(Clearwisdom.net)
In August 1993, a relative of mine in Beijing brought me a book called "China Falun Gong." Frankly, I wasn't interested in Qigong, nor, did I understand it. I thought it was some kind of exercise for old people when they had nothing else to do. Besides, I wasn't into sports at all. However, I do like reading; therefore I started to read the book. Immediately, I was shocked. Wow, the book was so righteous. It was what I'd been trying to find all my life. I said to myself, "I want to cultivate." Right then, I felt a pulse in my lower stomach jumping rapidly. Meanwhile, I heard the whistling of wind. I felt my forehead become tight, with the flesh gathering and drilling inward. At that time, I had the notion that I wouldn't become a true Falun Gong practitioner if I didn't attend Teacher's lectures in person. Therefore, I waited eagerly to see Teacher and I counted the days until Teacher came to our town to give Fa lectures.
Back in 1994, whenever I saw an advertisement for a Qigong lecture, I would go and register for it. The Human Research Association had no staff other than a few people in charge of collecting tuition. When I went there, I saw that they were very busy. I had some time, so a few other practitioners and I stayed and gave them a hand.
I heard Teacher would do a live radio program at a local radio station. I asked the local Qigong Research Association to take me with them. However, they were planning to drive a motorcycle to pick up Teacher; they weren't even going to borrow a car. So, another practitioner borrowed a car and drove Teacher to the radio station.
It was winter at that time. I didn't like the cold since I'd never enjoyed good health. My hands were cold even though I wore a thick sweater and down coat. When the car arrived, several people exited it. I didn't know who Teacher was. I asked, "Has Teacher Li come?" "Yes, I'm here," Teacher replied and immediately came up to me and shook my hand. Teacher's hand felt big and warm. I felt like a small child in front of Teacher.
After we went into the room, I took a good look at Teacher. Teacher is very tall. He has very fair skin. He looked very kind yet solemn. He looked like a young man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Teacher and the host of the program talked. I sat behind them and listened. However, I felt so extremely cold that I shivered. I touched the heater. It was warm, and then I came to realize something.
Before Teacher went in the studio, I had asked Teacher, "Why do I feel so cold? Are you purifying my body?" Teacher said, "Yes. Illness is Yin. People's nerve endings are very sensitive. Therefore, you will feel cold when the illness is being pushed out." When Teacher treated a person's heart disease over the phone, I felt as if somebody grabbed something from off of my heart and a cold thing left. Ever since then, my heart disease has been cured.
Later, in one of Teacher's lectures on healing illness, Teacher said, "As a genuine practitioner, however, you cannot practice cultivation with an ill body. I will purify your body. " (Zhuan Falun, Lecture One, 2000) Teacher also told us that we would get what we are supposed to get if we don't pursue it. I firmly believe what Teacher said since that was actually my personal experience.
The next morning at 9 A.M. Teacher gave a lecture in a large hall. All the revenue from that day went to the Qigong Association.
Later that night, Teacher started the nine-day lecture in another hall. There was a lot of interference. Teacher gave the lecture on the first floor. On the second floor, people were dancing, shouting, and playing cards. All kinds of noises mixed together. The interference was huge.
During the break, a young couple from the countryside approached Teacher. They carried a baby who was about one or two years old. They said the baby was choked by a peanut and asked Teacher to remove it. However, the baby looked fine and breathed well. Teacher said he wasn't a doctor and asked them to go to a hospital. But the couple refused to go. They waited off stage. When Teacher finished the lecture that day, they ran up on stage again and persistently asked Teacher to treat the child. Teacher said no. The man then tried to throw himself into Teacher and tried to punch Teacher. A few practitioners held him back so Teacher left. However, that man didn't listen to us. He made a scene and cursed Teacher loudly in the hall. Some practitioners, who left late that day, all saw this.
I explained to the couple as well as to other practitioners. "Actually, when the couple came, Teacher had cured their child even though Teacher said he wouldn't treat the child. However, the couple didn't enlighten to it." On my way home, I felt very upset. How could the couple curse Teacher in front of so many practitioners? They shouldn't have done that. Meanwhile, I couldn't help blaming Teacher in my heart, "You cured the child. Why didn't you tell them?" The second I had this thought, I realized I shouldn't think this way, since it's disrespectful towards Teacher. But, I still felt very agitated.
The next day, we moved to another place. I hoped Teacher would explain what happened the previous day to remove the potential misunderstanding. However, Teacher didn't say anything about it. There was still interference in the new place: one elderly woman suddenly had an attack from her old illness and fainted, a mental patient cried and shouted at the door, and some people from the Qigong Association tried to sell Bodhisattva pictures. However, compared to the original place, it was already quite an improvement.
During the break, I often watched Teacher. Teacher sat there quietly and seldom spoke. He looked very kind and compassionate, yet so sacred and solemn that no words can describe him. I felt so little and impure in front of Teacher. I respect Teacher but I was afraid of Teacher at the same time. Therefore, in the next few years, I didn't consider myself Teacher's disciple since I felt Teacher is so great, while I wasn't good enough to be his disciple. When we were with Teacher, nobody talked when Teacher was silent. We were all very quiet. Sometimes, just to be polite, I would break the silence and talk to Teacher a little. I remember that during the break at the second lecture, I asked Teacher two questions. The first one is whether it's good to care for sentimentality. The second is what I should do if I feel sleepy when I practice the exercises. Teacher didn't directly answer me. He kindly smiled and said, "You'll know after the lecture."
Teacher stayed in a hotel booked by a practitioner. It was quiet there and it was pretty nice. However, it was far from the lecture hall. In order not to trouble practitioners, Teacher found a hotel himself on Changan Avenue. The first floor is a restaurant, and the hotel is on the second floor. The room was very small, and since it was downtown, it was very noisy. However, it was very close to the lecture hall. Teacher insisted on moving there. We all disagreed and suggested that he stay. Eventually, Teacher reluctantly agreed to stay at the original hotel.
When the lecture was about to end, some officials and rich people in the city tried to invite Teacher for a dinner. Teacher declined all their invitations. Teacher doesn't differentiate between his disciples based on their rank or wealth. Actually, Teacher cares very much about practitioners who don't have money. In order to lower the financial burden on those practitioners, Teacher would always give a free lecture on Sunday. Before the lectures ended, Teacher would take a picture with the practitioners. The Qigong Association tried to ask for 10 Yuan from each practitioner, but Teacher refused and negotiated with them until the price was fair.
At the beginning of June in 1994, I heard Teacher would give a nine-day lecture in Zhengzhou in Henan Province. I took some time off in order to attend. The Zhengzhou Qigong Association had few staff members. They rented a small and shabby football field. Practitioners from both the Beijing and Wuhan Falun Dafa Associations helped with the ticket booth.
On the first day, before the lecture, I saw a veteran practitioner from the Dafa Association helping with the ticket booth. He had a cucumber in one hand and a pie in the other hand. I teased him, "Why so thrifty?" He said, "Don't ask me. Teacher just had some instant noodles." I was moved. Later another veteran practitioner told me some stories about when Teacher started spreading the Fa. Every time Teacher traveled to other places to give Fa lectures, he would book the cheapest seat on the train. Sometimes when the train was overbooked with no seats left, Teacher would spread out some newspaper on the floor and lay there.
At the lecture, I saw Teacher. He still looked very energetic, so compassionate and solemn. Teacher gave the lectures in such a shabby place. We all sat on the ground to listen to the lectures.
Suddenly on the third day, the sky turned dark. Wind blew so hard that little rocks flew everywhere. Along with the wind came heavy rain and hail. The power was knocked out. It was pitch black. I knew some evil beings had come to interfere and Teacher would be able to deal with them. Therefore, I sat at the back and didn't move. Veteran practitioners all sat quietly. However, some new practitioners got anxious and started to leave or take shelter from the rain. Teacher looked around and told us a story that once when Shakyamuni gave a lecture, the wind blew out the lights. None of his disciples moved. They all continued to listen to Shakyamuni. Immediately, all the practitioners became quiet. Teacher stopped the Fa lecture and sat there quietly for a while. Then he sat on the desk, crossed his legs in full lotus, and started a set of hand-gestures. I watched Teacher. Suddenly, I saw two turning Falun in Teacher's palms. The Falun rotated, emitting golden lights. It was the first time that I saw things via my third eye.
After finishing the hand-gesture, Teacher came down off the desk. He took a bottle off the desk and drank all the water left in it. Then holding the bottle, he extended his arm. It appeared that Teacher wanted to use the bottle to hold something that was going to fall. Suddenly, something dropped into the bottle. Teacher fastened the lid back on the bottle. Teacher smiled and said, "The Head of the demons just came. But it doesn't matter. They were all taken care of." Later, I heard from practitioners sitting close that the bottle continued to shake on the desk until Teacher patted it once. The power came back on. The sun came out. It all happened in about half an hour. All the practitioners witnessed the miracle and we started clapping. The next day, we moved to a stadium, and many people from the local area came that day.
After the Zhengzhou Class, Teacher immediately left for the Jinan Class. During the lectures in Zhengzhou, Teacher mentioned that time was almost over for him to spread the Fa himself. He said that after the Jinan Class, there would be a class in Dalian. After that, he planned to stop. I quickly made some phone calls to let people in my town know about this. Eventually about five or six hundred people from my town attended the Jinan Class.
After the class, I met with Teacher again. His clothes were not fashionable at all, yet they were very clean. Teacher had gotten some sun and he looked tired and sad. Later, when I read Teacher's article "Teaching the Fa on Easter, 2004, at the New York Fa Conference," I understood why Teacher looked sad. In the article, Teacher said, "Back when I'd just started to impart the Fa, as I looked at the people in the audience, I was thinking about something. At the time, those people's heads had few righteous thoughts in them, and it was even rare for them to have their true, own thoughts. Human beings are influenced by all kinds of ideas out in society, and with their postnatal concepts they form fixed ideas about various things in the human world. And what's more, some outside factors control and interfere with people. That's the kind of beings I faced back then. At that time when many students said 'Dafa is great,' they weren't sincere, and some people had some doubts about the huge changes their bodies were going through. As I looked at those beings, I would think to myself, 'Can they do it? Will they be able to come out of that state they're in?' And then there were factors in their cultivation path that would bring interference to their cultivation and my Fa-rectification. How hard that was! Back then I thought about this all the time."
I've never again seen Teacher since we said goodbye in Jinan. Sometimes I envy fellow practitioners living abroad since they can see Teacher so often. How lucky they are! However, I do know that Teacher is with me all the time, taking care of me. I know that Teacher didn't give up on me even when I made mistakes and walked down the wrong path. Sometimes I can hear Teacher saying, "It doesn't matter that you fell down, it doesn't matter! Quickly get up!" ("Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference") Teacher also said, "The truth is, I treasure you more than you treasure yourselves!" ("Eliminate Your Last Attachment(s)").
Teacher has been holding my hand and walking me back home. Everyday I live amongst Teacher's immense compassion with the sacred Buddha's light shining upon me.
