(Minghui.org) Greetings, revered Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I had a dream in September 1996, in which a white-bearded old man, with a whisk in one hand and a small bundle in the other, rode on a white cloud along a beam of white light to my home. He handed me the bundle and said, “This is a medical book. It is not an ordinary book, it is a very precious book. If you read it carefully, all your ailments will be healed.” Just as I was about to bow to him to show my gratitude, with a swoosh, he shook his whisk, ascended on a cloud, and disappeared into the heavens.
It was around 5:00 a.m., but I woke my husband up and told him about the dream. He thought I was just being ridiculous or might have been possessed by a spirit. Just then, we heard a knock on the door. It was the postman. He handed me a pick-up slip and told me there was a parcel for me at the post office.
My husband went to the post office and returned home with three books and a letter. The books were Zhuan Falun, Zhuan Falun Volume II, and another Dafa book. The letter inside was from someone I’d met two years earlier. She wrote that Zhuan Falun was a very precious book and that I should not read it like a novel, and that if I read it attentively, I would be enlightened to many things.
I was in pain all over my body at that time, including my internal organs. It felt like I had been born into this world to suffer. I had gastrointestinal issues, uterine tumors, headaches, and neurasthenia. Due to insomnia, I felt dizzy and sleepy all the time, whether at work or at home, and even when I was walking. My life was far from normal by any measure.
I also had very serious urethritis, with acute symptoms every two to three months. I would have blood in my urine, and the pain was like being sliced by a knife. When my heart disease played up, I felt like I could suffocate to death at any second, and I was always struggling for air. I fell into a deep depression and seemed almost like a mental patient.
I was a frequent visitor to the hospital and took all kinds of herbal and modern medicines—as if they were my daily meals. But my health didn’t improve at all. It seemed to me that life was almost worse than death. I tried to end my life a number of times, but failed each time. I was in great pain and despair for 18 years—until Master arranged for someone to send me those precious books.
Master said:
“Today we have made public to you this great practice. I have already delivered it to your doorstep. It is up to you whether you can cultivate and make it.” (Lecture Eight, Zhuan Falun)
I started to read the books right away. Because I didn’t have the videotape of Master teaching the exercises for nearly a year, I focused on reading the books. When I was reading Zhuan Falun, I felt something rotating everywhere inside me. I was a little scared, as I shook with the rotating movement. I thought something might have gotten inside me. As I studied the Fa more and more, I understood that Falun was cleansing my body.
When I got a videotape of the exercises, I started do them as well. One day, while I was doing the meditation, I saw something on top of my head that looked like a chimney, and thick black smoke was coming out of it. After that, my headaches were completely gone. I could feel that all of my ailments had disappeared, and I was given a brand new life. Thank you very much, Master!
Letting Go of Resentment for My Mother-in-law
I married the second son in a rural family of seven children and went to live in their large household of eleven people, including my parents-in-law, sisters-in-law, and brothers-in-law. They owned farm land and ran several side businesses, such as weaving straw bags. They also raised pigs, chickens, geese, ducks, dogs, cats, rabbits, and other livestock. Adding in the enormous household chores, I found the workload unbearably hard.
With so many people in the household, there were always huge piles of clothes to be washed. There were no washing machines in those days, so everything was washed by hand. Around July and August of each year, I had to wash and clean everyone’s padded winter clothes and then mend them. My back ached and I had pain in my legs. My fingers often bled trying to get my needle through the heavy clothes. I was exhausted from the endless livestock and household chores, and I often fainted.
Whenever that happened, my parents-in-law would say to my husband, “Where did you find such a sickly woman? You still have a future. You should divorce her and find yourself a new woman.”
My mother-in-law often said to me, “I don’t want to look at you. Go live somewhere else.”
I felt deeply hurt. I couldn’t see any hope for my life and I had no one to talk to. I often went to the bushes behind the house at night and cried my eyes out, blaming my mother for bringing me into this world.
One day, out of the blue, my mother-in-law told me that she had found a dilapidated, empty house for my husband and me to move into. I didn’t say anything, but we did move out. Maybe the household chores were too much for my mother-in-law without me, so in less than a year, she asked us to move back. In fact, we moved in and out quite a few times over the years.
My mother-in-law once told us to move to another run-down house that had been empty for two years. The roof leaked badly, so it was a rather miserable existence. Fortunately, we had good harvests for three years in a row, so my husband and I built a new house with a tile roof for ourselves.
My parents-in-law then wanted to sell their house and move in with us, but I rejected the idea. They got very angry and told all our relatives to talk to me so that I would change my mind. However, many of them didn’t side with my parents-in-law. I thought they were heartless and I had no intention of allowing them to live with us. As time went by, my resentment for my parents-in-law grew and grew.
After I became a cultivator, I made up my mind to be a good person like Master expects us to be. For the first time, I started to look at things from my mother-in-law’s perspective, and realized that it wasn’t all her fault.
There was always tons of farm work to do. As a daughter-in-law, I couldn’t do as much as I should have, due to my poor health, and I always looked gloomy from pain. Of course my parents-in-law felt uncomfortable and uneasy about me. All of their children had now grown up and moved out, and they wanted to live with us, but I coldly rejected them because I still felt bitter about how they had treated me. How miserable they must be feeling! With this realization, I decided to let go of my selfish attachments. I invited my parents-in-law to live with us in the new house, and they were very happy.
I took very good care of them. My father-in-law was in poor health and couldn’t eat much, except for loaches, a kind of fish. It was difficult to get them in the winter, so I took the train quite a distance away to find some for him. I made sure that their clothes and bedding was always clean, and I changed them often. I also tried my best to cook food that they enjoyed. My father-in-law often said to me that, as parents, they didn’t handle the household affairs properly and caused me a lot of hardship, and now we had to bear much of their debts, for which he felt very sorry. I always comforted him when he felt this way.
My husband and I moved to South Korea in 2000, and my parents-in-law went to live with their eldest son. I called them every week to send our regards, and sent them new clothes and money every season. By studying the Fa, I completely let go of my resentment for my mother-in-law, and our relationship changed for the better.
Once when I called her, she started to cry, saying, “Looking back, I did so many wrong things to you! Your health was poor, and there were so many things to do at home. You couldn’t handle them and often fainted. I didn’t care about you, said I didn’t want to look at you, and drove you out. In spring and autumn, I only cooked chickens to boost my own daughters’ health, but I never did anything for you. I’m really sorry. Now, you are nicer to me than all three of my daughters put together. When you come back to China, I will raise 50 chickens just for you. I will give your body a boost every month.”
I was very touched by her kindness and cried with her. If I hadn’t practiced Dafa and learned to live by the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, I might never have been able to let go of my resentment for my parents-in-law.
Master’s compassion helped me let go of my hatred and resentment for my parents-in-law, guided me to assimilate to Dafa, and taught me to treat everyone with tolerance, kindness, and compassion.
Cultivating Myself in the Tian Guo Marching Band
Practitioners in South Korea formed the Tian Guo Marching Band in May 2006. The band is an important project Master personally initiated to further clarify the truth and save sentient beings. I decided to join the band and chose to learn to play the flute. Because I had no sense of music, I encountered great difficulties from the very beginning, and I couldn’t produce even a single sound.
For me, a farmer who had labored in the fields for decades, learning to play the flute was almost inconceivable. After trying for three days, I still couldn’t get a sound out of it, so I decided to return the flute and quit the band. But the band leader asked someone else in the band to teach us how to play the flute. He explained the basics of the instrument, but I didn’t understand anything and gave the teacher a very hard time.
Two weeks later, the band leader handed us the sheet music for the pieces we would be learning. I was stunned because I couldn’t even sing do-re-mi, so I wondered how I could possibly play a tune on a flute?! Just then, something Master said came to my mind:
“But the Fa is all-powerful, and with everything it is perfectly all-encompassing. And after all, cultivators have Master looking after them. Everything you, a cultivator, encounter is related to your cultivation and Consummation or else those things absolutely would not exist.” (“Dafa Is All Encompassing,” The Essentials of Diligent Progress II)
I kept Master’s words in mind and practiced very hard. Every day, I practiced the flute for hours, until my mouth cracked and my lips blistered. Playing an instrument is not the only requirement, because we also need to march in parades, with our playing and steps perfectly synchronized. No deviation is acceptable. This was yet another obstacle for me to get over.
I found a quiet place near my home where I could practice marching and playing the music simultaneously. After three weeks of hard work, I began to develop more sense of it. In the morning, I always got to the practice room early and would ask others for advice if I had any questions. I learned the piece beat by beat, and I was finally able to play “Falun Dafa is Good.” I was so excited that my happiness was beyond words, and tears ran down my face.
I would like to thank the band leader and all my fellow practitioners who helped me so much in the process. It is beyond belief that someone like me, who spent half of her life working in the fields, with a pair of rough, stiff hands, not only learned how to play the flute, but also became a member of Tian Guo Marching Band. I felt so happy and extremely proud.
We were going to participate in an event on July 20 to demonstrate our resistence to the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong, so the band leader asked all members to learn to play two pieces well. Time was pressing and we had to practice hard. I put aside all my other work at hand and went to practice the pieces every day. I practiced the fingerings wherever I was—on a bus or the subway, or just walking somewhere.
In less than two and a half months, I learned the two selections. I rained very hard on the day of the event, but we marched and played in the parade until the end. The band leader was very pleased. He said that even though we only played two pieces, we did very well. He also said that even professional musicians needed to practice for a long time before they could play well in such an event. But our band was able to play two pieces within such a short time, which was pretty amazing, considering that many of our band members, who range from elementary school students to people in their 60s and 70s, started from scratch. It was truly amazing and incredible! After every subsequent activity, I have reflected on my performance, discovered my shortcomings, and practiced even more diligently.
We all know that we must have good teamwork to be able to perform well, and that only then can we effectively eliminate the evil elements in other dimensions. So we have always paid attention to our personal cultivation and group Fa study.
Our band is busy from April to November every year. We participate in many events across the country. We cooperate well as one body and have played an important role in assisting Master in Fa-rectification and saving sentient beings.
To further improve our technical skills, the band adopted an assessment system. Even though were were nervous, we all took part in the exam. Guided by the band leader, I played fives pieces. He particularly told me to practice more of the middle and end of “Sacred Song.” He told me that I did very well and sounded much better than expected. He also told me to practice the folk song “Ariang” as homework for the next exam.
That piece has a lot of dotted-eighth notes and sixteenth notes, which were challenging for me. When I finished the next exam, the band leader said that I’d gotten both the rhythm and the lengths of the dotted notes wrong. He said that if I wasn’t sure about them, I should have asked before I played. I tried to hold back tears as I left the exam room, but burst out crying as soon as I got outside. I felt I was very incapable and had caused the band leader and other members so much trouble. I even started to doubt if I should continue playing in the band.
I had devoted all my spare time after work to practicing the flute. But the disappointing evaluation of the second exam made me feel as if I had wasted nearly two months of my time. I felt very sad and deeply hurt by a feeling of guilt, thinking how hard it must have been for those who were teaching me, who couldn’t even understand the instructions!
Master said:
“You will meet with many ordeals in the course of your cultivation. As long as you study the Fa earnestly, you will be able to overcome any difficulty. As long as you study the Fa earnestly, answers can be found within the Fa that will be able to solve any hard-to-untie knots in your heart, or any hang-ups.” (Teachings at the First Conference in North America)
After I studied Master’s teaching, I rectified my state of mind and decided to keep going.
Later, we got a new conductor. I reviewed some basic knowledge about the flute and passed two of the three exams. I also understood how to improve my practice technique. When the conductor came the third time, because my cultivation state wasn’t good, I didn’t go to practice with the band. Coupled with my doubt if I should continue playing in the band, I failed the third exam.
Many band members who didn’t play well earlier passed the supplementary exam. I didn’t want to take the supplementary exam, thinking that I am getting older and it’s hard for me to keep up with the band in parades. It’s also not easy for me to participate in band practices. I might be better off quitting and doing something else that I feel more comfortable with.
Due to such unrighteous thoughts and human notions, I didn’t turn up for the supplementary exam.
Many fellow practitioners felt sorry for me and called me to share their understandings. They helped me realize the seriousness of cultivation. I changed my mind, took the supplementary exam, and started to participate in band activities again. Thanks to the help of fellow practitioners, I picked myself up from the fall and continued to push forward on my path of cultivation. Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners.
Master said:
“When the band was playing, the energy they emitted was tremendous. Be it the energy emitted, the sounds you made, or the music and notes themselves, they all had the effect of affirming the Fa and sending out energy.” (Teachings at the Conference in Los Angeles)
I came to understand that every piece and every note I play emits enormous energy and plays an important role in clearing out the evil elements in other dimensions. Two events I participated in left very deep impressions on me. One was the Cheonan World Dance Festival, and the other was an international festival in Wonju in Gangwon Province. Both festivals hosted groups from more than 30 countries. The Tian Guo Marching Band not only had eye-catching costumes but also the most majestic impressive aura. Along the route, parade announcers introduced the Tian Guo Marching Band and Falun Dafa, and the excited spectators applauded and cheered us. We were awarded the Second Prize.
When we stood on the grand stage, basking in the rousing cheers and applause from the sea of people, the glory and dignity of the Tian Guo Marching Band filled me with profound emotion.
Conclusion
From my limited cultivation experiences over the past 20-odd years, I came to understand that my entire life was created by Dafa, and everything originated from Dafa. Therefore, following the principles of Dafa is the most profound and most beautiful thing in my life. I have also realized that for Fa-rectification period Dafa disciples, our sacred duty and mission is to assist Master in Fa-rectification and saving sentient beings. I’m determined to try even harder to do the three things well and be worthy of the title “Dafa disciple.”
Thank you, revered Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!
(Selected Speech from the 2024 South Korean Falun Dafa Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference)
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