After My Sister Died as a Result of the Persecution - My ten-year cultivation journey

By Xiao Yan, a Dafa practitioner from Heilongjiang Province

(Clearwisdom.net)

--Quote from this article

It has been ten years since I obtained the Fa in 1998. During this ten years' cultivation, I would not have been able to walk this far on my cultivation path without the compassionate protection and hints from Master.

Recalling the time when I first obtained the Fa, I studied the Fa and practiced the exercises with unmatched enthusiasm. I studied two or three chapters of the book Falun Gong each day. One year later the persecution started. At the end of 2000, My sister and I went to Beijing to validate the Fa and were arrested. When police asked me for my name and address, I didn't tell them. They made me sit on the cold cement floor to freeze. It was very cold in Beijing. When I still didn't say anything, the police became desperate. They shocked me on my hands, face and head with electronic batons. At the time I had no hatred toward them but tried to persuade them not to behave like this. I told them: "Good will be rewarded with good and evil will be met with retribution; If you persecute good people, you will face retribution; I have never done you any harm; You have parents and children; If others treat your family members or relatives like you treat me, how would you feel? I don't hate you but sincerely wish you good; Please don't persecute good people."

Shortly afterwards my whole body started to shake violently (Master was helping me but I didn't realize it at the time.) The guard who beat me was terrified and asked: "Have you suffered from any disease in the past?" I said: "No." "Please sit down and drink some water." He said. The guards exchanged their views and dared not beat me any more. During my detention, I recited Hongyin and Essentials for Further Advancement whenever I had time. If I didn't recite the Fa, my human attachments all came up and I felt scared and helpless. But when I recited the Fa, my fear was gone and I felt that nobody could move me. I realized that this was not a place where I should stay and that I must leave so that I could save sentient beings.

My sister and I were separated after we were arrested in Tiananmen Square. When I saw her again, her body was covered with black and purple bruises, her hands full of blisters because the police in Beijing burned her with heating pipe, her feet and toes were trampled black and blue by police, her wrists and ankles were bruised black and blue due to tight shackles. She became mentally unstable. Later, she was tortured to death.

After I came home from Beijing, police from the local police department went to my shop every day and tried to force me to write a guarantee statement to give up Falun Dafa. They used carrot-and-stick tactics and were very hypocritical. Feeling helpless, I thought of leaving home to avoid the persecution. But Master gave me hints in my dream that I shouldn't go. It was impossible for me to give up cultivation. What should I do then? Since the police forced me to write, I would write the truth about the persecution, how the CCP persecuted good people with Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance in their hearts, how Falun Dafa practitioners were forced to go to Beijing with nowhere to seek justice, what price practitioners paid during their appeal for Falun Gong and how police severely beat practitioners and persecuted so many practitioners to death and had broken up so many families.

I handed it to the policeman who tried to force me to write the guarantee statement. He kept shaking his head as he read it. Still, he handed it to the Director of the police department and heads of the 610 Office. They sent the political instructor who said to me: "Can this be called a 'Guarantee Statement'? Aren't you waving flags and shouting for your group? You said you sacrificed so much. But why didn't you mention what we had done for you, without even a holiday break? Go and write another one." Ok, I will add that. So I copied the same contents again and added the sentence at the end "police gave up holiday breaks." I handed it to them again. They said: "OK this time. Very good." I felt very strange. I didn't say I would give up cultivation and I wondered why they said it was very good. Later on I enlightened to the Fa principle of

"There is no affect between master and disciple
The Buddha's grace remolds Heaven and Earth
When disciples have ample righteous thoughts
Master has the power to turn back the tide"
(from "The Master-Disciple Bond" in Hong Yin II)

If disciples have strong righteous thoughts and let go of the human attachment of fear, the evil dares not persecute us.

My sister's death had a big impact in the local area. When I talked to people about the persecution, they didn't listen. What should I do? My own actions could validate the Fa. There is an old saying: "A man knows his companion on a long journey and in a little inn." Gradually people around me found that I was not the kind of person the CCP defamed on TV. People said: "Go to her shop to buy things. You can rest assured because she practices Falun Gong." Through this incident, I enlightened to the Fa principle of "he is full of great aspirations while minding minor details" When people don't understand Falun Gong, they will refer to the behavior of Dafa practitioners.

With the progress of the Fa rectification, three withdrawals became one of the very important steps in truth clarifying activities. This was too hard for me. When people came to my shop, I wanted to talk about it but the words were pushed back again. Then I regretted so much after they left. I thought to myself that I shouldn't always behave like that. I am Master's disciple. I must listen to Master. No matter how difficult it was, we must do what Master has told us to do. So I started to talk to people about Falun Gong and the persecution face to face, and persuade them to withdraw from the CCP.

At first I didn't speak well. So I looked inward to see where I went wrong and tried to improve next time. When coming across unreasonable people, I was quite discouraged. I said to myself "If you don't want to quit the CCP, let it be. Do we have to save you?"When I became downhearted, Master's article "For the Good of the World"was published. The sentence"I just don't believe their consciences are irretrievably lost." resounded in my mind. I realized that Master was encouraging me and telling me not to become disheartened. Gradually whether people accepted the truth or not, I was not moved by their superficial behavior.

Relying on face to face truth clarification was too limited. We got truth-clarifying materials from far away areas and they were in demand in our local area. My husband (a practitioner) and I decided to set up a material center in our home, but we didn't have any computer knowledge. My husband said: "A relative of mine (non-practitioner) knows about computers and he can buy a good one for us." But we ended up with a computer for which he had replaced all the new parts except the CPU with old ones. The computer was always breaking. Through this we realized that we couldn't rely too much on others as far as saving sentient beings was concerned.

I said to my husband that we shouldn't be afraid of the difficulty, we should educate ourselves. Master is right beside us, so we will certainly learn how to do it. We downloaded the technical handbook and learned bit by bit. With the help of Master, we learned how to install the system. As long as our xinxing was up to par and we were not afraid of hardships, it was actually easy to learn about computers and how to get onto the Internet safely. Our notions had hindered us from setting up a material center in our home.

Because I had no knowledge of printers, we bought a second hand printer. As a result, the pages of the Nine Commentaries we printed from it were out of order and looked terrible. I thought to myself: if our materials are beautiful and eye-catching, sentient beings will accept them; if we ourselves even don't even like the materials we made, how can the sentient beings be saved? My husband and I checked on the website to see which printer practitioners recommended. There was one they recommended which was small in size and highly efficient. We bought it. This time things printed out nicely and professionally.

Later on we copied DVDs of the Chinese New Year Spectacular show. We needed a large sum of money to do this. We had to rely on our own resources because local practitioners didn't provide us with any funding. At the beginning we bought cheap DVDs but the feedback from practitioners was that it didn't show properly after playing several times. The show was so beautiful and it achieved marvelous results in saving sentient beings. We should use the best quality DVDs. I used the money invested in stock in our shop to buy DVDs. I thought to myself: "I came to this world not to live an ordinary person's life but to help Master rectify the Fa and save sentient beings. I shouldn't be attached to worldly loss or gain." Master saw this and made miracles happen. Profits for our shop were much greater than before. I had enough money to do things to save sentient beings. It is truly "Cultivation depends on one's own efforts while the transformation of the gong is done by the master." (from Zhuan Falun). This process was also a process of our cultivating our hearts. We found our attachments of relying on others, laziness, fear of technical things and fear of hardships.

Another issue I'd like to share with practitioners is the issue of helping each other among practitioners and forming one body. During my contact with practitioner B, I felt he was not strict with himself and indulged himself. He was not able to quit drinking alcohol or killing. Some practitioners always said to him: "You are a practitioner and shouldn't behave like that." It was alright for practitioners to point out his shortcomings but it should with enough compassion. Practitioner B not only didn't listen to them but rather he had his own complaint: you always say that I am not right about this and that, I will not go to your place. Thus a separation was formed among practitioners.

I asked practitioner B: "Please tell me your problem so that we can solve it for you." He said: "You are not able to help me." I said: "It hasn't been easy for each of us to have walked through rains and winds to this point in cultivation since the persecution started on July 20, 1999. Under such evil circumstances, you still haven't given up cultivation. Now the environment is better, yet you become slack. How come? It will be a life-time of regret if you miss this once in a million years opportunity." He said: "I haven't studied the Fa for a long time. As soon as I pick up the book, I feel sleepy. It has been almost a year and I haven't even read Zhuan Falun once. I understand what you have said. But I am not able to put it into practice." I thought: "The Fa can break all attachments, the Fa can destroy all evil, the Fa can shatter all lies, and the Fa can strengthen righteous thoughts." (from "Drive Out Interference") I decided to study the Fa with him. When we finished reading Lecture One of Zhuan Falun, he said: "I haven't studied the Fa like this with a serene mind for a long time. I feel so good as if everything becomes still. Nothing can interfere with me."

From this, I realized why Master asked us to study the Fa collectively. Through group Fa study, we can help each other move forward, we can learn from each other and cultivate diligently. It helps us to form one indestructible body. I sincerely hope practitioners who have been interfered with by human attachments and not been able to cultivate diligently can talk about your attachments that you are not able to let go of. Practitioners will not treat you differently, but will help you improve in the Fa and help you to get rid of the interferences and improve together.

This is my first experience sharing paper. Please kindly point out anything that is not from the Fa. Thank you.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/11/12/189139.html

 Yearly Archive   Printer Version