(Minghui.org) Greetings, revered Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
Predestined Relationship with Dafa
I was born into a big family in a small rural village in Switzerland. I was the seventh child in the family and almost died at birth. To avoid suffocation and make me cry, I was alternately put into cold and warm water. The “shock therapy” worked and I survived. Sadly, my mother died four days later due to kidney poisoning.
When I looked back on my difficult birth and unfortunate childhood many years later, I realized that Master Li, the founder of Falun Dafa, was already taking care of me from the very beginning. When I was around ten years old, I was riding my bike to a cheese factory one day. I turned left without giving a signal. Luckily, the car coming from behind avoided me at the last moment. Once again, Master saved my life and bore an enormous amount of karma for me.
It has been 26 years since I began cultivating in Dafa, during which time I experienced many ups and downs, but not all tests were passed smoothly. Whenever I recalled the Fa conference I attended in Geneva in 1998, I felt deeply touched, because Master never gave up on me when I felt confused and lost in the everyday people’s society. I know that I must be more diligent in cultivation to be worthy of Master’s immense grace. I am eternally grateful for Master’s boundless kindness and compassion.
Nine-Day Falun Dafa Workshops in Basel, Zurich, and Winterthur
This year, we organized nine-day Falun Dafa workshops in a number of cities in Switzerland, and I learned a lot from this experience. In order to demonstrate the exercises correctly, I watched the video of Master teaching the exercises very carefully beforehand. Even though I had been practicing Falun Dafa for so many years, I felt very ashamed when I noticed that some of my movements were not correct. I realized that I had not paid enough attention to the exercises in the past. Wouldn’t this indicate disrespect to Master and the Fa? In the process of running the workshops, I found myself much more focused when doing the exercises and was no longer easily distracted as in the past.
It was not always easy to find proper venues for the workshops. Once, we were able to rent a beautiful room in a traditional building on the banks of the Rhine in the city center just before the workshop was due to start. During those workshops, I was often challenged by the shallow understandings and disrespectful questions that the attendees had about the Fa. I realized that I needed to forbear and be patient, and kindly explain things in an easy-to-understand way.
Master wrote in his recent article “A Wake-Up Call”:
“To be able to regard anyone and everyone with compassion, to have love for all people, really isn’t something the average person can achieve. Harder still is to have a sense of compassion toward all living things in everything you do. But that is something practitioners of Dafa have to be able to do! Spiritual development is a process, and so what I described might not be doable at the moment for those who are newer to the practice; but with time, as you develop further in your spiritual practice, you must manage to do that. Veterans of the practice need to do this now. This is something dictated by your historic mission, and it is something that every Dafa practitioner who aspires to spiritual greatness must achieve in their practice!” (“A Wake-Up Call”)
I asked myself, “Have I really cultivated compassion?” Master has especially emphasized this, so I must try harder and treat all people with a broader mind and more kindness. I realized that I must put myself more in other people’s shoes to understand why they behave the way they do.
With Righteous Thoughts for Others, Serious Sickness Karma Disappeared
On July 20, 2024, the 25th anniversary since the onset of the persecution, we held an event at the Parade Square in the center of Zurich from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. It was a very hot day, with the temperature reaching over 30 degrees Celsius (86°F). The square is a well-known tourist spot, always packed with visitors from all over the world, including many from mainland China.
Since many fellow practitioners were busy with other projects that day, not many were able to join this event. Being the only moderator and speaker for the event, it was a big challenge for me to do the public speeches throughout the day, as I was having severe pain in my tongue. The pain spread from my tongue to my ears, then to my entire head.
As I needed to make a ten-minute speech every 15 minutes, I asked Master to help me in my heart, and completely negated all the arrangements by the old forces. I made up my mind to do my best to carry out my duties for the event. At the same time, I looked inward to find my attachments. I realized that when other practitioners complained about me or badmouthed me or others behind our backs, I would feel resentful. When I felt I wasn’t being treated fairly, I tried to “save face” because my self-esteem was disturbed. Aren’t these all selfish human notions? With this realization, I started to send forth strong righteous thoughts to eliminate these human attachments and all other interference.
I was very clear in my mind that, as a Dafa disciple, I should not have the thought of being sick. Fellow practitioners were also very helpful with what needed to be done, and I was deeply touched by the harmonious atmosphere at the event. At the beginning, I had to speak a bit slowly, but as time went by, my condition improved.
I later stopped thinking about the pain I was in and just focused on how to speak clearly to clarify the truth to passersby, telling them about our efforts to end the brutal persecution in China. When I saw people with Asian faces, I tried to talk to them in English, and when I saw Chinese tourists, I said to them repeatedly, “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.”
Soon after, my pain disappeared. A fellow practitioner reminded me to treat the test as an opportunity to endure hardship and to take hardship as joy. I was also aware that my karma was also reducing. Still, I need to work harder in this respect and be grateful for the opportunity. Thank you, Master, for your boundless compassion.
In fact, I had planned to fly to London to participate in a grand parade and the 2024 U.K. Fahui that weekend, an event I was really looking forward to. However, after our application for the event in Zurich was approved, I had to reconsider my plan. I was a little reluctant at first to give up the trip to London, but I soon made up my mind to stay for the Zurich event, because I knew that I should consider the benefits to others first, instead of myself. Wouldn’t I be selfish if I went to London and left everything here for the fellow practitioners? When I thought this way, I knew very clearly that I should take responsibility for the Zurich event.
We held a large-scale event a week later in Bern to expose the 25-year-long persecution of Falun Dafa in China, and I was the speaker again. That morning, I got up at 5 a.m. and did the fifth exercise first. When I started to do the first four sets of exercises at around 6 a.m., I suddenly felt very weak and had to sit down. Then I started to feel severe pain in my joints. I was facing a test again, of being able to hold out in the summer heat in Bern. I didn’t think much about my physical discomfort, and after I finished breakfast as usual, I felt a bit better. By the time I arrived in Burn, all my symptoms had disappeared without a trace.
Learning New Techniques to Support Gan Jing World
With the arrival of the Gan Jing World project, I knew that it would be a wonderful platform to promote traditional culture and spread the truth. I felt Master’s boundless compassion in giving the world’s people a most precious opportunity in the latter days. Through this platform, people can experience a family-friendly world free of violence.
I’ve been very active on multiple social media platforms for a long time, so I see it as a great opportunity to support Gan Jing World. However, I found it quite challenging at the beginning to learn to use a completely new tool, and I had to learn by doing. Everything was new to me and I had no choice but to explore as I went along. Seeing the urgency and importance of the project, I established my own channel.
I noticed that I began to feel restless and impatient when dealing with the difficulties brought by the new technologies, especially when I failed again and again to upload videos to my channel, and I had to start all over again. I realized that I had a tendency of trying to get things done as quickly as possible.
Looking inward more deeply, I realized that the reason I felt restless was because I wanted to avoid difficulties, and I tried to resolve the issues without too much trouble. I realized that Master was giving me another opportunity to improve myself in cultivation. I couldn’t possibly reject such an opportunity because if I did, it would mean that I was no longer being diligent in cultivation. Clearly, I was trying to avoid hardship and difficulties at that time.
I also realized that my negative attitude earlier would bring me more pressure and dissatisfaction. So, I started to rectify myself and tried to deal with the challenges with a more relaxed attitude instead of pursuing the desired outcome. As time went by, I was able to share my experience with other practitioners, and the difficulties I came across. They also hoped that they could promote Gan Jing World through various channels.
This summer, Zurich hosted the Swiss National Costume Festival. Teams from all Swiss cantons displayed their handmade traditional costumes, performed dances, and played traditional Swiss folk music. We also prepared flyers to promote Gan Jing World to hand out to people at the festival.
I had to overcome a hurdle at the beginning however, which was that I felt a bit awkward when I talked to strangers about Gan Jing World. Where did this feeling come from? I looked within and found that I had a fear of being rejected. Then where did this fear come from? I realized that it must be interference from the old forces, to prevent us from promoting Gan Jing World. When I realized this, I firmly negated all negative thoughts I had earlier, and sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate all such interference. I tried to approach people without any prejudice or human notions. I first asked where they had come from and told them about the local traditional culture. Most people were very open-minded and very happy to share their views, as well as the importance of preserving traditional culture and values.
This experience helped me a lot because I found a good way to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds, and I was also able to take photos and short videos to post on my Gan Jing World channel.
Dear fellow practitioners, let us be more diligent in cultivation, improve together, and be willing to take hardship as joy as Master said in “Tempering the Will,” Hong Yin, “...Let joy be found in hardship...”
The above is some of my personal cultivation experiences. Please kindly point out anything not in line with the Fa.
Thank you, revered Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!
(Sharing at the 2024 German-speaking Switzerland Fahui)
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