him sit up, placed the book in front of him, and turned the pages for him. He read attentively. After he read it, he asked me for paper and a pen. With the one hand that he could still use (although it was shaking) he wrote, “Can you tell me why I have a brain tumor? Why did this disease pass down from my ancestors to me?”

My grandfather also died of cancer. At that time I could not answer that. But I knew there must be reasons behind it. My brother read the book, but he could not forget his illness. And he asked this question that he could not understand.

The Issue of Sentimentality

Because I was teaching, I could not stay at the hospital too long and returned to Changchun. When I went back to Harbin Hospital to see him again, I saw that he had deteriorated. My sisters were exhausted. I told them all to go home, and I would stay. After they left, I was extremely busy. In the daytime I had to cook for my brother, feed him, clean his cloth diapers, and watch the IVs from morning to evening. I could only rest after midnight. But I was fine and much healthier than an everyday person.

One day, I put in a great deal of effort to help my brother sit up in a chair. I put all kinds of objects around him to keep him from falling out of it. But when I walked away to fetch something for him, boom! He fell on the floor. His hands and feet did not work and he wasn’t able to protect himself. I heard him say, “Ouch!” and hurried over. There was a big bump on his forehead. I tried to help him up, but I couldn’t—he was too heavy.

Looking at the scar on his head from the surgeries and thinking of the additional pain I was responsible for, I hugged him and burst into tears. Then I realized something was wrong—how could I get so disturbed and cry? My tears stopped and I went to another patient’s room to ask two young men to help me move my brother. Together we got my brother back in bed. I knew I did not pass this test well since I was disturbed by sentimentality. My sisters came back to replace me.

Master Closer than a Relative: Follow the Fa

When I returned from Harbin back to my home in Beijing and saw Master’s picture on the wall, I could no longer hold back my tears. Looking up with tears in my eyes, I saw his portrait come alive, and he looked at me with compassion. I felt Master was closer than any relative, and there was much I wanted to tell him.

Recalling that time, I knew that I was too attached to sentimentality—that is why I had to work on this at the beginning of my cultivation. Especially strong was my affection for my family members. Because of that excessive affection, I had trouble eating and sleeping and was always worried about this or that. It did not matter how much I suffered, I would not let others suffer, especially when it came to my family members. After I started to practice Dafa, I realized it was this sentimentality that bothered me and trapped me, making me unable to escape. From Master’s lectures, I knew sentimentality was one form of demon; sentimentality is also related to selfishness and it can breed all kinds of attachments. During this tribulation, I had a strong sense that my brother was helping me to let go of sentimentality for him so that I could improve. If I did not improve, he would continue to suffer. In my heart, I said to Master, “Master, enough is enough. I cannot be like this anymore. I will let go of sentimentality.”

When I got to the hospital the third time, things were different. I decided to consider myself a genuine practitioner and follow the Fa in everything. That is, I was strict with myself and did not slack off a bit. While my sisters and I were doing all we could to take care of our brother, we heard from our hometown, Suihua City, that our father had been hospitalized with failing kidneys and blood in his urine. Since no one at home was available to look after him, his employer sent someone to take care of him in the hospital.

Several days later, a message came from my birthplace of Hailun City that my uncle’s youngest son was in a life-threatening condition and had been taken to a hospital in Shanghai. This uncle and his wife had died relatively young, and my father had been helping to look after their five children, some of whom had gone to work and some had gotten married. On top of all that, my aunt in Harbin City injured her leg in a car accident.

I knew those mishaps were “checking on me” to see if I would be disturbed. This time, I was able to maintain my xinxing well: I was able to let go of attachments and remain calm.

Since I’d started to help take care of my brother, I’d taken many train trips between Harbin, Changchun, and Beijing, most of the time in distress. After looking after my brother the third time and returning to Beijing, I got a phone call several days later that my brother had passed away. My family asked me to return as soon as possible for the funeral—even if I had to fly. In my heart I was very calm. Nothing is accidental and if it had to be this way, I had to accept it.

The tribulations related to my brother helped me understand one thing—that the family members I loved would all eventually leave me. I tried to pull them back, but it did not work, it was beyond my control. Were I not a practitioner, I would face death someday, too. Similarly, my son would stand by my bedside, trying to keep me here, and he would face the same fate. There is nothing other than endless sorrow. As a cultivator, I have understood some of the reasons why one suffers, and I’ve realized that I cannot be an everyday person and suffer like this. That means I must fundamentally eliminate something that everyday people are attached to—sentimentality.

Meeting Master

Time passed quickly and in mid-August 1994, I returned from Beijing to Changchun to teach. Before my class I visited Xu, who told me that Master Li would be back in a few days. He asked me to welcome Master, which I was happy to do. I had been traveling outside most of the time and had overcome many tribulations. And I had not seen Master for a long time.

On the day we were to welcome Master at the airport, I changed into a pink suit dress with patterned lace. From far away, we saw Master walking towards us, and I was happy and excited. I could see Master was happy, too. He shook my hands and asked, “Why did you come back?” I told him I’d been back for a week. We took a group photo at the airport. Master came to Changchun for a short time before going to Yanji to give a lecture seminar.

Before Master left, I spent one night writing a very long cultivation experience article. I wrote 12 closely-written pages. I told Master about my troubled life, how I overcame tribulations, and questions I had related to the tribulations. I asked Master: “Why do I suffer so much?” At the end of the article, I wrote, “My Master is only Li Hongzhi. In my heart, there is only Falun Gong” to show my determination to practice Dafa.

We saw Master off to Yanji, where he would lecture next. While we waited in the lobby at the airport, Master told us a story about a gun bolt (a bolt is the sliding piece of a repeating, breechloading firearm). At that time, I did not realize it was a hint for us. Many years later, I came to understand that Master was telling us there is nothing accidental on our journeys of cultivation. This applies to even very trivial matters. Before Master boarded the plane, I gave him my cultivation experience article in an envelope. “He will read it on the plane,” I thought.

(To be continued)