(Minghui.org)
Greetings, great compassionate Master!Greetings, fellow practitioners!
After I graduated from college in July 1995, I spent time at home while waiting to start my new job. My mother, who was illiterate, told me that she had a book titled Zhuan Falun and told me to take a look at it.
When I finished reading the book, I was amazed. My conception of the world suddenly changed! I realized that human lives are really not so simple. Instead of being selfish and doing things for oneself, one must be moral, consider others, and return to one’s original, true self. I was delighted to find out that such an opportunity existed! This was exactly what I wanted.
Be a Good Person According to Dafa and Validate Dafa
Master said,
“One must begin by being a good person. One should always improve xinxing ...” (Lecture Nine in Zhuan Falun)
After I started cultivating Dafa, I performed well at work and conducted myself as a good person according to the requirements of the Fa. I got an “excellent” rating every year on my annual review at work.
I never submitted medical expenses to my work unit. My employer allowed each person to be reimbursed for a certain amount of medical bills each year. Everyone knew that I didn't use this benefit. Someone once asked me to give him my benefit since I didn't use it. While I was still trying to figure out, as a cultivator, how to respond, another colleague said, “They practice truthfulness and won't do dishonest things!”
I once ran into a supervisor from my former employer. He pointed at me and told the people with him, “This is a very good person. How good is he? Whenever he saw a dripping tap, he would turn it off. When he saw spittle on the floor, he would clean it up...” I had forgotten that I did these things. But the supervisor that I hadn't seen in ten years, who had been busy pursuing material wealth, had not forgotten about these seemingly trivial things. It goes to show that such small gestures have an impact on people and an influence that can be far-reaching.
In every situation, I held myself to the standards of Dafa. In July 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to persecute Dafa. I was detained and placed in isolation. The guards visited me every day, trying to force me to say something bad about Dafa. Dafa had benefited me physically and mentally, so how could I say that it was not good? I told them, “One day as a teacher, a lifetime held in esteem as a father. I will not criticize Dafa!” (This Chinese saying refers to how one should respect one's teacher as one would respect one's father.) They recorded these words in my file and never asked to talk to me again.
Later my work unit demoted me because I continued to practice Falun Dafa. As the persecution got worse, they asked me to quit the CCP. I thought that this was okay since I had joined the CCP for wealth and prestige to begin with. Falun Dafa has turned me into a good person, while following the Party can only make me selfish and bad. I decided it was a good thing for me to quit the Party.
At the end of 1999, my work unit asked me to promise not to go to Beijing to petition the government for the right to practice Falun Gong. I didn't promise them anything regardless of how they tried to talk me into it. The leader said, “Our work unit is a model unit in our province, but you will jeopardize this status. If you won't make the promise, you will have to resign.”
At the time, employees of a model work unit would get yearly bonuses equivalent to two months’ salary. I thought that, as a cultivator, I should be considerate of other people. I submitted my resignation, citing my wish not to affect the work unit. In fact, what was really on my mind was, “I have obtained Dafa, and nothing else is significant.” I didn't yet realize that I should clarify the truth to them.
Even though I didn’t care much about my resignation at the time, the pressure was enormous. The work unit, the police station, and the council office were all looking for Dafa practitioners. I often felt oppressed and surrounded by darkness. Even breathing was difficult. After I submitted my resignation, I went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Dafa.
Many years after leaving that work unit, I had to go back to take care of some business. When the manager of the transportation department saw me, he was very emotional. He took my hand while we walked, “Good man. You are a good man...” I could feel that it came from his heart.
I accepted a position in a private company in the year 2000 with a starting salary of 500 yuan. As a Dafa disciple, I conducted myself according to the requirements of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. I arrived early and stayed late every day. I did my work with great diligence and conscientiously helped the management and business operations. In a few months, my salary was increased to 2,000 yuan, and not long after that, it jumped to 5,000 yuan. After starting at the bottom, my salary was surging to a level that was pretty high and quite rare in society at that time.
It should be pointed out that this was not based on my ability. I had no experience, while a lot of people who came to this job were managers or were very capable of doing the job, but they could not make it in the end. It was clear to me that it was due to a lack of trust between the boss and the employees. This company was run by a married couple who were very guarded. It was not easy for them to trust or reward people. They never gave anyone a salary increase. Sometime later, the couple told me, “We have been running our business for so many years and have never seen anyone like you.” Subsequently, the boss began to spread the word, telling his clients that those who practice Falun Dafa are good people.
Master said,
“From now on, whatever you do, you should consider others first, so as to attain the righteous Enlightenment of selflessness and altruism. So from now on, whatever you do or whatever you say, you must consider others—or even future generations—along with Dafa’s eternal stability.” (“Non-Omission in Buddha-Nature” in Essentials for Further Advancement)
In fact, all I did was conduct myself in accordance with Master's requirements. The words and deeds of Dafa disciples in conformity with the Fa seem ordinary, but they are deeply influential and impact everyone around them.
Remaining Committed to Memorizing the Fa in a Labor Camp
Initially, I did not have a deep understanding of Dafa. In 1996, I read Master's lecture about the students in Changchun who were able to recite the Fa:
“They said: 'Why don’t we memorize something that’s this good? It requires us to be good people at every moment among everyday people and it enables us to improve, wouldn’t it be better if we could memorize it? Then we’ll have something we can measure ourselves against at every moment.'” (“Suggestions Given at the Beijing Falun Dafa Assistants Meeting” in Explaining the Content of Falun Dafa)
This made me realize how precious Dafa is. I started to memorize the Fa and have never stopped. Regardless of the difficulties and interference during the process, my experience was that when you really cherish the Fa, you will naturally stick to it and give it the highest priority.
In 2002, I was illegally held in a detention center for more than 50 days, during which time I recited the Fa about ten times. I could almost recite Zhuan Falun in its entirety.
In 2006 I was again illegally detained for a year and a half, this time in a labor camp. I recited the Fa every day, recalling every page and every paragraph. There are nine lectures in total, subheadings, and a total of six hundred and one paragraphs in Zhuan Falun. I memorized all of it and recited it 200 times. Sometimes I could go through the entire book in a day. My body was constantly in Dafa’s energy field. Sometimes I could feel changes in me, from the Fa, manifest out to the surface of my body, and they were occasionally quite strong.
When other practitioners in the labor camp found out that I could recite Zhuan Falun, they were very happy and wanted to do the same. Because the labor camp did not allow Dafa disciples to talk to each other or have any other type of contact, they could only ask me for a couple of sentences when we passed each other on the way to the bathroom or when going outside to do labor. Sometimes they quickly came over to me and asked for a couple of sentences. If they stayed a little longer, the officers would shout, “Go, and leave immediately!” Little by little, some practitioners managed to memorize a large portion of Zhuan Falun. It was extremely difficult to study the Fa there, and we had to grab every tiny opportunity to recite a couple of sentences. Thus, practitioners dearly cherished it.
During my detention in the labor camp, no guard beat or yelled at me. A team leader said to another Dafa disciple, “Everything you did (e.g. refusing to do forced labor, shouting 'Falun Dafa is good,' etc.) was under his (indicating me) instructions.” But they never touched him, as if they were afraid of him. I knew that it was the effect of the mighty virtue of Dafa.
I once told the head guard that it was not respectful to make the inmates squat after the daily roll call for the meal. I asked them to stop that practice. The team leader said that it was a rule and could not be stopped. He knew that I was going to refuse to do it, so he started to create a terrifying atmosphere, trying to scare me. After we lined up for roll call, I refused to squat. Some other practitioners saw me, and they refused to as well. The team leader seemed exasperated and immediately restrained me. I shouted, “Falun Dafa is good!” Several people came over and dragged me to the office. He attempted to use an electric baton on me, but it was out of power. He then left the office in desperation. When the head of the labor camp heard about it, he immediately came from his home and to talk to me. The next day, it was announced that squatting after the roll call for the meal was canceled. This incident made the team leader feel he had lost face, so he did not show up for work for the next couple of days.
When my term in the labor camp was about to end, the head guard said to me, “You didn't come here for nothing this time. You did everything you should do.” I knew that there was no way I could accomplish this without being lifted by Dafa. It was like a person crossing the ocean; the person crosses it not because he is powerful, but because a ferry carried him. If one tries to cross without relying on the ferry, he will drown in no time.
I found that the best method to memorize the Fa is to write it down from memory. Doing this kept me focused, since I also had to memorize the punctuation. At the beginning, I recited Lunyu. Regardless of how fluently I recited it, when I tried to write it down from memory (I wrote it once every two weeks), I always made mistakes. Therefore, being able to recite the Fa does not mean that you have memorized it. Being able to write it from memory is what I think really counts.
Later on, I started to write Zhuan Falun from memory. I found this to be really helpful. Reciting offers a different level of understanding of the Fa compared to reading it, while writing from memory is completely different from reciting. When reciting the Fa, I rarely found mistakes, but all my errors were exposed when I wrote from memory. I didn't feel bad when mistakes occurred. I made mistakes when I had problems and deficiencies in my cultivation. These must be overcome! The mistakes tended to happen at different places every time. Where it was perfect one time could be where errors appeared the next time. I thought that it was just like the transformation of the small universe of the human body; different problems would occur at different levels of transformation. It is just like the place where an energy channel is blocked; it gets exposed so it can be fixed and opened up. Doing it repeatedly improved my cultivation.
I respectfully bow to Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!
