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Looking Inward and Doing the Three Things Well
By Yingming, a Dafa practitioner from Shandong Province
(Clearwisdom.net) I obtained the Fa in 1995. At the time, I
was on maternity leave and went back to my parents' home. Two weeks later, my
husband came to visit us. I noticed that he looked very good. He told me that it
was because he had practiced Falun Gong, and that Falun Gong taught
Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance. At that time, I felt that this practice
was a very good one. I decided that I would practice it when the baby got older.
After I returned to my own home, I also listened when my husband listened to the
Fa. Later, he taught me the exercises. I could feel the warmth in my palms and
my body while practicing. I thought to myself, "Why should I wait? I should
begin the practice now." Therefore, I began my journey of cultivation. Just like what Teacher said,
after I studied the Fa, my entire outlook on life changed fundamentally. I began
to truly understand that the purpose of a human coming to this world was to
return to one's true self. Since both of us practiced Falun Gong, our family was
in harmony. We worked diligently and received praise from other family members
on both sides, along with co-workers and neighbors. However, after the persecution began on July 20, 1999, the evil Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) destroyed our beautiful life. We went to Beijing to appeal
to the government by clarifying the truth about Falun Gong. We were
then taken back to our hometown by force. We were not allowed to go to work and
were forced to attend the brainwashing classes and write the three
statements. We were monitored around the clock in order to prevent us from
going to Beijing to appeal again. Lawless people constantly called our home at
night and severely disturbed our normal daily life. In that evil environment, I
was lost and did not know what to do. Later, after I calmed down and studied the
Fa, and gradually managed to have a clear mind, I decided that I wanted to stand
up and clarify the truth for Dafa and let ordinary people know the truth about
Dafa. At the beginning, I distributed truth-clarifying materials to residents in
the small community where I lived. In September 2000, I made copies of some
truth clarifying materials and went to the market to distribute them. At that
time, when I first began to step forward to do something to validate Dafa, I was
not that stable in my mindset. After Fa study, I became more and more stable in
my heart. I then began to clarify the truth about Dafa to my other family
members, classmates, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and passersby, etc. Once a leader from my work unit found me and said, "I am sorry. I want
to tell you one thing." He fished out a piece of paper that read,
"Whoever reports will be rewarded" The main content on that piece of
paper was, "If you find Falun Gong practitioners distributing
truth-clarifying materials, report them. Each person who reports the event will
receive a certain amount of money each time." That leader warned me
repeatedly that his leaders wanted him to make sure to let me know. At that time
I was not afraid at all. I thought to myself, "Before I did not have a good
chance to talk to him. Now he came to see me. Isn't that a very good chance for
me to tell the truth to him?" Therefore, I asked him, "Do you know
about Falun Gong?" He said he didn't know too much. I began to tell him how
our Teacher requires us to treat our job, and how to handle a conflict, etc.
That leader attentively listened to me and raised some questions now and then,
such as about the broadcasts on national TV, the fabricated stories about the
Tiananmen Self-Immolation, homicide, etc. I patiently
explained the truth to him. Finally he said he understood now and told me to
practice at home if I felt it was good. He told me not to go to Beijing to
appeal and not to distribute truth-clarifying materials. Otherwise, we would all
be in trouble. I told him I knew what I should do and that Dafa practitioners
could only bring blessings to their work unit. I remembered Teacher's Fa in my
heart: "Validate the Fa with rationality, clarify the truth with wisdom,
spread the Fa and save people with mercy" ("Rationality" from Essentials
for Further Advancement II) Since then, that leader has not come to talk to me about my practicing Falun
Gong. Because that leader had righteous thoughts towards Dafa, later he was
blessed and was accepted by Tsinghua University for graduate studies. Along with the speedy Fa validation process, clarifying the truth to ordinary
people became an urgent task. Sometimes I wondered how to clarify the truth to
my former classmates. When I had that thought, I didn't realize that the chances
would come. One day in April 2004, I received a phone call from one of my former
middle school classmates who told me that there was a gathering to celebrate our
twenty-year reunion. I immediately expressed that I would like to participate.
Nothing is accidental. Therefore, I began to prepare a truth-clarifying CD
called "Traveling Heaven and Earth through Wind and Rain" for each
classmate and teacher. In the meantime I asked my fellow practitioners to help
me send forth righteous thoughts in order to make things go smoothly so that
every classmate would accept the CD and be saved. On the day of the gathering, I
expressed my wish to each classmate and teacher, "I care about each one of
you sitting here and I sincerely wish all of you have a beautiful future.
Therefore, I prepared a gift for each one and hope this gift will bring you and
your family my sincere wish." A teacher asked me the content of the CD and
I told him that it was about the truth of Falun Gong. One classmate immediately
said that was a personal belief and said he understood that it was wrongfully
persecuted. Therefore, everyone was happy to receive the CD. The entire
gathering was very harmonious. After the gathering of my middle school classmates was the August gathering
from the Skilled School. I prepared the same gifts. Since everything went pretty
well last time, I thought that this time there should also be no problem.
Because of the attachment of complacency, interference came immediately. One of
my previous classmates even prevented me from distributing the truth-clarifying
CD's. I knew it was interference. Therefore, I sent forth righteous thoughts to
eliminate the evil factors behind him and then told him, "You should not
behave like that. You cannot stop me. I only have one wish, which is to let
everyone sitting here know the truth about Falun Gong and have a beautiful
future." With that righteous thought, I gave the truth-clarifying CD's to
everyone who wanted to accept them. Only a few people did not want the CD. After two classmates' gatherings, I realized that I should not have any
attachments when validating the Fa. Just as Teacher said, "I will use any troubles or unpleasant things you come across--even if
they involve work for Dafa, or no matter how good or sacred you think they
are--to eliminate your attachments...." ("Further
Understanding" from Essentials for Further Advancement) When the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party was
published, I first thought that it had nothing to do with me since I was not a
member of the CCP. After Teacher published the article "Turning
the Wheel Towards the Human World," I began to realize that the
Youth League and Young Pioneers were also
organizations of the CCP. Therefore, I immediately declared my resignation from
all CCP organizations. In the meantime, I exchanged my understandings with other
fellow practitioners and clarified some hazy understandings. We also reached the
same understanding on how to ask ordinary people to quickly break away from the
CCP organizations. We thought we should start doing this ourselves and then
gradually expand the scope. At first, there were a lot of mental obstacles and
we were afraid of others saying that we were getting political. After further Fa
study, we corrected our erroneous concept. During that process, some people
resigned from the CCP organization once we explained the reason for doing so.
Some people would try several times. However, no matter how difficult the
process was, I held a mindset that we must let everyday people see what the evil
CCP is and tell them what its fate is, and why people should break away from it.
The process of truth clarification is also validating the Fa and improving our
understanding. Whenever I encountered some obstacles in my truth clarifying
activities, I would first look inward to find out what kind of mindset would
cause that. Then I would think about how to do it in the correct way. We should pay special attention to sending forth righteous thoughts. In 2003,
when I heard the news that we should send forth righteous thoughts around the
clock on July 20, I thought to myself, "Do not go to bed the entire night?
What should I do if I cannot hold my palm erect because of sleepiness? I should
take a nap after lunch." Since I had that bad thought, I encountered
interference immediately. I became muddle headed and did not have a good effect
when I sent forth righteous thoughts. Since I did not recognize it as
interference, I suddenly felt like throwing up after 11:00 p.m. at night. I got
up and used the bathroom and could not settle my stomach. All I vomited was
blood. At that moment, I was shocked and wondered why that could happen. "I
am a cultivator so why would that symptom appear?" I immediately denied it
when the wrong thought came. During my years of cultivation I have felt that
Teacher has been looking after me every minute. Therefore, I sent forth
righteous thoughts at once to get rid of those dark minions and rotten demons
that were interfering with me and completely opposed the arrangement of the old
forces. In the meantime, I studied Teacher's Lectures in the United States
about illness karma. Thus, by sending forth righteous thoughts at the top of
every hour, and insisting on studying the Fa until daybreak, the interference
was quickly eliminated. The following day, I earnestly watched Teacher's first three Dalian lectures
on video. On the third day, a fellow practitioner who I had not seen for a long
time came to my home. She said that she hadn't been able to eat anything for a
long time. She was worried and could not bear it any longer. At that time her
family members were planning to take her to the hospital. She asked our
suggestions on what to do next. I then told her about my recent hardship and how
I passed it. I suggested that we send forth righteous thoughts and eliminate the
interference from the old forces. It was difficult to completely deny the old
forces. I suggested that in the meantime, we should strengthen our Fa study and
do the three things well. We should not hold our previous mindsets
of staying at home and cultivating ourselves. We should step out and clarify the
truth to everyday people. We should believe in our Teacher and Dafa. Nothing bad
will happen to us. After talking to her we watched lecture four of Teacher's
Dalian lectures. I do not know whether it was coincidence or if it was Teacher's
special arrangement, but all of her questions were answered while watching the
lecture. Later she came to visit me several times and she completely recovered
and also corrected her cultivation state. During these years of cultivation, I have encountered many difficulties and
hardships. I always remember one thing: If I fell down, I would get up again and
continue walking forward. If it was not for Teacher's mercy saving us, I don't
know if I would have made it this far. Besides what I have shared, I have quite
a lot of experiences, but I cannot express all of them at one time. In the
process of walking my cultivation path, I still have a lot of shortcomings. For
example, recently I fell into laziness. After reading Teacher's articles "A
Will That Ebbs Not" and "The Closer to the End, the More
Diligent You Should Be" I began to think deeply and realized that I
must take a more straight way on my cultivation path. We should calmly study the
Fa and look inward, work with other fellow practitioners and step forward
together. Teacher is our guidance. Each of Teacher's articles was published to
prevent us from taking a side path. By walking only our Dafa path, we can reach
the shore of happiness. March 14, 2006 |