(Minghui.org) Greetings, Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I am very fortunate to be a Falun Dafa practitioner and I am grateful to Master Li, the founder of the practice, for everything. I would like to share some of my cultivation experiences.
I started to be interested in qigong in 1997 when I was a 35-year-old instructor in the military. I read books about various qigong systems and was impressed by the supernatural phenomena described in qigong. I bought quite a few such books.
In July 1997, my son’s teacher mentioned the words “Falun Dafa” in a conversation. Those words excited me, and I asked where I could find more information about it. The teacher borrowed a videotape of Master Li’s lectures from another practitioner, and both my wife and I went to her place to watch the video. Master’s compassionate appearance touched me and, deep from my heart, I knew it was true. On the way home after watching the first lecture, I was so excited that I hopped around like a child. “What Master said is so great!” I kept saying to my wife.
The next morning, I went to the group exercise site at a local landmark. Hundreds of people were there, and I wondered why I had never heard of this before. I followed the movements of the practitioner in front of me. After the exercises ended, I went up to her and asked how much I had to pay to learn Falun Dafa. “It’s free of charge,” she replied. I was very touched and admired Falun Dafa so much. It cost to learn other qigong systems. How could I find something that was free?
I went there every morning for several days to learn the practice and listened to other practitioners share their experiences. When they talked about the miraculous health benefits, I said, “Can the practice help someone with late stage pulmonary heart disease?” A practitioner pointed to someone in his 70s and said I could ask him.
I went over to that practitioner and politely asked him about this. He smiled and told me, “Of course. I used to suffer from pulmonary heart disease, emphysema, asthma, and other late-stage ailments. What do you think of me now?” I looked at him and saw that he was very healthy and full of energy. Since my father had the same health problems, I knew there was now hope.
After learning the five exercises, I bought a copy of Zhuan Falun and returned to my hometown hundreds of miles away. My father had been bedridden for a long time. He was pale and emaciated and could hardly speak. “Father, I brought you a gift. Falun Dafa can save you,” I said. He shook his head in disbelief.
I helped him sit up, put pillows behind his back, and began to read Zhuan Falun. He was very interested and listened attentively. Several pages into it, he said, “Please give me the book and I will read myself.” As he read, he kept saying that Master Li was extraordinary and that he believed every sentence.
Two days after reading the book, my father was able to get out of bed and walk around the house. The neighbors were all surprised. One of them whispered to me, “You father seems to be experiencing terminal lucidity. You’d better prepare for his funeral.”
But my father just got better and better and was impatient for me to show him the exercises. He learned one exercise a day, all five before I returned to the army. About two months later, my father wrote to me saying that all his health problems were gone and that he had become a totally healthy person. Many people in the village heard about this and they also began to practice.
Because my father had been ill and could not work the land, all the work had fallen on my mother’s shoulders in the past. With six children to feed, my parents often ran out of food. The long-term hard work and anxiety left her with shoulder pain, high blood pressure, and arthritis.
Noticing the positive changes in my father, my mother also began to learn the practice. She had little education, so she could not read, but she listened to Master’s audio lectures and did the exercises in the morning. Over time, all her ailments disappeared. Because she was so busy with work on the farm and the household chores, she didn’t even notice when her ailments disappeared.
After she began to practice, my mother’s period came back in 1998. In 2019, all 10 of her fingers grew new nails. This is hard to explain with modern science. Over the past 27 years, since she began to practice Falun Dafa, she has never needed medication. She is now 82 and can run like a young person. Everyone who knows her is amazed.
My five siblings and their families all lived near the military base where I served at the time. After returning from our hometown, I told them how my father and I had benefited from Dafa and the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. They were interested, and all 12 of them studied the Dafa teachings after dinner and did the exercises together in the morning.
Everyone also tried to follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance in their daily lives. My wife was selling clothes at the time, and customers were worried about four things: price, size, quality, and wrinkles that they would be unable to iron out. Because of these concerns, she put up a board outside the shop that read, “Guaranteed returns, exchanges, repairs, and ironing.” Due to a good reputation, her business did very well.
With 12 in the same household, there were conflicts from time to time. But by following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, they were able to find where they could have done better. Even during difficult times, they reminded each other of what Master said:
“When it’s difficult to endure, you can endure it. When it’s impossible to do, you can do it.” (Lecture Nine, Zhuan Falun)
Everyone was thankful to Master for our harmonious family.
When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to suppress Falun Dafa in 1999, it started in the military. A meeting was organized in my unit and my supervisor told me to criticize Dafa in public. I considered this a great opportunity to tell people about Dafa, so I did not decline.
During my speech, I covered two main points. First, I began to practice Dafa because of the moral values of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and the great health benefits. For example, my father used to suffer from pulmonary heart disease, emphysema, bronchitis, and asthma. No hospital could help him, but all of these illnesses were healed by Falun Dafa. Secondly, I talked about the chaos in society that Master Li described:
“...Sinister gangs and the deranged political party -Politicians and gangsters work together as one....”(“The World’s Ten Evils,” Hong Yin)
After I spoke, people in the audience began to talk to each other. “No wonder Falun Dafa would be criticized here,” one of them said. “This poem has accurately depicted our society,” another person added.
My supervisor spoke to me after the meeting. He said I was expected to criticize, not promote Falun Dafa. “Everything I said was true,” I explained. “I cannot lie. If I did I would be going against Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.” A political commissar (the highest ranking officer at the site) spoke to me a few days later and asked about Falun Dafa. I told him about the moral benefits of Falun Dafa and showed him the five exercises. Although he did not see any issues with it, he knew, based on his experiences, that another political campaign was coming.
It was later announced that all Falun Dafa practitioners would be forced to retire from the military and transferred to local workplaces. The political commissar specifically coordinated with a local veterans placement office and put me in the most profitable business in the area. My income doubled compared with my previous salary in the military, so many people considered me lucky.
After the persecution started, my family members joined others to prepare truth-clarification} materials and distribute them. As a result, five of us six siblings were sent to forced labor camps or prisons.
When I was arrested, the police ransacked our place and my wife fled out the back door. Since the roads were blocked and the police were searching everywhere, she had to hide in a chicken coop. A taxi happened to drop a passenger off nearby and she was able to escape. With no relatives in the city, she remembered good friends of ours who lived in the countryside about 60 miles away, so she went there.
The couple that were our friends treated my wife very well. My wife did not want to upset them so she did not dare tell them what had happened. She just helped out with the chores, feeding their chickens and pigs and cooking. She worried about our 12-year-old son.
My son cried when he got home that day. His father, one aunt, and two uncles had been arresed the day before. Thinking his mother had also been arrested, he did not know where to go. Fortunately, his uncle helped him. But because his wife had also been arrested, that uncle had to raise his own two children and couldn’t take the boy in.
Several of my friends took turns looking after my son. My wife returned three months later. She hugged my son and both of them cried. Things were indeed miserable.
My father was terrified. Five of his six children had been arrested, detained, and sent to labor camps or prisons for being better people, and he could not accept it. He died six months later at the age of 59. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had desroyed my happy family.
After practitioners distributed materials near my workplace in 2004, {{610 Office and police station officials panicked. Suspecting I had done it, a group of police officers came to my workplace and ordered my supervisor to summon me to the security office for questioning. They were so forceful that the workplace officials thought I had committed a felony. But I had absolutely no fear and decided to eliminate the evil behind those officers.
I asked Master Li to help me and kept sending forth righteous thoughts. “Several police vans showed up here today, and you went through my supervisors and their supervisors to summon me. Do you know how much damage you have caused?” I asked after one officer started talking. “You job is dealing with criminals. But now you are persecuting an innocent peron who follows the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
“There is nothing wrong with practicing Falun Dafa, and distributing information helps people know the facts. The CCP has made up all kinds of lies to defame Falun Dafa, such as the staged self-immolation on Tiananmen Square. Please think about it for yourself and find out the truth. After all, there is the saying, ‘good is rewarded, and evil incurs retribution.’ Looking back on the political campaigns in the past, you know what happened to the evildoers later on.”
I could feel the vicious elements behind them had been disintegrated, and their fierce attitudes disappeared. The police officer in charge smiled and said, “We just came here to see what was going on, nothing else.” After greeting officials in my workplace, all the officers left. It’s been over 20 years, and they have never returned.
Hundreds of people are employed where I work, and I have talked with most of my coworkers about Dafa over the years. But there is a large team that I had little interaction with. People there work shifts that cycle every four days. Because it is so noisy and dusty, hardly anyone wants to work there.
To help save people, I told my supervisor I wanted to work there. Some of my coworkers thought I was crazy. Why would someone in his 50s go to such a bad place to work shifts that only young people can tolerate? But I knew I had a mission to tell people the facts, so I went there anyway.
Having never worked shifts before, I found it difficult at first, especially the night shift in the winter. I had to get up at 1 a.m. and walk about 500 meters from the parking lot to the workplace in the freezing wind. The workplace was dusty and very noisy. It was not easy.
But I prevailed, both in adjusting to the new environment and in telling people the facts about Dafa. Because of the poor working conditions, many temporary workers would go to other departments or stop coming after their second year. As a result, there were hundreds of new faces every year, and I was happy that so many of them quit the CCP’s three organizations after hearing facts.
Ten years passed, and I was going to retire in a few days. Knowing that over 100 newcomers had not heard abut Dafa, I knew I had to work harder. I talked with more than 30 people in single day. Because of the noise, I had to raise my voice to be heard, and I was hoarse at the end of the day.
Most of these temporary workers had only an elementary or middle school education. They came from remote villages and had relatively pure minds, so they tended to believe what I said. Plus, I was their manager, so hardly anyone disagreed. I finished talking with everyone the day before I retired.
After being assigned to this workplace from the military, I never took one day of sick leave over the course of 22 years. Because the workplace brought in sufficient revenue, each employee could apply for reimbursements of up to 1,500 yuan (USD$200) for medical bills each month, which adds up to 18,000 yuan per year. So I have saved hundreds of thousands of yuan for the workplace based on this alone. People who know this are amazed. They have said Falun Dafa practitioners are not only healthy, but also good people who do not take advantage of others for their own benefits. I am glad this is also one way of validating Dafa.
Several domestic security division agents came to my home in November 2021. Since I was at work, they asked for my wife’s cell phone, deleted the software for overcoming the internet blockade, confiscated all our Dafa books, and took my wife to the police station to interrogate her. One police officer who had heard the facts before called me and apologized, saying he had no choice but to lead the agents to my home, since he was ordered to do so. I said I understood his situation.
I went to the police station after work, sending forth righteous thoughts as I did. After telling them who I was, I could see the contempt the two police officers had for me. I quickly learned that the one in uniform was the deputy director of the police station and the one in plainclothes was the director of the domestic security division.
“Since you are in plainclothes, please show me your work ID,” I said to the director. He looked at me and did not want to.
“I had the courage to tell you my name. As a law enforcement officer, you need to do the same,” I said determindly. “Please show me your work ID.” He had no choice but to take out his work ID.
I said I would remember his name and asked what laws my wife had violated. When he said she had circumvented the internet blockade to read overseas information, I asked him for the legal documents he had compiled as evidence. Hearing he did not have any, I replied, “If you came here as law enforcement with no legal documents, it is both a dereliction of duty and illegal.”
I told them they had violated the law in several ways that day. First, I had paid for the Dafa books they took, so they were my personal property. Second, my wife had done nothing wrong and should not have been taken to the police station. Third, it was wrong for them to ransack my home and confiscate items without authorization.
I could feel that the vicious elements behind them had been disintegrated. The domestic security officer showed me a list of items they had taken and he left with his staff. The deputy director of the police station said that my wife and I could go home for dinner but had to come back to make a written record. Thinking this would an opportunity to tell them about Dafa, I agreed.
During our conversation, the deputy director asked when I started to practice and why I did. I told him I started in 1997, two years before the persecution began. “Falun Dafa tells us to be considerate of others,” I said. “For example, I agreed with this note-keeping today because I know this is your job. Another reason I wanted to practice was because of the health benefits. My mother is in her 80s and she can still run like a young person.”
I then told him pointed out the errors in the CCP’s defamatory propaganda. For example, in the staged self-immolation on Tiananmen Square, police officers were able to put out the fire with extinguishers as soon as the fire started. “Do you think there are fire extinguishers all over Tiananmen Square?” I asked. The officers shook their heads.
“So it was like filming a movie and everything was planned ahead of time, right?” I said. They thought about this for a while and then nodded.
The deputy director asked one last question, “Will you continue practicing Falun Dafa?”
“I will practice even if you kill me,” I replied.
When the deputy director said there was no need to include this sentence in the notes, I insisted, saying it would help higher officials understand the situation. So he did.
Although the police had harassed my family every now and then in the past, they never came again after this conversation.
Above are some of my experiences. Please point out anything inconsistent with Dafa’s teachings.