(Minghui.org) I am a 63-year-old Falun Dafa practitioner. I've experienced a lot in my life, but I've always believed that fate is Gods’ arrangement and that everything is tied together by karmic relationships. Whatever the setbacks, one must still be kind.
Living Under Another Roof
I lived in a rural area when I was young. When I was nine, my maternal uncle had yet to have a child of his own, so my parents gave me, their third child, to him to be his daughter. Reasonably speaking, I should have had a happy life, but I was treated like a slave and was always hungry and cold. It was not a happy home for me, and for a very long time I could never seem to forget it.
I remember feeling hungry.
When other children got home from school every day, their parents would have left them a big bowl of food in a hot pot. That never happened to me.
My uncle and aunt would eat a bowl of rice in the afternoon and cook vegetable soup for dinner. I only got the soup, while they never went hungry.
On top of that, I had to go to the fields to gather a basket of ragweed and then wash and cut it before feeding it to the pigs. This was the first thing my uncle would ask me about when he got home, and he would feel the pigs' bellies just to make sure I'd done it.
I also had to do other heavy chores. For example, in the winter, I had to cook a big bowl of sweet potato vines overnight for the pigs while my aunt did needlework.
When the fields needed to be planted, my uncle would plow up the soil while my aunt planted the vegetables. I had to go to the ditch in front of the house and lug two pails of water back to water the vegetables. I remember always feeling hungry as I did this.
Once, after I'd carried many pails of water, the ground got wet and I slipped. I hurt so bad I couldn't move, but my aunt and uncle didn't come to help me up. Instead, my aunt scolded me.
My mother, who lived next door, saw this and ran over to calm my aunt while helping me to sit up. She then helped to carry the pails of water a few times.
I also remember the winters.
My winter blanket was old, hard cotton batting that my aunt and uncle no longer wanted. It didn't keep me warm, and my nose was stuffed up for a long time.
When I graduated from high school with good grades at 17, I could not attend college because of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s political campaigns, so I returned home to work in the village.
I worked nonstop and was the top laborer in the production line. But when the money was distributed among the workers, I didn't get a single cent.
I repaired the dike walls in the winter. When it rained, I had no socks to wear, and the only shoes I had were so old that they were full of holes. Even so, I was not allowed to buy shoes, and my feet got soaked when it rained.
There was one year when I coughed for almost two months while repairing the walls, but I was not given any money to buy medicine and developed chronic bronchitis. After that, I would cough for several months every winter.
No Regrets after Understanding the Meaning of Life
A baby girl was born to my aunt when she was 36 years old and I was already 17. I took good care of my sister and even bathed her after returning home from work because I saw that my aunt was not good at taking care of children.
During the 80s, my uncle moved to a suburban area near my home. When my sister got married, she stayed in the house with her husband. The young couple would do business on the streets while my uncle and aunt opened a grocery store at home.
After I graduated from vocational school at 23, I went to work and later got married. We were very poor and earned very little. When I had a child, I had no financial support and still had to hire a babysitter. Life was very difficult.
However, my uncle told people that I didn't treat him well and never gave him any money. Word spread far and wide, and even my distant relatives heard of it. I felt helpless when I heard it.
I started practicing Falun Gong in 1996, and Master changed me. I no longer dwell on the past, and even if I do recall it, I don't feel anything.
Cultivation has enlightened me to karmic relationships, and I understand that this is the karma that I owed from previous lives and that those who create suffering for me help me to repay my karma. At the same time, this has helped my cultivation and strengthened my spirit to be able to endure hardship. I should thank them.
Whenever I felt resentful, I would remind myself that I am a Dafa practitioner and must listen to Master and treat everyone well.
Master said,
“Even if you can’t endure you must endure. As a cultivator you must be compassionate! Just now I said that if you can’t love your enemy you can’t succeed in cultivation, and you can’t become a Buddha. Think about it, when someone is bad to you isn’t it that you owe him from the past? If you don’t repay him will it do? What you inflicted on him then is perhaps even more evil than how he treats you now, and the pain you created for others is perhaps even more than this!” (Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Houston)
Master's words opened up my memories, and I seemed to see how I had hurt people in the past. I became more at ease.
After my daughter started college, I saved frugally and was able to earn some money to buy things for my aunt and uncle. When I had good food and my daughter was not with me, I would not eat it myself but would instead take the food to my aunt and uncle.
I was sent to a labor camp in 2003 after the CCP started its persecution of Falun Gong. When I returned home in early October 2004, my elder brother gave me 2,000 yuan to help me recover. I took 500 yuan of that amount and gave it to my aunt and uncle for their daily expenses. This was the first time I'd ever given them money.
No one in the family would accept it until I insisted and my sister agreed to take it. From then on, I would give them 2,000 yuan every year and buy things and visit them on big occasions, such as their birthdays and traditional festivals.
One day, when a colleague saw me buying a huge gift for my aunt and uncle, she asked me what traditional festivals they celebrated.
After I told her, she said, “My sister-in-law was also adopted, but I have never seen her buy anything for my parents-in-law. She only sends her children over for me to take care of them for a few months during the school holidays. She never brings anything over.”
In 2013, my aunt was very sick and bedridden, so I went to visit her. Her face looked yellow, and it seemed she didn't have much time left.
Because my sister and her husband are in the meat business, they have to get up at 2 o’clock in the morning to go to work, so my aunt had nothing to eat even if she was hungry. I was astonished to see this and thought, “We really must do what is right.”
Having enough to eat, from my point of view, is a human right. One should not go hungry. Thus, I would cook at home and bring food over to my aunt and uncle.
By doing that, I really understood what “returning good for evil” really means. Only after one suffers in the same way can one truly know how unbearable that suffering is.
I have experienced hunger many times and know that hunger can cause tremendous pain. A person cannot survive without food. I looked at things from others' perspectives and not from the perspective of getting revenge. I brought food over to them for a few days until my aunt's niece heard about it and took on the task of bringing them food since she lived close by.
Praise from My Aunt and Uncle
My uncle is 83 this year. He had severe myopia when he was young and lost his vision in both eyes when he was 50.
After my aunt got sick, I often brought them fruit, snacks, and cooked food. I visited them and comforted them.
When my aunt was bedridden, I would help fill their bowls and wait for them to finish eating before I left. I also told them to recite, “Falun Dafa is good” and “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.”
They believed me because they could sense from my behavior just how wonderful Dafa is. Under Master's protection, my aunt gradually recovered. She could even sit at the door to look at the sun and also eat at the table.
In the first half of last year, when my aunt was bedridden, I bought a video player and loaded a few videos about Dafa and the persecution for them to watch. She recovered after watching them for a few days and could sit up and even play in the living room.
My aunt and uncle were truly comforted by my help when they were dealing with such hardships and difficulties. They would praise me whenever someone visited them. Their words reached even our relatives and their neighbors from other provinces.
My aunt was dying. Although it was not easy for me to walk up and down the stairs as I live on a higher floor, I would visit her every day and sometimes even went over twice a day to feed her.
She passed away a month before the 2018 Chinese New Year at the age of 80.
Thank you, Master, for restoring my health and giving me the extraordinary ability to take care of my adoptive parents. Thank you, Master, for creating my life so that I could become a Dafa disciple.
(Submission to “Celebrate World Falun Dafa Day” 2018 on the Minghui website)
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