(Clearwisdom.net) Greetings Revered Master! Greetings fellow practitioners!
I am a senior lecturer at a technical school. Ever since I began cultivating in Falun Dafa in early 1996, numerous times I have witnessed the greatness and extraordinariness of Dafa, as well as Master's immense compassion.
One Person Cultivates and the Whole Family Benefits
My husband used to suffer from severe arthritis, chronic colitis and pharyngitis; however, he miraculously recovered from these incurable diseases not long after I began practicing Dafa. Several years passed and he never had a relapse. It was truly an example of “one person cultivates and the whole family benefits.”
My husband used to be a foul-mouthed person who would shout profanities non-stop when he was really mad, but he stopped using foul language before we even realized it. It was truly amazing that he was able to break his decades-old bad habit simply because of my cultivation practice. It’s just as Master said in Zhuan Falun,
“We believe in saving ourselves and saving others, saving all sentient beings. So when the Law Wheel rotates inward, it saves oneself, and when it rotates outward, it saves others. When it rotates outward, it sends out energy and benefits others.”
“When people who have bad thoughts think about wrong things, under the strong effect of your field they might change their thinking, they might stop having bad thoughts for the time being. Maybe someone wants to badmouth somebody, but out of the blue he changes his mind and doesn’t want to talk badly about him anymore. Only the energy field from cultivating a true teaching can have this effect. That’s why there used to be a saying in Buddhism, 'Buddha’s light shines everywhere, propriety and righteousness harmonize everything.' That is what it means.”
Solidly Cultivating and Validating the Fa
After graduation, I entered the workforce, and I became increasingly obsessed with material interests and fame, and my morality also went downhill with the rest of society. I quarreled with my husband all the time and I was exhausted with life even though I was only in my 30s. I was so fortunate to find Dafa and immediately began to follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and conduct myself accordingly. I strove to be a good person both at home and at work.
At my school, job performance is no longer a deciding factor of salary and bonus once a teacher gets promoted to the position of senior lecturer. As such, many of my colleagues lost the incentive to work hard after being promoted since better performance wouldn’t get them more compensation. I, on the other hand, kept Master’s Fa in mind:
“Then there are some people among us who conduct scientific research or studies—are those considered attachments? The results of your work and those things you do are for the benefit of the public, and serve the broader society and others. It is your duty to do those things well. And if you are a worker, you too should do a good job and really earn your wages and your compensation, right? That’s because a practitioner should demonstrate that he is a good person wherever he is.” (“Teaching the Fa and Answering Questions in Guangzhou,” The Law of Zhuan Falun Explained)
So I not only kept working hard, but also strove to do an even better job. Besides my teaching responsibilities, I also took on projects to compile and edit textbooks. My school launched three new projects in 1997 and assigned me to be in charge of one of them. The other two projects both ended up in failure, with one suspended mid-way due to lack of funding and the other one enriching the person in charge but causing the school huge financial loss. My project was able to soon get on the right track and eventually earned the school a healthy profit. During the process, seeing that I always tried my best to save the school money, my colleagues also worked hard and never once attempted to make money for themselves. This experience again showed that “Buddha’s light shines everywhere, propriety and righteousness harmonize everything.” (Zhuan Falun)
All my colleagues witnessed how I followed the principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to do a good job and my school publicly praised me at numerous meetings. One year they also gave me the award for “Teacher of the City.”
After the persecution began, my school was also pressured to “reform” practitioner teachers. The newly appointed CCP party secretary led several section chiefs to my home trying to persuade me to give up my practice. I told them how, guided by Dafa's principles, I did my job well, and they were deeply moved. The year the persecution was running the most rampant in our city, they co-signed a letter to send to the 610 Office promising to monitor me, thus hoping to shield me from being arrested.
At home, I was no longer bothered by family conflicts. I shouldered all the responsibilities of housework and had fewer and fewer conflicts with my husband. I eventually stopped fighting with him altogether. I took good care of him and our child. When my husband was worried about his work, I comforted him. But at the same time, I was adamant in stopping him when he said or did things that were disrespectful to Master and Dafa. Once he repeated the CCP lies to attack me, and I realized it was the evil that was controlling him to utter those words. I said to him sternly, “Don’t say these things against your conscience. If you say this to non-practitioners, it’s equivalent to sabotaging Dafa and that is a grave crime.” He was subdued and from that point on, never said any bad things about Dafa. This year he even gave me 1,000 yuan to use for truth-clarification materials production. He wanted me to save more people.
Strengthening my Righteous Thoughts and Driving away my Fear
I was detained for two months after I went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa at the beginning of 2001. After being released, I developed strong fear. The first time I tried to hang materials exposing the facts of the persecution on a door knob, the door suddenly opened and I was so scared that I ran as fast as I could. Through constant Fa study, I came to understand that saving sentient beings is Dafa disciples' responsibility, so I made up my mind to break free from my fear. To achieve this, I kept studying the Fa as much as I could. Gradually I was able to always think of the Fa and Master whenever I ran into trouble. In the meantime, I paid attention to solidly cultivating myself and looking within whenever there were any conflicts. Little by little, righteous thoughts took the place of my fear.
Fa-study also enabled me to negate the old forces’ arrangements with righteous thoughts and I truly felt my righteous thoughts getting stronger and stronger. When the police came to my home again to harass and threaten me, I was able to remain calm and talk to them about Falun Gong with ease. When there was news of a possible mass arrest of practitioners, I was not moved at all. I didn’t have fear either when attending experience sharing conferences. Distributing truth clarification materials also became so much easier for me.
I found that not only fear, but our human notions also have a negative impact on our righteous thoughts. When I first started to distribute Shen Yun DVDs, sometimes I walked around for more than one hour and was only able to hand out one or two copies. I looked within and realized that I was afraid of being refused by people and didn’t want to lose face. I reminded myself that I was doing the most sacred thing and worked hard to remove these attachments.
During my efforts to tell people about the persecution, four times I encountered people who shadowed me or threatened to report me to the police. The first time I was extremely frightened, but fortunately with Master’s help I was able to get rid of the person following me around. The second time this occurred, I was still a bit nervous but managed to escape danger with wisdom. The third time around I quickly looked within to identify my attachments and the person who threatened to report me walked away by himself. The fourth time I had no fear at all and openly clarified the truth to the person trying to make trouble for me. It was really as Master said,
“If you are not afraid, the factor that would make you afraid will cease to exist. This is not to be self-imposed, but is achieved by truly and calmly letting go of it.” (“Eliminate Your Last Attachment(s),” Falun Dafa Essentials For Further Advancement II)
Fellow Practitioners’ Things Are My Things
In recent years, I participated in a lot of projects to rescue arrested practitioners. I went to the police departments and courthouses numerous times to clarify the facts about Falun Gong and request the release of our abducted fellow practitioners. I also wrote and mailed out many letters to advise people not to participate in persecuting Falun Gong. I still had fear when I first started doing these projects, but I worked hard to stay calm and send forth righteous thoughts to strengthen practitioners in custody and their families.
Even though the number of practitioners we were able to rescue was very limited, each experience was precious and I used these opportunities to look within, and I also learned how to better resist the persecution with stronger righteous thoughts. I kept Master’s words in mind, “The next person's things are your things, and your things are his things.” (“Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference”) “A magnificent cultivator, on the other hand, is able to let go of his Self and even all of his ordinary human thoughts amidst crucial trials.” (“Position,” Essentials For Further Advancement II)
Elevating Myself in the Fa
While working together with fellow practitioners to save sentient beings, I often ran into conflicts which at times seemed hard to resolve. Whenever this occurred, I tried to remember Master’s teachings,
“They are in a state of immense tolerance, of mercy toward all beings, and of being able to understand everything with kindness. To put it in human terms, they're always able to be understanding of others.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston”)
“We don’t talk about the “unity” everyday people do, which is a forced, superficial thing. You are cultivators, and your realms are higher. So in your many projects your actions should reflect an understanding of others, an ability to listen to people's opinions, and an ability to gauge what's right and what's wrong by using Dafa.” (“Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference”)
Master’s Fa helped disintegrate any grudges or resentment time and again and enabled me to be more tolerant and understanding of others. Master also taught me to look within when there were conflicts. As soon as I identified my human notions, I worked hard to eliminate them completely.
Any improvement I had in my cultivation up to this point wouldn’t have been possible without Master’s help and guidance. Due to the persecution, I was once detained, and also suffered greatly when it came to my job and material interests. Non-practitioners often commented that I was so stupid because I gave up high salaries, but I know all too well that what I “lost” can never compare to what I gained from my cultivation. As a Dafa disciple, I am endlessly happy!
I’d like to express my sincere thanks to our Master! I also thank my fellow practitioners for their help!
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