(Minghui.org) As World Falun Dafa Day approaches, I can’t help but think of the practice site at the university where I studied in the 1990s. I’d like to share my memories of those practitioners and the wonders of Falun Dafa. All the names mentioned in this article are pseudonyms.
Predestined People Come to Learn Falun Dafa
Ms. Huang was in her 60s, once taught at the university, and was the first teacher there to begin practicing Falun Dafa. We called her Auntie Huang. She had severe heart disease and hadn’t taught for a while. She was bedridden, kept an oxygen tank at home, and often had to be taken to the hospital.
The local market was only a two minute walk from her home, but she had to rest several times while carrying four pounds of groceries home.
Auntie Huang had a friend who was a professor at another university. She also had heart problems and was often hospitalized. The professor began practicing Falun Dafa and felt well afterward. She visited Auntie Huang in 1994 and brought her a book, Falun Gong, and showed her how to do the exercises.
Auntie Huang tried to read the book, but each time she had a terrible headache and had to put it down. She said she could hear a voice reading the book, and she later realized it was Master Li’s (the founder of Dafa) voice. The book contained photos and instructions of the exercises.
Although exercises 1, 3, and 4 were short and easy to learn, Auntie Huang couldn’t do them all at once, so she took breaks and was eventually able to do all five exercises in one day. Even though she was still taking medication, her health improved in a few months.
By the spring of the following year, Auntie Huang felt she had enough energy to do the exercises outdoors, and found a grassy area on campus. In China, qigong practices were very popular at the time, and people did all kinds of practices on campus.
Several elderly ladies often walked by Auntie Huang and said they sensed a good energy field around her. They asked her what she was practicing and she told them about Falun Dafa. They eventually stopped doing the other exercises and began practicing with her.
Auntie Huang soon no longer needed to take medication, and she fully recovered from her illnesses. She felt energetic and had a nice complexion, and she looked healthy with her black hair and rosy cheeks. She was able to do housework again, and her husband and son saw the incredible power of Dafa.
Auntie Huang established the first Falun Dafa practice site on campus and brought the tape player every day so practitioners could do the exercises to the music.
Dr. Zhang worked at the university hospital and Auntie Huang was her patient. She saw Auntie Huang on campus one day and was surprised to see her in such good spirits. She asked, “Why don’t you come see me anymore?” Auntie Huang told her how Falun Dafa had helped her become healthy.
Dr. Zhang thought it was unbelievable that a qigong practice could get rid of an illness that doctors couldn’t cure. She knew Auntie Huang’s physical condition when she was ill, but the woman standing in front of her looked very healthy! This was a big shock to Dr. Zhang, who was an atheist.
Coincidentally, Dr. Zhang’s daughter who was studying at Harvard University in the United States, wrote her parents saying, “I was never impressed by anything since I was a child, but Falun Dafa amazes me!” She recommended the practice to her parents.
Dr. Zhang’s husband was a professor at the university’s biology department. Auntie Huang’s transformation and his daughter’s letter made him think. He said, “Darwin’s theory of evolution has always been controversial in the scientific community because the intermediate link between monkeys and humans was never found.”
Thus Dr. Zhang and her husband decided to give Falun Dafa a try, and came to the campus practice site. Little by little, they understood the Fa principles and embraced the practice.
Many people at the university saw Auntie Huang’s recovery and also learned the practice.
The head of the university logistics department (in his 40s) and a retired member of the central government agency (in his 60s) both had diabetes, but recovered after practicing Falun Dafa. They talked about their previous illnesses, and said, “We couldn’t eat fruit, porridge, sweets, and could only eat small amounts of rice. We were often hungry and could hear our stomachs growling. We began practicing, and now we can eat anything.” They laughed about their past experiences and said they were happy to have regained their health.
There was a male practitioner, in his 50s, who had asthma since he was five years old. His sister began practicing Falun Dafa and recommended it to him. But his asthma symptoms got worse during the first two months of practicing, thus his wife tried to stop him from practicing. His sister knew that this was Master eliminating his karma, so she encouraged him to continue, and took care of him. After two difficult months, his asthma was gone. He worked at a nursery, and was able to bike four hours round-trip every day for work. He was happy and felt at ease after he began practicing.
An elderly couple, in their 70s, came to the practice site after seeing Auntie Huang regain her health. The wife worked at the university library before retiring, and her husband was a retired CCP member. The couple had experienced the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) political movements and campaigns. They were quiet and didn’t socialize much with others.
She said, “I walked out of our apartment one day and saw a pile of feces in front of the door. My husband was going to shout and question who did it, but I stopped him. I said, ‘We should be more tolerant now that we practice Falun Dafa. It’s no big deal, and I’ll clean it up.’” The old lady had a round face and gray hair, and told the story with a smile in a calm manner.
An engineer at the university-run enterprise and her daughter were regulars at the practice site. The mother was very capable, and contributed greatly to the company. Her daughter was a student and a class leader at the university. She was an outstanding student, and her classmates often borrowed her class notes before tests. Her teachers and classmates liked her because she was kind and considerate. I still remember her smiling eyes and kind gaze, and her endearing personality.
After the CCP began to persecute Falun Dafa, the administrators revoked her scholarship because she refused to give up the practice. Her classmates supported her and helped her get the scholarship back a year later.
It was like what Master said:
“If something is yours, you will not lose it. If something is not yours, you will not have it even if you fight for it.” (Lecture Seven, Zhuan Falun)
A university graduate who was in her 20s had femoral necrosis and couldn’t walk, but she recovered after she began practicing Falun Dafa. She described something she saw while doing the exercises, “A man tried to seduce me, but I rejected him. The image disappeared after I rejected it. I then saw Master’s gigantic law body above me. Master looked very solemn and sacred, and celestial maidens scattered flowers in the sky. I think Master was happy that I passed the test.”
The Practice Site is a Pure Land
The university welcomed new students in the fall of 1995. Some were already practicing Falun Dafa in their hometowns, and joined the practice site on campus. There were about twelve people at the time. By the spring of 1996, the number had gone up to fifty. In the fall of 1996, the number had increased to 100 people. In addition to the morning practice, an evening practice was added to help those who worked during the day and didn’t have time to practice in the mornings.
Auntie Huang watched with joy as more and more people learned the practice. She took care of everyone, and often invited the students to her home after the morning practice and treated them to bowls of noodles. We studied the Fa together and talked about our cultivation experiences.
The practice site was located on a grassy area next to a small road. The area became too crowded as the number of practitioners grew, so the site was relocated to a larger area under the trees across the small road. Practitioners who arrived early cleaned up the dead leaves in the autumn and plowed the snow in the winter to provide a clean space for people to do the exercises.
Auntie Wang was in her 50s, and she was an enthusiastic and helpful person. Auntie Huang usually brought the tape player to the practice site, but Auntie Wang later volunteered to take over the task. The person in charge of the tape player had to be at the practice site before everyone else, so Auntie Wang arrived early and cleaned the site with other practitioners. By the time people showed up, they had already finished their work. To avoid unexpected situations, other practitioners also brought tape players.
Falun Dafa emphasizes the improvement of one’s character, therefore it is important to read the book and understand the Fa principles. To help people understand the practice, practitioners sometimes held a nine-day class. At that time, Master had already gone abroad to introduce Falun Dafa, thus practitioners played Master’s lectures in video format.
This involved the issue of locating a venue. There was a practitioner in his 40s who was tall and strong. He was a department head at a workplace, and was well-liked. He was able to rent the auditorium at work and he paid the rental fee. He didn’t want people to pay him back, and he contributed greatly to facilitate the nine-day class.
As more people came to inquire about Falun Dafa, Auntie Huang did the exercises on her own time so that she could talk to passerby about the practice at the site. Practitioners taught anyone who wanted to learn. The book Zhuan Falun and Master’s lectures video and audio tapes were popular and in short supply. Therefore, many veteran practitioners bought extra copies and lent them to people. People could return the books and tapes if they decided not to learn, and if they did learn, they could keep them for free or pay the original purchase price. Practitioners’ noble and kind behaviors affected each other in a positive way.
Master said:
“The lofty conduct that Dafa disciples have established in this environment--including every word and every deed--can make people recognize their own weaknesses and identify their shortcomings; it can move their hearts, refine their conduct, and enable them to make progress more rapidly.” (“Environment,” Essentials For Further Advancement)
As soon as the exercise music started playing at the practice site, practitioners stopped chatting and walking around, and were ready to do the exercises. No one needed supervision, and everyone was conscientious.
During the experience sharing, practitioners talked about how to improve and be a better person; and when conflicts occurred, they looked inward for their own shortcomings. They were kind and peaceful, with smiles on their faces, and the atmosphere was clean and pure.
It was like Master described:
“...during the course of cultivation you have all come to know that this environment of ours is very good. At the practice sites everyone can open his heart and say freely what he wants to. This isn’t possible anywhere else in human society. That’s why every student can feel that upon arriving at the practice site he has entered into a pure land and has stepped into a place that is most sacred. People all care about each other in a way that “you care for me and I care for you.” This can’t be found in any other human setting. Why can it be this way? It’s simply that every Dafa disciple is cultivating himself. Once a problem or a conflict emerges, everyone searches for his own shortcomings, looking to see whether it was caused by his own wrongdoing.” (Teachings at the Conference in the Western U.S.)
The university had many visitors. Several people walked by us one day when we were doing the exercises. A young man asked what kind of exercise we were doing and told us he saw red light covering the field, and it looked very nice.
As Falun Dafa spread in the area, more people came to the practice site, and it became crowded again. Auntie Huang advised new practitioners who weren’t students to establish new practice sites near their homes. This would facilitate the spread of Dafa and allow more people with predestined relationships to learn the practice.
When I reminisce the past—the events and the scenes, the voices and the smiles of practitioners, and the peaceful feeling of practicing as a group—everything is vividly displayed in front of my eyes.
I still remember the gentleman who had severe back pain and took an hour to get in the car, but with righteous thoughts and firm belief in Dafa, his back pain disappeared; the tall straight-backed confident worker who practiced with his family and welcomed everyone to study the Fa and share at his home; the woman who had been at odds with my husband for many years and learned to be patient after practicing Dafa; the auntie who liked to have fun and was reluctant to babysit her grandchild, but decided be a good mother-in-law; the university employee who studied Tantric Buddhism and later thought Falun Dafa was the true Buddha Fa and practiced earnestly; the many practitioners who became good people; and the students who excelled in their studies, were happy to help others, and were eager to spread the Fa... How are you all doing?
We lost contact with each other during the past 25 years of persecution. Fellow practitioners, are you still practicing? Are you still telling people about Falun Dafa? Let’s continue to cultivate well, and let more people know about Dafa and awaken them, because this is our wish.
(Selected submission in celebration of World Falun Dafa Day on Minghui.org)
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