(Minghui.org) Twenty years ago, to heal illness, keep fit, and pursue the purpose of life, I began to practice Falun Dafa. Since then, I have treasured the opportunity to cultivate myself and made it my lifetime pursuit. It was Master Li, the founder and teacher of Falun Dafa, who helped me understand how to be a good person, a practitioner, and someone aiming for a higher realm who is altruistic.
Although I was detained, tortured, and fired from my job, I continued to read Zhuan Falun every day. I have come a long way, even though I’ve been through a great deal of hardship. I would like to share some of my cultivation experiences.
My parents and siblings took good care of me when I was a child. When I went to school, I was at the top of my class. After graduation, I was offered a good job. Therefore, I always felt I was superior to others. I also had a short temper. In conversations with others, I would interrupt them to express my own opinions. When I ran into a conflict, I always thought that the other person didn’t understand or care about me.
After I married, I realized that my husband was bossy and couldn’t stand my bad temper, so he often fought with me. At work, I liked to show off my abilities and kept myself occupied. At home, I wasn’t good at taking care of the household chores. Life was tiresome and unpleasant. At a young age, I developed serious atrophic gastritis. Sometimes, I vomited while walking on the road or at work. After I began to practice Falun Dafa in 1997, and without taking any medication, my stomach problem completely healed.
By cultivating Dafa, I came to understand what it means to be a good person by adhering to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Eventually, I changed my bad temper and let go of my big ego that had formed over time and managed to lower my opinion of myself. In dealing with conflicts with my husband, I stopped demanding that he change. Instead, I reflected on my own shortcomings and was able to correct my bad habit of speaking before considering the effect of my words. I also learned to cook and to complete the household chores.
On holidays and weekends, I often went to the countryside to see my in-laws. I cooked delicious meals for them every visit. My husband felt more at ease with me, so when he ran into personal conflicts at work, he shared them with me. I used the wisdom that I had gainedby following the Falun Dafa principles to talk with him about being tolerant of others, thinking from the other person’s perspective, and letting go of competitiveness and anger. By following what I said, he felt that his mood changed for the better, so he joked with me by saying that I was his “life secretary.”
After July 20, 1999, when the evil Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began persecuting Falun Dafa, I lost my job, and this negatively impacted our relatives. However, they saw that my faith in cultivating Dafa never wavered. They also witnessed my kind words and actions that resulted from following Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Still, under the Party’s rule of terror, there was occasionally pressure, from within and outside of my family, regarding my personal cultivation environment.
My husband worked for the government. After I was subjected to persecution, he had to endure a great deal of pressure. He saw that when I came home after being illegally detained for 10 months, I still studied the Fa and did the exercises. He was so upset that he threw a chair at me. He also prepared a divorce agreement that he wanted me to sign.
I had a serious talk with him. “You know what I was like before and you know how I treat you and your family now. It’s Dafa that changed me for the better and I am no longer conceited. I understand the pressure you feel because I practice Falun Dafa. If getting a divorce will make you feel better, then, sure, I’ll sign the paper.”
After I signed it, he said he would submit it the next day. However, when he came home, it was as if nothing had happened. Seeing that, I prompted him to hand in the divorce application. Surprisingly, he tore it up in front of me and said, “I won’t tell you what to do. You look after your own safety.” I knew that Master saw that my xinxing had improved and so resolved this tribulation for me.
One day in 2009, my husband came home and said that he might be promoted and he was being assessed for the new position. But someone said behind his back, “His wife practices Falun Dafa.” When he heard that, he worried that his job would be impacted because of me.
I then shared with him what Master said, “...with one person practicing, the whole family benefits...” (Teachings at the Conference in Australia)
I tried to convince him not to worry. I thought that Master would not arrange for his job to be affected because of my practice. I decided not to acknowledge the possibility of this being true. If his promotion was impacted, he and his family would have negative thoughts about Dafa. In addition, if his manager denied his promotion, he would have committed a sin. After I thought it over, I decided to go and talk with his manager to clarify the facts and help him to show his kind side.
His boss was a former neighbor who knew me. Without informing my husband, I went straight to his boss’s office. I told him about the difficulties I’d encountered after losing my job, the conflicts it caused in my family, and facts about Falun Dafa being persecuted. I also tried to talk him into quitting the Party.
I said, “If my husband doesn’t get promoted because he fails the public opinion assessment, no one is to blame. But if he passes the assessment and doesn’t get promoted because I practice Falun Gong, then it will be hard to predict if our marriage can be saved. I have lost my job, and I couldn’t take it if my family fell apart. I hope you will help me protect my family. Don’t make me a factor in the matter of my husband being promoted.”
He already knew that practitioners were very kind, and now he learned how Falun Dafa adherents are persecuted. He showed his stance by saying that he wouldn’t mention me at my husband’s assessment and told me not to worry.
My husband received good comments at his assessment. In the meeting where the managers discussed his suitability for promotion, he passed and was promoted. After that, he no longer said that he was negatively impacted by me practicing Falun Dafa.
In 2019, whenever the CPP leaders held a meeting or enforced a lockdown due to the COVID pandemic, the police came knocking on our door just for surveillance purposes and harassment. That interfered with my family life and made a bad impression on my neighbors. Every time the police came, I said that Dafa was being persecuted. They said they were just doing their job.
Any practitioner who has consciously become a good person by holding himself or herself to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance can only bring good to other people and society. Why was I still under surveillance by the community and police? It was discrimination against a citizen for her belief by a government ruled by the Party, and it was humiliating to me personally. Being tolerant doesn’t mean being cowardly. Therefore, I couldn’t just do nothing about this unreasonable harassment.
So I went to my local community management committee and said to the person in charge, “Because I practice Falun Dafa to keep fit and be a good person, I lost my job. I haven’t appealed my dismissal to the government. I stay home, yet the police come to my place whenever they feel like it. They talk loudly in the hallway and pound on my door, which disturbs the other tenants. Doesn’t that count as harassment?”
The community leader said that it wasn’t appropriate for the police to do such things. He asked me to not say anything else, as he would talk to the people at the police station that he had connections with and ask them to not bother me, but rather, to send people from the community office. I said, “It’s not good for the community office personnel to harass me either, is it? It’s better if you don’t disturb us at all. Please mind your own business and hold your own meetings.”
I also talked with the head of the office. I asked him to talk with the chief of police and make it clear that I couldn’t accept their harassment. I asked him to say that he hoped that they would stop doing that. I also warned them that if they were to harass me excessively again, I had the right to protect my rights via legal means.
On the bus ride home, I ran into the father of the police officer who had knocked on my door. I knew the father and told him how I’d been treated unfairly. I also said that if his son were to participate in persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners, who are good people, he would bring harm to both himself and his family. I also sincerely asked for the father’s help in telling his son not to come to my home and harass me, as such behavior was truly not good for him.
It was hard to get in touch with the people from the police station and the community office who were harassing me. I then asked other practitioners to call them to talk about Falun Dafa and the persecution. After that, people stopped knocking on my door. This incident made me truly believe that when facing unfair treatment, practitioners shouldn’t back down or be afraid. We should speak up and try to prevent ordinary people from committing crimes toward Dafa and be responsible for people.
Now, both my family and relatives have learned the facts about Falun Dafa, and they show respect for my cultivation.
For a while, when I ran into people who didn’t want to listen to the truth about Falun Dafa and the persecution or said bad things about me, I was unhappy. I even resented those who were disrespectful of me. Often enough, I argued with my family. I felt I wasn’t behaving like a practitioner, as I failed to assimilate with Dafa. In addition, my skin appeared to be aging.
In the latter half of last year, I let go of my anxiety about saving people. I calmed down and used more time to memorize and then recite Zhuan Falun. I systematically studied Master’s new lectures. That’s how I learned that if I didn’t look inward, I wasn’t properly cultivating. Looking inward is Master’s basic requirement for his disciples. But for a long time, I didn’t know how to look at myself to find the attachments that were causing problems. By holding onto my old habits when things didn’t go my way, I’d look at the shortcomings of others and end up not thoroughly obtaining the Fa even though I have practiced for many years.
Studying the Fa wholeheartedly and thinking about where I fell short when I was in a conflict became second nature. After that, my legs never slipped when I sat in the lotus position to meditate. I also stopped feeling drowsy when I studied the Fa and sent righteous thoughts. In my day-to-day life, when I ran into an intense conflict, I remained calm.
One time, I went with my husband to have a gastroscopy (an upper endoscopy) to examine the upper part of his digestive tract. Because I wasn’t quick enough to get in the queue for him in the morning, he had to wait a little longer to have the test done. He berated me in the lobby, saying that I was useless. I couldn’t explain what happened, nor did I want to. I just stood quietly while he cursed me for a long time. Others who were waiting for the gastroscopy were surprised and asked me, “Why is he so mad at you?” I said, “He is my husband, and he is having a temper tantrum.”
I too was surprised that he could be so disrespectful of me. But I immediately realized that it was happening to eliminate my attachment to vanity. I also thought about that while we were in the line, I was afraid other people would cut in front of us, which came down to fear of losing out.
I enlightened that the reason he was angry with me was that I didn’t behave like a practitioner. In my head I said to Master deep down, “Your disciple did wrong.” Just then, my husband’s name appeared on the screen, indicating it was his turn. He stared at me, then quickly walked into the examination room. I went to get a wheelchair to take him to the ward after he finished checking in.
When we got to the ward, he didn’t talk about what had happened. I smiled at him, as if nothing had happened. When I called my sister, I didn’t complain about his behavior. We practitioners value virtue. If I said bad things about him, I’d lose virtue, which I didn’t want to happen. He was actually helping me improve my xinxing—how could I complain about him? I should really thank him. In the past, even though I endured his ranting, I would have complained about him to my relatives afterward.
Due to the cosmos’s cycle of formation, stasis, degeneration, and destruction, human morality has declined to the point that it is below a human standard and all kinds of natural disasters are occurring. To save people amidst the calamities is a practitioner’s duty. Giving people chances is also immense compassion that our wonderful Master bestows upon sentient beings.
I talk about Falun Dafa with people in my day-to-day life. No matter where I am, I keep saving sentient beings in my heart. Whenever I run into a person with a predestined relationship that I can talk to, I help him or her quit the CCP and talk about the persecution of Dafa. Often, I ask the person to keep in mind the phrases “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.”
This year, I ran into two people who had quit the CCP at my suggestion. They underwent medical treatments due to having terminal illnesses. But neither of them recalled what I’d said about reciting the two phrases, so they were still tormented by their illnesses. When I looked inward, I realized that it was because I was in a rush to talk about the persecution that I didn’t get a chance to articulate the benefits of Dafa. Now I understand that I shouldn’t just help people quit the Party, I need to have them truly understand the facts so they will be saved.
I let go of my fear of being persecuted. If someone chose to quit the CCP and was willing to accept the informational materials, I always gave them brochures and asked them to check them out. I gave a USB drive with Dafa information to those who knew how to use a computer. For relatives and friends, no matter how far away they lived, I went to their homes to deliver the information, so they would know about the benefits of Dafa in more detail.
When I managed to clarify the facts thoroughly to people, I could see that they were blessed. I’d like to cite one example.
I asked a friend who was diagnosed with cancer to recite the auspicious phrases. I also printed out examples in which people had recovered from health problems after reciting the phrases and gave them to him. In the past, even though he agreed to quit the Party, he still said good things about the Party in public, so I gave him a copy of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party. About three weeks later, I went to visit him again. He said to me cheerfully, “I’ve recited the phrases every day. Now my sense of taste is back and my blood sugar and blood pressure came down.” When touching on the Party, he said, “It’s not worth talking about.” He also asked me for a copy of Zhuan Falun. His whole family and siblings agreed to quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
Cultivating Dafa is my greatest pleasure in life; Dafa is my most precious asset. For me to come this far, Master’s benevolent empowerment and uncompromising enlightenment have been indispensable. I’ll be forever grateful for Master’s saving grace.
Thank you, fellow practitioners, for your selfless help.