(Minghui.org) I am in my forties and have been practicing Falun Dafa for twenty years. Throughout this time, I have gained not only a healthy body but also the knowledge to become a better person who is considerate of others.
Practicing Dafa
I live in a village. I suffered from many ailments before I began to practice Dafa, including chronic gastroenteritis, headaches, appendicitis, cholecystitis, infertility, viral meningitis and pancreatitis. I also had problems with my lumbar, thoracic, and cervical spine.
Some people in our village learned Falun Dafa in 1997. They told me that Dafa is good. However, I had been following the Communist Party's atheist teachings and ignored them.
My diseases got worse over time. Under my mother-in-law's continuous encouragement, I went to the group exercise site. The practitioners were playing Master's exercise instruction video. It piqued my interest; I started to follow the movements.
I heard Master mention “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.” I felt that these principles were perfect and became indescribably excited.
I led the pack going home. I thought everyone else was going so slow, but they said I was the one going too fast. Then, I realized that I could walk quickly and didn't feel any pain.
As I continued to do the exercises and study the Fa, all my illnesses disappeared. I have not needed to take a single pill since then. I also became pregnant with a daughter despite previously being infertile. Today, she is seventeen and has had perfect health.
Treating My Family Members Kindly
Master told us to be considerate of others. It is a principle I try to follow in my daily life.
My parents-in-law built a new house and wanted to split it between their two sons when they got married. However, my husband and I married first while my brother-in-law was still single. For a while, our family was the only one in the new house.
A few years later, my brother-in-law got engaged. I offered the new house to his fiance and said that I would move with my husband to the old house. She discussed it with her family.
In the end, they decided to let us keep the new house while they would live in the old house. A potential battle that would have taken place in other families was settled easily in ours.
My father-in-law would always mention the time I picked him up. One day, he had gotten a ride back home with someone else. But the driver let him off five miles from our home, and he didn't know how to get back. He even walked in the opposite direction for a long while, making a long journey on foot even longer.
My mother-in-law came to tell me that he had not come home by 7 p.m. At the time, my husband and brother-in-law were not home. So I rode the electric motorcycle to look for him myself, even though I had a terrible fear of going out in the dark. The bike's headlight was bad, so I had to hold a flashlight in my hand.
It was pitch black outside. To be quite honest, I was a bit scared. But luckily, I found my father-in-law quickly. He was totally exhausted and couldn't walk anymore.
I later thought about it: How was I able to go out without any hesitation? Because Master had told us “to attain the righteous Enlightenment of selflessness and altruism.” (“Non-Omission in Buddha-Nature,” Essentials for Further Advancement)
It was evident that Dafa had changed me.
Maintaining a Marriage
When I was introduced to my husband, he said he did not smoke or drink and could take care of a farm all by himself. However, after marriage, I found out that he smokes, drinks, wanders around, and has a hard time holding down a job.
I tried to ask him to change, but he didn't listen. He would even beat me if I said too much. I cried many times and grew sickly. We lived on very tight means. Eventually, we decided to get divorced. But for whatever reasons, we never seemed to be able to complete the paperwork despite going to the office many times.
After studying the Dafa, I gave up the thought of divorce.
Master said in Zhuan Falun:
“The entire cultivation process for a cultivator is one of constantly giving up human attachments.” (Lecture One, “Genuinely Guiding People Toward High Levels”)
“Accordingly, in your future cultivation you will run into all kinds of tribulations. How could you cultivate without these hardships? If everyone is good to one another without conflicts of interest or interference from the human mind, and if all you do is just sit there, how can your xinxing improve? That wouldn’t do. One must truly temper and improve oneself through actual practice.” (Lecture Four, “Transformation of Karma”)
“Why do you encounter these problems? They are all caused by your own karma. We have already eliminated for you many, countless portions of it, leaving only that tiny bit that is divided into tribulations at different levels for improving your xinxing, tempering your mind, and removing your various attachments. These are all your own tribulations that we use to improve your xinxing, and you will be able to overcome them.” (Lecture Four, “Transformation of Karma”)
I looked inside my heart and found that I had some bad thoughts about him: resentment, disrespect, and a rebellious mentality. I tried to get rid of them. I said to myself, “Maybe I owed him in one of my previous lives, and now is the time for me to pay it back. Besides, if it is not my tribulation, I wouldn't have run into it anyhow.”
My husband liked a lady who was beautiful and a sweet talker. He would spend a lot of time at her home, only to criticize me for no reason when he got back.
He borrowed money, trying to start a business. As the Communist Party officials were corrupt, he had to take them out to restaurants and karaoke places to ask for favors. Despite spending all the borrowed money, he never got anything from the officials. I was left with the duties of paying the monthly interest, feeding the family, and paying for our daughter's education. Money was tight, to say the least.
Sometimes I felt sorry for myself and argued with him. Then I recalled how Master told us that it was for sure a Dafa practitioner's fault when she had a conflict with non-practitioner. I looked inward for my own attachments that I needed to remove.
My sister started looking for a place for me to move out. My mother-in-law cried when she heard the news.
I said to myself, “If I divorce, my parents-in-law will be very sad. My daughter will have a single parent. People will keep talking about my husband, and he will have a hard time trying to feed himself. So I am the only person getting relief, but everyone else suffers. I should not get a divorce.”
I started a small store. I didn't make a lot of money, but it was sufficient to keep the family going. It also gave me more time to read my favorite book, Zhuan Falun. I was able to explain the facts of Dafa and its persecution to people coming in my store. After they understood the truth, some survived severe car accidents, some recovered from their illnesses, and some stopped hurting others.
A neighbor told me one day, “Our village has a very good person.”
“Who?” I asked him.
“You. I always talk to my wife about you. You are the real good person in our village. Everyone knows that!”
It is Falun Dafa that taught me how to be a good person!
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