(Minghui.org) July 20, 1999, was not an ordinary day for Falun Dafa practitioners. It was not an ordinary day for me either. I heard the words Falun Gong (Falun Dafa) for the first time on this day, and I heard the media propaganda slandering Falun Dafa at the same time.
I didn’t understand how to discern that this was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s propaganda, so I rejected and resisted Falun Dafa in my heart. I hated Falun Dafa and its practitioners. The hatred was so strong and overwhelming, as if I had indeed personally been affected by it. Only when I read the booklets Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party and The Ultimate Goal of Communism did I realize that my hatred had come from the evil specter of communism, and it was consuming me.
I Repeated the CCP’s Lies and a Judge Stopped Me
I listened to the CCP’s biased propaganda and believed it. I hated Falun Dafa so much that I cursed Falun Dafa and the practitioners loudly in front of my colleagues and clients one day, but a judge stopped me on the spot.
The judge asked me if any of my family members practiced Falun Dafa and whether I knew what Falun Dafa was about. He also said that the official media had reported that many university professors practiced Falun Dafa. He asked me whether those professors were more experienced, more powerful economically, and wiser than me. I replied that no one in my family practiced Falun Dafa, and I didn’t know Falun Dafa at all, and that I was far behind those professors in all respects. The judge then said that since the TV said that more than 100 million people practice Falun Dafa, there must be some benefits to practicing it, and that the media reports might not be true, and that since I didn’t know anything about Falun Dafa, I shouldn’t echo the media’s propaganda.
I no longer swore at Falun Dafa and its practitioners in public, but in my heart, I didn’t acknowledge Falun Dafa, and my mind was full of the slanderous words that I had heard on television. I couldn’t analyze the media reports rationally myself. I just followed them blindly.
Understanding That the Tiananmen Self-Immolation Was Staged
I got a copy of Zhuan Falun from a colleague at the end of 2003. While I was reading the book, I felt like I was listening to a kind elderly person teaching me how to be a good person in a simple and understandable way. I learned about the principle of no killing at my level of understanding, how precious life is, and why we shouldn’t hurt other people and our own bodies, or commit suicide. I realized that the Tiananmen self-immolation incident was staged by the CCP, and it was a hoax. The book Zhuan Falun was the evidence.
1. As long as people read Zhuan Falun, whether they start to practice Falun Dafa or not, they will know that Falun Dafa forbids killing. Committing suicide or abortion is a sin and a huge sin. Those people who joined the self-immolation performance in Tiananmen Square, whether they had practiced Falun Dafa previously, were no longer Falun Dafa practitioners at the moment that they joined the hoax performance. Zhuan Falun clearly states the rule.
1. I followed the instructions in the book about how to do the jieyin hand position and could do it properly. Wang Jingdong, the person from the self-immolation incident, didn’t do the jiejin position correctly and the way he sat was incorrect as well. This proved that he didn’t practice Falun Dafa and didn’t know anything about it at all. Anyone who knew Falun Dafa even a little would have performed the postures much better. The big mistakes he made suggested that the video was done in a hurry.
1. My understanding was that someone was afraid of being barred from making such a video, so the video was rushed. Who would prevent the video? It might have been high-level officials from the CCP government. This suggests indirectly that the self-immolation hoax was done by a minority group of people and that the opinions of the high-level officials in the CCP central government differed. If this hoax had been approved by the majority of the leaders, this would not have been done in a hurry, and there wouldn’t have been so many obvious mistakes. This proves that what Falun Dafa practitioners said was correct, which is that Jiang Zemin single-handedly launched the persecution and that most of the CCP’s high-level officials didn’t agree with the persecution.
When I understood that the Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident was a hoax, I wondered why I had been so irrational before. Why did I just believe what the TV said without thinking things over for myself? Furthermore, Falun Dafa hadn’t harmed me at all. Why did I hate Falun Dafa and its practitioners so much?
I Start Practicing Falun Dafa
The book Zhuan Falun enabled me to regain my rationality and to not follow others blindly, and it allowed me to learn that the criterion to judge good and bad are the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. I found what I had been searching for the purpose of my life. I started practicing Falun Dafa with joy.
Even though I accepted Falun Dafa and acknowledged it was good, I didn’t believe that its practitioners would be good due to my mentality of doubting everything, which had been instilled in my mind by the CCP. I believed that Dafa is good and Master is good. Yet I believed that human beings were human beings and Falun Dafa practitioners wouldn’t behave as well as the book had taught them to behave. I was unwilling to contact local practitioners and resisted and rejected them from the bottom of my heart. I practiced Falun Dafa all by myself.
By practicing Falun Dafa alone, I understood that Falun Dafa has no formalities and no organization. The CCP said that Falun Dafa was well organized. I knew the CCP was lying and had cheated people. I believed Falun Dafa is good, and I wanted to practice Falun Dafa. No one who represented Falun Dafa came to see me. No practitioner tried to drag me to do something for Falun Dafa. I witnessed that what the Falun Dafa book said was true.
Master said,
“Every Falun Gong practitioner is a member of society, and each has his own job or career. It’s only that they go to the park to do Falun Gong exercises for half an hour, an hour, or so each morning before heading off to work. We don’t have various provisions that people have to follow, as organized religions do; nor do we have any temples, churches, or religious rites. People can come to learn or leave as they please, and we have no membership rosters. How is it a religion, then?” (“Some Thoughts of Mine,” The Essentials of Diligent Progress II)
“...then our practitioners should continue to study the Fa and do the exercises of their own initiative, without any organization—they can join the morning exercises of their own initiative—thus preserving our practice’s distinctive features and purity.” (“To the Beijing Veteran Practitioners,” Essentials for Further Advancement)
Realizing My Arrogance and Competitive Notions
From childhood to adulthood, I had been educated by the CCP’s theories and had sung the CCP’s songs. My thinking, habits, and modes of thought were all within the framework and context of the CCP. I was unable to think independently or with rationality.
I didn’t fundamentally understand that the CCP was the evil spirit and demon that would destroy humanity, a possessing spirit that takes over human bodies and controls human minds. I didn’t recognize and understand the facts of the persecution of Chinese people in the countless political movements that the CCP had launched. So I basically didn’t understand why the CCP persecutes Falun Dafa practitioners without any basis and why it frames and sabotages Falun Dafa all year long without end.
Using the CCP’s mentality and perception, I couldn’t practice Falun Dafa wholeheartedly. I didn’t really listen to Master to be a genuine practitioner, or negate the persecution or counter the persecution. I didn’t really know how to save the sentient beings who have a predestined connection with Falun Dafa.
For the past 22 years, I didn’t let go of my ego and was incarcerated in a forced labor camp once, detained twice, and sentenced to prison once. This was not because I practiced Falun Dafa, but because I sought it and wanted it.
I was incarcerated in forced labor for one year. The superficial reason was that the police arrested me. The actual reason was that I didn’t want to lose face or to be shamed. My husband had messed around with other women and wouldn’t come home or look after our family or our child. He boasted that he had looked for other women because I was no good. He even messed around with a woman who lived in the same building. The old forces in other dimensions took advantage of my shortcomings.
After I was released from the forced labor camp, I was still arrogant and self-centered. I let my notions control me. I only studied the sections of Zhuan Falun that I liked. I didn’t really obtain the Fa and didn’t fundamentally change myself. I was selfish, arrogant, and thought I was always right. Because I had not assimilated with the Fa, I was unable to see through the evil’s tricks and passively followed them. I had even thought of staying in the detention center and prison to see how they persecuted the practitioners so that I could lodge a lawsuit against the judicial officials involved and hold them accountable. Actually, I regarded the law as a means to punish people, not as a means to save sentient beings.
When I was in contact with local practitioners, I found that they were unable to tell me details about the persecution clearly. I was unable to get evidence of the persecution.
I saw a criminal judgment for a Falun Dafa practitioner by accident one day in 2004. This judgment contained many mistakes. Anyone who knew a little bit of law knew that this verdict had problems. This was a wrongful case. Why did such a ridiculous case exist?
I wanted to go to the prison myself to find evidence of persecution, and then I would lodge a lawsuit against them.
After I personally experienced the persecution in prison, I found that I was wrong. My fundamentals were wrong. Behind the idea of filing a lawsuit was my competitiveness, which I should let go of. A practitioner needs to cultivate oneself well and save sentient beings with compassion.
Legal Department Officers Tell the Truth to Me
After going through persecution several times, I realized that Master had been using the officials in the legal departments to tell me that Falun Dafa is good. I also witnessed that sentient beings have come for the Fa, and they all actively get involved in countering the persecution.
A police officer came to my workplace in 2004 for business. I asked him if he had ever been involved in arresting Falun Dafa practitioners. He told me that he had been doing this job. I asked him how Falun Dafa was. He said, “I have read Falun Dafa books and watched their DVDs. The contents are very good. If people read Falun Dafa books and watch the DVDs, even if they don’t practice Falun Dafa, this society would become better and better. Those arrested Falun Dafa practitioners are so kind!”
An elderly Falun Dafa practitioner came to see me in 2005. She said that her son had occupied her apartment and wouldn’t let her live there. She said that she had only asked that her son live in one room and she would live in the other room, and that she didn’t want to drive her son and his wife out via legal means. Moreover, she had bought an apartment for her son. He had rented out that apartment and then lived with her without her consent. Now he was trying to force her to move out.
I went to mediate for them. Her son and his wife were rude to me and said arrogantly, “She practices Falun Dafa. We want to drive her out.” They didn’t leave any room for discussion.
I went to her residential compound. The community director and another colleague were in the office. The director said helplessly, “She is in her old age and practices Falun Dafa at home to stay healthy and keep fit. But her son reports her to the local police station and asks them to arrest her.”
While I was mediating for them, the son sealed her mouth and tied her legs with duct tape and put her in a child’s bed. He rang the local police and asked them to arrest her. Two police officers came and saw her. One of the police officers scolded the son severely and ordered him to stop mistreating her. If he didn’t stop his mistreatment, the police would arrest him. The son had to remove the tape from his mother’s mouth and legs. When the son saw me, he asked me why the police officers hadn’t taken his mother away.
He played the audio recordings of people slandering Falun Dafa to his mother and mistreated her in different ways every day. He even locked her inside the apartment and didn’t let her go out. She had dropped a piece of paper, on which she had written “Please rescue me,” through the window, hoping people downstairs would help her out.
I went to the local police station. The director told me that her son and his wife were arranged by the local 610 office to monitor her. Her home was a “family brainwashing center.” When I went to see the guards in the residential compound where she lives, the guard told me that they had been arranged to monitor her every day and to report her if she went outside, and that a car would be sent to follow her.
I went to see the chief judge of the court’s civil division and asked him if a case could be lodged. He said that as long as Falun Dafa was not mentioned and it only required that her son move out of her apartment, the case could be filed.
I attended the hearing of the trial of a Falun Dafa practitioner one day in 2005. The courtroom was open, and anyone who came could see the trial scene and could go into the room to hear the case. When the bailiff tried to stop them from entering, the presiding judge signaled to the bailiff to let anyone come in.
During the trial, the Falun Dafa practitioner didn’t know how to defend herself and didn’t get to the point. The presiding judge guided her from time to time, and the whole process became a time that observers listened to her truth clarification.
(to be continued)
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