(Clearwisdom.net) I started to practice Falun Gong in January 1998. I used to be quite a weak and fragile person, but now I feel great and I am free of illnesses. Regretfully, I temporarily stopped practicing Falun Gong for about a year, because of the persecution that started in July 1999. However, I finally decided not to give up my cultivation and continued to practice Falun Gong.
One day, in 2004, when I was just about to go out and distribute Falun Gong truth clarification materials, one of my sons saw me and told me not to go, as he knew the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was still trying to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. I told him that distributing truth clarification materials was a good thing to do and an important deed; it was to save sentient beings. How could such a deed be against the Chinese law? Then, I told him, "I am over seventy years old. I have gained good health through my practice. Learning to save sentient beings is an unselfish act. Remember this! If I get arrested, never pay them any money to get me out of prison. That would only encourage them to do it again. The CCP are committing crimes when they arrest good people."
After more than ten years of practice, I have learned how to look inward. This is absolutely necessary to improve one's character, remove attachments and assimilate to the Fa.
One day when I was out buying coal, I said to the lady who was preparing my invoice, "Do you know that Falun Gong is good and Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good?" She smiled and after a while said, "The other fellow waiting for coal is responsible for arresting Falun Gong practitioners. Keep your voice down." I replied, "I am not afraid of him, because he is just someone who does not know what Falun Gong is about. Once he understands the true nature of Falun Gong, he will act differently."
When the CCP was about to hold their annual meetings, a fellow practitioner came to advise me to exercise more care when keeping Dafa materials. While I agree that we should always pay attention to safety issues, I believe the thoughts we hold are more important. Master said in the poem "What's to Fear?" in Hong Yin II:
"Should you have fear,
it will seize upon you
If thoughts are righteous,
evil will collapse"
Once I understood this principle, I let go of my fear and hurried up in my activities of clarifying the truth to people, and asking people to quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
There were times when I kept on finding faults with fellow practitioners. Then I said to myself, "If you understand the Fa well, you should be working with fellow practitioners to improve the overall cultivation environment. If you expose a fault of fellow practitioners and they do not like to hear it, it indicates a lack of compassion on your part. If you worry about hurting the feelings of fellow practitioners, your worry is the cause as to why they do not want to listen to you." This allowed me to see the deeper meaning of the words:
"...they are reflected images. Reflected images are nonetheless a form of matter's existence, and they are the result of a corresponding reflection that changes according to changes over there." (Zhuan Falun)
The reason the ocean can accept water from all rivers is because it is at the lowest level. When we place ourselves above fellow practitioners, this will cause them not to accept our advice. The reaction of fellow practitioners acts as a mirror of the level of our own consciousness. This is what I learned from looking inward. From now on, I shall study the Fa even more and do the three things well. Then, I shall report to Master.