(Clearwisdom.net)

During the day, he is a director of the department of orthopedics in a well-known hospital. He treats patients, does research, and gives lectures. At night he meditates and walks in the mountains. He has cultivated like this for four to five hours every night, for eight years. One day, he heard music that shook the deepest parts of his soul.

What motivated him to cultivate so hard while having the fame that others admire? What opportunity helped him to gain the truth of Buddha Law for which he had been searching?

This is the story about a doctor with superb medical skills who had been searching for the truth of the universe and life.

When Dr. Ao Manguan was young, a fortune-teller predicted that he would have a bright future in the building and construction field. Later, he was accepted by both the department of civil engineering at National Chung Hsing University and the National Defense Medical Center. When he recollected how helpless his mother was when she was admitted to a hospital, and when he thought about the heavy financial burden his family had to bear, he decided to attend the National Defense Medical Center, which he believed would benefit both others and himself. Later, in medical school, considering his personal situation and interests, Dr. Ao chose orthopedics as his major, and as the direction of his medical career. It is interesting that an orthopedist studies the structure of the human body, which in a way fits the fortune-teller's words. Only the materials are different, but what he studies is the active, building structure of the human body.

Dr. Ao is the Director of the Department of Orthopedics in Cheng Hsin Hospital in Taipei, and a member of the Orthopedics Association Council. After he graduated from the National Defense Medical Center, he worked in the Central Hospital in Bremen, Germany, and then at the University of California in Los Angles as an orthopedics researcher. Later, he was the head of the Department of Orthopedics in the National Defense Medical Center and then Director of the Department of Orthopedics in the Army's General Hospital.

In other people's eyes, the titles and his rich experiences showed that he had a bright future. But he had seen the most sobering side of life. For instance, a healthy child was quickly reduced to a vegetative state from a choking incident. A noble woman, who used to be elegant and talented, injured her lower back while taking care of her very sick husband who had lost his business. It took her three hours to get from the 1^st floor to the 3^rd floor of the hospital. Having seen what many other doctors viewed as common things in the never-stable world, Dr. Ao felt a deeper experience of life, started to wonder more and more, and have questions about life.

Dr. Ao had practiced Taichi for 18 years. He competed overseas several times. Behind the medals and honors, he deeply felt the emptiness once the glory was gone. To improve his medical techniques, he read all kinds of methods for improving health, and encountered many phenomenon, such as clairvoyance, seeing through the human body, cosmic language, spirit possession, qigong treatment, and more.

In order to understand and cherish life, Dr. Ao gave up his desire for seeking fame and personal interests, and started to think about learning Buddhist meditation. He perused a few religions and qigong, and then practiced a Zen meditation. Every day after work, he spent four to five hours meditating. Sometimes he walked in the mountains at night, and often walked the whole night. His cultivation time was not fixed, but he often practiced till midnight or early morning. Although he performed demanding medical work during the day, and his cultivation practice after work, Dr. Ao persisted in his pursuit of truth for eight years. Sometimes, he felt physically and mentally exhausted.

Meditation is quite hard work. But he had experienced the joy of feeling his body free while walking, sitting, and sleeping. As a doctor, he had seen enough of those who have earned "a mountain of gold and lived in mansions," but who could not trade anything for a good night's sleep. He clearly knew how precious it is to have a free body. Even so, he still had many cultivation questions for which he could not find answers. He had many uncertainties regarding the meaning of life, the universe, and many cultivation phenomena. He wondered what was most worthwhile to pursue in one's life, and whether there is such a thing as reincarnation.

One day when Dr. Ao walked by Tianmu Sports Park, he perceived never before-heard music. Having meditated for many years, he had gained a good sensitivity to music. He stopped, and felt that the music was shaking everything in him and touching the deepest part of his being.

He followed the music and found a group of people meditating, looking extremely elegant. It was the music for the Falun Gong sitting meditation. Following a Falun Gong practitioner's introduction to the practice, Dr. Ao finished reading Zhuan Falun in two days. Zhuan Falun is the primary book for Falun Gong study. Suddenly, all the questions he had accumulated during the past eight years of meditation were answered. Having searched for the truth of the universe and life for such a long time, he finally found the answers. He respected the courage and wisdom of Master Li's disclosing the profound secret of Buddha Law cultivation. He decided to devote himself to the cultivation of Falun Gong.

After he started Falun Gong cultivation and found the truth of Buddha Law, Dr. Ao further experienced the preciousness of attaining Dafa. When asked how precious it is, Dr. Ao paused and said, "In my experience, Falun Gong is more precious than air."

A key factor in preventing SARS is a healthy immune system. Pressure and stress can lead to lowered immunity. Dr. Ao suggests that everyone settle down and carefully examine their physical and mental state, adjust the unhealthy part, and upgrade the mind and body to the best state.

One should improve the ability to think positively. Medical experiments have shown that caring for others can strengthen one's immunity. Take Sister Teresa as an example: before she died, she had physical contact with all kinds of patients, including AIDS patients, yet she was not infected by any illnesses.

A wall of immunity surrounds every healthy person. A virus is stopped when it hits a healthy person, and it will no longer spread. The more healthy people there are in an environment, the more they will form a wall that prevents contagious diseases from spreading.

Prior to 1999, more than 100 million people in China practiced Falun Gong, which created a very beneficial environment. Now the Chinese government persecutes Falun Gong, and has ruined this environment. It is dangerous to pursue solely economic development while not improving people's minds. When human beings' fundamental kindness is ignored, people's health will plummet at the same time. Through cultivation one can completely improve one's mind and body, and safely avoid the SARS crisis.

In 2001, Mainland China hosted a conference on orthopedics for doctors from both Taiwan and the Mainland to share their experiences. Dr. Ao, who practices Falun Gong, was the only one in the conference who was rejected at the border. But Dr. Ao did not feel that he personally lost anything.

"What you receive from cultivating Falun Gong is far beyond what the conference can provide. To gain you must lose. Through cultivation, we are able to take a peek at the mystery of the human body, the broadness and profoundness of the universe, and the enlarged benefit on both mind and body. Whether you can go to the Mainland can in no way compare to that." But Dr. Ao also felt pity, "There are still many things that the Mainland can do to improve its medical techniques. The purpose of attending such international sharing is to help improve China's orthopedics treatment levels and benefit more Chinese. My rejection was the loss for the people at the other side of the straight who have the need for orthopedics experts. It also blocked a channel for people to get to know each other."

Because he wants to contribute his energy, Dr. Ao never misses any opportunity to share medical knowledge, and tries to share what he has enlightened to in cultivation, to let people know that "a medical doctor can reach higher success through cultivation!"