(Clearwisdom.net) I’m 71 years old and I started practicing Falun Gong in August 1996. Looking back over the 14 years on my cultivation path, I feel I have a lot to share.
Starting Cultivation Practice
In 1996, a friend introduced me to Falun Gong. When I started reading the book Zhuan Falun, I immediately began experiencing wonderful changes. My mind became clear, my heartbeat became steady, my body very relaxed, and I felt very comfortable regardless of how long I sat. Before I even finished this precious book, the more than a dozen diseases I had, including cerebral arteriosclerosis, neurasthenia, and rheumatism, which had bothered me for so many years, had disappeared. For the first time in my life I experienced the wonderful feeling of my body feeling light and without illnesses.
During the period of personal cultivation, I grasped every opportunity to read Zhuan Falun and memorize Master’s lectures in my spare time. I felt myself quickly improving. Wishing to share with others the wonderfulness of Falun Dafa, I discussed with coordinators in my area and we organized activities to introduce Falun Gong in every surrounding county and township. The number of local practitioners grew from four in 1995 to 700 in 1998. My cultivation was such that even though my legs ached and were very painful during the sitting meditation, afterward I felt great.
Cultivating and Improving Through Writing Reports
I am not well educated, but I took on the task of writing reports to the Minghui website (Chinese version of Clearwisdom.net) about the situation in our local area. Master expanded my wisdom, so despite my limited education, I have able to write many articles throughout the past eight years. Whether it was to expose the evil police, stories of good being rewarded with good and evil with evil, letters to authorities to appeal and share the goodness of Dafa, or experience sharing articles, I was able to write them.
I started writing articles to expose the evil.
In 2004, a fellow practitioner told me about his son being persecuted at Xinhua Forced Labor Camp in Sichuan Province. Because his son lived in the mountains and there were no other practitioners in the area except for the son’s wife, his situation would not be exposed in a timely manner. I understood that fellow practitioners’ issues are my issues, so I decided to write an article exposing the evil. Looking at articles on Minghui Weekly as reference, I wrote a summary and outline of what happened, and wrote the article following that outline, revising it again and again before I submitted it.
In the first half of 2005, by chance I overheard a farmer practitioner talking about an incident that took place in his village, an example of how good is rewarded with good and evil with evil. I knew it would be valuable for truth-clarification and validating Dafa if it were written as an article and published. So, after verifying the facts, I wrote the article and it was published on the Minghui website. During the second half of the year, a coordination group was formed in my area and I was given the role of writing articles.
After practitioners studied Master’s 2004 article, “Master's Comment on a Student's Article,” they all understood the importance and impact of writing articles to expose the evil. Everyone was willing to share the details of the persecution they had suffered. While working on those articles, I found huge gaps between fellow practitioners and myself, because my selfishness stood out in stark contrast to their compassionate unselfishness.
For me, the process of compiling fellow practitioners’ articles was a process of eliminating my human notions. Some articles were very wordy, and some articles needed more details. I told myself to be patient and not complain. After I finished the first draft, I verified the facts with the practitioner and modified it before finalizing it.
Sometimes practitioners weren’t happy when their long articles were edited and became shorter. They complained, saying next time they would not come to me. At the time, I didn't watch my xinxing, and I also became emotional when I heard that. In fact, the practitioners’ criticisms were targeting my attachments, because I also had complaints and was proud. After looking inward, I realized we were not following the standards of the Fa, but instead I was arguing with fellow practitioners about who was right and who was wrong.
Master said in “Fa Teaching Given in Manhattan,”
“Whether you are right or not is, for a cultivator, not important whatsoever. Don’t argue left and right, and don’t emphasize who’s right and who’s wrong. Some people are always stressing that they’re right, but even if you are right, even if you’re not wrong, so what? Have you improved on the basis of the Fa? The very act of using human thinking to stress who’s right and who’s wrong is in itself wrong. That’s because you are then using the logic of ordinary people to evaluate yourself, and using that logic to make demands on others. As gods see it, for a cultivator to be right or wrong in the human world is not important in the least, whereas eliminating the attachments that come from human thinking is important, and it is precisely your managing to eliminate those attachments rooted in your human thinking as you cultivate that counts as important.”
I told myself that whether or not the fellow practitioners’ comments were sincerely meant to help me improve, I should first look inside. While working with fellow practitioners, whenever an issue arose, I should first look at their strengths and find my shortcomings regardless of what we are doing, and if I see their shortcomings, I should also look inside myself to see if I have similar attachments. If don't, I should examine myself to see why I had that inappropriate thought, why their comments bothered me, and if at that moment my thoughts were based on human notions.
I’d like to share Master’s teachings with fellow practitioners so that we may improve together.
“You need to really, truly put some effort into cultivation, and not lapse into just doing it superficially; you shouldn’t have so many human attachments. As Master sees it, your each and every thought, and your every single action, reveals to me what your heart is like. What I least like are those who are all talk and no action. Nor do I like those who are cunning. What I like are those who are honest and simple, sincere and down-to-earth. I also hope that you can all, after so many years of cultivating, positively grow in wisdom and not grow so much in terms of knowing how to deal with worldly matters or how to conduct yourself as a human being leading a worldly life.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2010 New York Fa Conference”)
Thank you, Master!
