(Minghui.org) Greetings, Revered Master, Greetings, fellow practitioners!
It was in early 2012 that I obtained the Fa. Nevertheless the principles of the universe and the cultivation process mentioned in Zhuan Falun are very familiar and make tremendous sense to me. The word cultivation seems so sacred and divine. I burst into tears reading the phrase “saving sentient beings.” I recalled my state of mind at the time, I was deeply moved. I realized that I was not happy and my life had no meaning. My husband and I were moving frequently from one house to another, but when I ran into the words “return home” or “come back to your origin,” I truly believed the meaning of those words.
I was introduced to Falun Dafa through a friend of mine who took me to the park to meet practitioners. I was astonished that I was able to sit in the lotus position for 30 minutes. I bought the Zhuan Falun book and spent the next three days reading the book. At my first look at Master Li's picture, deep down in my heart I cried out to Master, “Please save me Master, I want to cultivate.” During that very time, I was mourning the loss of my mother; I was devastated by that loss and cared about nothing. I felt a strong energy from the book and the death of my mother did not seem as painful. It was like a miracle, and I realized that death is not the end of everything. People came to earth through fate and destiny so when destiny ends my mother had to leave. From then on, I was determined to cultivate and realized that I have to overcome all difficult obstacles to resolve historical conflicts and debts. Master has shouldered tremendous karma for me, the rest I have to take care of by elevating my xinxing and help Master in saving more sentient beings. The bottom line is: I want to return home with Master and I believe in his saying:
“I am rooted in the universe. If anyone could harm you, he or she would be able to harm me. Put simply, that person would be able to harm this universe.” (Zhuan Falun)
Stepping Out to Validate the Fa
A month later, a fellow practitioner donated a room from her commercial building for us to meet to study the Fa and practice. It was originally a storage room. Every day, I had to drive to go meet a few other practitioners to work on the place. We cleaned it out, remodeled it a little bit so it would look nice and solemn. Two weeks later we were able to open the place and started validating the Fa to some predestined individuals and at the same time conducted group Fa-study and practiced the exercises.
I am not a good driver, so the whole time behind the wheel I would recite Falun Dafa Hao [Falun Dafa is good]. One day, on the way there, I was rear-ended by a big box truck. I heard a big ‘bang.” I was very alert. It was 10:55 a.m., time for sending forth righteous thoughts. I felt a pain starting in my head. I immediately sent forth righteous thoughts and asked Master’s help to keep my righteous thoughts and negate all arrangements of the old forces. During the time waiting for the police, I asked the truck driver for his help to step into a building.
I was able to clarify the truth and told them about the persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He was very empathetic about the whole situation and even promised to post it on Facebook. On the way home, I was hit by a spell of sleepiness, but I made it home safely. Also, the pain now had spread from my head to my shoulders. I knew I just needed some sleep and I would be fine. After waking up, I completely forgot about the accident, I realized that Master has purified my body, and he had negated my karma.
Overcoming Tribulations While Clarifying the Truth
I felt so much more at ease moving into a smaller house. My house is always welcoming people for Fa-study and doing the exercises. We had been working with Shen Yun Performing Arts promotional materials, and we needed badly a storage area. My house was too small for storing promotional flyers. My neighbor offered to build a storage area. I thought that it was such a simple matter to change a patio into a storage area. While beginning the work, a building inspector stopped by and asked for the permit for construction. I was baffled; I completely overlooked this matter. I had to go to the county and request a permit. I was told that the previous owner had already broken the law by building the patio without a permit, now if I build the storage area, it would be doubling the violation. They required a drawing by an architect. It only costs me $400 for the materials and I thought it was ridiculous that I had to spend $2000 for the drawing. The inspector returned as scheduled, and I honestly told him that it was my mistake. I was willing to close it all up and take the materials inside the house.
I took the opportunity to clarify the truth to him, introduced him to Shen Yun, a divine traditional Chinese culture that was being destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party, and all I wanted was to contribute my modest part to the revival of this culture. I sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate all the evil forces behind him. After a while, he told me: “Don’t worry, go ahead with the project. I will close the case and wish Shen Yun all the success. In my heart, I knew that Master had saved him through my mistake. I promised Master that from now on I would follow all the regulations of the ordinary world. Thank you, Master, for your benevolence.
A week later, I experienced an excruciating stomach pain, I could not move. It was time to go to the park for practice, I couldn’t move around so I lay down on the couch and listened to Master’s nine-day lecture series. Being quite new to cultivation, my husband worried and called a practitioner who happened to be a physician. She kept her righteous thought and did not prescribe any medication. The pain got worse and worse. I was into my two-months of obtaining the Fa. I realized that Master was eliminating karma for me. More than that I realized that I could not lie down here, that I needed to be out there to practice. I had to eliminate this illusion of sickness, and Master let me see two skeletons. I solemnly told them “I have a mission to accomplish; I have to clarify the truth and save sentient beings. No force can interfere with this.” The skeletons vanished after I asked for Master’s help. At that very time my phone rang, a practitioner said she was running late and asked if I wanted to go with her. I knew it was Master who sent her for me.
At the park, I had more tests. Two veteran practitioners told me to be careful because they knew someone with the same problem and ended up with cancer of the colon. I knew that it was the evil force wanting to test my faith in the Fa. I smiled and told them: Master will arrange everything. For practitioners, all of this is a test to elevate your xinxing. I recovered completely after Fa-group exercise. The pain came suddenly and went just the same.
Master said:
“...cultivation depends on one’s own efforts, while transformation of gong is done by one’s master.”(Zhuan Falun)
Negating Old Force Arrangements
We are a very solid Fa-body and we trust each other completely in validating the Fa. I think we complement each other when needed. My husband has good skills in technology and machinery, and I am good at planning and budgeting. We also coordinated and communicated rather well with the local practitioners on various Falun Dafa practitioners' projects. My husband and I were working on promoting Shen Yun at the time. We were very busy. One time, I disagreed with his way of working, not thinking about others, and not showing much compassion, nor tolerance. Suddenly he turned to me and said: “I don’t want to do this anymore, I am too exhausted and tired of this.”
I kept quiet and looked inward: “Why did he have to say those words?” He continued: “I want to move out, and cultivate on my own. Maybe I will improve.” I continued to look inward and tried to understand him. He worked full time, at night he worked on Shen Yun projects, did not have enough time to study the Fa, so he could not keep his righteous thoughts. I reluctantly agreed and found him an apartment. On the way there, I saw my attachment to challenging and competing with him. I wanted him to see he was wrong and I was acting according to the arrangement of the evil forces. Master has pointed out to me of my lack of compassion, and the evil forces had taken advantage of my shortcomings to act upon.
I suddenly realized that Master would not arrange for us to be separated, as how could we clarify the truth and how could we explain this to the ordinary world. Being a Dafa practitioner, I was determined that this was not Master’s arrangement; my heart was full of attachment to competing, to anger, to unfairness. But these feelings were not mine; I immediately cleansed myself and negated all those feelings. Then I talked solemnly to my husband: “If you seriously want to move out, I will agree to that, but remember Master’s teachings. He said cultivation is a serious matter. Today you agree to do Shen Yun, the next day you want to quit. This is a mission on saving sentient beings. Their futures depend on being saved, and you cannot let the old forces arrange your path to eventually destroy sentient beings and that includes you too. No one can be so impervious to say that they can cultivate alone, without the Fa body. That is not Master’s arrangement for you. I will be brave enough to let you move out, but I don’t know that I will be that brave to take you back in because we don’t have enough time. Please give it a serious thought, negate all those evil thoughts and get back your righteous thoughts.” I also said I was sorry for being competitive instead of showing compassion towards him.
In the end, he did look inward and then said: “I don’t want to disappoint Master, let’s continue our work.” So we continued the path that Master had layed out for us.
Master said:“...“He’s right,And I'm wrong,”What’s to dispute?”(“Who's Right, Who's Wrong” from Hong Yin III)
Getting Rid of Bad Thoughts
Recently I have had several friends from high school contact me through an instant messaging service. I hardly had time to chat with friends, especially high school friends from 30 years ago. But I enlightened that this was no ordinary social chatting, but this was Master’s arrangement for me to save these friends of mine. They are successful individuals in society such as doctors, engineers, investors…. A number of them have their roots with Buddhism or Catholicism. The majority did not favor Falun Gong, having been brainwashed by the CCP, but also they disliked Chinese people.
As far as clarifying the truth, I had to get them to understand the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and get them to differentiate China from the CCP. I had sent out a great deal of information about the benefits of Falun Gong on health. Some of my friends seem to be more open about Falun Gong. One day I got a text from a friend of mine, an anesthesiologist:
“I think you should stop sending facts on Falun Gong to your friends. Go to any other forum to promote that. You are such an ignorant person, this is a place for friends to chat and share life stories not to talk nonsense.”
After reading his text, I was very sad and shocked, how can an old friend that I used to admire for his calmness, his attraction to meditation say those things? I immediately looked inwards. I realized that my state of clarifying the truth was not correct. When he posted his picture, I had a notion of undermining him, I thought how he looked so old and also he appeared so mean. Because of my bad notions towards him, it put words in my mouth and I told him that he had changed and aged a lot. I did not cultivate my speech and I had hurt his feelings. Hence this was the reason for the mean text. I regained my righteous thoughts, negated all those bad thoughts, attachment to showing off, undermining others, and competition. The tug of war with the evil forces lasted for about five minutes, then with compassion and pure thoughts I texted him:
“I am sorry for aggravating you. I thought with a longtime friend, I could share all the bad and sweet things that happened in my life. And I want you to know how I benefited from Falun Gong. I thought sharing these things would help people understand all the benefits of Falun Gong and understand the truth about how the CCP has persecuted Falun Gong practitioners, because still a lot of people did not know this.” Once I clarified the truth to him with a calm heart, he immediately wrote back. “Don’t worry! Please continue to share because everybody has an inner part that needs to be shared. Thank you.”
He had transformed into a completely different person. In that group there were more than 40 people who heard the truth about Falun Dafa, and Master will arrange for me to continue to save them at a deeper level.
One day, as I was showing the exercises to a new practitioner, I got a phone call from a friend in my high school group. She wanted to invite me to come to show her how to practice the exercises. She said dozens of people in the group had witnessed the conflict between me and my friend and admired how I had changed my friend’s arrogant attitude. I did tell her that it was my shortcoming for not thinking about others. Then I accepted the invitation to fly to Texas. I did not realize at the time that it was Master’s arrangement for me to wander about to eliminate my karma and save beings. The lady of the house just overcame a life and death sickness, and she was a pharmacist, and her husband a physician. They believed in Buddha and God but they didn’t think Falun Gong was good. I didn’t know what to do yet, but I knew for sure that Master wanted me to save them. I studied the Fa and practiced the exercise as usual.
The night before I flew there, I had a dream: I was driving on a very narrow and dangerous street, and if I deviated my steering wheel a tiny bit, I would dive into the deep valley. That street led up to a palatial gorgeous palace, and then I was startled and woke up. I knew that this was my mission. They picked me up at the airport, and we talked happily about our high school memories. The next morning, I showed both of them the exercises. I didn’t let any notion take over. After that, the husband didn’t want the wife to continue learning. I knew the evil forces had influenced him because the night I got there, the electricity went out. He thought Falun Gong brought bad luck. I sent forth righteous thoughts for the power to come back. After sending righteous thoughts, the word pursuit popped up in my mind, Master had pointed it out to me. I immediately sent righteous thoughts to eliminate all bad thoughts, all attachments to pursuit and success. Master had already arranged everything.
Being Tested
After that night we got together, including some friends that I haven’t connected for a long time heard that I was visiting, so they all dropped by to see me. I knew that this was meant to be, Master arranged this. After dinner, they questioned me about the persecution. They interrogated me following the communist way, I knew they were testing my belief and my faith in the Fa. I calmly explained and clarified the truth to them that practitioners do not get involved in politics. "Just look at millions of people being tortured and killed--that would be enough to start up your compassion and empathy for the victims." I kept my righteous thoughts while talking to them.
I was very calm and then one friend asked me: “Last night everybody was impatient, arguing and testing you, and you were not upset?” I told them: “I practiced Zhen – Shan – Ren (Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance), and I want everybody to know that Falun Dafa is good. If you already have faith in something else, that is fine, but always remember Falun Dafa is good.”
They changed their attitude and a number of them wanted to learn the exercises. I realized the predestined relationship between them and I and they came here for the Fa. I almost lost the chance to save them.
Back home, a practitioner was sharing she had a dream that she saw nine people on a beautiful boat, and I was wearing pink. One person refused to get on the boat. I knew it was my friend’s husband. I hope he will change.
Master said:
“The old forces don’t dare to oppose our clarifying the truth or saving sentient beings. What's key is to not let them take advantage of the gaps in your state of mind when you do things.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston” from Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. II)
Thank you, Master, for taking care of me every moment of my cultivation life. I will keep working on saving sentient beings and go home with Master.
(Presented at the 2018 New York English Experience Sharing Conference)
