(Minghui.org) When I was young, I loved reading the novel Journey to the West. After I grew up, I found out that Tang Monk Xuan Zang was a real person. His original name was Chen Wei and he was from Yanshi, Henan Province. To find the Buddhist scriptures, he traveled to the west to Tianzhu, which took him 19 years! Following Emperor Tang Taizong’s command, he wrote a book, Buddhist Records of the Western World. The novel Journey to the West was based on Monk Xuan Zang’s stories.

After I read Buddhist Records of the Western World, I felt that the real Xuan Zang deserved even more respect than the Tang Monk in the novel. He did something that no ordinary person could. He traveled over 400 kilometers across the desert, climbed snow capped mountains, and crossed glaciers. There were bandits and unexpected tribulations along the way, a lot more than just the 81 hardships recorded in the novel.

I had many questions: He went to 110 countries—how could he understand all those languages? Over the 19 years, what happened when he got sick? On his way there, especially where there were no people around, how did he get anything to eat? How could so many people, both good and bad, admire him? What was even more difficult to believe were those miracles he experienced.

For example, during the five days he was crossing the desert, he relied only on chanting the Buddha's name; when he knelt down with his sincere heart in the Buddha Shadow cave, Buddha Shakyamuni manifested on the cave wall. As an atheist, I found those things very unsettling.

I became a Falun Dafa practitioner in 2005 when I was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. Modern medicine could not save me, but after I started practicing Dafa, the cancer and all my other ailments disappeared. I have personally experienced many miracles. I have also seen Master’s Fashen. Other practitioners I know have had miraculous experiences, as well.

I finally understood that divine beings truly exist! Tang Monk Xuan Zang did not deceive me! All those stories from ancient history were meant to build the foundation for a divinely-inspired culture so that people today could use them as references.