(Minghui.org) Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, said,
“The greatest manifestation of shan is compassion, and it is an expression of tremendous energy. It can disintegrate all that is not right.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2009 Washington DC International Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. IX)
My understanding of Master’s Fa is that such powerful energy can help Falun Dafa practitioners when they clarify the facts to people. It will enable people to learn the truth about Dafa, and dispel the lies and propaganda put out by the Chinese Communist Party and its state-run media against the practice.
When the old force factors behind a person are disintegrated, his or her human side will be able to sense the compassion of a Dafa practitioner.
I have experienced this firsthand when I was serving a three-year prison term for my faith.
Compassion has also helped to dissolve my resentment toward another practitioner, and helped me escape a dangerous situation. Cultivation of compassion also made the letters I wrote to clarify the facts about Dafa become more powerful and effective.
Imprisoned
I was sentenced to a three-year prison term in 2002 for practicing Falun Dafa. I was held in the city detention center for 16 months, before being transferred to a prison to serve the rest of my term.
Prior to my arrival at the prison, the practitioners there went on a strike to protest their illegal sentence, which was met with brutal suppression. The practitioners persevered however, and the prison authorities eventually compromised—the practitioners no longer had to do hard labor, just as long as they showed up at the workshops every day.
I was placed in the “training camp,” on my arrival at the prison, where a few criminal inmates were assigned to monitor me. Their job was to try to get me to stop practicing Falun Dafa, but they soon gave up after realizing that I wouldn’t change my mind no matter what. However, they told me that they still needed to pretend to try and “transform” me, so they wouldn’t get into trouble with the guards.
After about a week or so, the guards transferred other practitioners out of our team. The inmates monitoring me told me that they were moved because they had put so much effort into getting other practitioners to renounce their belief, but as soon as the practitioners returned to the cell at the end of the day, one look from me erased all of their work.
I was taken to a regular ward after the training camp, where a guard told me, “We're not even going to waste our time trying to transform you. Just don’t make any trouble for us.”
Cleaning the Blackboard
The workshop I was assigned to was on the third floor of a building, in which the notorious “transforming” team was housed on the first floor.
One morning, on my way to the workshop, I passed by the first-floor hallway and saw a blackboard with an article written in chalk. It was by a “transformed” practitioner slandering Dafa.
The practitioners started talking about the article after arriving at the workshop. We knew that we couldn’t let such an article poison the minds of the people here, so I suggested that we write a letter and deliver it to the guards in that ward.
I wrote the letter, and another practitioner threw it through a window on the first floor, on her way to get water.
The blackboard wasn't there at the end of the day. However, it reappeared with the article untouched after having merely been put away for a few days.
A practitioner who sat next to me at lunch said, “We have to erase it.” I nodded in agreement.
Before leaving the workshop that day, the practitioner and I grabbed a rag. We didn’t say a word to each other, and followed the rest out of the workshop.
The hallway was full of inmates leaving the building. Without looking at anybody, we walked straight up to the blackboard and started erasing the article. With what felt like just a few strokes, the entire blackboard was wiped clean.
We didn’t find out until later that another group of practitioners also made plans to erase the article that day. When they found the blackboard clean, they were delighted.
The Dafa practitioners were unified by one pure thought: that we must uphold the Fa, and stop sentient beings from being poisoned by slanderous words against Dafa.
The prison authorities never mentioned the incident, and no investigation was conducted to find out who did it.
“The Video was Fake. They're all Fake”
The kindness exhibited by Dafa practitioners’ often rubbed off on the people around us, including the inmate assigned to monitor us. Four inmates were assigned to monitor one practitioner around the clock, which gave us the opportunity to tell them about Dafa.
These inmates spent most of their time around practitioners, and knew that Dafa practitioners are good people. Seeing that the inmates were becoming more friendly toward practitioners, the prison authorities decided to separate practitioners from regular inmates, and kept us out of the workshops.
The guards in the workshops, however, continuously played the CCP’s propaganda programs slandering Dafa.
A practitioner whose celestial eye was open saw that each inmate in the workshop had a rope around their neck, which was tightening with every negative thought they had towards Dafa after watching the slanderous programs.
The inmates often talked about the videos when they returned to the cell.
The prison authorities tried to incite hatred and create conflicts between inmates and practitioners. However, my team lead was very supportive of Dafa. She had shared a cell with a Dafa practitioner for several months at a detention center, and it just so happened that she had an affair with that practitioner’s husband. But the practitioner didn’t resent her, and instead treated her like a sister and told her the truth about Dafa. The team lead was very touched by the practitioner's actions, and even started learning the Falun Dafa exercises.
That night, the team lead gathered us all together, and said, “Let’s talk about the videos. Whatever anyone wants to talk about is fine.”
There were three practitioners in our team, all in the medical profession. We used common sense and our knowledge in modern medicine to explain each of the discrepancies of the self-immolation video that they were forced to watch. All of the inmates listened quietly. After we were done talking, an inmate said, “The video was fake. They're all fake.”
Over a dozen inmates in our team learned the truth about Dafa that night, and understood in their hearts that Dafa is good.
Resentment
When our materials production site was ransacked by the police in 2010, the practitioner in charge was arrested, and later released on medical parole.
One night, I dreamed of that practitioner looking very upset. She was staring at me with a face filled with resentment.
Another practitioner delivered me a letter the next day that was from her. In the letter, she said that under pressure from the police, she gave them my mine and my brother’s details. She naively said that the police wouldn’t do anything, except for visiting us and asking some questions. She added at the end, “I just wanted to go home.”
My brother and I felt resentment toward this practitioner, as we had welcomed her into our home when she had to leave her hometown a few years ago to avoid persecution. How could she do this to us?
I just couldn’t shake off the feeling that the police could show up at any time. I dreamed of this practitioner again, and she still had a resentful look.
My mom called me at work the next day, and told me that my brother had been arrested—the police were rummaging through our home as she spoke. My mom asked me to pick up my niece after school and take her somewhere else, so that she wouldn’t be traumatized by what was happening at home.
After my brother’s arrest, I felt a huge amount of pressure crashing down on me. Fear crept in, and I thought I would be next.
I looked out the window whenever I got a free moment and wondered which one of the cars parked outside was there to monitor me. If anyone showed up wearing a uniform, I immediately froze. Other practitioners suggested that I run away.
I thought long and hard about the many times my family and I were arrested and detained when the persecution first started, and how it had caused our relatives and friends to become skeptical about Dafa.
It was only in recent years that we started to turn things around, and slowly proved to them that Dafa is good. If I gave up my job and left now, all of our efforts would end up in vain, and I would likely push them further away from Dafa.
I decided not to leave.
Though my righteous thoughts weren’t strong, I wanted to walk the path that Master arranged for me. I was confident that Master would help me in dangerous situations.
I dreamed of that practitioner with the dreadful stare again. She appeared in front of me by a deep ditch. I thought that I could jump over the ditch, but fell a few inches short. I reached out and grabbed hold of a rock on the other side, hanging off the edge. As I was dangling off the edge, I saw my co-worker sitting in a small hut, looking right at me. After I managed to climb up, with much difficulty, I asked her bitterly why she didn’t come and help me. She responded, “Didn’t you want to cultivate? Aren’t you supposed to cultivate yourself?”
After I woke up, I tried to recall the details. I realized that my brother and I must have hurt her in a previous life somehow. And that the co-worker was suggesting that I can't hold resentment toward the practitioner for giving our names to the police. Master was telling me that only I could cultivate through the situation, and get rid of my resentment.
After I calmed down and thought more clearly, I tried to understand the practitioner's situation when she was under severe pressure from the police. Isn’t this also the old forces’ trick to separate Dafa practitioners? Isn’t my resentment toward her exactly what the old forces wanted?
With these thoughts, I suddenly felt something heavy fall out of me—I could almost hear my resentment hitting the ground.
Persistent Truth Clarification Helps Change Peoples Hearts
Many years ago, the then head of the local Domestic Security Division arrested her own kin—a couple who were Dafa practitioners. As a result, she climbed up the ladder and rose to power of division head. The husband of the couple died in prison as a result of torture.
I couldn't operate a computer at the time, and I asked another practitioner to help send information about this incident to the Minghui website to expose her bad deeds.
When she saw her information published on the Minghui website, the division head was furious and declared to arrest more practitioners.
However, with her other relative persistently clarifying the facts to her about Dafa and the persecution, she and her husband eventually quit the CCP.
When she retired, she gave all of the Dafa books that she had confiscated during her tenure back to her relative.
Importance of Documenting the Persecution
I think it’s important to document accounts of the persecution, and all the sacrifices practitioners have made. I have recorded my own experiences, and encourage others to do the same.
I have helped many practitioners who are illiterate to write articles. I took notes as they shared their experience. Then I wrote the articles for them, and emailed them to the Minghui website.
Some practitioners were concerned about writing their experiences through fear of being targeted by the police. Others had been severely tortured, and didn’t want to dig into these painful memories. After sharing my understandings of the Fa, and encouraging them, most wrote down their experiences, and I emailed them to Minghui.
Most of these articles have been published on the Minghui website.
Using a Divine Pen
I was fired as a government employee for my belief in Falun Dafa, and have been working as a contractor for the past ten years. My hours are long, and I don’t have a lot of free time.
When I saw other practitioners go out every day to talk to people about Dafa, I felt anxious that I wasn't able to do the same. Then I remembered what Master said,
“The divine pens deter those demons in human skinLike sharpened blades, they extirpate rotten spiritsThe old forces pay not the Fa its due respectWielding the brush you shall subdue the surge of madness” (“Deterrence,” Hong Yin Volume II, Translation Version A)
So I decided to write letters to let people know the facts about Dafa. A handwritten letter seemed more personal and friendly than a typed one.
The first letter I wrote was to the new division head of the local Domestic Security Division, who had caused so much suffering to local practitioners and their families, as she climbed to power.
She personally led the arrest of my brother, and the ransacking of our home. When my mother petitioned for my brother’s release at the police station, she was hostile toward her and pushed her.
I listed all the crimes that she had committed in the letter, and told her that her name was listed as part of an international investigation. I told her that she would not have a bright future if she continued doing bad deeds, and that she should use her power to treat Dafa practitioners with kindness, so that she and her family would have a bright future.
As I wrote more and more, my resentment toward her disappeared. I became calm and compassionate, as if I was writing to a friend that I cherished very much. In my letter, I told her that Dafa had spread to more than 100 countries and regions around the world, and how the persecution and organ harvesting of Dafa practitioners had attracted international attention and condemnation.
I asked her to position herself well so that she wouldn’t be implicated when Jiang Zemin, the then head of the CCP, who launched the persecution in 1999, is brought to justice.
I heard that both she and her husband had health issues, so I included a link to the article Falun Dafa Brings Hope to Desperate Mother and Her Dying Son, and told her that she could read other articles on the Minghui website.
Division Head's Behavior Changes
I went to the bank one day trying to deposit money at the ATM machine. However, both ATM machines were broken, which gave me a bad feeling. I became so befuddled that I forgot to grab my bank card from the machine, and even left my wallet, which had about 200 yuan cash with truth-clarification messages on them. Someone found the wallet and turned it into the police.
The police arrested me the next day. At the police station, the division head of the Domestic Security Division and a male officer came to interrogate me. When the division head walked in, the first thing she mentioned was that I looked good. She liked my outfit, and complimented me on my rosy complexion.
During the interrogation, she repeatedly told me to be safe and take care of my family. I sensed that she was not opposing Dafa, and sincerely wished me well. She told me she was very busy, and that she wasn’t actively going after practitioners, and only got involved in the case because she had to.
The division head went through my purse, and found a letter filing a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin (the former CCP leader), which I had not mailed out.
She looked at it, and said, “You still have this letter from 2015?” Then she folded it, and put it back in my purse.
I didn’t feel that I was being interrogated, but instead just having a chat. I was allowed to leave after two hours, and got everything back, including the two hundred yuan in cash.
This division head later released another practitioner, despite opposition from the police chief. Her reason was that the practitioner had a young child at home that needed to be taken care of.
I used my divine pen to write many more letters to people.
Through writing these letters, I gradually let go of my resentment and competitive mentality. I was able to remain calm, and was filled with compassion when I wrote them.
I felt that the police officers had it the worst in this persecution, and were truly pitiful.
Saving sentient beings with my pen is one of the abilities that Master gave me, and it is my unique path in cultivation and truth-clarification.
