(Minghui.org) I am in my 30’s. From childhood, I had the tendency to be inquisitive and to formulate my own way of thinking. Even in elementary school, while other children my age were content with food to eat and time to play, I was already trying to figure out the meaning of life.
I often thought, “Whether we are rich or poor, our lives always end up in death. Do we have souls? Where do they go after we die? We are born naked, bringing nothing with us. We die empty-handed and cannot take anything away with us. What is the meaning of life and living when we do not have the ability to choose when to be born or when to die, when it’s impossible for us to call the shots on even the most fundamental things, much less be the masters of our own destiny?”
Neither my parents nor my teachers could provide me with any answer or insight into my queries. If anything, their attempts to answer or explain tended to deepen my puzzlement.
In the inner world of my consciousness and subconsciousness, I always felt the sensation that I was waiting and longing for something, although I knew not what.
When I was young, neighbors commented that I was an honest child with a good sense of justice.
At the time, my favorite food was meat dumplings, but when other children in the neighborhood who also loved meat dumplings came to my house to play, I always let them eat my favorite meat dumplings without blinking an eye. So other children liked me and loved to come over and play in my house.
Sometimes while at play and something bad happened as a result of carelessness or mischief, I would often willingly take the blame and receive the punishments but would refuse to tell on or sell out my companions.
Unfortunately, that notion of self-sacrifice disappeared when I grew up. It was replaced by the worry of losing face or of missing out on some self-interest. I became increasingly selfish.
When I received good scores and praises or affection, I would feel elated, but the elation was short-lived. Deep in my heart, I continued to feel a vague emptiness.
My first experience in love left an indelible imprint in my heart. I tasted all the sweet, sour, bitter flavors that kind of love can bring, so that I prematurely learned about the fragility, elusiveness, and unpredictability of human affection, especially between the sexes.
We pursue love to promote our sense of self-worth, to satisfy our vanity, and to prove our ability to attract and conquer. We all long for true love but what we present to each other are our facade and not our inner thoughts and motivation.
My first love experience thoroughly changed me. Gone were my youthful innocence and naiveté, replaced by a heart that was growing progressively complex and burdened, and by a strong desire of pursuit after fame and profit.
It was about that time my father had an affair, creating a most tense atmosphere at home. It was so oppressive that I didn’t even want to go home.
In China, the Communist regime, in order to destroy China’s 5000 years of glorious traditional culture, had intentionally and systematically turned people’s sense of morality upside down. State-controlled media continuously and shamelessly broadcast the pursuit of sexual freedom as freeing the human spirit. To date, from the upper echelon dignitaries to the lowly commoners, debauchery conduct is not something dishonorable but a source of pride.
With the total collapse of morality came the flood of fake goods and false pretenses endangering all facets of society so that an interpersonal relationship is no longer one of camaraderie and trust. Even relatives and friends are wary of each other. Everybody is trapped and nobody can escape.
My father was once a very decent person with a kind disposition and a generous heart. Somehow, he also got himself caught in the quagmire of immorality.
My father’s affair created in me a dark shadow, robbing me my sense of security and rendering me extremely sensitive to person-to-person relationships. I grew more miserable in my heart. I lost faith in human affection, lamenting about life’s helpless miseries, human nature’s ugliness, and the absence of a sense of belonging.
It was when I was feeling absolutely depressed that Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) entered my life.
I had just read a few pages of Dafa’s book Zhuan Falun and Master Li’s (the founder) simple words already shocked me to the core and touched my very soul. I immediately realized Falun Dafa was what I had been waiting and longing for all my life.
With the realization came another unmistakable sensation of things circling around my head and on my palms. It was only later on I found out they were Falun.
I was in a state of utter excitement and jubilation. I finished reading the book practically in a heartbeat. I finally understood the meaning of life and living. My lifelong quests were all answered among the pages of the book.
I couldn’t wait and promptly learned the five sets of exercises.
In the cultivation practice of the Buddha Fa, the most important aspect is the raising of the realm of our morality, the elevation of our xinxing.
The hardest tribulations I had to overcome were my father’s affair and the hurt it had brought to the family.
My father would not repent his ways nor would he give my mother a divorce. Instead, he began and continued to look at my mother with disdain and treat her with disrespect. He would pick fights with my mother and would try to buy my loyalty with bribe money so I would stand on his side.
Fortunately, I had Dafa to guide me. I refused to be bought. I stood by my mother and gave her support.
My mother had always been an atheist, but because of the mental and physical tortures of a sham marriage and the diseases that showed up as a result, she began to seek spiritual and religious answers and comfort.
One time, she sought out a fortuneteller who assured her an infidel husband was in her destiny but divorce was not. She was shocked that he could see into her past, present, and future. She started to think that perhaps the ideas of deities and cultivation practice were not pure superstitions after all.
After that, I had some heart to heart talks with my mother.
My mother told me, “Because of your father, I have developed all kinds of illnesses that devastated my health. Because of your father, I have been depending on sleeping pills and anti-depressant drugs to maintain my sanity. Every time your father acted a bit nice to me, I would think I saw a ray of hope, only to be dashed each time with the realization he was either coaxing me to get more money from me or using my connections to advance his personal cause.”
I said to her, “Do you know why I so cherish Falun Dafa and revere our Master? It’s because Master has granted me a new life, a spiritual life, and Dafa has been guiding me onto the right path or I might have ended up like my father, selfishly going after material gain and carnal pleasure, making your life much more miserable, desperate, and hopeless.”
I explained how the Fa principles in Dafa’s main text Zhuan Falun has helped me understand the reasons for our being born into the world, the true meaning of life and living, the relationship between loss and gain, and why we have to go through so many trials and tribulations.
I shared with my mother how reading Zhuan Falun had opened up my eyes, broadened my horizon, deepened my understanding, comforted my soul, rectified my life, and helped me stay my course so I would not be confused and misled by the world’s devious ways.
As a result of our conversations, my mother started to read Zhuan Falun and walked into Dafa cultivation practice. Within a year, all the illnesses she had brought onto herself disappeared.
Before cultivation practice, my mother had tried her best to hold on to her husband, but the outcome was further alienation. After cultivation practice, she began to look inward and learn to apply Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to measure all things.
She just wanted to follow Master’s guidance to live her life as a better person and hadn’t planned on getting anything in return. Nevertheless, she’s blessed with a mind of peace and a body free of diseases. The best of all is our family is restored to one of tranquility and harmony.
For the longest time, I had hung on to the notion that having an affair was an absolute and unforgivable wrong deed. That notion led to my unshakable feeling of disgust toward my father. I despised him, creating an unbridgeable abyss between the two of us.
Master says:
“The most difficult things for people to abandon are their notions. Some people cannot change, even if they have to give up their lives for fake principles. Yet notions are themselves acquired postnatally. People always believe that these unshakable ideas—ideas that can make them pay any price without a second thought—are their own thoughts. Even when they see the truth they reject it. In fact, other than a person’s innate purity and innocence, all notions are acquired postnatally and are not a person’s actual self.”(“For Whom do You Exist?” from Essentials for Further Advancement)
From studying the Fa, I came to the realization that everything on earth has a karmic relationship. As children, we shouldn’t get ourselves entangled with parental conflicts. Our feeling towards our parents should be that of filial piety, despite the mistakes they might make. They are not for us to judge.
As Dafa disciples, we should all the more be understanding and compassionate rather than be indulging in petty sentimentality. If we are to save all sentient beings, we must look at and treat others in accordance with Dafa’s principles, to try to put ourselves in their shoes, see things from their perspectives, and let pass all misdeeds from the bottom of our hearts.
I began to change my attitude from contempt to respect toward my father.
With diligent Fa study, with frequent exchanges, with firm determination to cultivate well, my mother’s heart also slowly took a drastic turn. Layer after layer of grievances and resentment built-up for many years began to be peeled away through looking inward.
She changed her attitude toward my father, paying attention especially to how she talked to him to make sure she practiced the cultivation of speech. Although my father had swindled and squandered a huge amount of money from my mother, my mother continued to support him financially whenever he needed it.
My father loved to live a life of extravagance. He would take frequent trips and make frivolous purchases. His closet bulged with clothes he hardly had a chance to wear. He used to make demands on us to satisfy his material needs and feed his bloated ego.
When my mother and I started changing under the influence of Dafa, my father started changing too. He cut down drastically on his trips and purchases. He stayed around at home more and more.
One day, about two years into my mother’s Falun Gong practice, my father made a heartfelt remark to my mother, “You are a changed person!”
He even said to his old classmates, “When a man gets on in age, it’s still the old wife he can rely on.”
I have a friend who was miserably involved in a five-year affair with a married man from which she could not disentangle herself. Her emotional distress was such that she came down with a bad case of eczema from which she also could not recover. She turned to me for comfort and help.
I talked with her and shared with her what she could understand based on the principles of Falun Dafa. I impressed on her that her behavior with a married man was adulterous and immoral and that her trust in her illicit partner was irrational and misplaced.
When she finished reading Zhuan Falun for the first time, she showed her firm decision to terminate her unsavory relationship with her former lover by not accepting any more monthly monetary support from him, and after she read Zhuan Falun three times, she also returned the 100,000 yuan she had painstakingly cajoled from him as down payment for a house.
After she turned over a new leaf and began living her life under the guidance of Falun Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, a miracle happened. Her eczema disappeared.
Falun Gong has been persecuted in China for almost two decades, but instead of being crushed, it is embraced by people in over 100 countries and regions all across the globe. Its books and writings have also been translated into 40 languages.
Many people are beginning to learn the truth about Falun Gong and its global impact, as well as about the Communist Party and the atrocities it is continuing to commit against its own people since it took power.
To date, thousands of people in and outside of China have already submitted their criminal complaints against Jiang Zemin, who launched the persecution of Falun Gong. Officials in the public security bureau, people’s courts, and procuratorial organs are more and more aware of the trumped-up defamation against Falun Gong. Many have looked at Falun Gong practitioners with kindness and understanding. Some even, within their capability, protect practitioners or refuse to participate in persecuting or prosecuting them.
It is my hope that more and more people will come to understand and accept Falun Gong, read Falun Gong’s main text Zhuan Falun, appreciate why and how practitioners can remain steadfast in the face of brutal persecution, choose for themselves a bright future, remove themselves from the Communist Party, and follow Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to live their lives.
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