Following Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance at Work

(Minghui.org) After graduating from college, I was assigned to work in the kindergarten of a state-owned enterprise. I was lucky to learn about Dafa through a coworker in April 1996. I had just turned 22 years old at the time.

Other practitioners and I practiced the exercises outdoors to validate Dafa in 2000, and were reported to the police. I was dismissed from my position as director of the kindergarten and transferred to the company’s landscaping team. The employees in the team were underprivileged and were looked down upon. I stayed there for three years, enduring disrespectful stares, scorn, shunning, and others’ misunderstandings. I was often harassed by the police, forced to write guarantees to renounce my belief, and was targeted to be sent to brainwashing sessions. The state-owned enterprise later closed, so my husband and I relied on odd jobs to support our family, and we suffered a lot. During the most severe period of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution, I relied on my firm belief in Dafa and the protection of my kind supervisors at work, and made it through steadily. After my work unit went bankrupt, I was reassigned to work in a local public kindergarten. I have been working there for almost three years.

When I first arrived at my new position, my notions made me feel that my personality was not suitable for this field, so I disliked the occupation. I had been away from early childhood education for nearly 20 years, so even though I was assigned to work in logistics at the kindergarten, I still had many difficulties adapting to it. I was not familiar with my colleagues, and I was often not recognized, wronged, and treated unfairly. My heart was frequently moved. My work did not go smoothly, and I was under a lot of pressure.

I kept in mind that I am a cultivator, however, and that I should strictly require myself to act in accordance with Dafa’s principles, walk well the cultivation path arranged by Master, constantly improve my xinxing, cherish the opportunity to improve my xinxing, and eliminate human attachments that are not in line with Dafa, such as competitiveness, discontentment, and disliking people I didn’t approve of. I tried my best to maintain a compassionate and peaceful attitude at work, not think at the same level as those who wronged me, and take the high road and to not be influenced by anything unrighteous in the secular world.

I was in charge of allocating funding to help children from families having financial difficulties. The provincial policy required public kindergartens to spend three percent of their income every year to help such children. After discussing this with the kindergarten supervisor, I completed the work as required. It really helped the children from the low-income families in the kindergarten. The parents were very grateful to receive the aid and said that their incomes were meager due to the pandemic, and this financial aid had helped them a lot. One parent sent a pennant to say thank you. During this period, the supervisor also talked with other kindergartens, and they all said that the spending for financial aid was three percent.

In February last year, when the education bureau was auditing the financial aid fund spending for each kindergarten, mine was the highest in the group. Kindergartens with twice the number of students as mine spent less than half of what we spent, and kindergartens with similar numbers of students as ours spent less than one-third of what we did. Except for us, no kindergarten had followed the provincial policy. In China, under the rule of the Party, people are used deceiving superiors and subordinates, and saying one thing while doing another. The accountant for our kindergarten sent me a screenshot of the audit data in the group, saying that the director had asked me to explain why we spent the most for financial aid. Although all the heads had agreed and signed the disbursements for all the funds at the time, under these circumstances the director of the kindergarten thought that I was a fool to strictly follow the policy.

I didn’t feel good at all at the time. In this society where morals have declined, good people have become the odd ones in the eyes of others. I truly felt that it was hard to be a good person there. I asked myself, “You are a Dafa practitioner. Is it wrong to follow Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, to be a good person?” My answer was no. I then felt at ease and did not care what others thought of me. I just adhered to Master’s teachings and made sure that everything I did lived up to my conscience.

Not long ago, the education bureau held an urgent meeting for the people in charge of allocating financial aid in public schools and kindergartens, requiring them to report the funding amounts for each school and kindergarten for the past four years. The numbers would then be reported to the city after being summarized. They said that the provincial government was going to send people to conduct a detailed and strict audit in 2025 to see whether the policy was followed. Those who did not do so had to find a way to solve the problem themselves. This was unprecedented. The province had never checked this work before, so each school and kindergarten did what they wanted and took advantage of loopholes. They only spent a small amount of funds symbolically every year, which made many children from poor families lose the opportunity to get financial aid, and a large amount of funds were misappropriated. Corruption has spread across all the professions. The participants of the meeting were all a little flustered. A group of people whispered about rushing back to discuss with their leaders what they should do. I stood calmly in the meeting room, and I felt touched. I used to be considered a fool, but I was calm, upright, and settled. I was grateful to Master for teaching us to follow Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.

After I returned to our kindergarten, I told the director about this meeting. She said with deep feeling, “It seems that we have to do things in a down-to-earth manner!” I joked, “We will still do it according to the policy in the future? No getting around it, right!” She answered seriously, “Of course, we will do it as we should.” At a dinner party later, the director raised her glass to me and said, “You are the most trustworthy.” She then nodded knowingly to the deputy director in charge.

We should guide our every word and action according to the principles of Dafa, leaving a reference for ordinary people. This is also a form of rectifying the human world.

My work environment is getting better and better now, and I have gained everyone’s recognition and trust. I think this was all Master’s using the complex work environment of ordinary people to eliminate my karma, temper me, and make me a qualified Dafa disciple. Although the process has been difficult, my xinxing indeed has improved a lot, and I have taken a big step on the path back home.

Practitioners Support Each Other in Assisting Master to Save People

My workplace has long hours and complex work, which is tiresome. It is also far from my home. It is a new challenge for me. I feel very tired after work every day. I have been working on a project where we produce truth-clarification materials. Because my local fellow practitioners are doing a good job in clarifying the truth face-to-face, there is a great demand for materials, from brochures, pictorial materials, various truth-clarification books including Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, Disintegrating the Communist Culture, and The Ultimate Goal of Communism, etc., to year-end truth-clarification desk calendars, and wall calendars.

It takes a lot of time every week to print the materials. The raw materials also have to be moved from downstairs to the seventh floor, and after the materials are made, they have to be moved back downstairs and transported away. Fortunately, my family members have all been out of town, so I have less housework to do. Besides the three evening group Fa study sessions every week, and my regular Fa study and exercises, I spend almost all of my remaining time making truth-clarification materials. I had never done such heavy physical work since I was a child, so every day I get so tired that I feel pain all over my body when I go to bed at night, as if I have been beaten. The amazing thing is that everything feels fine when the next day comes. Sometimes when it is hard to keep going, I think of Milarepa, who had deep bloody wounds all over his body due to laboring to build a structure. What is this little suffering of mine? All these are good things.

Before I started practicing, my family knew that I was practically addicted to sleep. I could not be disturbed by anyone when I was sleeping, and sometimes I could sleep from noon to the next morning. I often felt weak and listless, and I would feel sleepy when I was only a little tired. I realized that Master was using this method of “physical suffering” to remove the bad things and the desire for comfort in me. I can now easily carry a box of paper upstairs, and my sleep time has been reduced from more than ten hours to five or six hours.

Practitioner Tong, who delivers materials, recently saw that I was doing relatively more intense work, so when she came to my house to study the Fa she used the time to put materials into some large bags she made, and then helped carry them up to my apartment when fellow practitioners came. One time, ten boxes of paper for calendars were delivered. The three male practitioners in the Fa-study group were busy with something else and did not come, so the five of us female practitioners carried all of them up in one vigorous effort. The thin and weak practitioner Xiaohong carried the materials back and forth four times. I was very moved. The selfless state of fellow practitioners touched me. After moving the materials, everyone laughed, and said, “When we needed male practitioners, none of them came.” After Xiaocheng, who was in charge of repairing the machine, finished repairing the machine, she saw that the room where the materials were made was a little messy. Knowing that I did not have time, she helped tidy it up. We practitioners silently shared the load and cooperated, supported, and encouraged each other on the path of assisting Master in Fa-rectification.

I quietly read Master’s article “Treat Master’s Family Members Properly”:

“From the moment Dafa began spreading, it has taken into consideration that the world’s people, including the gods, have committed countless sins throughout the long history of the cosmos, lifetime after lifetime—especially the world’s people. For beings like that to be saved, the only way is to disregard their past sins. What a blessing of salvation from Dafa this is! What enormous mercy! What a holy blessing!” (“Treat Master’s Family Members Properly”)

I was very moved. Although I have been walking on the path of cultivation without stopping, and have been practicing hard following Master’s guidance, I still feel that I have a gap from the requirements of Dafa. I feel guilty for not living up to Master’s grand compassion and boundless grace. In the limited time ahead, I will make courageous progress and return home with Master as soon as possible.

If there is anything not in line with the Fa, please correct me.