Letting Go of Life and Death to Fulfill My Vow

(Minghui.org) I began practicing Falun Dafa in 1997. In being able to persevere on my cultivation path for over 20 years, I understand that Master Li has had to put in immense sacrifice on my behalf.

I’d like to share three stories about my letting go of life-and-death in order to validate Dafa.

My Escape from Jail

Master published “Teachings From a Tour of North America” in 2002. At that time, I was forced into homelessness by the persecution, which gave me the opportunity to study the Fa and share my experiences with other practitioners.

I can’t remember how many times we read this lecture, but I ended up being able to recite multiple pages of it. Deep in my soul, I clearly realized: My purpose for coming to this world was to help Master save sentient beings.

On the eve of the 16^th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) National Congress, our region of practitioners were subjected to a wide-sweeping raid by the authorities. As a result, a few dozen practitioners were arrested, including those involved in running a large truth-clarification materials production site. I was among them and taken to a detention center.

The guards used cruel torture methods, such as “Duck Floating in the Water,” which forces people to have their belly touch the ground, while lifting their four limbs upward. This was used to torture me for more than 10 days. On the 10^th night, I’d reached the limit of my endurance and gave in by signing the slanderous documents they had on hand.

In the following days, I felt extremely regretful. Before that, I came across a sharing on the Minghui website, which mentioned two reasons for a practitioner failing to get over a tribulation: One was due to a lack of faith in Master. The other was being afraid of enduring hardship and not letting go of the attachment to life-and-death.

After looking inward on these points, I decided to pay attention to the following aspects: Strengthening my main consciousness, having faith in Master, and paying attention to ridding my attachment to comfort and fearing hardship. I didn’t dare to slack off and became determined to put my heart into reciting the Fa, sending forth righteous thoughts, and doing the exercises.

Once, while reciting the Fa, I suddenly realized how determined we were to come to this world to validate Dafa.

I was illegally sentenced to two and a half years in a forced labor camp. My mother came from far away to see me before I was sent away. The local Deputy secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee also came along. He said that as long as I had a good attitude and was willing to be transformed, I could go home immediately. I refused.

In the notorious provincial women’s labor camp, I was holding onto the thought of dismantling the evil factors behind the scenes and validating Dafa. The team leader said to me, “Unless you ‘transform,’ we will make your life so miserable that you’ll wish for death.” They used 12 prisoners to monitor me around the clock and used more than 100 people to forcibly brainwash me. In addition, they confined me to a small dark room in a stairwell for over a month.

However, nothing could change my righteous faith in Dafa.

Because I stepped forward to try to stop the team leader from instigating inmates to beat and humiliate senior practitioners, the guards took revenge on me.

In the beginning, I was handcuffed and hung with only the tip of my toes touching the ground, followed by being deprived of sleep for four nights. I recited the Fa the entire time. On the fifth day, the team leader came to check on me, but I didn’t hold even a bit of resentment against her.

In front of her child, the team leader was a kind mother and wasn’t completely heartless. But as soon as she put on her uniform, the evil specter of the CCP manipulated her to commit crimes against humanity. Everything came down to her self-interest, and I felt she was rather pitiful. While sending forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil specter, I strengthened her kind thoughts. When thinking about the consequences of her persecuting practitioners, I became teary.

The next morning, she suddenly said that she decided to give up on “transforming” me so that I could have a period of peace and quiet.

I ran into another detained practitioner I knew well. She whispered to me, “In the team next to us, a practitioner went on a hunger strike and managed to escape. If you could endure this hardship, you could give it a try as well.” She wrote down Master’s new article on a piece of paper and gave it to me. It was like a treasure!

What she said gave me a hint, but I wasn’t sure what to do next. I wanted to get out because, by doing so, I could completely negate the evil arrangement. The more I was held against my will, the more karma the guards would create for themselves.

I became clear that regardless of when the Fa-rectification ends, I’d have to reach the standard of a true cultivator and give up the attachment to life-and-death.

A clear thought appeared in my mind: “You once made a vow at a critical moment, so you’ve got to use your life to safeguard the Fa.” I indeed made a vow, and I was determined to let go of life-and-death by going on a hunger strike.

Even though I had this idea, it wasn’t an easy task to follow through with. At first, I was faced with a few collaborators who were sent over to convince me to change my mind. They told me the hunger strike would not work. Some of them even showed me how their own teeth had been lost or damaged from being forced-fed.

As soon as they started talking, I realized why they would fail: First, they didn’t understand that going on a hunger strike was meant to validate the Fa, as well as frighten the guards in order for me to get out.; second, perhaps they were also unable to let go of the thought of life-and-death or feared being force-fed. After realizing this, I became clear that going on a hunger strike was to let go of life-and-death and to oppose the persecution.

On the seventh day of my hunger strike, the guards hadn’t force-fed me, probably because they wanted me to end it on my own. Then a test came in which I was extremely thirsty and really wanted to sneak a sip of water while washing, as nobody would have seen me. But then the thought of a sky full of Gods and Buddhas seeing that I was not firm in the Fa stopped me. I immediately felt a tinge of sweetness in my mouth and was no longer thirsty. I knew it was Master who helped me. When I felt hungry, as soon as I started thinking about cultivating high-energy matter, I stopped feeling hungry.

Seven days later, in order to make it more painful, the guards got inmates to pry open my teeth with a uterine dilator and pinch my nose to force-feed me. As soon as the dilator touched my teeth, I couldn’t help but open my mouth. It was very painful, and I felt that my teeth were going to break. Looking inward, I was afraid of my teeth being broken and the pain of the instrument poking my gums. Once my teeth were pried open, they could force-feed me, and I would not be able to control the next step.

I asked myself: If I was not afraid of death, why should I be afraid of my teeth falling out? Was I afraid of the pain? Was I afraid of it affecting my appearance? I was not! A divine being should be as firm as a diamond, and my teeth are also as firm as a diamond. I was determined to pass the force-feeding test!

I sent forth righteous thoughts beforehand for a long time to eliminate the factors persecuting me. Among the inmates who came to force feed me, one was a fellow villager who had a good impression of me. When she used the dilator to pry open my mouth, I held the thought that my teeth were indestructible and could not be pried open. She tried a few times but failed. The guard suggested that she poke my gums, but she was soft-hearted and did not use much force. The prison guard suggested that she use more force. I thought to myself deep down, “Hold tight, hold tight, ask Master to help me.”

Suddenly, a loud cry came from a practitioner next door, “Don’t allow anyone to persecute practitioners! Falun Dafa is wonderful!” She shouted this three times. Everyone inside the room was shocked by her voice. I suddenly felt that my righteous thoughts became ample. The collaborator held the dilator and made a few random strokes, then the guards told her to forget it and try another way.

From then on, they stopped force-feeding me and switched to nasogastric feeding. Nasogastric feeding is a way for hospitals to save unconscious patients, but it was used in the prison to torture practitioners.

In order to make me suffer, the prison guards ordered a rubber tube as thick as a finger to be inserted from my nostrils to my stomach and then injected something into the tube with a syringe. In order to prevent me from resisting, they handcuffed me to the bed. After each nasogastric feeding, the tube was drawn out with blood all over it. The inmates who were assigned to watch over me felt so sick that they wanted to vomit and could not eat. Nasogastric feeding was carried out twice a day.

Afterward, the guards sent people to come see me, “What’s the use of you going on with a hunger strike? You’ve still taken in food. It’s so painful, you might as well eat it yourself.” I understood that they were trying to break me psychologically. I thought: It was not about the outward appearance of what I was doing. The evil force-feeding, and my taking my own initiative to eat were two different things. Master looks at the basis of my actions.

One day, a guard asked me, “Falun Gong prohibits committing suicide, so why are you refusing food and trying to kill yourself?”

I replied, “I’m expressing myself peacefully in this extremely coercive environment and hope my pain can awaken your conscience.” The guard was speechless.

Despite the torture, I was still able to stand up without any discomfort and felt rather light. I was a particle of Dafa, suffering for sentient beings. The guards and whoever persecuted us were the most pitiful.

A few days later, I realized that I also needed to let go of life-and-death to oppose the nasogastric feeding, instead of enduring it passively. The next time they came to take me away, I hit my head on the washstand in the process of resisting with all my strength, leaving a big cut.

I felt dizzy, and my body was light. I had only one thought: “Master, I really let go of life-and-death, and death doesn’t matter. But saving sentient beings requires a human body, and I can’t lose it!”

I heard a lot of noise around me, and I was pulled onto a stretcher and taken to the hospital. The doctor didn’t even give me anesthesia, but just sewed two stitches in my head and bandaged it with a piece of gauze. There was still blood dripping from my head, but they took me to the next room to continue nasogastric feeding.

I heard the team leader calling the head of the Labor Camp and other teams, but he got reprimanded for transferring me to other places, as they were afraid that I’d negatively “impact” other people who were targeted to be “transformed.” In the end, he said, “Ask your mom to come pick you up.”

The next afternoon, my parents arrived at the labor camp from a few hundred miles away. After they finished handling the paperwork, I left the camp under “bail out for medical reasons.”

Helping Save Sentient Beings

After I got out of the labor camp and studied the Fa systematically, I came to a deeper understanding on letting go of life-and-death and understood that the whole point was to have faith in Master and being completely selfless. I clarified the facts to people for the sake of exposing the evil authorities.

When eight practitioners were handing out copies of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party in the county, police officers illegally arrested them and started proceedings to have them unjustly sentenced. When sharing on how to rescue them, a practitioner mentioned that, in the last couple of years, when we exposed the evil to local residents, we did it in a fairly comprehensive way.

However, when it came to clarifying the facts to police officers, the procuratorate, and judicial system, we needed to make a breakthrough. Some practitioners suggested we go straight to the 610 Office, government agencies, and The People’s Congress to appeal for the unconditional release of detained practitioners. This suggestion sounded good, yet it was hard to carry out.

I came to enlighten to the fact that I should step forward, as their business was also my business. However, I was reluctant to do so. I felt that since I left the labor camp and now lived in a relatively relaxed environment, I was reluctant to revisit the issue of letting go of life-and-death.

I didn’t expect to face this test – whether I could step forward to talk to people in the government agencies, police, procuratorate and judicial system also required one to hold oneself against the standard of letting go of life-and-death. What concerned me the most was that I was afraid of being persecuted again. But I knew that Master didn’t arrange for us to be persecuted.

Did I truly have faith in Master? No. If I were to truly let go of life-and-death, would I still be afraid of being persecuted? No, I wouldn’t.

A dozen local practitioners went to the government agency. They quietly sent forth righteous thoughts outside, while Ms. Lin and I went straight to the 610 Office. When the director saw us, he was caught off guard. After hearing our intentions, he said he’d make a call to the Domestic Security Division and have police officers come over.

Ms. Lin tried to tell him that we had no ill intentions, but only came to tell him about our situation. We were a group of good people, unlike what he learned from the CCP’s propaganda. I quietly sent forth righteous thoughts to not allow him to successfully call the Domestic Security Division. He tried a few times, but the calls didn’t go through. He started scolding us and left the room. After we left the office, we saw practitioners, one group after another, still sending forth righteous thoughts outside.

I later learned that a few groups of practitioners also went to the People’s Congress, the Discipline Inspection Committee, and the Appeals Bureau. This collective petition had caused quite a stir to the relevant departments of the city, and they regarded it as a big incident.

Looking back at the appeal on that day, it was great that quite a few of us stepped forward to work with one another, even though we didn’t divide the tasks beforehand. Each practitioner saw what needed to be done and worked together unconditionally.

This group appeal shocked every government agency in the city and made them pay attention to the cases related to Falun Dafa, while also giving them an opportunity to learn the truth. None of us who participated in the appeal was persecuted.

Taking Results Lightly for the Sake of Saving Sentient Beings

With the progress of the Fa-rectification, my understanding about Dafa has become more in-depth. I have come to realize that letting go of life-and-death was more about letting go of “life.” I needed to let go of the stubborn concepts that people use to protect themselves from being harmed, letting go of the ego, and letting go of the so-called comfortable life in the world for the sake of saving people.

When I applied for retirement, I was told by the Social Security Administration that I was not eligible to receive a pension since I had been sentenced to prison. According to the provincial document, my 20 years of service before serving the jail sentence would have to be completely erased. So for the past five years, I’ve been defending my rights, demanding that my years of service be recognized, and that I be allowed to retire normally.

I applied to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) for access to information from an old document that contained information recognizing my years of service. But officials in the MOHRSS refused to give it to me, so I sued these two departments in accordance with the law. The case was set up smoothly, and the Administrative Division of the Intermediate Court accepted my case.

Information from the MOHRSS was the key to winning my case. I was worried about not being able to find information on the personnel of the MOHRSS, but I inadvertently accessed a document from the Ministry’s office on information disclosure that had recently been posted online. This was exactly what I needed, as it listed the names of various division directors.

I spent two nights revising my letter of appeal. It mentioned my optimal working performance after I began practicing Dafa, recognitions at work; the cruel persecution practitioners endure; the fact that good and evil has its due course; the truth behind the origins of Covid-19, and how repeating the auspicious phrase of “Falun Dafa is wonderful!” “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is wonderful!” helps ensure one’s safety.

I repeatedly deliberated on the tone and content, striving to be calm, kind, and concise. I also asked a practitioner who was good at writing articles to help me revise it. I then sent the letter to the heads of these 20+ divisions and departments.

After the letter was mailed, some of my attachments popped up. I wasn’t sure about how much those government officials knew about Dafa. And when I came across an article on the Minghui website which mentioned that a practitioner was illegally sentenced for writing a letter to inspire kindness, I became nervous. But I knew this was my fear.

I carefully examined the reason for what I did: It was to save them, but it was also mixed with the hope that they would help me have a good outcome on my appeal. I shouldn’t be motivated by a desire for personal gain; I should be doing it for their good. At the same time, it occurred to me that it was no accident that I came across that list. I believed that it was arranged by the Master for me to save them. So I let go of my fear.

I understand that people being able to do evil comes down to the factors in other dimensions manipulating them.

I was informed by mail that I was going to appear in court. Fellow practitioners strengthened me with their righteous thoughts, removing the evil factors manipulating the people involved in the MOHRSS. After a period of time, I was much less stressed.

The court repeatedly delayed the opening of my “information disclosure case” and finally dismissed it on the grounds that it did not fall within the scope of administrative litigation. I continued to appeal to the High Court, which upheld the first dismissal of my case. I then went on to file a complaint to the Supreme People’s Court.

When submitting the appeal and complaint materials, I revised my letter of goodwill that I had previously written to the judges in the first instance. I pointed out that the wrongful judgment of the previous judges had seriously affected my legitimate rights and had contributed to the inaction of the administrative authorities, which should be pursued in accordance with the law. And for that reason, I had already filed a complaint against those judges with the relevant authorities.

Although the final outcome upheld the first ruling, it was what I expected. However, I was able to utilize the case to tell more officials the truth about Dafa and give them an opportunity to be saved. Perhaps I made this vow to save them long ago.

Thank you, Master, for your benevolent arrangements and protection. I should always think about the prehistoric vow I made with my life, so I won’t feel indifferent and will be more diligent in saving more people.