(Clearwisdom.net) I am seventy-two years old now. I only attended primary school for three years. By reviewing the ups and downs in my seventy plus years of life and recording them, I hope to encourage fellow practitioners who read this article.
Childhood
I was born into a poor family. During the spring when I was 13, I was very sick for more than half a year. One night, I asked mother for some dumplings to eat. Mother said that eating dumplings when one is very sick was not a good idea. When mother gave me the dumplings, I only took one bite and it tasted like horse dung. I set it down and immediately fell asleep.
To this day, I still have a vivid memory of the dream I had that night: I left home with two people. There were beautiful flowers and plants all along the way. Finally we arrived at a city, where a lot of people came and went. Afterwards we entered a palace and I did not know anyone there. A person sitting in front of me asked: "Are you waiting here or going back home?" At the time I wasn't sure what I was waiting for, and I thought mother would be worried if she couldn't find me. So I said I wanted to go back home. Then the two people who brought me there sent me back, thus I returned home. I remembered that when I fell at the gate, I woke up. After that, mother told me that I had already been asleep for three days and nights.
Ten years in prison during the Cultural Revolution
During the Cultural Revolution, I was sentenced as a "counterrevolutionary" and was imprisoned for ten years.
After I made it known that I wanted to enter religion, a Taoist who heard about my wish encouraged me to join his school. Since there were no other choices, I thus decided to cultivate with him in this school. Several years later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started the Cultural Revolution, and classified Taoism as an "anti-party evil cult" and also an active counter-revolutionary bloc. The four of us who cultivated together were all sentenced and put into prison. Since then I've experienced the extremely brutal policies of the CCP.
While I was in prison, family visits and food deliveries were prohibited. Everyone had only about a pound of corn chaff per day, one fifth for morning and evening each, three fifths for lunch. Anyone who did not conform to the detention regulations was only allowed to have 3 ounces of food per day. However robust a person was, he or she would become skin and bones in just a month. Every other day some people starved to death, and we often saw dead people being carried out from the cells. None of the people who were old, weak or sick survived. Only those who were young and strong enough could survive and return home alive.
Having escaped from the jaws of death at the county detention center, I was sent to a forced labor camp. Although food was provided, forced labor was still cruel and injurious to a human body, not to mention the forced study. Three years at the detention center and seven years in a forced labor camp made me feel that every day was as long as a year. I did not even know how I persisted and survived through those ten years.
When I was 37 years old, I fell from a stage while working high up and broke my right hipbone. Thus I lost the ability to take care of myself, and I could not even turn my body while laying in bed. After six days of suffering, the prison guard found a bone-setter to adjust the bones for me. After one month when I could take care of myself again, I was forced to resume work. However, the forced labor was really hard for me and I could barely endure the pain. One day I thought: "There are seven more years, how can I suffer so much pain! I would rather drown myself to get out of this place!" When I was just about to jump into the water, I was stopped by a companion. There were some other prisoners who witnessed my pain and reported it to the head. Thus, I was granted several days to take a short break.
In the forced labor camp, everyone was vigorously forced to study the so-called transformation policies. They combined ideological remolding and labor transformation to make you become a so-called "new student." The more I listened to the nonsensical talk they used to deceive people, the more disgusted I became. However, those who did not study well would be interrogated. If you did not accept it, you would receive corporal punishment. In those gloomy days, what should I do to pass such a long time ahead? Then I decided to participate in the study. From my heart, I just wanted to practice reading and writing in case I would need them in the future. At first, I just studied the newspaper, and then they gave me many philosophy books written by Hegel, Marx, Engels, Dühring, Feuerbach and Darwin, etc. I seemed to be studying very hard during those seven years. But I was not poisoned by the books; instead, I realized that atheism is a huge poisonous weed infesting the earth.
Finding Falun Dafa
In 1980, I had served out my sentence and went home. Since my childhood I've been standing on the side opposite to the CCP. At that time, because I did not agree with the CCP, my family was ruined and I lived alone in poverty with nothing to depend on. Unprincipled people attacked me and good-natured people kept silent when they saw me because they were afraid that the CCP would regard them as being in agreement with me. Therefore no one dared to give me a hand when I was in difficulty.
When there was no way out, I followed an adoptive father who used to be a reporter in the central newspaper when he was young. Since he was getting old, he returned home. My adoptive father then took four people from my entire family to Beijing, where I worked in a carpentry company for ten years. After that, I went back to rebuild my old home; however, money was so short that I had to return to Beijing. In the later working period, the CCP started to persecute Falun Gong. One practitioner brought several Dafa books for me and taught me the five sets of exercises, and didn't charge any money. He told me that he had the responsibility to help me obtain the Fa and begin cultivation. I was touched by his sincerity and firmly believed that this practice of Falun Dafa is righteous. In January 2000, I learned the five sets of exercises all at once. Afterwards this practitioner taught me to send righteous thoughts. Since then I never saw this practitioner again. Over the past several years, I kept studying the Fa and have read the articles on Minghui website conscientiously. My xinxing has gradually improved.
Look inward for attachments
Although I diligently practice Falun Dafa, I still have a lot of attachments that need to be removed. For example, I was longing for an easy and comfortable life, particularly in regards to food, wishing for longevity and health, and fearful of persecution. Every attachment directly blocked me in validating the Fa and saving sentient beings. I only clarified the truth to very close friends and would run away if there were too many people. Of the three things I only did the exercises and sent righteous thoughts steadfastly. I studied the Fa at home, but without a Fa-study group my improvement was slow.
Improving my xinxing in conflicts
Recently, two people asked me to teach them the exercises. I taught them all five sets of exercises and treated them with benevolence, and we became very good friends. However, after two years, both of them gave up practicing Dafa and changed back to ordinary people, and this made me very sad. Later on they cost me a lot of financial loss, making me feel even more pained and I almost lost my confidence in clarifying the truth. These days there are too few people with a righteous heart. One day I studied:
"While the ordinary man might
long for Immortaldom,
Behind the unbelievable wonders
lies wrenching sorrow;
It takes cultivating the mind,
severing desires,
casting off attachments,
Lest man be lost in his ordeals
and gripped with deep regret. "
("Who Dares Renounce Human Attachments? " from Hong Yin)
Then I realized the two fellow practitioners were helping me to get rid of my attachment to personal gain. The reason that I felt unsettled was to help me identify and cultivate away the attachment that I could not let go of. After I realized this, I stopped feeling distressed whenever I thought of them and finally passed this test.
Immersed in Dafa, our righteous thoughts will ascend, our post-natal notions will be removed, and divine power will replace human thoughts. The tribulations we have during cultivation are chances for us to improve and assimilate ourselves to the new universe. Righteous thoughts and righteous actions will help Dafa disciples battle through tests.
I only went to elementary school for three years, and cannot express perfectly all the improvements I have experienced during cultivation. I hope fellow practitioners will kindly point out anything that is improper.
