(Clearwisdom.net)
Excerpt:
While talking with him, I found out that he was the head of the construction site. I asked him, “Is this your crew?” He said, “Yes.” Then I asked him whether he wanted his crew to make more money. He said, “Of course.” I told him, “There are many people at the construction site, and each time I come, the folks here are happy to take all kinds of truth-clarification materials. Other managers saw this and asked me to provide them with truth-clarification materials too. When I later returned, more than a dozen people asked for Dafa books. Among them was a manager's driver. Some people asked for videotapes of Master Li's lectures, and some wanted exercise tapes. After years of distributing truth-clarification materials, clarifying the truth face-to-face and persuading people to withdraw from the CCP and its affiliated organizations, many people have come to know me. When they see me, some say, “Falun Dafa is Good!” Others tell me that the truth-clarification materials are very good and discuss what the read about with me.
– By the author
The Online Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference for Falun Dafa practitioners from mainland China has been held eight times. In the past, I used various excuses to avoid writing an experience sharing article. However, as a genuine practitioner, I felt extremely guilty for not ever writing an article. This time I decided to deny any interference, no matter what I encountered. I thought, regardless of the score I might get, I will genuinely hand in my paper to Master. Fellow practitioners, please point out any mistakes that are not in line with the requirements of the Fa.
I. Studying and memorizing the Fa laid a solid foundation for my cultivation practice
I began practicing Falun Dafa at the end of 1999. At first, my purpose for practicing cultivation was mainly for healing and fitness. I remember when I read the book Zhuan Falun for the first time, due to having a lot of karma, and the fact that I did not have a good education due to the fact that the Cultural Revolution took place while I was in middle school, I was badly influenced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, therefore, I couldn’t understand what Master was talking about in the book. Later, I gave up Fa study and only did the exercises. Once, I dreamed that Master was guiding us in studying the Fa at our practice site, and I did not know what Master was saying. I then asked a fellow practitioner who told me that this Dafa is really good. This was Master giving me hints, indicating that I should go to the practice site to study the Fa. I suddenly realized that that was the reason why I had such a dream. I therefore began to study the Fa again.
Up until 2000, although I studied the Fa, I felt that I was not solid enough. Even though I did not have anything to do at home, I did not want to go out because when I went out, I always heard or saw things related to the persecution of Falun Dafa, slandering of Dafa, and Master being verbally abused. I thought to myself, “This is the persecution from the evil. If this kind of situation continues, I do not know how evil it can get. If I could memorize such a good Dafa in my heart and keep it there forever, the evil would not be able to interfere with me.” Thus I began to memorize the Fa.
One can imagine, under such conditions, how big the interference was when I tried to memorize the Fa and at first I could not memorize anything. I spent an entire afternoon and still had not memorized the first paragraph. Before I practiced Falun Dafa, I was a person who always wanted to be a winner. I thought to myself, I was not this stupid when I was a student. What’s happened to me now? I did not believe that I could not memorize this book. I told myself that I would continue for two days if I didn’t get it done in one day. I did not care about the result and I continued to memorize the Fa all day long.
At that time, I did not spend much time in distributing truth-clarification materials, even though I had ample time. Each day I would memorize the Fa from 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. After dinner, I would connect all the paragraphs that I had memorized that afternoon. I would start all over again even if I had just one word wrong, until I could recite it all fluently. I would continuously recite that passage of the Fa five times. It went especially well when I did it while sitting in the lotus position. One hour was fine, but my legs were very painful for the second hour. One could imagine how I felt for the third hour of sitting with my legs crossed. Later I thought that the pain in my legs might affect my memorizing the Fa. Then I thought to myself, “Would memorizing the Fa be affected by the pain in my legs? That wouldn’t be right. I should use memorizing the Fa to overcome the pain in my legs.” Finally I had memorized the Fa and was able to recite it while sitting with my legs crossed, focused and concentrating; nothing could interfere with me. As soon as I began to memorize the Fa, I would not hear anything else; I was not aware of anything, and naturally my legs did not hurt any more.
Every day, after 6-7 hours spent memorizing the Fa, my entire brain was filled with Fa, and I would have fewer human thoughts. I went from at first being able to only memorize one paragraph, to later memorizing three to four paragraphs. Every time when I completely memorized the Fa, I would recite a paragraph slowly and tried to understand Master’s Fa. Through memorizing the Fa and doing consistent Fa study later, I benefited a great deal. It is hard to express my feelings with words. It has laid a solid foundation for me, especially during all these years of counteracting the persecution, clarifying the truth, and saving sentient beings.
Here are some examples:
When I memorized the part of the Fa where Master talks about a person who is tied to a bed with his eyes covered and is told that they will cut his wrists and he would die because of the bleeding, I realized that in fact this is a false impression. But the man was literally scared to death. Master also said, “In Buddhism they say that everything in the world is an illusion, that it’s not real.” (Zhuan Falun). At that moment, I realized that Master was telling us that this evil persecution was also a false impression. In the eyes of genuine practitioners, when letting go of life and death, it is nothing. My experiences during these years of counteracting the persecution, clarifying the truth and saving sentient beings fully confirmed what Master said in this paragraph. The evil illusion seems to be real, but it is still an illusion. Because we have our Master who is guiding us, evil will never prevail over righteousness.
In Zhuan Falun, Master also mentions the principle of a mentally challenged person not burdening him or herself with everyday people's quests for fame, personal benefit or sentimentality, but who instead lives a contented life. And moreover, this person will have a much better future. After understanding this Fa principle, I tried to guide myself to not be concerned with fame, personal benefit or sentimentality during these years of cultivation practice.
II. Always returning home safely after clarifying the truth
Everything will make way for the righteous Fa
After constantly studying the Fa, I understood that Master came to this human world to rectify the Fa and for the salvation of all sentient beings. The Three Realms were made for the Fa-rectification. Dafa disciples agreed some time in the distant past to help Master with Fa-rectification. Everything in the universe is for the Fa-rectification, which must be successful and has already been pre-arranged. Everything is for the Fa-rectification. Everything should give way to Dafa practitioners to save sentient beings. Evil is nothing. It should not exist and should be eliminated.
Therefore, I began to distribute and post truth-clarification materials in large numbers. Each day I would ride my bicycle and go to residential buildings. Different areas and all kinds of people became my targets for distributing truth-clarification materials: residents living near the road, stores, pedestrians, the baskets of bikes, parked cars, construction sites, commuting workers, farmers, and people who collect garbage.
Later, Master published “Teaching the Fa at the 2005 Manhattan International Fa Conference.” Through studying this lecture, I understood what we should say when clarifying the truth to people and how to talk to them. I then changed my way of clarifying the truth, especially when I saw that some of the truth-clarification materials were discarded by people, both inside and outside the residential buildings. I became very anxious and wondered how I could encourage those people who did not want to know the truth to take a look at these truth-clarification materials.
I remembered a paragraph from Zhuan Falun. Master said, “..., or they’re strung up right in the middle of the street. Lift your head and it’s right in your face.” (Zhuan Falun) I thought that the truth-clarification materials used to save people should also be arranged to be seen as people looked up. Therefore, I folded letter size paper lengthwise or sideways into two parts. I followed Master's teaching on how to clarify the truth and prepared small, neatly written banners with the wording: “People should have Freedom of Belief;” “Abusing Human Rights is a Crime;” “Falun Gong teaches Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance, the CCP is all about lies, brutality and struggle;” “The Master of Falun Gong has saved tens of millions of people through his compassion and kindness, whereas the CCP has killed 80 million of its own people through various campaigns;” “Jiang Zemin, the former president of China, through his jealousy of Falun Gong and its popularity, directed the Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident and framed Falun Gong;” “Falun Gong is now promoted in over 100 countries and has received more than 1,000 awards; and, “People have benefited a great deal from practicing Falun Gong.”
I arranged these banners and information in two rows and posted some in the hallways of the buildings where they were easily seen by people walking by. In different locations, people would be able to see them whenever they looked up, even those who didn’t want to see. I kept writing banners during the day and posted what I had written at night. At that time, Master often encouraged me: I dreamed I was flying. Sometimes I was flying along the road. Once I dreamed that the evil was running after me and I instantly flew up into the sky; the evil could not reach me. I remembered one night I went out and posted what I wrote as usual. The next day I met another practitioner who reminded me to pay attention to safety because that practitioner had heard that the night before, the authorities were trying to intercept Falun Gong practitioners. I replied, “I was in that area last night.” I knew that Master was protecting me.
“Falun Gong Team”
At the beginning of 2007, I started to clarify the truth face-to-face, distribute truth-clarification materials, and persuade people to withdraw from the CCP and its affiliated organizations. Each day I would carry copies of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, Shen Yun Performing Arts booklets, Telling the Future CDs, Falun Dafa bookmarks, Remembering our Benevolent Master, and other information reminding people of the value of goodness, etc. I would give people different truth-clarification materials depending on the circumstances, or I would open up my bag and let people choose what they wanted to have.
Once, I went to a construction site and saw a large group of people working. I was about to walk over to them but before I stepped onto the site, I saw a car parked near the road with a man inside waving for me to come over. I rode my bicycle over to where he was. He wanted to shake hands with me. I smiled and said, “I am a traditional woman. I do not know you. Men and women should not get so close if they do not know each other.” Then I told him about the prophecy mentioned in the past about when mankind become degenerate, when the old and the young do not distinguish between each other and have incest with each other, this would be the time for mankind to be eliminated. Heaven will first eliminate these kinds of people. Moreover, if a person has a family, they should not think or do these things as this will not only destroy oneself, but destroy others as well. He smiled and did not say anything.
While talking with him I found out that he was the head of the construction site. I asked him, “Is this your crew?” He replied, “Yes.” I then asked him whether he wanted his crew to make more money. He said, “Of course.” I then told him, “If you want your crew to make more money, you first need to ensure the safety of your workers. You will make more money if there are no accidents. How can you be safe?” I told him that his workers will be blessed if they read Falun Dafa truth-clarification materials, especially if they genuinely memorize the words, “Falun Dafa is good. Truth-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” Doing so would ensure their safety. I told him, “Let your workers read these truth-clarification materials, they will then be safe.” He smiled and waved his hand, indicating for me to go over to his workers and distribute the truth-clarification materials. Since there were many people at the construction site each time I went there, all the truth-clarification materials were rapidly given out. Several other managers saw what was happening and also wanted to have the materials. Later, over a dozen workers wanted to read Falun Dafa books. Among them was a driver for one of the managers. Some people even asked for the videotapes of Master's Fa lectures and some asked for the exercise tape. Of course, I satisfied all their requests. One manager joked, “Our team now has turned into a Falun Gong team.” I smiled and said, “That is your blessing.” There are many such cases.
After all these years of distributing materials, clarifying the truth face-to-face, and persuading people to withdraw from the CCP and its affiliated organizations, many people know me. Whenever they see me, they say, “Falun Dafa is good!” A number of people say that these truth-clarification materials are very good and very true.
Believing in the Fa in any kind of situation
Of course, there were dangerous times also. I remember when the bad news about the harvesting of organs from living Falun Dafa practitioners became known. I felt very sad and wondered how the evil CCP could do such a horrendous thing. I wanted to let people know how evil, how cruel, how inhuman the CCP is and thus enable them to see through its nature, stay away from it, and discard it. The chance came during the May 1st holiday. My children were all traveling and nobody was at home. I had a lot of time to go out to distribute truth-clarification materials. However, during those days, the evil head came to our place, and police cars were driving back and forth on the street all day long with their sirens wailing. Police and security guards were running everywhere. If they saw motorists doing anything suspicious, they would order them to park near the road and they would check that car. For a while, the atmosphere was very tense. Some practitioners also advised me not to do anything. I thought to myself, “Dafa is suffering through the persecution, Falun Dafa practitioners' organs are being harvested while they are still alive. How could I not care about this? How could I sit at home and do nothing? That's not right. I must do what I should do.”
Every day I prepared a large bag of truth-clarification materials and then traveled by car to a small residential district which was over 60 miles away from where I live. There, each small district is several sizes larger than that of our district. I heard that people there seldom saw truth-clarification materials. I went to that place twice each day when my husband was not eating lunch at home. Within seven days, I went there almost seven times and distributed materials to each and every small district.
One morning, I went to a construction site and a police officer from the 610 Office noticed me and took me to the local police station. At first, I was a little confused. The police asked me where I came from and also asked for my husband's cell phone number. After calming down a little, I thought to myself, “That's not right. I am a Dafa practitioner. How could I rely on ordinary people?” When they asked about other things, I did not cooperate with them. I calmly and benevolently clarified the truth to them. At that time a police officer said, “You are still smiling. You know that on March 19, leaders from above issued an order saying that when dealing with Falun Gong practitioners there is no need to follow any procedures. We can directly sentence them to forced labor camps.” I did not acknowledge what he said. I thought to myself, “The evil has no say in this.” In the meantime, I stopped clarifying the truth to them and sat there with my eyes closed and began sending forth righteous thoughts. I told the evil in other dimensions, “You do not have the right to control me. My original goal of coming here is to save people. Since you asked me to come, then you gave me a chance to eliminate you. I did not have such an opportunity to send forth righteous thoughts in such close proximity before.” I then told Master, “Master, since I came to this evil den, I will completely eliminate this evil that wants to prevent me from saving people. I will go home in the afternoon. And then find my loophole and get rid of it.” After that, I focused my thoughts and kept sending forth righteous thoughts. At 2:30 p.m., when people came back to work, the director of the police station said, “How dare you come to our area? Don't do that any more. Your family will be here in a few minutes to pick you up.” Thus I was able to return home.
Through this event, I realized that Falun Dafa practitioners should firmly believe in Master and Dafa at all times and in any kind of environment. In the meantime, we should also believe in ourselves, that we will be fine because we are Dafa practitioners. Master has given me the ability, especially in the face of the evil, to deal with difficulties, tribulations, conflicts, and even sickness karma. When we have righteous thoughts and behavior, all of these can be seen as false and will naturally evaporate. Master only requires us to have righteous thoughts and righteous actions.
Also, I rarely or don’t even think about issues such as the so-called sensitive dates, or how the authorities would follow or monitor practitioners, how neighbors also monitored practitioners and betrayed them, or what I should do when I encountered the evil. I do not think about these negative things. I just do things whenever I need to and whenever I want to. (Of course, I am aware that I must pay attention to safety.)
In short, with the arrangement and protection of our Master, for all these years I do not know how many people I have clarified the truth to and persuaded to withdraw from the CCP and its affiliated organizations, nor what quantity of truth-clarification materials I have distributed. I should not be attached to those things. I do things and ask for nothing. Therefore, normally I do not keep a record of that. Today, however, I roughly calculated that over thirty people now read Dafa books as a result of my clarifying the truth to them and know that Dafa is good. Of course, this was all done by Master. I only spent time running around and talking to people. If there was no protection from our Master, I could do nothing in such an evil environment.
III. Cultivating ourselves well will enable us to save sentient beings
During these years of cultivation practice, what I realized was that having a righteous heart and mind makes everything I face naturally positive. It was only when I cultivated myself well, let go of my human mindset, naturally assimilated to Dafa, that there would be less interference, less trouble, and less conflicts. The evil would not dare to persecute such a practitioner, as Dafa would not allow it and Master controls everything for us.
During the first three years of persecution, after I went to Beijing to validate the Fa, I was sent to a brainwashing center where they tried to force me to write the so-called guarantee statement. I did not agree to do any of that. I left home and went to Beijing three times. However, the persecution caused a great deal of disruption to my family. My husband was a section-level officer. He is a person who cares about his reputation, is a very strong minded person and would not allow others to criticize him. At the same time he is also a timid person. In those days, I was criticized in big and small meetings and was threatened that something would be done to me. The threats and intimidation affected my husband and eventually he could not endure it any more. He would come home and feel very angry and would not allow me to practice cultivation, and even said that he wanted to divorce me.
“Will you tell me what benefits your wife gets from practicing Falun Gong?”
How could I deal with such a situation? I contemplated for a while and felt that the only thing I could do was to cultivate myself well and then the situation would rectify itself. Since then I have totally changed myself. I followed Dafa's principles and adjusted myself. With righteous thoughts, the evil could not interfere with me. I tried to behave well by following Master’s words, “... you shouldn’t hit back when attacked, or talk back when insulted.” (Zhuan Falun) I stopped blaming my husband and parents-in-law. I took care of all the household chores. No matter how tired I was or how difficult the task was, I did not complain and treated my family kindly. With regard to money, and especially on how to handle money used by my parents-in-law, I allowed my husband to totally handle it. I did not have any complains no matter how big a loss I may have had. There were no conflicts; I let go of human notions and tried to do everything as a Dafa practitioner in order to validate Dafa. When my husband caught a cold, I bought some pears, peeled and cut them into small pieces and put them on a plate. I then put sugar on them, put toothpicks in them and gave them to him to eat. My husband stopped controlling me and I was free do the exercises and study the Fa. I also wisely encouraged my husband to watch Master's videotapes of the Fa lectures and CDs that clarified the truth about Falun Dafa. It took him one year to watch all the CDs, after which he wanted to have more and he completely changed his views of Dafa and Master.
One day, when my husband came home after work, he smiled at me and said, “Today, the secretary of the community called my name and said, 'Will you tell me what benefits your wife gets from practicing Falun Gong?' I replied by saying, 'Originally, if I said one sentence to her she would have eight sentences waiting for me in reply. Now she doesn’t say a word if I verbally abuse or hit her. Originally, she did not get on with my mother but now she treats her even better than me. My wife used to have all kinds of illnesses but now she is as strong as a cow,' and so forth. The community secretary patted his thigh after hearing that, 'This is so nice. If someone tries to cause trouble for your wife in the future, I will not cooperate with them any more.' (He was referring to not carrying out orders from his leaders to persecute Falun Gong practitioners.)
Since then, our community has had very few Falun Gong practitioners sent to the brainwashing center or being sentenced to the forced labor camp. Once, the authorities came to our community and wanted to arrest three Falun Gong practitioners reported by other people (myself included) and take them to the brainwashing center. The community secretary invited a whole table of people to dinner and told the staff members from the 610 Office that he wanted to deal with that case by himself. Thus he turned away staff from the 610 Office.
IV. Lessons learned. Making persistent effort in cultivation practice
Master said, “As I've said, everything that happens today in the ordinary society is the result of Dafa disciples' thoughts.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.SA.”)
Cultivation in Dafa is a serious matter. I have learned some profound lessons. As I did not maintain good xinxing, I did not validate Dafa. In the second half of 2002, my daughter was in high school. A boy had a crush on her. When I heard this, I went to the boy's home and wanted to talk to his parents to prevent him from getting close to my daughter. Unexpectedly, we had an argument and I made things even worse. I should have let go of my sentimentality towards my daughter. At that time I did not realize that it was because of my attachment to my daughter. I did not pass that test.
The next test came right after that. Someone from my daughter's school falsely accused her of stealing. I again did not maintain good xinxing. Another time, one of my acquaintances who was a client at my husband's work unit asked to receive some benefits from the business. My husband made an exception and had already given her some benefits, but she was not satisfied. She brought her grievance to our home and scattered garbage in front of our home. She did this every month for four months. After studying the Fa, I finally realized that the situation had occurred for me to upgrade my heart and mind nature. But I failed the test three times. Not only did I not upgrade my heart and mind nature, I also caused a bad effect for Dafa.
These things happened almost ten years ago. However, whenever I think of them, I still feel very guilty. Through constantly studying the Fa and with the improvement in my cultivation, I now seem to not get angry as others would. Think about it, humans with those unrighteous thoughts and selfishness would harm not only themselves but others as well. Such a stupid mindset causes troubles and difficulties. Things would go wrong or against one's will, painful illnesses would occur, death, even lifetime disability, plus natural disasters would occur. Humans are at this level. What is the use of getting angry? Last year, my daughter had some difficulty. I gave her 10,000 yuan. As a result, not long after that, her mother-in-law asked for 100,000 yuan. I did not get angry about it. I thought it was a good thing. I helped my daughter enlighten to Dafa's principle of Truth-Compassion-Forbearance: everyone gets old one day and she should learn to respect old people. Experiencing adversity can be a blessing. My daughter understood what I told her and thus avoided a family crisis.
Cultivation practice is like this, in the face of conflicts or tribulations, if we do not assimilate to Dafa and let go of the human mindset, we can bring all sorts of troubles to ourselves. My lesson is profound. Therefore as a Dafa practitioner, especially a Dafa practitioner in the Fa-rectification period, we shoulder the duty and great mission of clarifying the truth and saving sentient beings. Whether we are at home with our family, with our friends and relatives, contending with others in society, or in any kind of environment, when we encounter conflicts or tribulations, we should learn to first calm ourselves down and look inside, cultivate ourselves and assimilate to the Fa. Even if handling the matter is against our original intention, as long as it complies to the Fa, we should deal with it to meet the Fa standard. Thus we will not feel regret later, nor experience any painful feelings. As long as we follow the principle of Truth-Compassion-Forbearance, be selfless, think about others first, and be a good person, we will be able to harmonize with Dafa and be able to save more sentient beings.