My 80-Year-Old Mother Recites the Fa with Me

(Minghui.org) My mother recently turned 80 years old. I tried memorizing Zhuan Falun, the main book of Falun Dafa, with her years ago, but we only memorized one lecture and stopped. I had always wanted to memorize Zhuan Falun with her over the past decade, but she kept refusing. She would say she was too old to memorize Zhuan Falun or she wanted to memorize Hong Yin instead. In short, she would find excuses not to memorize Zhuan Falun.

I talked to her again three years ago about memorizing Zhuan Falun, and she agreed. However, she only recited one lecture and then stopped. I continued on my own and spent over half a year to complete memorizing Zhuan Falun.

I wanted to continue memorizing later on but didn’t do it. Recently, I noticed that my focus during Fa study was not good. Sometimes, after reading a paragraph, and then stopping to send righteous thoughts, I couldn’t remember where I left off. I knew there was a problem with my reading, so I made up my mind to start memorizing Zhuan Falun again.

My mother didn’t feel well in the spring of this year, and would often feel sleepy when reading. In order to persuade her to memorize the Fa with me, I downloaded and printed articles from the Minghui website about other practitioners memorizing the Fa, and showed them to her. This time, she readily agreed to memorize Zhuan Falun.

We followed the method described in one of the articles. We first read a paragraph together, and then one person read it again, while the other recited it from memory. If one of us couldn’t recite the paragraph properly, we wouldn’t move on until both of us had memorized it. We recited paragraph after paragraph without reviewing what we had recited before and kept moving forward.

Initially, we could only memorize a few paragraphs a day, but later on we could do two or three pages a day. Sometimes, when our progress was slow, it was usually when our human thoughts were interfering. During the slower times, we could only memorize a paragraph a day. When our minds were disturbed, we couldn’t focus or memorize smoothly, even after many repeated readings. However, we persisted and continued memorizing and then reciting.

Throughout the process, there were times for us to cultivate our xinxing. We encountered significant interference when we reached Lecture Six. Various family matters came up, and my mother and I didn’t memorize and then recite for several days. Harmony was the norm in our large family because both my mother and I practiced Dafa, and considered the well-being of our family in everything we do.

However, suddenly our family members disagreed with each other and complained among themselves. Both my mom and I were affected and even spoke ill of other family members. As a result, my mother’s tooth broke while eating, causing her days of pain and difficulty eating. She also had a runny nose while studying the Fa, which severely interfered with her reading. I also experienced a mild cold. During that time, our washing machine broke, the bathroom light stopped working, and even the clock on the wall stopped ticking.

My mother and I looked within. We compared our conduct to Master’s teachings and discovered our tendencies to speak ill of others behind their backs, a lack of consideration for others, a strong tendency to complain, a mentality of not accepting criticism, and a self-righteous attitude. When we identified our problems, something unexpected happened. The washing machine, which would have cost 600 to 700 yuan to repair, was fixed by my husband. The light started working normally without any repair. My husband wanted to take the clock for repair, but after a few days, we found it working perfectly. Everything returned to normal.

I understood that all of the incidents were reminding us to cultivate diligently so that everything could return to a normal family harmony. It was only by studying the Fa well that we could truly improve ourselves.

We finally finished memorizing the sixth lecture, and when I came home from work I continued to memorize from around 5 p.m. until almost 9 p.m. We finished memorizing and reciting the first section of Lecture Seven, and my mother said, “Let’s finish another section tomorrow.” I smiled and agreed. Surprisingly, we completed the second section the next day. Then my mother said, “Let’s finish the rest of the lecture tomorrow.” It was just a casual remark from her, and I smiled and replied, “Okay.” I knew it was impossible, as there were over 20 pages left, how could we finish it in one day? But the next day, we memorized at an astonishingly fast pace. Since I had the day off, we memorized and recited two sections, covering over 10 pages. This left us with only one section remaining. On the fourth day, we finished the final section in a short time. We even started memorizing and reciting Lecture Eight.

It would normally take us over two weeks to complete a lecture, but we did it in four days. The power of Dafa is truly miraculous.

My mother wants to recite the Fa more. Sometimes, when I say that I’m going home after reciting, she would respond, with some regret, “Are you really leaving?” Unlike before, when she would always find excuses when I suggested that we recite the Fa.

The best thing is, that we no longer feel drowsy while reciting the Fa, and rarely lose focus. Whenever we encounter problems, we quickly gain insights from the Fa and let go of our attachments. Through reciting the Fa, we have discovered many subtle attachments that we hadn’t noticed before. Thank you, Master, for your help!

I would like to encourage practitioners to give memorizing and reciting the Fa a try. It is indescribably wonderful. Memorizing the Fa is not as difficult as you might imagine.