(Minghui.org) I started practicing Falun Dafa in 1996. Before this, my life was very difficult, and I was miserable. Because of the Chinese Communist Party's birth control law, I have had to have five abortions. Following one of the abortions, I experienced severe hemorrhaging and was hospitalized. The next morning I left my bed to go the washroom, but it was occupied. I recall thinking that I would have to wait, and then I lost consciousness. When I woke up, many people had gathered around me and were calling my name, but I couldn't hear them clearly. Later, a relative of a patient in the same ward with me recognized me and asked somebody to carry me back to my bed. During the years after that, I was very weak. I had to take medicine every day and I always felt very cold.
At that time I was only in my thirties, but I looked like someone in her forties. The hospital was unable to tell what my problem was. The Chinese doctor said that I was severely lacking in Chi and blood. I had to consume bowl after bowl of bitter Chinese medicine soup. The pain in my body had reached an extreme, as had the pain in my mind and spirit. My husband was obsessed with Majong and rarely at home. He didn't care about me or our child. Although I was very sick and weak, I needed to take care of our school-age son as well as two cousins who lived with me. It is not difficult to imagine how hard my life was. My parents-in-law never inquired about my health or how I was doing. They did ask us for money however. To ask for their help would have been like expecting the sky to open a door. I thought of ending my own life so many times, but realized I could not leave my elderly parent and my minor son—I couldn't afford to die. My self-esteem was extremely low. I, who was already introspective, became even more so, to the point that I was unwilling to communicate with others. At times my mind was very dull and I could not think clearly.
In the autumn of 1995, I was so angry with my situation that I left home for Hainan Province. Being so far from my hometown, I felt even more depressed. I missed my 10-year old son day and night. I couldn't figure out why my life had turned out like this, and wondered how it would all end. One evening I slipped into the river by accident and was saved by colleagues who accompanied me. Though my body was still alive, my heart was dead and couldn't have been any colder. In the spring of 1996, I began to show symptoms of lack of body temperature control, vomiting, and diarrhea. I was so weak that I did not think I could endure such torture, and decided I had to go back to my home. At that time, if I was walking outside, even people who didn't know me would walk up to me and ask whether everything was OK. It was even difficult for me to walk. I lacked strength from head to toe and from inside out. I couldn't even tell where my body hurt because it hurt everywhere. No medicine could make me feel even a little bit better.
I heard some people say that practicing qigong in the park could cure disease, but I laughed at them, thinking they were so superstitious. However, I felt so awful that with the thought of “trying-it-out,” I went to Changchun Zoological Garden in the autumn of 1996. It is only about a 10-minute walk from where I lived, but it took me over 30 minutes to walk there in my condition. By the time I arrived, most of the people who practiced Falun Dafa had already left. One of the remaining practitioners was playing a video of the lectures of Master Li Hongzhi. I have been a practitioner of Falun Dafa since that day in the park.
Before I began practicing Falun Dafa, I was very careful about what I ate. Anything a little cold or a little hot would lead to diarrhea. Three days after I started to practice, I was able to eat all kinds of food. A week later, all my diseases were gone and I could walk very fast. Finally I knew the feeling of having no disease at all! My body felt very light and supple. I was very happy and had a song in my heart every day!
One day a year later, when I was doing the fifth exercises at the practice site, I levitated. Many people saw this. At that time, I had not studied the Fa very well and didn't know that this was due to the opening of the heavenly circuit. I was so scared that I stopped going to the park to practice. When I practiced at home and sat in meditation, my husband also witnessed me levitating. This is described in Zhuan Falun. The only difference was that I wasn't levitating as high as the practitioner in the book.
With I studied the Fa more deeply, I began to understand the reason why people become sick. When I looked at my life with the principles of Dafa, I was scared. I not only treated people badly, but in today's world, where values are deteriorating day by day, I was already unable to tell right from wrong. I did so many bad deeds in the past and created so much karma. Many deeds had brought shame to my family, but I was still thinking that I was a good person. If Master had not taken on some of my karma after I began cultivating, how could I repay it all?! And who knows how many miserable days would be waiting for me?!
The way I looked at this world totally changed because of Falun Dafa. I stopped looking at other people's mistakes and began looking inside for my own shortcomings. I no longer complained or looked down upon myself. I know I have the happiest life! When my husband came home after playing Majong at night, I would get up from my sleep and make a bowl of soup or porridge for him. I would watch him finish eating, then go back to bed again. It was sometimes 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning before he finished eating. In this case, I would not go back to bed, but took my cushion and went to the park to practice. At the very beginning, my husband didn't believe that I could become so good, and he tested me again and again. Once I made a soup for him four times. It was either too salty or there wasn't enough salt. I kept my xinxing and made the soup for him until he said that the soup was good. When he lost money outside and cursed me after coming back home, I was able to maintain my xinxing. When he no longer cursed me, I would ask him how his day went and if he needed anything. I also began to care about my parents-in-law and helped them at home.
Things continued like this for some time, and my husband was so touched that he told everyone he met, “Falun Dafa is good.” If someone at the Majong table had trouble at home, he would tell them that their wife should practice Falun Dafa. Previously, my husband worked in a government agency, but he quit and started his own business. He didn't make any money however, and his temper became very bad. Later, he went back to the government agency to work. From the very beginning, things didn't go smoothly. He cursed at me every day after he came home. I followed the principles that Master taught us in Zhuan Falun:
“As a practitioner, the first thing you should be able to do is to not fight back when you are beaten or sworn at—you must be tolerant.”
I maintained my xinxing to past this test. Sometimes when my human attachments were strong, I couldn't pass the tests very well. One winter, our apartment building was not supplied with heat. The construction of the building was already quite poor and now there was no heat. It was very cold and damp inside the apartment. My husband disliked this and refused to come home to sleep. He didn't ask how our child and I were doing in this damp and cold place.
The lack of heat resulted in excess use of electricity and the electric panel broke. The Power Bureau refused to repair it for fear that it might cause a fire. So we had neither heat nor electricity. When my son was doing his homework, I lit up a gas heater and put it behind him, but I was afraid of carbon monoxide poisoning, so I kept the door open. This made our apartment even colder. When we slept, my son and I stayed together and covered ourselves with all the blankets in our home. When we woke up, our heads were very cold. The happiest moment every day was when I went to a fellow practitioner's home with my son to attend Fa-study. My son and I still remembered clearly and deeply that warm feeling. About three weeks later, my husband came back for a change of clothes. My human heart was strong with emotion then, and I asked him why he didn't care about me or our son. His response made me very sad. He said with the room being so cold, how could anyone live there? He couldn't stay here for even a minute, yet my son and I had stayed here for over three weeks! Didn't he ever think about how we had managed? My husband didn't care to listen to me and left. He only came back a month later because the heat was back on. I wasn't able to maintain my xinxing that time and I have regretted it ever since. Later, I looked at this from another angle. It was because he left me and my son behind to endure this coldness that I could bring my son to a fellow practitioner’s home to study the Fa. Though my son didn't continue to practice, Dafa has been buried deep inside his heart. In looking at the situation from this angle, shouldn't my son and I thank him?!
Dafa not only brought me a completely new life, but Master also saved the lives of my relatives. I remember that not very long after I obtained Fa, my son was attending an English tutoring class with his aunt at a university. One day after class, when he was crossing the road after stepping out of the gate, a car drove by very fast. Even before his aunt could see clearly what was really going on, my son was hit by the car and thrown into the air. He hit a railing and then fell to the ground. People who witnessed the accident thought that my son would die. The driver thought that he had killed someone. My sister was totally terrified. Yet my son stood up by himself, as if nothing had happened. My sister cried and brought the boy back home. After he had been looked at in the hospital, it turned out that besides a few scratches on his arms and legs, he was uninjured.
Another time, my husband went on a business trip with his classmates. As they drove home, the car hit a big tree on the side of the road. My husband was sitting next to the driver. The front of the car was totally demolished. Even the traffic police thought that my husband would either die or lose his legs. My husband was carried out of the car, and then without assistance, he was able to stand up and walk. There was nothing wrong with him. My family members realized that this was because I cultivated in Falun Dafa and that it was Master Li who protected us.
Now that I had good health, I was able to go back to work and earn money to improve our life again. My husband and son were very happy. When I was at work, I never forgot, not for a second, that I was a practitioner. I worked very hard and never cared about personal loss. I worked as an accountant. When I saw that our company was unable to collect money due to lack of staff, I went out to collect the money myself. The company I worked for was a milk distribution center. To collect the money, I needed to go door to door and it was hard work. I went door to door to make the collections and did not ask for even a penny in compensation. My boss knew that I practiced Falun Dafa and also said to everyone he met, “Falun Dafa is good.” During those years when I worked, the boss entrusted me with important tasks because he knew that I practiced Falun Dafa. In 2008, I was sentenced to a forced labor camp and persecuted. My boss didn't hire a new accountant for over six months, and kept the position open for me. He even went to the forced labor camp to ask them for my release. The company I worked for was a joint venture of three persons. All of them wanted to hire someone of their own to do the accounting. Later, when they knew that I was a Falun Dafa cultivator, they gave up the idea and promoted me as the manager of accounting.
At an alumni gathering in 2007, all of my classmates expressed their opinions of Falun Dafa to me. One classmate said, “Someone said Falun Dafa is not good, but I know someone who practices Falun Dafa, and that person is very good. What the TV said is not correct.” Another said, “I've told everyone I know that Falun Dafa is good. Don't listen to the TV's lies.” Everyone expressed their opinions to me. They all knew that Dafa is good. Another classmate who was sitting next me worked in a prison and was dressed in her police uniform. I looked at her and said, “I don't like your uniform.” That was only a joke and I didn't expect her to stand up and walk out. When she came back she had changed out of her uniform and was wearing ordinary clothes. She smiled at me and said that she did this to show me respect.
People around me saw the changes that had taken place in me after I began cultivating in Falun Dafa. They realized that my family life had improved. It was because of this that they could help me during the craziest days of the evil persecution. They did not change their righteous thoughts towards Dafa, even when the lies about Dafa were everywhere. I was illegally sentenced to a forced labor camp twice and detained at a detention center three times. In the autumn of 1999, the community and the police station designated someone to work in my house to monitor me. In 2003, the community where I lived posted my picture in the police station. It is said that an order had come from an upper level of the government that they wanted me, dead or alive. A person was designated to check everyone who came to visit me. My husband and sisters were required to sign a guarantee form and be fingerprinted before they were allowed to enter the room. Even worse, when the police couldn't apprehend me, they seized my husband and kept him at the detention center for a day. Two managers from his company had to come to request his release before they would let him go. Despite all this, my husband always believed that I was doing the right thing. It was Dafa that had turned me into a good person. No matter how crazy the evil was, whenever we were out in public, he would proudly introduce me to everyone as the Falun Dafa member of our family. When I talked to people about quitting the evil Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations, whenever my husband was there, he would help me to talk to the person. Sometimes he would also suggest an alias for people who wished to resign from the CCP. When the DVD of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party came out, we watched it together about ten times. Now he always follows news stories about the persecution with me.
Falun Dafa changed me into a virtuous person who thinks about others first. I am unable to put into words all that Master has given to me. I deeply feel the greatness of the grace of Buddha, but it is hard to express it. Through these years, I was not always steady in my cultivation. I didn't have strong belief and righteous thoughts when I was in prison, and compromised with the evil. However, Dafa is deeply rooted in my heart. No one can erase the imprint of “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance” from my heart.
Category: Improving Oneself
