(Minghui.org) This year is Falun Dafa's 26th anniversary and the 15th year I have cultivated. I have cultivated through countless trials and hardships, but our compassionate Master has helped me and protected me the whole time.
When I read the call for articles from Western Falun Dafa practitioners, I felt I should share at least some of my cultivation experiences in hopes they will help my fellow practitioners so that we can elevate as one body.
Studying Zhuan Falun in Chinese
From the beginning of my cultivation, I had the wish to read the Fa in the original. Sometimes I looked at the page with Chinese characters and told myself, “Oh, how nice it would be to understand them.” When I saw Chinese practitioners reading the Fa together in Chinese, I was inspired even more. I told to myself that I would try to learn at least the basics of Chinese and “see how it goes.”
Another practitioner and I found a teacher who taught us the basics of Chinese. She explained simple grammar and taught us to write our first characters. We went to her for a few months, but as we switched to different topics of conversation, I started to mix characters and words and said that all the Chinese in my head was confusing me.
Then I tried another approach: I started to learn with a self-study book. But after a few lectures I had to quit, because the book was filled with communist party culture and I did not want to repeat the things celebrating the Party's “achievements” in conversation.
Several years passed and I almost forgot my initial enthusiasm to learn Chinese. But from time to time, I heard a quiet voice say, “Try it, learn it.” So I decided to take a whole new approach.
By that time, I had practiced Falun Dafa for about 3 years, so I said to myself, “I will use the most direct method. I will try to read the Fa directly in Chinese and each time I run into a word I don’t understand, I will look it up in the dictionary and learn it.” At that time, I knew about 200 characters. I proceeded very slowly but managed to read about half a page daily, and the number of new characters in my dictionary increased very quickly.
I was surprised that I somehow “remembered” those characters. I wouldn’t say I remembered each character at first re-writing, but after a few repetitions, I was somehow able to remember these characters. At the same time, by learning it this way, words and sentences from the Fa that I was learning remained fresh in my memory and helped me in my cultivation.
I think it was our Master who helped me so that I could quickly learn the language.
It took more than a year for me to read all of Zhuan Falun. After I finished it for the first time, I started to read it again from the beginning. This time it went much quicker and only from time to time did I have to look at my “dictionary” that I created during the first reading.
Today I am able to study Zhuan Falun in Chinese and only seldom do I have to look up a certain character. But it is interesting that I don’t understand anything else in Chinese, such as newspapers or TV news, even if I see characters I should know. Similarly, when Master's new teachings come out, I have to use the dictionary a lot to read them.
I think that the fact that I was able to learn to read Zhuan Falun in Chinese shows the miraculous power of Dafa.
After some time, I started to think that the reading itself was not enough, so I started to memorize Zhuan Falun. I tried to learn one paragraph at a time, but it took me sometimes a week to move to the next paragraph, so I started to learn Zhuan Falun sentence by sentence. I read the sentence until I could repeat it aloud from memory and then I moved to the next sentence. As my memory improved, I started to learn a few lines in a paragraph at a time. That is how I have been studying Zhuan Falun until today.
Memorizing the Fa brought about almost miraculous changes in my cultivation. At the same time, in some harder moments in my cultivation, sentences from the Fa that I had learned appeared in my mind and helped me to resolve the situation.
If We Just Play Our Roles, Miracles Can Happen
Last summer, the Tian Guo Marching Band organized a tour of European cities. The capital of our country did not apply to have the band perform there because we thought that not too many tourists went there and that the performance in other cities could help to save more beings.
By chance, the day the band was to perform in a nearby city in another country, our capital had organized events in honor of “The Day to Remember Victims of Totalitarian Regimes.” It was a good opportunity and I wondered how to use this opportunity to remind people about the persecution of Falun Dafa in China.
I had an idea that we could do a larger activity in our capital and invite the Tian Guo Marching Band, even for an hour or two, and afterwards they could return to the nearby city and we could do a petition-signing activity and invite a victim of the persecution of Falun Dafa in China who now lives in Europe. When I presented this idea to other practitioners, they did not quite accept it. For a start, the band couldn’t come then, because the drivers would exceed their daily driving limit, as they had to travel to yet another country that same day.
I realized my attachment to “having things my way” and said to myself that perhaps our compassionate Master had other arrangements for this event. I dropped my ideas. At the same time, I asked Master to help us find a solution that all of us could agree on.
At that time, when I recited Lunyu by heart, one sentence really resonated:
“When people show the appropriate respect and reverence toward Dafa as it manifests here in this world, they, their race, or their nation will enjoy blessings or honor.” (Zhuan Falun)
And soon enough, a wonderful opportunity presented itself. It turned out that it would be possible to invite a victim of the persecution to our country. I seemed as if Master had arranged it. When members of parliament or journalists have an opportunity to meet directly a victim of the persecution and express his or her respect in some way, it will bring them good fortune.
Several members of parliament whom we contacted agreed to a meeting, and almost miraculously, we arranged for television and national newspaper coverage.
There was one more problem: the practitioner who'd been persecuted spoke only Chinese, and there was no practitioner in my country who could translate. I discussed this problem with a coordinator, who'd helped us contact the practitioner in the first place. She said it wouldn't be a problem, because the Tian Guo Band was performing nearby and we would surely find a translator in the orchestra.
I was very happy and felt again that Master had arranged it all very harmoniously.
As I drove the victim of the persecution and the translator from the airport to our home that evening, we talked about the arrangements for the following day and the best way to clarify truth to the members of parliament and the media. I tried as much as possible not to push my ideas. I said my view, but I added that things should be said according to our principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and we should think first about saving sentient beings so that they can accept the facts and be saved.
The next morning we got together to study the Fa and do the exercises. The day went very quickly. In the morning the victim of the persecution met with two members of parliament, who expressed their sympathy and their will to help. During the interview with the newspaper, the journalist understood the facts and background of the persecution and the article was published two days later in the national newspaper, both on the internet and in print. The TV interview was broadcast about a month later, when it fit naturally into current events.
When I later thought about it, I saw our compassionate Master's immense wisdom. The Tian Guo Marching Band actually came to our capital that day, because the translator for the practitioner who was interviewed was a performer in the band. But the band did not perform in our capital, because they played the whole day in the nearby city. The band was thus able to save sentient beings in two cities at the same time. That is something I could never have imagined, because, in my mind, one thing excluded the other. I understood from that event that, if I follow the Fa, miracles that I will be able to understand only later can happen.
This solution was at the same time agreeable to everyone. Practitioners who thought they should support the performance in the other city went and had a good impact. The event in our capital required only a few people, which was very considerate of our resources.
This is only one example of similar amazing occurrences I have encountered during my cultivation. My gratitude and respect for our compassionate Master, who made these things possible, is immeasurable.
If we just play our roles and are not attached to what we do, miracles can happen.
As I have cultivated, I think my strong attachments have often prevented miracles from happening. When miracles did occur, it was always because I studied the Fa well and was able to follow it in my actions. To do that, learning the Fa by heart helps me a lot.
From the depths of my heart, I wish I could abandon my attachments more so that I could help our compassionate Master save more sentient beings.
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