By a practitioner in the United States

(Clearwisdom.net) On December 21, the Fifth Fa Lecturing Session in Guangzhou City (in Guangdong Province) was begun. This was the last Fa Lecturing Session held in China. At that time, Falun Gong was already very widespread and people came from all over the country to attend the seminar, even from far away northeastern provinces and Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. They came to obtain the Dao (Way), which they considered the greatest thing in their lives. There were many moving stories. Some people came too early and had only brought a little sum of money for their living expenses. So they reduced their daily food expenditures to two Yuan, which, in a city like Guangzhou, is too little to even just make their stomachs feel full. Therefore, some practitioners from Beijing gave each one of them one hundred Yuan. A girl from Northeastern China had no income since her state-owned company, along with some large and medium industrial companies, had declared bankruptcy. She went out selling vegetables to make a little money to attend the Fa lectures, and with that little money she helped other people attend the Fa lectures too. Two brothers, who came carrying their bed quilt, survived like vagabonds on the food people donated and slept outdoors exposed to all kinds of weather.

Teacher giving Fa Lectures at the Second Fa Lecturing Session in Guangzhou in 1993.

It was said that more than five thousand people had come and those that came later could not get tickets to the lectures. Long before the first lecture started on the morning of the first day of the seminar, the square in front of the gymnasium was already a sea of people. Among them about 500 people were without tickets. Some Beijing practitioners gave their tickets over to them. Upon passing on the tickets, both sides, and also the people around them, had warm tears in their eyes. After the lecture started, people without tickets still stayed in the square in front of the gymnasium. Their perseverance deeply touched the workers at the gym, who then made an exception and opened an adjacent building where they set up a TV connected to a synchronous video tape recorder so these people could watch the lectures.

The Fifth Fa Lecturing Session in Guangzhou was an exceptionally grand occasion. It could be seen that people were eager to obtain the Fa. The consciousness of sentient beings had been aroused and their respect for Teacher was beyond description in any language. One day practitioners came very early, standing quietly on both sides of the corridor between the gate of the gymnasium and the hall inside. The crowds of people left no space in the gym except for the corridor through which Teacher would enter. When Teacher came, he was greeted with great respect. The great reverence for Teacher from everyone's heart of hearts astonished the workers at the gym. They asked practitioners, "What kind of person is your Teacher? We have never seen so many people paying so much respect to anyone."

The Fifth Fa Lecturing Session in Guangzhou excited and encouraged practitioners. We had realized what kind of thing Teacher had taught us and what kind of road we would be going along as the path of our own cultivation. Everyone had made up his mind to continue his practice to the end.

The Fifth Fa Lecturing Session in Guangzhou was the last class held by Teacher in Mainland China. Within just a few years after that, Falun Gong greeted the high tide of its spread in China.

To attend the fifth seminar, people had made special trips from the USA, Hong Kong, and some European countries. These people, after returning home, became the first group of practitioners in their local areas and later did much work in spreading the Fa all over the world, making a great contribution to the Fa.

Ladder ascending into the sky - a wonderful scene which occurred during a practitioner's sitting exercise in China. The golden ladder in the photo didn't originally exist in the room.

Recalling my journey of cultivation during the past eight years, I rejoiced very much over my chance to live in the time when Dafa was first being spread, to listen to Teacher's lectures in person, and to be taught the practice by Teacher in person. How valuable a predestined relationship this is! Many people would envy me for having such a relationship. Although within these years I have encountered many tribulations and suffered a lot, my feelings and mentality have been totally different from when I had no choice but to suffer the tortures of sickness prior to my cultivation in Dafa. In my cultivation, after suffering, I clearly felt dirty materials being eliminated piece by piece from my body. Now my body is full of energy, my life is full of hope, and I have seen a hopeful and beautiful future.

As a matter of fact, any being's life was originally beautiful. Merely due to ignorance of the universe's principles, a being had unknowingly made much karma and drawn its life into an abyss of suffering. Teacher has told us the true principles of the universe, purified our bodies, and equipped us with the Falun (law-wheel) and all the mechanisms needed in our cultivation, which has made us able to cultivate ourselves in Dafa and incessantly raise our levels physically and spiritually. Non-practitioners may see suffering in practitioners' lives, while we as practitioners will feel very happy because we are beings who are ascending and who are able to exist forever together with the universe. In the past, this would only be considered demonstrating the good will of human beings, while today we are truly and earnestly going along this path and we are truly able to jump out of the abyss of suffering, returning to our true origins.

It has been very hard for our Teacher to spread the Fa. He has done so without a single minute or second of rest during the nine years since the beginning of the spreading of the Fa. There are many things that we may never know and our hearts may never be able to hold. The loftiness and greatness of his moral character and the vastness and magnificence of his wisdom, even a ten-thousandth of it cannot be expressed using human being's languages. In July of 1999 in Mainland China, I saw radio and TV stations fabricating rumors rampantly, and with cruel motives, arousing people's bad mentalities. Not to mention everyday people, even some practitioners started to waver. I just felt it was pitiful to the point of being absurd. How can one probe Buddha's heart from the perspective of human being's notions and judge Buddha's principles using human being's reasoning?

At this last moment of rectifying the universe using the Fa, we must follow Teacher on the way forward as we did before, for ourselves and especially for the eternal future of the sentient beings in the universe.
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2002/9/16/36648.html