(Clearwisdom.net)
Because of my job as a Chinese medicine doctor, I come into contact with many patients, including Chinese people living outside of China. In the past several years, my relationship with my patients has changed. I no longer treat them simply as my patients. Instead, I treat them more as sentient beings to be saved. Spreading Dafa and clarifying the truth, therefore, has become part of my treatment, and this has often proved more effective than the medicine I prescribe.
Frequently, a patient asks during his first visit, "Doctor, when will my illness be cured?" I often answer with a smile, "That will depend on yourself. Chinese traditional medicine talks about 'Seven Emotions Causing Sickness.' An excess of any one of those emotions could make your condition worse. There is an old saying, 'Thirty percent comes from treatment, and seventy percent comes from cultivation.' Here cultivation refers to cultivating one's morality and character. Follow the principles of truthfulness, compassion, tolerance, and cultivate both your body and mind. That will help to stabilize your five inner organs, balance your blood pressure, and strengthen your energy, and therefore your health will improve quickly." Such suggestions sometimes brought very positive results.
During our conversations, I try to find an opening to clarify the truth to them. In the beginning, people were poisoned by the slanderous propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party. I usually tried to correct their misunderstandings with some common sense and scientific information. Teacher told us,
"Validate the Fa with rationality, clarify the truth with wisdom, spread the Fa and save people with mercy." ("Rationality" in Essentials for Further Advancement II)
Chinese people often asked me, "How long have you been abroad? Do you go back to China often?" I told them that I had not been back to China for six years because I was a Falun Gong practitioner. Once a patient who had rheumatoid arthritis jumped off the bed upon hearing my words. I laughed and said, "Lie down please. No need to be frightened as soon as Falun Gong is mentioned."
"Tell me, how much do you know about Falun Gong?" I asked.
He then seriously told me, "I saw footage of the (staged) self-immolation, and heard about suicide and killing by Falun Gong practitioners on Chinese Central Television."
"Do you think I would commit 'killing' or 'suicide'?" I asked.
He looked a little lost, finding it hard to connect such lies with me.
I then said, "There are Falun Gong practitioners in over 70 countries and no such incidents have ever been reported outside of China. Since you watched CCTV's broadcast of the staged self-immolation, didn't you find it questionable? Have you ever thought about it carefully? After Wang Jingdong was burned by the fire, how come his hair stayed untouched and the plastic bottle filled with gasoline between his legs did not melt or explode? How was the little girl, Siying, still able to sing after her trachea was cut open..."
He said, "How could CCTV tell such a lie?"
"Since it was from CCTV, it would most likely be a lie," I answered. "Do you still remember SARS in China? Our government lied to the world and disregarded the lives of people in all the other countries. Wasn't that a serious issue of mal-intent?"
He then asked, "What about the story that someone cut open his own stomach looking for the Falun?"
I knew he was going to ask this question. I had heard all of these lies and fabrications before. I told him, "Any person with common sense would understand it. Falun is a living being in another dimension. What is another dimension? I'll give you an example. Do you have a cellular phone? When you talk on the phone, do you see the person you talk to? No, but you hear him, correct? Why? We can't see the electro-magnetic waves because they exist in another dimension. Chinese medicine has talked about main and collateral channels for over four thousand years. Nobody can see those channels but they indeed can be used to cure people. Now the existence of these channels has been scientifically proven and internationally recognized. Those channels also exist in another dimension. If someone cut himself open to seek for his main and collateral channels, he would definitely be considered as having a mental disorder."
"But I still think Falun Gong is blind faith." He said.
I asked him, "Can you tell me what the exact meaning of blind faith is?" (He struggled with it and could not state it clearly). I then said, "Actually blind faith is a neutral term. Only to an atheist, does it become a negative term. Chinese people are all proud of our 5,000 years of history and culture. Why do you think foreigners like Chinese culture? I think it is because the ancient Chinese culture was actually a culture of semi-divinity. You must have read the story of The Journey to the West and The Canonization of the Gods? Nowadays people regard these as fairy tales. Looking back at Chinese history, the Buddhism founded by Shakyamuni, and the Taoism attributed to Lao Zi, have had a very big influence on our traditional spiritual ideology, in addition to our concepts of beauty and our moral standards. Why were these things so convincing to people? Back then, in the everyday lives of Chinese people, they could feel the existence of the gods and Buddhas. Just like none of us can see the air, but we feel its existence, and air is a basic necessity for our lives. People recognized that they got blessings from doing good deeds and got punished for doing bad deeds. Thus, people believed that there were divine beings 'three feet above their heads.' They believed in 'good is rewarded with good, and evil is met with karmic retribution.'"
"What is Falun Gong? What is cultivation? Why do people practice Falun Gong? Why did Jiang Zemin want to persecute Falun Gong?" He asked questions one after another.
When I talked about the persecution endured by Falun Gong practitioners in China, he said bitterly, "I believe that is true. I escaped from that society myself."
When he was leaving, I gave him some truth clarification materials about Falun Gong. With the materials in his hands, he said, "What if I learn Falun Dafa?" I smiled, "Then you would not have to come to visit me. You could proudly say, 'now I obtained the Fa, what can diseases do to me?'" He then borrowed a copy of Zhuan Falun.
When he came to my office, he had struggled with every step due to his arthritis, but when he left, he carried a big bag for his sister and walked quickly across the street. Watching him leave that day, I told myself, "Actually, everyone is subject to the law of heaven daily - 'Good is rewarded with good and evil is met with evil.'"