Not Accepting Kickbacks at Work—Spreading the Truth to Save Sentient Beings

(Minghui.org) I am 79 years old, and began practicing Falun Dafa in 1996. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began persecuting Falun Dafa in 1999, the state-run media was telling me that Party members were not allowed to practice Dafa. Right after that, I went to talk to the township CCP secretary. I told him that I wanted to renounce my memberships in the Party organizations. When he asked me why, I told him that I practiced Falun Dafa, and that if I had to choose between the CCP and Dafa, I’d choose Dafa, as I couldn’t do without it. The secretary said that he couldn’t make the decision to approve it. I told him, “I don’t need you to make the decision, I just want to inform you.”

I’d like to share some experiences on how I clarified the facts to people, studied the Fa, and cultivated myself in recent years.

Letting Go of Self-Interest at Work to Validate Dafa

When I first began Dafa cultivation, I was the general manager in a construction company. I also managed financial approvals. I held myself strictly to Dafa’s standards at work. I’d like to give a few instances in this respect.

Once when ordering a boiler for a residential area, I chose a company that had just entered the area with good quality products. I told the salesperson that I did not want kickbacks. That way I could try to bring the price of the boiler down as much as possible.

But in the end, when I made the payment in 2002, the salesperson insisted on giving me a kickback of 40,000 yuan, which was equivalent to my annual salary at the time. I told him that I practiced Dafa and couldn’t accept it. But he insisted, so I had the company pay 40,000 yuan less when buying the boiler and I paid the rest with the 40,000 yuan given to me.

After my boss learned about it, he was very surprised, and said to me, “That money was for you. It has nothing to do with the company.”

The director of the boiler factory didn’t believe that anyone would do things this way, because all companies asked for kickbacks when buying boilers, and if a vendor didn’t give any, people would buy from other companies. The director of the boiler factory said, “In today’s society, there is only one situation where you don’t want kickbacks. That is if you have shares in the company.” So he took it for granted that I had shares in the company. My boss proved on the spot that I was just an employee and had no shares. The director of the boiler factory thought that was so unexpected, and he invited me and my boss to have dinner at his favorite restaurant in the city.

Another time, when my company won a project, we had to order aluminum alloy doors and windows. The other party wanted to give me a kickback of 10,000 yuan. They said there were more than 20 clients in total, and each client would be entitled to the same kickback. So when I made the payment, I asked the boss to reduce it by that amount. The boss then learned about the kickback and said that it was for me and he couldn’t take it. But I insisted on using the 10,000 yuan to offset the company’s payment.

I later worked as a site supervisor for another construction company, and I also had to return two kickbacks. Both my boss and the other party knew that only because I practiced Falun Dafa did I decline the money.

The residential complex I was responsible for was completed in 2003. The boss insisted on giving me a three-bedroom apartment of more than 1,400 square meters, saying that I hadn’t made a lot of money from him over the years, and he wanted to compensate me with this apartment. The full price of the place was more than 140,000 yuan at the time.

I heard from other employees at the end of the year that the boss had taken on a loan with high interest rates. I discussed with my family and gave the money for the apartment to the boss’s wife. When the boss found out and came to me, I said to him, “Your financial situation is not very good now. You know I’m a practitioner.”

The boss became teary and responded, “I will give you back the money after I recover financially.” But the matter just passed like that.

Clarifying the Facts at Work to Save Sentient Beings

I used to openly practice Dafa at work. During the 23 years from 1999, when the Party began to persecute Dafa, to when I was 75 years old and retired from the company, except for the two years I was imprisoned, I clarified the facts to people at work. Almost all of my colleagues decided to quit the CCP and its youth organizations.

After being released from prison, I started working as a site supervisor at another company in 2010. I came into contact with more people who worked on the site in different posts, and talked to them about Dafa. There had been more than 1,000 people working on the construction site, and most of them knew that Dafa was good, and quit the CCP.

One electrician was in charge of shifts. Every time his staff got off work, he required everyone to shout “Falun Dafa is good” before they left. Later, the shift leader told me the reason he did that was because they all rode motorcycles out of work together, and he was afraid of them running into danger on the road. He knew that if everyone shouted “Falun Dafa is good” before hitting the road, there would be no danger.

My first boss was very supportive of my cultivation. At the staff meeting every year-end, he always asked me to talk about the Dafa principles. He was clear that if every one of his staff were to accept them, it would be much easier for him to manage the company.

My second boss also acknowledged my belief in Dafa. When I clarified the facts to people on the construction site, I never felt any pressure from him.

Reciting the Fa, Cultivating Myself, and Eliminating Attachments

Two and half years ago, my practitioner wife and I began to recite the Fa together. I felt that when I read through the whole book, I could hardly feel any improvement in my xinxing. I often came across experience sharing articles about practitioners reciting the Fa, and my daughter (also a practitioner) was sharing about how they improved after reciting the Fa at her Fa-study group. So my wife and I decided to join in.

We tried to recite it passage by passage, but we always felt that we didn’t achieve very good results. We later changed to read a paragraph together three to five times, and then recite it sentence by sentence. After we finished reciting one sentence, we moved on to the next, connected the two sentences together, and then recited the third sentence. The three to five times that we read together helped us correct each other’s mistakes, and we got the idea of the paragraph. After reciting sentence by sentence, we felt that every sentence had entered our hearts, and the Fa principles were revealed.

When we ran into places where we recited incorrectly, or had a hard time reciting, we carefully looked inward, and understood where we fell short in our cultivation. We recited the passages slowly, and were only on lecture six in the second round of reciting the Fa. Even though we went slowly, we felt that we learned more insights compared to reading through the whole book. When we read together with other practitioners at night, we also didn’t pursue speed, but rather went slowly in order to put the Fa into our hearts.

Through reciting the Fa these past couple of years, we learned to cultivate ourselves. I got to eliminate the attachments of not wanting to be criticized, resentment, feeling unbalanced, lust, showing off, and validating myself. I just realized that I have to let go of sentimentality.

A couple of years ago, I had leg muscle pain for a while. At first, I wanted to relieve it by walking, and I often tapped my thighs involuntarily. Later, I realized that walking was not the right approach. Through sharing with other practitioners, I got Master’s hint as to where I fell short. I realized that I had resented different people for many years. I excelled at school, and was always valued there, and later in my workplace. I was used to being valued. Once someone didn’t value me much or even looked down on me, I would feel uncomfortable and my self-righteousness would be triggered.

I started looking for everyone whom I was at odds with, starting with my elementary school classmates, then my colleagues at work, people I met, and even my relatives, one by one. Right after that, I started thinking about practitioners. Before I even did that, my legs suddenly stopped hurting. Since then, I’ve never had a relapse.

I also had the problem of coughing and spitting up phlegm in winter. I’ve had this problem for the past few years. I never bothered looking inward before. I only took the condition as being related to my old age. I later learned to cultivate myself. Once, when spitting, I suddenly realized that I resented a relative who always spread rumors about me. I truly understood from the bottom of my heart that he was helping me to improve. It was because I couldn’t get over this hurdle that he kept spreading rumors about me. After that realization, I stopped coughing and spitting.

I recently looked at my sentimentality. When sentimentality for my grandson couldn’t be dealt with, I developed resentment. I am still working on eliminating it.

Out of so many beings, Master picked me as his disciple. This is an eternal honor. Thank you, Master! Thank you, Dafa! I must cherish the opportunity. For Master to choose me is to task me with saving people. I should have them on my mind, and do more and better to save them. I should also pay more attention to cultivating myself, so that I can be more capable of saving people, so as to pay back Master’s saving grace.