My name is Zhiyuan Wang. I' a practitioner from Boston and work as a researcher in Harvard Medical School. I attained the Dafa in February 1998. After one year' cultivation, I deeply realize that Falun Dafa is a genuine, orthodox cultivation way and can genuinely improve people' spirituality, maintain their health, and help them become healthier, more noble, supernatural persons! Cultivating Falun Dafa is the sole wish in my life. The following is the story of my attaining the Dafa and part of my cultivation experience. As early as 1983, I began to practice Qigong. I was suffering from a disease called "Progressive Spinal Muscular Atrophy". Neither Western nor Chinese medicine could cure it, and it is clearly diagnosed as an "incurable disease" in Western medicine. I myself am a doctor and really knew that there was nowhere to go, so I turned to Qigong to try my luck. I began learning a kind of Qigong. At first the feeling was not bad, but soon after some problems came up. The more I practiced, the stronger my capabilities became. However, my physical condition got worse and worse, and more diseases came. I suffered from duodenal ulcer, enteritis, urethra stones, and more. A massive hemorrhage of the digestive track happened twice, in 1994 and 1997. Especially the first time, in 1994, because of the shock of blood loss, my blood pressure could hardly be detected and I almost passed away. Thereafter, dizziness, fatigue, loss of memory, and apparent aging bothered me for many years. I always felt exhausted after a whole day' work and even lost the strength to speak. My Qigong teacher later died as a result of curing others' diseases. I realized this Qigong was not what I searched for. I decided to find a genuine master. Several friends and I searched everywhere. However, the popular kinds of Qigong in society were all evil and fake ways just to cheat people out of their money. Where is the master of orthodox cultivation? Where should I go? It was just like the saying: "there is no map for me to find a master and no way to go to Heaven." Sometimes I looked up to the sky and cried in my heart:" Master, where are you?! Where is the orthodox cultivation way?". In 1995, before I went abroad, my friends and I made a promise that we would each go search for the master and inform the others when we found him. One day in February of 1998, the good news I had been longing for finally came. A friend in China wrote to me that Falun Gong is the genuine cultivation way, the best one! I was so excited when I read her letter. I realized this was what I dreamed of. So I couldn' help but go out in search of it, and soon made contact with an assistant in Cambridge. I luckily attended the 9-session seminar three days later, watched master' nine lecture video tapes, and learned the five sets of exercises thereafter. Then I began my journey of cultivation. The first day of the seminar, my physical reaction was very obvious. I always wanted to go to the bathroom and there were waves of warm current in my back, flowing through my whole body every so often. I didn' know what it was, and didn' think about it. What I did was just listen to the lecture. Usually I was very tired after a day' work and felt dizzy and sleepy. During the lecture I slept sometimes; however, I found my eyes were so bright and my head was so clear on my way home after the lecture. I felt lightness and comfort that I hadn' experienced for many years. I understood that the Master was purifying my body. The symptoms in my stomach disappeared the fifth day, and the discomfort of having the urethra stones stopped after that. Muscular twitching, weakness, and the other symptoms all vanished one after another. Thus my entire body recovered. My energy and physical condition reached a wonderful status that had never happened in the last 20 years. It is Falun Dafa that has bestowed a new life on me. Last March at the New York Conference, I was lucky to see our honorable Master. It was especially unforgettable that Master answered my son' and my questions, and removed our doubts and worries regarding cultivation. It was a great encouragement for us. I am a rather strong person. As an adult, I had never cried at all. However, during the conference, I kept weeping continually, and sometimes the tears were just like a spring. Later I realized that it was the Master who purified my body. Not long after this, I experienced many of the phenomena that Master told us about. Sometimes I could see the rotating Falun and hear the exercise music. At the beginning, I didn' pay much attention to reading the book. Then I read the article Melting Into the Law: "As a Dafa practitioner, what his mind is filled with is all the Great Law, and therefore this practitioner is definitely a genuine practitioner. So, in the matter of learning the Law, you should have a sober understanding. Doing more reading and studying the books is the key to real improvement. To make it clearer, if you read the Great Law, you are actually changing, if you read the Great law, you are actually going up. Boundless connotations of the Great Law plus a supplementary means, practice of the exercises, will certainly enable you to reach the consummation." After I read this, I began carefully reading the entire book one lecture a day, or two or three lectures a day. On the seventh reading, a marvelous scene appeared. Every time I opened the book Zhuan Falun, every page was colored red, and got more and more red as I read more and more, just like red burning charcoal; even beams of golden light shined out of the seams of the words once in a while! I realized that Falun Dafa is a universal law and Zhuan Falun is a book from Heaven. Our Master told us in Zhuan Falun on the second page, "To tell you the truth, the whole cultivation process for a cultivator will be one of constantly giving up the human attachments". At first, I didn' understand the meaning here. After a year' cultivation, I have come to know that the meanings of these words are so deep and profound. Not long after my cultivation began, I found my hands carrying electricity; wherever I touched, I transmitted electricity. At first I was very excited because I knew it was cultivation energy. Sometimes my clothes were just like balloons when I took them off. Soon I felt the troubles. I was electrically shocked several times every day; sometimes it was strong enough to make me to jump. Especially when I touched metal things, it was such that I dared not even open a door with my hands. I thought it was because of my fear. If I didn' feel afraid, I wouldn' get shocked, but it remained the same next time. It lasted for almost a year. I always wanted to ask our Master about this at every conference, but I could never remember until the Australian conference in 1999. I asked a fellow practitioner to raise this question for me. Fortunately, Master Li answered it. I carefully recalled everything and realized that I had a kind of complacency at the beginning, then a show-off mentality, and an attachment for pursuing capabilities. Also I intentionally tried to feel it sometimes. When I was shocked uncomfortably, I then had the attachment of fear. After listening to Master' answers, I understood everything. It was the troubles that my attachments brought. Afterward the phenomena disappeared. My work is doing biomedical research. Once I worked on a genetic experiment. I thought I was a practitioner and should be a good person who does his work well, even better than others. So I did everything diligently and tried my best to be perfect. However, I always failed. Then I got a little worried. Once I prepared extremely carefully before the experiment. Every step was perfect. I decided to double-check one more time and then do it. I took the dish with the cells and tried to put it under the microscope. Just at this moment, I knocked the dish off the side of the microscope and everything spilled. Several days of work ended in vain. I suddenly got enlightened that it was because of my attachment. Superficially, I did everything for my work, but actually it was for seeking fame and interest. This experience was for eliminating my attachment to my work. After I put it down, I felt really relieved. Since then, I keep a peaceful heart when doing experiments and am not attached to any purpose. As a result, things go very smoothly and successfully each time. Several months after my cultivation, I realized more and more that Dafa is so good, and I wanted more and more to promote Dafa. The first attempt was to persuade my mother to cultivate. After I went abroad, my sick mother became the person I worried about the most. I thought how great it would be if she could learn Dafa, at least to cure her illnesses. So I wrote and called to persuade her to learn, even asked friends to buy the lecture and exercise tapes and to find out the practice sites for her. However, she just didn' go. I called my nephew so that he could force her to go to the practice site and learn the exercises. It still didn' work. I called so many times; sometimes she agreed to learn for the moment, if I pushed too hard, but she didn' end up going at all. Half a year passed. At last, I thought about how old my mother was and how bad her health was. There were not many days left for her. She might lose the opportunity if she didn' learn it now. If these methods didn' work, I was ready to go home myself to teach her. One day, we were reading Master' book. An Assistant read the following to me: "You are not able to interfere with the lives of others, nor can you intervene the fate of others, including that of your wife, sons, daughters, parents, or brothers. Can you decide those things?" My heart was suddenly touched and tears started to fall. Our Master is so compassionate and pointed to my problem by using another person' mouth. Is this the attachment of sentimentality? Moreover, there was also the attachment of pursuit in it. I also enlightened to the fact that it might be true that my attachment was the obstacle preventing her from attaining the Dafa. Cultivation is serious. To promote the Dafa is so sacred that we should not hold any attachment while doing it! So I put that down and didn' push her any more. I only told her that Falun Dafa is not an ordinary Qigong practice. It is cultivation. Three months later, which was in early July 1999, I called back home. My mother was happy to tell me, " I have been cultivating Falun Dafa. The third day of my listening to Master' lecture, my head was clear and my eyes were bright. I could see and hear everything. From then on, I started going to the park to do group practice at 3 every morning and come back at 8 o' I also practice for two hours every night. Just for one month, all my diseases have gone. Now I feel very energetic both mentally and physically. I can do all my housework. I cultivate and practice with all my heart." She sounded so strong and her tone was so determined. I couldn' believe my ears. Is that my old and sick mother? It' a miracle! Before cultivation, she was a patient in the late stage of lung cancer. After radiation therapy, her body was very weak. She also suffered from hypertension, diabetes, gallstones, gastritis, arthritis, and more. She felt dizzy and giddy, flustered, and short of breath everyday. She couldn' do anything and could not take care of herself. The doctors lost hope for her completely. However her health recovered after one month of cultivation practice. She can read and practice for seven hours, and do housework everyday. It is absolutely the truth! It is a miracle of Falun Dafa. Over one year' cultivation, I have continued reading the book and doing the exercises. For a while, I thought I was already quite a good cultivator, and didn' pay any attention to my problems in cultivation. One day several months ago, I got up late. I only finished one hour of standing exercise and it was almost time for work. What should I do? Should I continue my practice or stop it and go to work. My first thought was to continue the exercise. Practice shouldn' be delayed. It was not a big deal to be late for work. Nobody would say anything about it just once or twice; besides, I myself arranged my work schedule as a researcher. As long as I finished my work, it was not a problem. Also I could go home late. At this moment, I suddenly remembered Master' lecture in Singapore, "The way you harmonize the Law first is to be a good person. At the same time you are being a good person, you have been harmonizing the Law". "Then how can you, yourselves genuinely understand the Law, cultivate in the Law, and be a genuine practitioner in a noble way. Thus everybody is harmonizing the Law. In other words, you are protecting the Law because the behaviors of every practitioner in the society are representing the image of Falun Dafa, aren' they? If we behaved improperly, that would definitely bring damage to the Great Law. In that way, we can' say that we are harmonizing the Law". I enlightened to the fact that going to work on time, working hard, and being a good person were a part of cultivation. If I continued to practice and didn' go to work, wasn' I focusing on practice and forgetting about cultivation? Could I practice well if I hold this kind of selfishness? How can I represent the behavior of a Dafa practitioner? I' a cultivator and should be a good person. I should obey the rules of my work. Master said, "The fundamental reason for Gong to fail making progress is two words, ' and practice', and people would only pay attention to practice instead of cultivation". Thus I went to work immediately. Checking on how well I was following the principles of Dafa, I felt very ashamed and didn' deserve Master' compassion. I have been cultivating for more than a year, but still focused on practice and ignored cultivation. In the two words "cultivation and practice," cultivation should be the first. Then I looked at my practice status. How much have I progressed? I still couldn' do the full lotus position. My practice was one with pursuit. It was selfish and too far away from the standard of a cultivator. From that point, my heart was relieved and I felt it had opened. That day I made the full lotus position for the first time. Before this time, I had been considering it as a matter of practice, not related to Xinxing. These are some of my cultivation experiences. I' very pleased that I can share them with everyone. Please help me by pointing it out to me if there' anything improper. At last, let me read one of Master' poems: "Solid Cultivation": "To learn the Law and attain the Law, To learn from others how they study and cultivate diligently, To check everything happening around you to see if you' following the Law, To do this and fulfill it is the genuine cultivation".

I am a Chinese person residing overseas; I am also a Falun Gong practitioner. I would like to talk about my family' various experiences from cultivating Falun Gong. Just like most of the young generation born after the Great Cultural Revolution, I had no knowledge of the existence of Buddha and Gods; neither did I believe them. I had heard of various Qigong exercises flourishing all over China. I did not think anything special about those exercises except for some mystic feeling. Because my mom was not in good health, she had learnt different kinds of Qigong; however, they never had any effects. So I only regarded Qigong as "a physical exercise with some sort of mystic flavor". In early 1995, I found myself by chance in an overseas job. During the Christmas vacation of 1995, I went home to visit my parents in China. Before my trip, my mom wrote to me and mentioned that she and my dad were practicing Falun Gong. It really surprised me. There was nothing strange about my mom practicing it; however, it was beyond my imagination that my dad also practiced it. My dad was a modernist school artist with a degree from an art college. Painting is his only hobby. He put all of his heart on art research (Modernist Western Painting.) He would sacrifice anything for this cause. Because of this, my mom always quarreled with him. My dad painted more than one thousand paintings. His painting speed is stupendous. His work has been widely praised by many western people. He tried to become famous wholeheartedly in order to leave something behind for his children. However he was never able to achieve it. So he became more and more hot-tempered, and his health became worse day by day. Everyday, he needed to take many medicines for his stomach disorder. Upon meeting my parents, I was deeply shocked by the enormous changes in them, changes which made me extremely happy. They enjoyed a more harmonious relationship. My mom had become more positive. It became much easier for her to climb stairs. Before she practiced Falun Gong it took her a long time to climb the three-story building. It was my dad who had the biggest change: his once-gaunt face had a ruddy complexion. He had also cut his "artist" long hair. The most astonished thing to me is that he gave up the hobby of painting, which had made him so impatient. Except for doing well in his job, my dad used most of his spare time for Falun Dafa cultivation. Upon my arrival, my parents started to introduce Falun Gong to me. Having witnessed the tremendous benefits they had from practicing Falun Gong, I could not help reading Zhuan Falun (the main book of Falun Gong practice). I felt the book was very good after I finished reading it. I found the answers to many questions that had puzzled me. When I asked my father how he could put aside his treasured hobby so easily, I got this answer: "By reading Zhuan Falun, I realized that the original meaning of our lives is to go back to our original self, not to enjoy the life of everyday people. I have the universal law now, so I should make good use of my time in cultivation." As my vacation was short, I returned to work in a hurry and did not finish learning all five sets of exercises. I brought back all the Dafa books with me but did not find an exercise site close to my home. Without a good practice situation, I only read the books in my spare time without doing the exercises. My parents always wrote to me and sent me new articles so as to encourage me in my cultivation. The time was flying, and soon one year had passed. In February 1997, I once again visited China. When I saw my parents again, I could not believe what I saw with my eyes. My dad looked very young with a ruddy complexion and smoother skin; his epilepsy symptom had almost completely disappeared. The most incredible thing to my husband and me was that he was contacting the art galleries and the museums in the Province to donate all the paintings he did before he started cultivation. If any friends wanted to have some of his paintings, he was willing to give them away. However, before he started practicing Falun Gong, he treasured his work so much that he was never willing to let any of his work go. He would not sell them even though some people offered to buy them from him. His action of donating all his work really perplexed his relatives and friends. They thought he had gone insane. However my dad thought it did not coincide with the standard of a practitioner to have his paintings occupy the company' storage space due to the limited space of his home. I also heard from my mom that he was the assistant for the exercise site. Every morning he was in charge of bringing a tape player to the exercise site. No matter it was cold winter or hot summer he never failed. Soon I joined my parents in studying Fa and going to practice at the exercise site every morning. My dad took advantage of the 15 minutes' walk to the exercise the site to recite Zhuan Falun. Practitioners' cultivation experiences shared during group study of Fa helped me a lot. Through the three months studying the Fa and practicing with practitioners in China, I truly experienced Falun Dafa' incomparable sacredness. Just like Teacher wrote in the article "Environment": "The lofty conduct that Dafa disciples have established in this environment—including every word and every act—can make people realize their own weaknesses and identify their shortcomings; it can move one' heart, refine one' conduct, and enable one to make progress more rapidly. Therefore, new practitioners or self-taught disciples must go to the exercise sites to do the exercises." Soon my younger brother also started to cultivate in Falun Dafa. After I returned from China, I found a local exercise site with the help of an assistant center in Beijing, and started to study Fa and do exercises with local practitioners. In May 1998, I invited my mother to come here to take care of my little child. Since then, she began to live with me. During the Spring Festival, 1999, my father and brother also came here. Right after my father and brother went back to China, the April 25th incident happened. Upon reading in the local newspaper about the April 25th incident, I called my dad and brother to inquire about the situation. They had just come back from Beijing. After July 20, 1999, the evil forces began the ruthless crackdown and persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners in China. On July 22, they illegally searched my dad' house and confiscated his passport, deposit certificate, TV, camcorder, stereos, computer, etc. They had looted the house almost to the bare walls. They even tore apart a cotton quilt to look for Dafa material, since they thought my family would hide some in it. My dad and brother were illegally detained for one month. Having learnt this terrible news, we wrote to the United Nations human rights organizations to seek for support, because thousands upon thousands of Falun Dafa practitioners in China were detained or sentenced for no reason, and they are enduring tremendous hardships. Practitioners abroad also helped clarify the truth to the people of all countries in many ways. Several months later my dad was once again illegally detained because he had passed on Teacher' new articles and was reported to the authorities by a coworker. My brother was also detained even though he did nothing. In the detention center they were subjected to inhuman tortures: they were electrocuted, beaten, etc. After he was released my dad did not tell us of his sufferings in details because he did not want to get us worried and also because his phone was tightly monitored and his whereabouts were put under close surveillance. I learned about their experience after I read from Minghui net about the crimes committed by the local police precinct. Afterward I called home and verified that everything I read was true. My dad regretfully told me "I did not cultivate well enough, I did not handle some of the tests well. I feel so unworthy of our Teacher." After the detention, my dad and brother had been staying home studying Fa and doing exercises without going out to clarify the truth. After having read "Benevolent and Great Master" and "Serious Teaching" published on Minghui net, they were deeply touched and at once went to Beijing with other local practitioners. My dad and some practitioners unfolded a banner reading "Falun Dafa Is Good" in the Tiananmen Square. My brother and other practitioners went to distribute truth materials of Falun Dafa around in Beijing. Now my dad and brother have been illegally sentenced to three years in labor camp. I am proud of my dad and bother as well as tens of thousands of Falun Dafa practitioners in China who have stepped out to clarify the truth. Their courageous actions have inspired all overseas practitioners to clarify the truth to the people all over the world and to suffocate the evil. Even though we the overseas practitioners have also been interfered with and disrupted to some extent by the Chinese government, we can still freely do exercises outdoors and study Fa together, enjoying the basic rights as human beings. Now, my little daughter is almost 3 years old. She goes to the practice site to practice with us everyday and distributes the materials to passersby. Since January 2001, we have tried to have my relatives in China visit my dad and brother. However, my relatives were told that if my dad and brother would not submit repentance letters no visiting would be allowed, and the officials controlled the information about them very tightly. During the Chinese Spring Festival, my mom got word that my dad and brother had written repentance letters. The real situation could not be verified. We could not understand and felt very sorry for my dad and my brother at that time. But I believe that their hearts toward Dafa are steadfast and unchangeable forever. March 25, 2001 Author' note: Because my dad and brother are still detained it is not suitable to disclose their names here.

Friends of Falun Gong is an organization of supporters of practitioners of Falun Gong. The purpose of today' conference is to make clear to the International Olympic Committee, the serious concerns that Friends of Falun Gong has towards the current human rights situation in China¡ªfor the purpose of both upholding and defending the most basic human rights of Falun Gong practitioners and for the preservation of the fundamental principles of the Olympic Movement.