The Thoughts of Five Falun Gong Practitioners on the Global Walk 2001, from Boston to D.C.

June 26, 2001

Day 1

I've embarked on the 2001 Global Walk from Boston to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness to the American public about the injustice done in China to the Falun Gong practitioners, who are being unjustly killed and tortured for simply upholding their belief in Falun Gong.

After an Amnesty International representative's statement of public support, a press release about the persecution of people in China, interviews by a local newspaper, and an interview by an Associated Press reporter, five of us embarked on what will be a three-week march from Boston to the nation's Capitol. Some practitioners will accompany us as far as possible before taking the train back.

We carry a yellow banner with the message "Stop the Killing in China." Some of us wear the yellow t-shirts printed with "China: Stop Persecuting Falun Gong."

Among the group are two high school students, a housewife, and a computer engineer.

Along the journey through the cities and towns, we listen to the video lectures and to the Falun Gong music. We also give the "Two Years Too Long" 2001 Global Walk bookmarks, on which are printed the facts about the persecution, to passers-by along our way. Some people show their support by honking their car horns as they drive by. People have also offered us money although we do not accept donations. We sincerely thank them, and let them know that this is a self-supported trip.

Two elderly women who had heard about the walk from the local media stopped on the road to offer us sodas.

On the first day, as we walked through the various suburbs leading out of Boston, I thought about how many hands of support had been put into this Global Walk project. Volunteers contacted the media, made banners, mapped out the walking route, drove the support car, and coordinated the walk, and many others cheered us on.

A practitioner who couldn't join the walk drove by, parked his car, and came to quickly greet us along the way. This simple act to show his support made a difference. Later, another practitioner drove by with other practitioners to greet us. One practitioner got out of the car to hug us; her heart was filled with tears of joy. There was another Western practitioner who greeted us with drinking water. A Western practitioner who had been walking with us decided to come back after he dropped his car off at home. When he left, a new walker joined us. Later in the night, I smiled when I heard he had called us several times to find out our whereabouts so he could catch up with us to walk. He would be walking with us for about a week. This was the good news to end our first day.

-S

Master says: "Study the Fa, obtain the Fa. Share and compare in studying, share and compare in cultivating. Compare each and every deed [with Fa]. Accomplishing [the above] is cultivating." I still remember in the early days when I first began to learn Falun Dafa, I heard veteran practitioners saying that Teacher once ate a student's leftover food, as wasting food is creating karma. I was deeply touched then, but I did not do well after that. And oftentimes, I would find some excuses for myself. Although I would not waste food without concern as before, still occasionally, I would waste food.

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Today, I discarded an apple. It was rotten with two holes. I bit the rotten areas away, tried again, but I still decided to throw it away. I told myself it was no longer fresh. Just then, a fellow practitioner took it out from my trash bag, peeled it with his knife, and said he would try it. He bit a piece and said, "it is too ripe, but it is still very delicious." He ate it so naturally. Watching him, I felt shameful and regretted deeply for my poor ability of enlightenment and for my attachment.

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I thought of Master's poem Solid Cultivation in Hong Yin [Master's book of poetry], and I felt grateful for Master's great compassion to arduously save all beings. From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to wholeheartedly strive upward and solidly cultivate myself.

-P Before today, I had never realized just how true the following phrase could be: "It is easier said then done." On this first day of walking, I had already doubted my ability to walk all the way to D.C.

I am young -- only 17 years old-- so I thought to myself, "of course I should be able to walk 25 miles a day if an over 50 year-old man could walk twice as fast. Mr. Teng, a Chinese practitioner, walked from his hometown to peacefully appeal in Beijing. The journey of 1,000 miles only took him 25 days. But for me, it seemed that as soon as pain in one part of my body eased, another part of my body became extremely painful. Compared to Mr. Teng's experiences, however, what is this "hardship" that I am going through? Unlike Mr. Teng, we do not have to beg for our food and we all have sneakers (some of us have new shoes just for this walk).

Thinking about Mr. Teng's plight, as well as that of thousands of other Chinese practitioners who have walked to appeal in Beijing, my eyes fill with tears. Suddenly, there is no question about whether I can walk anymore. I can and I will.

Please do not misunderstand me; I am not walking to determine if I can suffer as much as they can. I am walking so that their walking and suffering can be known outside of China. I will walk as much as time and my body permit. As more and more people learn the truth about Falun Gong -- a virtuous and ancient cultivation practice guided by Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Forbearance -- the harder it will be for the Chinese government to completely ignore the severe human rights violations it has been inflicting on its people.

-H

June 27, 2001

Day 2

This has really been an amazing day for us; a day full of touching moments and stories. We started walking in the morning as usual, but we did not make very much progress. One of the reasons is that one of our walkers was tired and fell behind from time to time. Of course, we stopped each time and waited for her to catch up. It must have been very trying on her self-esteem, though, because the rest of us were also affected to a certain extent. I admit that the rest of us were not compassionate enough towards her because we were focusing most of our attention on continuing the arduous walk. She had to call out for us to stop again and again. Later in the afternoon, strained by her wanting to walk and her inability to keep up with the group, she stopped and cried. Completing our 20-mile goal became less important as our top priority became the need to solve our "walking" dilemma as a group. So we sat down in a circle and began discussing our shortcomings and understandings on this walk. As people who practice Falun Gong, we have to conduct ourselves according to "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance," which are the principles of this mind-body cultivation practice. We realized that in the midst of this, or any, ordeal, we should look inward and search for the root of the conflict within ourselves. I found that I was not being compassionate towards everyone else on this walk. It turns out that everyone has some difficulty that he or she needs to overcome during this trip. Thus, I need to be considerate of others and understand their conditions. That moment was really revelatory to me because it allowed me to confront my shortcomings. In the end, all of us were faced with a serious question: "Do we want to continue walking till the end or throw in our towels and call an end to this walk?" Eventually, the girl who had cried decided to keep walking, and we all pulled our hearts together for a joint effort. Frankly, I was amazed to see just how fast we walked afterwards. How much heart we put into the walk really does make a world of difference.

-H

June 30, 2001

Day 5

Today I think things have gone full circle for me. For the first four days, I was always the straggler. Despite my determination to keep walking, I had to continually ask the group to take rest breaks. Today, though, I was the person encouraging the other walkers to keep going...

On the second day, my hardest day thus far, I broke down and cried. I was exhausted, and I was in a lot of pain. I could not take full strides because I had a huge blister on my foot. I felt hurt and that I was not being looked after. When I cried again that evening, it was more out of confusion than anything else. I was still certain that I wanted to continue. I worried, however, that I was keeping the group behind schedule. What if I felt this way every day? I did not calm down until I meditated that night. After calming down, I realized how selfish I had been. I even bickered with our coordinator about getting me something I thought I "needed" (a box of mints). On a side note, I've probably eaten 3 mints in total during these last two days I've had them.

Tears again filled my eyes. This time, however, I was calm. I am not here for a stroll in the park. As photographer Bob Breidenbach of the Providence Journal captioned a photograph that he took, this is "a walk with purpose." The purpose is to spread awareness of the brutal persecution of innocent people who simply want to meditate in peace and believe in Truth-Compassion-Tolerance. It is not to make me feel comfortable. What are these small aches and pains compared to the appalling conditions for those who practice Falun Gong in China face every day? If what they are feeling is a dog bite, what we are feeling is only a mosquito bite. Yet this mosquito bite can bring awareness of the dog bite.

The third day was better for me physically but I was still a straggler. Still, I was one of the first to ask for breaks even though I knew the other walkers were just as tired and were in just as much, if not more, pain.

Yesterday, the fourth day, my blister started hurting a little again. I was tired, mentally and physically. This time I asked for a break with a we-should-not-tire-ourselves-out excuse. Another female practitioner was in much more pain than I was and explained to me that even though we had already walked 25 miles that day, we should still try to walk as far as possible. This way, we would have more time to talk to the press later on. After all, we are walking to spread awareness of what is happening in China every day.

I did not clearly understand her words that day. I was still grumbling to myself that we could always use a few hours to rest that day as I reluctantly followed everyone else. I thought: "If they continue walking, then I will walk as well." Between long walking stretches (sometimes 15 minutes feel like 45 minutes when my legs are in pain), we would rest in some shade. When we rested around 5pm, we decided to all do the sitting meditation for 10 minutes. Meditation gave me the inner tranquility to truly look into myself. All of the other walkers experienced pain similar to mine. Why did I want to be treated specially? I'm not walking for me. I'm part of a group-effort to bring to light the persecution in China. I walked much better afterwards.

Today, for a while I was getting less tired as I walked. For so many days, the other walkers have repeatedly helped me physically (like carrying my water bottle) and mentally (like talking about their understandings with me to keep my mind off the walking). My legs were fine today. The blister did not hurt at all and is getting smaller. On this cycle of ups and downs, I have had a role reversal in four days. More than ever before, I understand exactly why we are walking. I plan on staying on the up of this cycle as long as possible.

-M

July 1, 2001

Day 6

Today upon waking up, I completed two sets of the exercises, managed to read a bit, and checked the Internet. I stopped dreading the long walk, and I reminded the other walkers to bring their ponchos, as there were cloudy skies.

The group has made a breakthrough today, as we seem to have walked tirelessly. I knew we would be all right once we made it through the initial hurdle. We walked with occasional breaks, during which we did the exercises. A Spanish-speaking woman stopped to talk with us. Although we couldn't speak her language, somebody roughly translated bits and pieces of what she tried to communicate to us. We gave her a bookmark before we parted to resume our walk.

In the afternoon, two men join us for a little while. They held the yellow "Stop the killing in China" banner high and marched alongside us. Along the way, about ten more people joined our team. Then the sky became overcast and rain began to pour down. We continued our walk through the rain with the new walkers in single file, so as to stay out of traffic's way. I asked whether the others wished to stop when we came to an intersection. No one seemed to mind the rain, so we decided to continue on. The visiting walkers left us one by one during the storm. The five of us all decided to take our ponchos off after the sun came out. We are walking to spread the message for China to end the persecution of millions of innocent lives; a persecution in which even children, women, the elderly, and the disabled are not spared. It was a refreshing change from the previous days' 80 to 90 degree heat. Our driver dropped by and waited for us down the road. We decided to drop off our unnecessary baggage, and we held onto the yellow banner so more people could see the message while we continued to keep up our pace in the pouring rain.

The next driver walked with us during the afternoon, before beginning his role as driver tomorrow. We waved goodbye to one walker who has spent the last five days leading us on. I heard there were other volunteers who wanted to join in the walk but they have been discouraged in order to minimize the city's concern. The police, who had been informed of the walk, came by to see our progress when it started to rain.

-S

A thunderstorm suddenly struck while we were walking today. What initially was a mere drizzle, quickly developed into a rainstorm and then a menacing thunderstorm. The rain was so heavy and thick that I could hardly see through my glasses. Periodically, I had to mop the rainwater off them. Later on when the rain became very heavy, I decided to take off my glasses until the rain let up. We still kept on walking, however, because this walk to stop the torture in China has to be done regardless of the weather. We were delightfully surprised to have Connecticut police keeping an eye out for our safety. One police car pulled over and the policeman offered us friendly assistance when we stopped for a "wet" break during the storm. The lightning was so close to us that it seemed to have barely missed us each time it struck. The thunder sounded directly over our heads, and the rain dropped down in sheets. Nevertheless, we continued walking while holding our banner, which read: "Stop the Killing in China", and the rain gradually stopped.

-H

Today was another day of firsts. This was the first day that I was able to run since beginning the walk. During the first few days, I focused on myself only, and I did not even bother to go 10 feet off our path to hand an onlooker a bookmark explaining our walk. Today, however, I was able to talk to many people and I thought that, perhaps, I was making up for all the chances to talk to people that I had missed the days before. Distance was no longer a problem, as my feet no longer hurt. I felt that I was accomplishing what I came to do to let people know about the persecution in China.

This was also the first day that it rained. When the rain began to fall, about a dozen people who also practice Falun Gong were walking with us. We ignored it until about five o'clock, when the local walkers started leaving one by one. I started to complain to myself that we should be taken care of and that we should find dinner. Not until 20 minutes later did I realize again how selfish I was. My feet did not hurt and my legs were not really tired. Everyone else was in worse shape today than I was. Everyone else was also drenched with rain.

Recalling once again the plight of the Falun Gong practitioners in China, I picked up my pace and kept walking. Just recently, a female Falun Gong practitioner was beaten and raped by a police officer on the side of a street in Beijing. There were a dozen onlookers but not one did a thing even though she repeatedly cried out for help.

I am very happy that it is not that way here. I am glad that people's hearts move when we mention the persecution. The police here are kind and gracious. Today, one from Waterford, Connecticut even stopped by and asked if we needed anything. I was speechless when yesterday a kindhearted non-practitioner not only wrote us a touching and meaningful letter but also dropped by to meet us all in person. What we have been doing has not been in vain. By exposing these horrible crimes, those police in China will think twice before striking another person.

-M

July 2, 2001

Day 7

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How time flies! It is already the sixth day since we set off from Boston. During these days, many things happened. We would like to share a few experiences with you.

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1. Physical Strength and Willpower

Walking 20 to 25 miles a day, for the first few days, we really had to "persevere, lift the feet, the ten-thousand-pound legs." In order to send out the SOS emergency call to stop the persecution and the killing of Falun Gong practitioners in China, we sped up our steps without notice. On the second day, it was extremely hot and some of us got blisters on our feet. Even for the walkers without blisters, they also found their feet extremely painful. Each step forward was a challenge to the physical body as well as a test of mental forbearance. As time went on, it was not our physical bodies but our willpower that supported us. When we reached the limit of physical endurance, we reminded ourselves of these words from Zhuan Falun: "When it's difficult to endure, you can endure it. When it's impossible to do, you can do it." It is just as Master said in Zhuan Falun: "When you are overcoming a real hardship or tribulation, you try it. When it looks impossible and is said to be impossible, give it a try and see if it is possible. If you can actually do it, you will indeed find: "After passing the shady willow trees, there will be bright flowers and another village ahead!" On the fifth day even though it was still very hot, we walked very fast. When it came to the sixth day, we did not even feel any hardship.

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2. Individuals and the Group

Since none of us had ever experienced much physical suffering, and each had been taken good care of at home as "the pearl on the palm" or "a child-emperor," we had usually requested support from others, either mentally or in daily life. Seldom had we ever considered or taken care of others. Thus, we had some conflicts after a few days of walking. Some wanted to walk fast while others wanted to walk slowly. However, we all share the same belief in Falun Gong that we cannot give up. After three days of walking, we came to realize that we are a collective entity, and we should forebear whether we walk fast or slowly. As our conscientious minds grow, our steps become more in harmony.

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3. Support from the Media and the people

Currently even though there are only a few of us walking, behind us there are many more practitioners supporting us, forming a great voice and impetus. On the way, many people honked their car horns, gave us the thumbs-up sign, or waved their hands to greet us. This has been very encouraging for us. A Western man wrote a special letter to us: "Your action is truly great. It is an action of justice..." Before we entered Rhode Island, a picture of us was published in the largest newspaper in Rhode Island. Along our way, many people greeted us in many different ways. Many said they read the article. We used every opportunity to give everyone who passed by our specially designed bookmark and Falun Gong information, as well as to help the predestined people establish a bright future. Sometimes we felt so tired that it was difficult to raise our feet, and each step forward had to be done with great effort. However, we would walk an extra 10 to 20 meters more to hand out bookmarks to passing by pedestrians. One day, in order to catch up with a runner and give him one of our bookmarks, a practitioner ran 20 to 30 meters despite already having walked over a dozen miles. It was the strength of compassion and benevolence that was supporting him. We all felt moved by his heart of compassion.

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We all know that this is just the beginning. The road ahead is still very long, but our hearts harbor an unbreakable belief in Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Forbearance, as do those indomitable practitioners in China. May we realize our promise with our actions and walk until we reach the end of our journey in Washington D.C.

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-P

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July 4, 2001

Day 9

For as long as I can remember, I have always had a degree of stage fright. In spite of that, today I dealt with a variety of questions during two live camera interviews, one right after the other. I overcame my fear of being on camera because I knew it would help raise awareness about the persecution in China, which is the goal of this walk. A few days earlier, selfishness probably would have wanted me to pull out of the interview. I was surprised that for a while, words flowed very naturally from my mouth. That was probably because I believed so strongly in what I was saying. When I again realized that I was being videotaped, however, I felt butterflies in my stomach and I stuttered a little. I am still new at this, and I hope to do better next time. It was very encouraging for me to hear that both reports came out very well. I don't know if I will ever feel fully comfortable while being videotaped, but I know that if I could do it again to raise awareness about the brutal persecution in China, I would do it.

-M