By a Dafa practitioner from China

(Clearwisdom.net)

In mid September 1995, my mother, who had only started practicing Falun Gong three months previously, came to my hometown to introduce me to the Fa. I once had the intention of becoming good and cultivating Buddhahood long ago, but I did not know the profound meaning of cultivation and how to truly cultivate. In August, I had even gone to a well-known temple for conversion and bought quite a few Buddhist scriptures, thinking that I would decide which cultivation way to take after I had finished reading them all.

Being a lay Buddhist before obtaining the Fa, my mother had two wishes: to have good health and to achieve an attainment status through cultivation in this life. She used to be weak and plagued by many illnesses and was near death several times.

My mother said that she was fortunate because only Falun Gong could enable her to realize her two wishes. As long as she practiced, Master would help her reach Consummation in this lifetime. She realized that she was a practitioner as soon as she came home from listening to Master's lecture at the exercise site the first day. After practicing for half a month, she was surprised to notice that the pains of arthritis in her fingers, wrists, hips, and other joints had disappeared completely without her even noticing when it happened. Her bronchitis and asthma also disappeared. Now she did not feel tired and out of breath from going upstairs. Before, she used to stop again and again between steps. My mother was anxious to introduce me to something that was so good. But at that time, I was not very enthusiastic about it. During that period of time, my mother continued to introduce the Fa to many predestined people.

Not long after she began the cultivation practice, she cried when she saw that I had no real intention of cultivating. She insisted on going home. In order to get her to stay, I reluctantly agreed to practice the exercises with her. To my surprise, I could feel strong energy mechanisms immediately after I began to learn the exercises, as if I would start floating in mid-air. I could only do the sitting meditation--without crossing my legs--for ten minutes, but I could feel a strong current spinning throughout my body and many small Falun spinning on various areas of my body. I could feel that there was a current coming through my joints. I knew that Master was taking care of me!

My mother left me with Dafa books and cassettes when she went home, telling me again and again to read the Fa every day and that reading the Fa was most important. She told me to look inside whenever I came across conflicts or felt bad physically, since this must have resulted from attachments that I still held.

When I first began to learn the Fa, I committed myself to reading every word and sentence with absolute attention, not allowing even one mistaken word. I would repeat any sentence I did not read correctly. As my learning of the Fa went deeper and deeper, I gradually realized the importance of learning the Fa and handled the book with increased respect. Also, the inner meaning of Dafa was gradually revealed to me. One day in March 1997, as I was reading the sentence "One does not only cultivate oneself, but also offers salvation to all sentient beings" in Zhuan Falun, I suddenly enlightened to the realization that my cultivation was not just an issue of my own improvement and Consummation. The true purpose of my cultivation is: All is for the Dafa of the universe, and all is for the sentient beings. I just knew that this was the purpose of my cultivation, even though I did not understand every aspect of it. I was willing to devote everything to this great aspiration. I would return to Dafa and sentient beings all that I had cultivated in Dafa! From now on, I must be more diligent in cultivation since "The time for actual cultivation in studying Dafa is limited." ("Awakening," Essentials for Further Advancement) Thus I must make good use of this limited time to enrich myself. I read and hand copied Dafa's words everyday. I did not waste time even when I was walking and waiting for a bus. Even if there were only several minutes left, I would read several paragraphs of Zhuan Falun or recite silently Master's articles. My mind was filled with nothing but Dafa, and my heart was filled with joy. When I read the Fa, I felt profoundly Master's immense mercy in the words and sentences, often being moved to tears. How happy a completely renewed life would be when immersed in the Fa! Meanwhile I paid more attention to upgrading my xinxing. I would think of this aspiration whenever I did not let go of my attachments or faced tests I feared I could not pass. I asked myself: "You can sacrifice everything for Dafa and sentient beings. Can't you give up this tiny human stuff?!" Then my problem would be resolved.

After I finished copying Explaining the Content of Falun Dafa and Essentials for Further Advancement, I began to recite Zhuan Falun. While reciting the Fa, I was interfered with by countless odd thoughts, attachments, thought karma, foreign messages, and fatigue. At first I did not recognize that this was interference to keep me from reading the Fa. I had to overcome them so that I could recite the Fa. Otherwise, I just could not commit the Fa to memory, no matter how many times I read it. I finally conquered all these forms of interference, although I sometimes wanted to stop when coming across difficulties. I realized that this "difficulty" was a big challenge, testing whether I could continue to recite the Fa. I disciplined myself to become clear-headed and to overcome all forms of interference. In the end, I could finish memorizing one page in less than twenty minutes. I continuously brushed up on what I learned previously using every minute and second. In this way, I recited the Fa at all times of the day except for when I attended group study or read the Fa by myself. From the end of 1997 to the beginning of 1998, I recited Zhuan Falun completely for the first time within two months. I finished the second time within three weeks. After the third time, I could recite the Fa when attending group study. I recited silently while others were reading. Once, when the power suddenly went out, the Fa study group listened to my reciting the Fa. I cannot remember how many times I recited Zhuan Falun in 1998.

It was this solid foundation of Fa-study and cultivation established in this personal cultivation period that enabled me to break through tribulations one after another and to remain open and upright after July 20, 1999.

Dafa practitioners have suffered intense persecution since July 20, 1999, and the media has confused sentient beings with lies. During this period, I went to Bejing to safeguard the Fa, appealed locally, clarified the truth to people, and shared experiences with fellow practitioners. I was illegally detained four times, suffered severe persecution, and almost lost my life; but I came through in the end and followed my path steadfastly with a righteous belief cultivated in the Fa. This experience of safeguarding the Fa made me gradually understand what completely opposing the arrangements of old forces truly is.

In February 2000, I went to Beijing to validate the Fa and was illegally detained for three weeks after I was taken back to my hometown. Several days after I was released, traveling with two fellow practitioners to share experiences with other practitioners in the adjacent county, the local plain-clothes police stopped us as soon as we got off the train. They took us back home and detained us illegally for 15 days for "leaving home without permission of the police." They also confiscated 2000 Yuan [500 Yuan is the average monthly income for an urban worker in China] from me, saying it was a "bail fee" so that my husband could come and get me.

At the Spring Festival of 2001, my sister called several times from our hometown to tell me that our mother was critically ill. I asked for a leave of absence from my work unit, but the leader refused, giving me various excuses. My mother was a veteran practitioner and a volunteer instructor. How did she arrive at such a situation? I immediately thought that I should go to her right away to study the Fa and share experiences with her, helping her pass this test. The leader in my work unit not only refused my leave request, but also threatened me, saying that I might be arrested before arriving home if I left without permission. I told them sternly, "It is a basic human right to go and visit one's mother. Nobody has the authority to deprive me of that. Don't you prevent my critically ill mother from seeing me just because I practice Falun Gong! If something happened to my mother, I would definitely expose this, letting the whole world know what is going on in China." Only then did they approve my request for a leave.

After I got home, my mother had already improved. My sixth aunt, who had been taking care of my mother, told me that for several days before my arrival, some peculiar things had been occurring at home. She frequently saw the shadow of a person waving his hand in my mother's room. It seemed that Master's Fashen was purifying my mother's body. Although my aunt did not practice cultivation, she knew something about it. She played the Dafa tapes for my mother to listen to every day. In addition, the local fellow practitioners took turns caring for my mother. I, too, took my mother's situation as eliminating karma, without realizing at all that this was the persecution of Dafa practitioners from the old forces. I did nothing other than to encourage my mother to be stronger.

On the afternoon of the next day after I came home, several police suddenly broke into my home and took me away by force without showing a warrant or following any legal procedures. My work unit had already notified the local police station to monitor me. My aunt followed us to the local police station, where the police tried to force me to write a guarantee statement not to make phone calls to fellow practitioner and not to associate with fellow practitioners. Otherwise, they would arrest me. I, of course, did not follow their unreasonable demands. Although they did not ask me to write the "guarantee statement"*, the "disassociation statement"*, and the "repentance statement", it did not comply with the requirements of Dafa for me to agree to these unreasonable demands. Dafa practitioners are one body. We must upgrade and ascend as a whole, particularly at present in the special Fa-rectification cultivation period. This is exactly what the evil fears the most. I said, "I am a citizen who obeys the law. Am I guilty of visiting my mother just because I practice Falun Gong, of cultivating 'Zhen-Shan-Ren' to be a good person?" One officer whose family name is Huang said, "We must arrest you because you practice Falun gong. No reasons are necessary. The authorities originally asked us to arrest you as soon as we saw you. We offered you a chance to get free, thinking that we are all folks in the same hometown. We will let you go home as soon as you write a guarantee statement." The police kept me in the detention center when I would not comply.

In the detention center, I met several fellow practitioners. They had been illegally detained for distributing truth clarification flyers. Against their will, two of them had written the "guarantee statements." I recited the Fa and shared experiences with them. They soon realized that going against their conscience does not comply with Zhen-Shan-Ren and would leave a stain on their path of cultivation. Isn't our purpose for learning Dafa to validate Dafa and to save sentient beings?! We are only truly being responsible for our relatives if we use our actions to validate Dafa, to let them know that Dafa is good, to let them not be poisoned by lies, and therefore be saved. The practitioners cried and felt regretful after they understood what I said. They declared what they had written, which was not good for Dafa, to be null and void. The police thought that I was responsible for overturning their "conquests" and said that they would send me to three-years of forced labor reform. I later learned that I had been illegally detained this time because the police wanted revenge. Apparently, because several practitioners and I had gone to Beijing to appeal for Dafa in 2000, both the officials of the city and the county were required by their superiors to write a "self criticism report" and were almost demoted as a result. Thinking that I was the one who was responsible, they were making use of this event to take their revenge. Walking tall, my sister went to the Political and Judiciary Committee of the county to ask for me after I was illegally detained for 48 hours. Finally they had no choice but to let me go.

(To be continued)

*Guarantee statement: A statement to declare that he or she is remorseful for practicing Falun Gong and guarantees not to practice Falun Gong again, not to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and never again associate with any Falun Dafa practitioners

*Disassociation statement: A statement to declare a dissociation with Falun Gong and promise not go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/4/2/47572.html