(Minghui.org) I’m 30 years old and I began practicing Falun Dafa in 2019. Family members encouraged me to share my cultivation journey with fellow practitioners and our compassionate teacher, Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa.
Since childhood, I suffered from several health issues. Chronic otitis media (infection of the middle ear) and sinusitis caused many sleepless nights and forced me to breathe through my mouth. As a result, my mouth was frequently covered in painful ulcers, making it difficult to eat or sleep. I had severe eczema and experienced unbearable itching at night. I couldn’t stop scratching and there was blood on my bed sheets in the morning. My parents took me to many hospitals in the city and I tried countless Chinese and Western medical treatments, but nothing helped.
When I was a child I killed ants and other small insects without a second thought—I was completely ignorant of the principles of karmic retribution. Influenced by my father, I began practicing Buddhism when I was in high school. I sincerely regretted my earlier wrongdoings and I started doing good deeds. I immersed myself in Buddhist scriptures and traditional culture, reflected on myself and became a vegetarian. However, my poor health remained unchanged after I graduated from college. The severe eczema continued to haunt me, and I began to wonder if I had accumulated so much karma that it was too hard to remove.
Everything changed at the end of 2018, when a teacher of traditional Chinese culture introduced me to Falun Dafa. Despite years of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) brainwashing and knowing that Dafa was persecuted by the CCP, I began practicing. I read Zhuan Falun three times in just three days. I truly realized that Dafa and Master Li are here to save people and that the CCP’s propaganda are lies.
My initial understanding of the Fa was superficial. I only read Zhuan Falun and some of Master’s earlier books. I listened to practitioners describe their amazing experiences before 1999, but with a sense of curiosity and envy because I hadn’t begun practicing sooner. I am a professional teacher of Go (Weiqi), an abstract board game for two, which is played throughout the world. Before the COVID pandemic, I frequently traveled to teach the game. When the pandemic led to nationwide lockdowns in late 2019, my classes stopped and I had to stay home.
I used this time to read all of Master’s Fa lectures and began trying to sit in the full lotus position when I meditated. It should not have been difficult for me since I’d tried it before when practicing Buddhism. However within ten minutes, I experienced leg pain and numbness, accompanied by bruising of the skin. I knew this occurred in order to eliminate karma and I tried my best to persist for 30 minutes, until my legs became very red and the pain became unbearable.
After two weeks of sitting in full lotus in meditation every day, and while reading Dafa books, the chronic eczema on my legs reacted intensely. Pus began to ooze from the red spots, which intensified when I meditated. I wrapped my legs in gauze when I went to sleep, and the bandages were soaked with pus in the morning. However, I took it lightly and discarded all my medications. I began meditating for more than an hour. I knew I was repaying the karma I committed before I began practicing, and Master was cleansing my body.
After a month, the eczema that had tormented me for over twenty years vanished. My legs became smooth and healthy. When I showed my family the photos of my blackened legs during that period, they were horrified, as that condition might require amputation. Witnessing this miracle, many of my family members began to understand the truth about Falun Dafa, and some even began practicing. The power of Dafa is extraordinary.
Many businesses collapsed and educational institutions were closed during the COVID lockdown. My career as a Go teacher seemed to end. Luckily, a student preparing for a professional Go exam approached me for private lessons. I realized that my cultivation should comply with ordinary society as much as possible, and I needed to support my family financially. So I gave him private lessons at my home, and he became my first private student.
As a cultivator, I strive to follow Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, including when I teach. Since the student and his parents trusted me, I have the responsibility to provide the best instruction possible. I tried to inspire his talent and interests with compassion, and I used humor and some terminology I invented to keep him focused. I encouraged his self-discipline to finish the after-class practice. I also provided feedback. The student was quite diligent and his progress was remarkable. He won a city-wide championship in his level, and within a year, reached amateur Class 5, the pinnacle for a youth Go practitioner.
I aligned my teaching with the standards of a Dafa practitioner, and as a result, parents highly praised me and sent more students to me. By word-of-mouth, my students grew in number and my financial situation stabilized. This experience helped me truly understand that as long as we prioritize practicing Falun Dafa and emphasize improving our xinxing (moral character), our environment naturally changes.
I also used this opportunity to introduce topics that challenged the narrow confines of evolutionary theory and atheism taught at school, such as trilobite fossils, ancient giants, underwater pyramids, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and the wonders of the divinely-inspired traditional Chinese culture. These topics served to dismantle the dogma at school and inspire the students’ thoughts about divine culture.
Once I established mutual respect and trust with my students and their parents, I asked my family member (a Dafa practitioner) to clarify the truth about Dafa to the parents. I also used traditional wisdom to explain to them the harm caused by atheistic ideologies and the CCP. The students and parents who understood the truth withdrew from the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
Because I cultivated diligently during the pandemic, my chronic eczema vanished. I remained unaffected by COVID, while many people around me tested positive. I often had dreams of walking down a road, and then effortlessly rising into the sky, flying freely with my arms open, while people below watched me in amazement.
While studying Master’s Fa Lecture, “Teaching the Fa at the Discussion on Writing Music and Creating Fine Art,” I realized that both Go and classical art are pillars of Chinese divine culture. I wondered whether Go could also be played in a way that is righteous, pure, and filled with a light of compassion. If everything follows heavenly principles, Go must as well. As long as we adhere to a righteous foundation, one can surely play Go purely.
So I tried to fill that gap in the art of Go on the basis of Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance. I began to develop a unique system of Go centered on “natural balance.” I combined my technical experience with the essence of both ancient and modern Go principles to create a comprehensive and unique framework.
To test the feasibility of the framework, I taught my students for six hours and then had them apply the concepts. The results were extraordinary. Students who embraced this balanced approach made great progress in a single year that typically takes others several years to achieve. I understand that as long as Falun Dafa practitioners study the Fa well and harmonize ourselves within the Fa, we can excel in whatever we set out to do in the human world, as this is all a manifestation of Dafa’s heavenly wisdom.
However, as the post-pandemic economy continuously deteriorated, I was influenced by my ordinary friends and I began pursuing wealth, and investments like gold, currency, and stocks. I had some initial success and I ignored the warnings of fellow practitioners—I even twisted Master’s teachings to justify my greed. My failure to rectify my thoughts eventually led to losses until my investments vanished. This was a wake-up call for me that Dafa cultivation is very serious and any human attachments we have will be taken advantage of by the old forces.
Through Fa study and sending forth righteous thoughts, I gradually pulled myself out of this state. Shortly after, I had a dream that I visited a slum filled with poor people. With a simple wave of my hand, they instantly transformed from being poor to rich. When I woke up, I understood Master enlightened me through my dream. Compared to practicing Falun Dafa, worldly wealth is as insignificant as a drop of water or a grain of sand, and is not worthy of pursuing. We must constantly rectify ourselves within the Fa in order to maintain righteous thoughts and actions, avoid being misled by superficial appearances, and prevent ourselves from going astray on the path of cultivation.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have found Falun Dafa. Through diligently cultivating within the Fa, I have experienced Master’s infinite grace. Master cleansed me and rescued me from hell. Thank you, Master, for your compassionate salvation!