(Minghui.org) Greetings, respected Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I would like to report to Master and share with fellow practitioners my cultivation journey these past few months during which I found my fundamental attachment.
I was born with a serious illness and I took medication throughout my childhood. When I attended secondary school I took Chinese herbal medicine every day. I continued taking medicine while I was at university, and after I graduated and I taught at a university. I later came to Germany to study German at a university, and under the strain of intense study I developed a stomach illness that seriously affected my studies and caused me great suffering.
My parents in China sent me a copy of Zhuan Falun and a video tape of the exercise instructions in February 1996. I read the book straight through in a single evening and I was tremendously moved: it felt as though I suddenly understood a great many principles, such as why people suffer, why they fall ill, and what people live for. The next day I began learning the five exercises by following Master’s exercise instruction video, and I began practicing Falun Dafa.
I began doing the exercises and reading Zhuan Falun every day, and two weeks later I was astonished to find that my stomach no longer hurt. During that time I even forgot to take my medicine.
My husband was German, and sadly he had motor neurone disease, an illness for which there is no cure. Seeing that my illness disappeared just two weeks after I began practicing Falun Dafa, my husband, who did not believe in qigong, began learning the exercises with me and reading Zhuan Falun in English after work, as there was no German translation at the time. After a while, the two of us noticed that his condition had markedly improved as well and that he no longer needed medicine.
After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began persecuting Falun Dafa in July 1999, we took an active part in activities to expose the persecution. On June 16, 2000, Master published “Towards Consummation.” I remember that when my husband and I were taking part in an activity in Switzerland that year, practitioners from various countries shared their understandings of this lecture. Everyone spoke about what their thoughts had been when they first began practicing. At the time I felt that my fundamental attachment no longer existed: I began practicing to cure my illness, but two weeks later it was completely gone, so there was nothing left for me to be attached to.
Time went by, and we continued cultivating. My health remained very good, but my husband’s grew worse with each passing year, until eventually he was bedridden and I had to devote a great deal of energy to care for him. One day in September 2016, my husband sadly passed away. I sank into a deep anguish that I could not pull myself out of. I did not know what the old forces had arranged for the two of us, or what gaps in our cultivation they had seized upon.
In September 2017 I moved to Frankfurt and put my energy into my job and into Dafa projects. As for how the old forces had interfered with my husband and me, I no longer gave it serious thought. Yet one thing kept putting me on my guard. Several practitioners in my area were going through severe tests of illness karma, and the way they went through them reminded me of what my husband had been through. I told them more than once that I kept running into cases of fellow practitioners going through illness karma, and that this must have something to do with me. But what exactly it had to do with me, I could not work out.
Jolted Awake
By 2026, I had been living in Frankfurt for more than eight years. One day a fellow practitioner rang me, saying he wanted to talk with me about two practitioners in the Frankfurt group who passed away from illness karma in two years. He said he asked them whether they found their own fundamental attachments, and they both said no. He believed this was the reason they passed away.
Inspired by this practitioner, the practitioners in our group began to take finding our fundamental attachments seriously. One after another they identified their own fundamental attachments and shared them sincerely with us. I also came to see my own fundamental attachment more clearly: it was the thought of curing my illness that I had when I first entered the door of Dafa, and it manifested as an attachment to Dafa being able to cure my husband’s illness.
I also understood how the old forces interfered with my husband and me, along with other questions I had. Here I would like to share my understanding in three respects.
Not Letting Go of the Fundamental Attachment Blocks Our Transformation
I had stepped into Dafa in order to cure my stomach illness, and soon after I took up cultivation the illness was gone. So I urged my husband, who was ill at the time, to take up the practice as well. I believed Dafa was certain to cure his illness, and from the very beginning this thought was a considerable attachment, although I was unaware of it.
Looking back now, for all those years I was making every kind of effort out of this strong attachment. For instance, I helped my husband do the exercises every day. As he could not lift his arms, he was unable to do the second exercise, so I held his arms up for him. I hoped that one day he would be able to lift his arms.
Later, when he could no longer read, I had him listen to the Fa continually, and I played the audio and video recordings. Even when he fell asleep, I thought listening to Master’s Fa would still do his Main Soul good.
I also kept trying whatever might help my husband: reciting the “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good” over and over, sending forth righteous thoughts for long stretches, using the Fa Master taught about benevolently resolving things to benevolently resolve matters with the beings interfering with my husband, and looking inward together with him. All the while I was making these efforts, deep down I expected my husband’s illness to go away, and I used the excuse that his recovery would powerfully validate Dafa to cover up my desire to cure his illness.
I did recognize this hidden intention and tried to remove it, but at the time I absolutely could not see that it was my fundamental attachment. I only felt that my heart was impure and my motive was wrong. So, however hard I tried, I could not change his situation. My husband also did not realize that this was his fundamental attachment.
Master said,
“Validating the Fa is also cultivation. The cultivation process is one of continually recognizing your own shortcomings and then disposing of them. It’s only that the earlier a lot of fundamental attachments are recognized the better. Recognizing them is, in itself, improvement. Being able to eliminate them, or overcome them, weaken them, and in the end completely eliminate them—that process is one of continually improving yourself, and it’s the fundamental transformation of a being.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2003 Atlanta Fa Conference,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World Volume IV)
Only now, studying this passage of Master’s teaching, do I understand that at the time neither my husband nor I realized what our fundamental attachments were, and so the transformation of my husband’s being could not be achieved.
Old Forces Held On to My Fundamental Attachment and Intensified the Persecution
Because my husband was in the grip of his illness for so long, my energies were drawn in as well. I knew this was not simply a matter of illness karma but severe interference from the old forces, yet I could never see clearly why the old forces were able to interfere with us, or how we were to break through that interference.
I repeatedly read what Master said about the old forces, and felt that I only half understood. Sometimes I asked myself: was it that the two of us had a great deal of karma, and the old forces were using that to test whether my husband and I would still believe in Dafa and in Master while he was in the grip of illness? But I knew that both of us believed deeply in Dafa and in Master. Even though my husband was tormented by his illness for so long, he never once wavered in his faith.
Perhaps it was because my husband had such a steadfast heart that Master was protecting him all along, and supernormal things happened to him several times. The last of these was in 2012, when he suddenly slipped into a coma and was resuscitated after being taken to hospital. A week later the doctor told me that my husband had only a few months to live, half a year at most, and suggested that he stay in the hospital until the end of his life. If he went home, the doctor said, there would be no medical equipment there, and without prompt resuscitation he could die at any moment.
After giving it careful thought, my husband and I decided to go home. Once we were home his condition improved, and right up until he passed away none of the issues the doctor warned us about happened. He lived for another four years.
Master said,
“Additionally, they manipulate wicked human beings to examine Dafa and its disciples, putting them through a comprehensive and destructive test that targets all human thoughts and attachments. Had you truly been able to get rid of those fundamental human attachments in your cultivation, this last tribulation would not have been so vicious.” (“Towards Consummation,” The Essentials of Diligent Progress II)
Only now do I see clearly that because my fundamental attachment had not been removed (and of course my husband’s own problems cannot be ruled out either), the old forces went after him endlessly, wearing his physical body down bit by bit, while at the same time, through the illness that interfered with him for so long, doing everything they could to break me. This ordeal was so severe and so evil.
Removing the Fundamental Attachment and Walking the Path Master Arranged
After my husband passed away, the old forces began piling one hardship after another on me. Bit by bit I felt that my health was not what it used to be: one ailment today, another tomorrow, one after another. I was very puzzled. Later my stomach developed symptoms like the ones from over 20 years earlier, and they dragged on for a long time. My heart was unsettled and the substance of fear grew. Seeing practitioners around me pass away from illness karma made me shudder, and I did not know what had gone wrong in my cultivation to bring on these stomach symptoms. Fortunately, what I thought at the time was that whatever the situation, I would step up sending forth righteous thoughts and hold firm to one thought: this is not illness, it is a false appearance. Gradually I made it through this test.
Now I understand: because my fundamental attachment had not been removed, the old forces kept manufacturing false appearances of illness for me, so that deep down I would go on clinging to the fundamental attachment that Dafa could cure my illness. I also found the answer to why I kept encountering practitioners in Frankfurt going through tests of illness karma: having seized on my fundamental attachment, the old forces wanted to use them to put me under mental pressure, to wear down my will to cultivate, and to keep me from succeeding in cultivation.
Master said,
“Each of your attachments could cause your cultivation to fail. Each of your attachments could result in physical issues, and lead your once-firm faith in Dafa to waver. In other words, to tell you the truth, no one intends for your cultivation to be a success and no one is giving thought to how your cultivation goes. The old forces want only to complete what they want to see completed, and that’s it.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2015 West Coast Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. XIII)
Now, when something happens with my body, I no longer have the attachment of fear. I firmly deny these things. The old forces used to be something vague, elusive and abstract to me, but now I can see through their tricks and break through their evil arrangements early on.
As I came to recognize my fundamental attachment more and more clearly, I read Master’s Fa lectures again and found that in many of them Master reminds us again and again to remove our fundamental attachments. Yet I clung to my illusion for all those years and walked the path the old forces arranged.
On June 8, 2026 the Minghui Editorial Board published a “Notice” recommending that practitioners who truly cultivate memorize Master’s lecture “Towards Consummation.” I now understand with real clarity how important it is to study this scripture: only by removing the fundamental attachment can we thoroughly deny the old forces’ arrangements and walk the path Master arranged.
If there is anything inappropriate in the sharing above, please kindly point it out.
Thank you, Master. Thank you, everyone!
(Presented at the 2026 European Fa Conference)
