(Minghui.org) My husband and I both practice Falun Dafa. As one of the few co-owners of a construction company, we learned over the years of cultivating in Dafa that we should let go of our pursuit of financial gains and benefits while handling business matters fairly with high moral standards and integrity.
In modern Chinese society where morality has been declining, very few people consider other people's loss and gains. However, Falun Dafa teaches us to be honest businesspeople.
The owners of our company decided to take turns managing the company – each of us would sign a three-year contract with the company and receive compensation plus a certain percentage of the company's annual profits during the contract. My husband was the first to run the company.
His term will be over by the end of 2019, but not all of the projects that he had established with other companies will be closed by that time, including a major contract that will take about ten more years to complete. The annual profit of this particular project will reach several million yuan.
He has received only a small fraction of the project's gains, since the partnership just started recently. If he no longer manages the project at the end of his term, he'd miss out on the profit-sharing entitled to manager-owners, but not owners who do not manage the company.
Being new to Dafa cultivation, it was very hard for my husband to let go of this opportunity. Driven by the strong pursuit for financial gains, he planned to start a second company by himself to continue with the project on his own. Trusting that my husband could do a good job, the owner of the client company readily agreed to transfer the contract to him.
When he first told me about his plan, I did not pay much attention to it. I believed that because he was a Dafa practitioner, he would follow “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance,” and his business partner was doing this because he had faith in him to accomplish the project successfully.
When meditating one day, two words suddenly appeared in my head – “fraudulent merchant.” Only then did I realize that we both had an attachment to financial gains, and we were not on par with Dafa's teachings and standards. I shared my understanding with my husband and told him not to start his own company.
Teacher told us,
“There was a saying in the old days: "Nine out of ten merchants are fraudulent." That is a saying made by everyday people. I would say that it is a matter of the human heart. As long as your heart is righteous and you trade fairly, you deserve to earn more money if you make more effort. That is because you are rewarded for the effort you have put in among everyday people. No loss, no gain. You have worked for it.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)
Setting up our own company and transferring the project to ourselves would make us frauds! This contract was signed while my husband was managing the company for all shareholders; in order to transfer the project to us, we must have the original company as our sponsor in order to establish our own. Although it was a common practice in the business world of modern China, as Dafa practitioners, we must use “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” to measure our behaviors all the time.
Teacher told us,
“Think about it, everyone: You are practitioners. Shouldn’t you be required to meet a high standard? The principles of everyday people should not apply to you, right? As a practitioner, isn’t what you get something of high levels? Accordingly, you must follow the high-level principles.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)
My husband finally understood why we should not take this lucrative project for ourselves. So he told the business partner to stay with the original company. However, he was afraid that this business partner would believe that he was a fool not to keep the project to himself. After searching inside himself, he realized that he had not completely let go of his desire for financial gains.
When he told this partner his final decision, the partner said he trusted him and would respect whatever choice he made, telling him “Your arrangement is the best!”
If this had happened before our cultivation in Dafa, even if my husband did not want to take the contract, I would have made him. I used to take financial gains as the primary goal for our business, and I would never let go of a big project that would bring millions in profit for us. A financial loss of this magnitude would have been unfathomable to me.
One developer asked us to fake the purchase of their commercial building in order to pay us back the cost of the construction supplies that we provided to them.
If we were indeed to buy the building worth 4 million yuan, a normal transaction would work like this: we (buyer of the building) apply for a loan from our bank, which approves our application and wires the money (4 million yuan) to the developer (seller of the building), which then transfers ownership of the building to us. We make monthly mortgage payments to the bank, and the developer no longer has anything to do with us or the building once the ownership transfer is done.
The developer proposed the following fake transaction – we [my husband and I] apply for a loan of 4 million yuan to 'purchase' the building. Once the developer receives the money from the bank, they give the money back to us as their repayment of the construction supplies costs they owed us. They would be making the monthly mortgage payments and we'd have nothing to worry.
We didn't think there would be any problem with the proposed transaction, so we agreed to it.
On the day we went to the bank to close the purchase, my husband accidentally left our ID cards in his office. As it was near lunchtime, we weren't able to finish the loan application that morning.
I thought over things on my way to lunch. I knew something was not right, but could not put my finger on what it was.
When I was meditating, a thought suddenly came to my mind, “A fake purchase itself is a fraud!” I immediately called my husband and said that we were not going to buy that building. Although things may work out fine and the developer would make their mortgage payments on time while no one loses anything in the process, it is still wrong because it all started with a lie – the lie that we would purchase their building.
Teacher said:
“...as a practitioner should follow the course of nature. If something is yours, you will not lose it. If something is not yours, you will not have it even if you fight for it.” (Lecture Seven, Zhuan Falun)
Dafa cultivators must not lie. Master wants us to be good people, and better than ordinary people no matter where we go in society. We cannot do anything that is not in line with "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance."
My husband usually brought his bank card and ID with him. Why didn’t he bring it that day? Master Li (the founder) is always watching over us! If he had taken the ID cards with him that day, the loan procedure would have been completed. We would have owed 4 million yuan plus interest to the bank. We would have been carrying this huge debt until the developer paid it all off. It would have been a huge loophole in our cultivation!
Master said:
“Haven’t we addressed that matter does not become extinct? Within a specific dimension, what a person has done or what a person does with a wave of his hand is all material existence, and anything he does will leave an image and a message. In another dimension it does not become extinct and will stay there forever. A person with supernormal abilities will know what happens by looking at the existing images in the past.” (Lecture Two, Zhuan Falun)
What attachments did we still have that almost made us fall for this trap arranged by the old forces? Our pursuit for benefits and gains! Had Master not given me the hint, we would not even know it was wrong to fake the loan. We must follow Master's teachings and walk on the path arranged by Master.
The other owners of the company decided that they'd try a new management style at the end of my husband's three-year contract in 2019; they'd have everyone jointly manage the business. My husband no longer wanted to be involved in the day-to-day operations after his term is up. He proposed to the other owners, “I have been managing the company for three years, but you have not. It's better that all of you together manage the company without me. I won't ask for profit sharing and I'd be content with just a fixed annual compensation.”
They agreed but worried that they were not familiar with the company's business. However, they knew that we were Falun Dafa practitioners, and they trusted us. My husband said, “I can help if you're not familiar with the business, but it won't take you long to become familiar. I can help with the existing customers, but hand over all the contracts I signed. I will not participate in management.”
My husband planned to spend more time on his cultivation in Dafa – practicing the exercises and studying Dafa teachings.
The goals my husband set for the company were to ensure the quantity and quality of our projects, and to provide the best services in a timely manner for the customers. His customers had been very satisfied with him, and they gave him very high rankings. However, he had spent too much time on the company's business, and he knew that he should no longer spend his time solely on earning money.
Master said,
“It is said in religion that regardless of how much money you have or how high your position ranks, it is good for only a few decades. One cannot bring it along at birth or carry it after death. Why is gong so precious? It is precisely because it grows right on the body of your Primordial Spirit and can be carried at birth and taken forth after death. In addition, it directly determines your Fruit Status in cultivation, and it is therefore difficult to cultivate.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)
We understood that it must be Master who had arranged for my husband to stop managing the company so that he would have time to study the Fa and clarify the facts to people.
Master Li has endured so much for us so that we can cultivate and elevate in our cultivation. We must treasure our precious time, follow the Fa-rectification process, and do the three things that Master asks us to do.