Being Kind and Understanding of Others

(Minghui.org) In this mortal world, where wave upon wave of karma are rolling in, the final calamity is imminent. However, Falun Dafa offers salvation to sentient beings and cleanses the world like a clear stream. Immersed in the Buddha light, I came to understand how people should live and why we came to the human world. 

Fortunate to Find a Righteous Way

My life had been rough. When I was a child, my father was a target of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) political campaign of that time. When I was middle-aged, my husband had an affair, then passed away. I lived a hard life with my nearly blind mother and young children. I felt that God was unfair to me, and that others had wronged me. In my dreams, I often fought with my deceased husband and took revenge on those who bullied me.

I was also very sick, and my heart disease and nephritis were getting worse. I worked the third shift on a factory assembly line. I had a heart attack late one night. I suddenly felt dizzy, weak in my limbs, and had difficulty breathing. If I couldn’t perform my tasks, any unfinished work would be passed onto the next area of processing, which led to consternation on the part of my colleagues.

I often wondered: “Why are we here? What’s the meaning of life?” These were questions I had to face sooner or later.

Amidst these tribulations, I came across Falun Dafa. When I first started reading Zhuan Falun, I felt that it was very good. I had previously read Buddhist scriptures, but they didn’t touch my heart for some reason. However, I couldn’t put Zhuan Falun down!

Treating My Colleagues Kindly

Without noticing it, my resentments became less and less. I also stopped judging others. I could now deal with the injustices done to me more calmly. I slept more soundly, felt more relaxed, and my complexion became rosy. Moreover, I no longer had any heart attacks, and I didn’t always feel the urge to urinate. All in all, I became healthy. After seeing the changes in me, some of my colleagues also began to practice Dafa. 

I not only felt better but, most importantly, I could understand others. Perhaps this was what I understood as goodness. 

When the company I worked for was in trouble not long after it started business, I was the team lead with the strongest technical skills. But when the company was stable, my position as team lead was awarded to someone else; I felt abandoned. You can imagine how resentful I felt towards my new team lead. 

After I began to practice Dafa, I gradually let go of this matter. Otherwise, when would the cycle of revenge end? Today, I may be the one being bullied. But tomorrow, it may be someone else. In this mundane world, karma must be repaid, and whoever owes a debt must pay it back. Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance are the only principles I need to hold onto! 

I no longer resented the team lead. When the lead was not around, others slacked off, but I worked quietly and diligently. The team lead gradually discovered this. She knew it was not easy for me to endure our reversal of roles, so how could I work diligently without asking for anything? She didn’t understand it. 

She began to pay attention to me and observed that I still did what I was supposed to do without complaint. At first, I didn’t say much but only told her that Falun Dafa teaches people to pursue kindness, and that Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance helped me change my mindset for the better. 

After a while, she wanted to know why I had such a good attitude. I told her, “It’s fate that brings people together, and it’s fate that you and I are working together. Nowadays, people are always thinking about competing with each other, which makes life very tiring. Yet you don’t know when the things you fight for will be taken away by others. The most terrible thing is that those who contend for things will lose their virtue. If people lose all their virtue, they will truly degenerate and be eliminated by God. So in the struggle for personal interest, there is no winner! 

“Falun Dafa teaches people to pursue kindness, which is in accordance with the laws of nature, and, naturally, they will be blessed by heaven. If we can take a step back and understand each other, you and I could live in harmony. Isn’t this great?!” 

She replied, “There are too few people who look at things the way you do!” We became good friends.

When I was persecuted by the CCP, she offered me a lot of help. She told her supervisor and the people around her that Falun Dafa is good. She also told others that I was a good person.

“Only You Can Understand Me!”

I know that we should not only be good to our colleagues, but also be understanding to our neighbors. There were three households on my floor, including mine, and I lived in the middle. My neighbor on the left rented their unit, and my neighbors on the right were an elderly couple.

One night, the neighbor on the left came home drunk, and he insisted that his garbage had been spilled and kicked around. So he threw away the things my neighbor and I had stored outside under the stairs. One of my things was a case of eggs.The elderly couple began to fight with him and wanted to call the police. I went outside to kindly persuade them not to do so. When they realized that I’d suffered the most impact due to the broken eggs, both parties felt so embarrassed that they stopped fighting.

I still treated the offending neighbor the same as when I first met him. I later asked him for help when I needed a favor so he would know that I still trusted him. I also continued to be considerate of the older couple, and everyone lived in harmony. Sometimes, when their garbage was not taken out in time, I took it out when going downstairs. 

There was a big deck outside our windows. A neighbor let his dog out on the deck, and the dog pooped under the windows of the elderly couple, as well as mine. The couple fought with the neighbor and even resorted to wielding a knife.

My family felt they should talk to the dog owner in a kind manner and advise him to be more considerate of others. The couple agreed and told me they would also just chase the dog away next time.

I thought the person who let the dog out had upset the neighbors, which wasn’t good for him. I really tried to put myself in his shoes and kindly advised him to try not to strain his relationships with others. When he sensed my sincerity, he opened up and repeatedly apologized and thanked me for my tolerance: “I needed to tell you about my family situation, as only you can understand me!”

If neighbors can be humble and get along peacefully, they’re actually treating themselves well.

“You’re Very Smart and Always Cheerful!”

My husband passed away after having an affair, leaving me and my children behind. Since practicing Dafa, I let go of my resentment towards my husband and kept in touch with his family. My eldest sister-in-law was busy, and she was looking for someone to assist her son’s in-laws to take care their child. The most difficult thing was that she always had conflicts with her son’s in-laws.

When she initially asked her sister for help, her sister balked. Babysitting is not an easy job to begin with, but it was even more difficult because they didn’t get along. My sister-in-law was embarrassed and had no other choice but to ask me.

I understood it would be rather difficult. I then thought: “Isn’t the world all about fate? Isn’t there both a disadvantage and an advantage when people have difficulty getting along with each other? Couldn’t it be solved if we take a step back? Wasn’t it a sign of her trust in me that she asked me for help?” 

I became healthy, and tolerant of others after practicing Dafa. Didn’t both my sister-in-law and her husband want, on some level, to gain some benefit? There is nothing too hard to handle. So I said to my sister-in-law, “Sure, no problem. I’ll help!” They were very happy. 

I went from Northeast China to Guangzhou City, where my nephew’s home was. At first glance, the family was indeed difficult to get along with. They were arrogant, my nephew was not good at communication, and the child was spoiled. However, I only thought: “I don’t care if others treat me badly. I’ll just turn a blind eye to it and do the best I can. What I should see is what others need and what I can do.” I didn’t have the mindset that: “I’m here to help, and everyone should respect my ideas!”

My nephew’s mother-in-law is from Shanxi Province and likes to eat noodles, so I worked hard to learn how to make Shanxi noodles. She and my nephew’s wife both liked the pancakes I made. She was boisterous and stubborn, and became upset when things didn’t go her way. I just smiled and told her not to worry. She didn’t pay much attention to the details in her day-to-day life. So when I was free, I cleaned the kitchen. I even made some toys for the child out of paper, and mended some clothes. Gradually, she developed a good impression of me and said, “You’re very smart and always cheerful!”

She told me that her life was very hard. When she was a child, she couldn’t find someone to marry because her family had been landlords, a “class” that was labelled by the CCP as a “bad element” in society. In the end, she found her current husband, whose family was very poor. After the reform and opening up of China, her husband went out to contract projects, thinking he could make more money. But before he could make any money, he had already spent a lot on bribing officials at all levels. Even so, the projects were still pending, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

I replied, “Alas, under the CCP, when did ordinary people ever have a good life?! The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the June 4^th student massacre, and rampant unemployment. It has always been regular people suffering! Now there is pornography, gambling, drugs, corruption, and poisonous food. Where can we have a good life?

“Nobody can save us at this point; only Buddhas and Gods can. And only by following Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance can one be blessed by heaven. I practice Falun Dafa, which helped me undergo holistic changes!”

She looked anxious and asked, “Can I have a copy of the Dafa book?” I then gave her my MP3 player with Master’s audio lectures on it. She kept saying: “It’s so kind of you to give this to me!”

After having been together for a while, it was time for us to part. She returned to her hometown, and I returned to the Northeast of China. During the Chinese New Year, I received a call from her, and she expressed her gratitude to me again. In the end, we became good friends. My nephew’s wife once said to me, “Of the three matriarchs in our family, I admire you the most!”

I think it’s not difficult to be a good person, that is, to understand others as much as possible, listen to their concerns, be tolerant of them, and think more from their perspective. This is the best way to resolve unnecessary conflicts and grievances. When we really think about others, they will sense it from the bottom of their hearts.