(Minghui.org) I started practicing Falun Dafa in July 2010. I moved to Toronto in 2015. I want to share my experience of passing a test of life-and-death and my experiences of clarifying the truth at tourist spots. I share to express my gratitude to Master and fellow practitioners.
My wife and daughter started practicing Falun Dafa in June 1996. I witnessed huge physical and mental changes in my wife after she became a practitioner. I was shocked. She became healthy, and she got rid of her bad temper. Our family also became harmonious; so I always supported them.
I read Zhuan Falun and Master's other Fa lectures. I identified with Dafa, and I thought that what Master taught was very correct. However, I found the idea of heaven and miracles to be unbelievable. Additionally, it was hard for me to give up the ordinary life. I still hoped that I could gain more achievements and promotions in my career.
After July 20, 1999, when Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Dafa, my wife and other Falun Dafa practitioners suffered in the persecution. My wife and I worked in the same company, and I endured tremendous pressure. As such, I was too afraid to practice. I couldn’t ask my wife and daughter to give up their beliefs, so I tried my best to use my capacity, influence, and power to protect them.
Our company arranged for me to have a physical examination in June 2010, and it was discovered that I had kidney cancer. I had surgery and lost my right kidney. There was also a stone in my left kidney. After I was released from the hospital, I followed my wife's and daughter’s advice and started studying the Fa. To be frank, at that time I didn’t take cultivation seriously, although I was very sick. I didn’t study the Fa carefully, nor did I do the exercises regularly.
In August my body developed symptoms of muscle weakness. I had fatigue, eyelid droop, and difficulty swallowing. I was even unable to eat. I was taken to the hospital for treatment. During treatment, the disease became more serious, and it was difficult to breathe. I was sent for resuscitation. My trachea was cut, and I required a respirator to breathe.
Everyone thought I was going to die. Many of my colleagues and friends visited me, silently blessing me. My wife gave me a headset to listen to Master’s recordings. She also told me that only Master could save my life. Many fellow practitioners selflessly helped us take care of my daughter.
A practitioner recalled that Master said, “'Having heard the Dao in the morning, one can die in the evening.'” (“Melt Into the Fa” from Essentials for Further Advancement)
He asked me to trust in Master and trust in Dafa. In the past, it was not easy to let go of the attachments to my wife and daughter, because my daughter was still young and my wife always had simple thoughts. They didn’t have the capacity to handle everything. If I left them, who would take care of them? But then I knew that Master would take good care of them. I had nothing to worry about.
I calmed down and listened to Master’s lectures again and again. I had two dreams when I was in the ICU. In the first dream, there was a huge mass of gray droplets of things coming out of my feet as I was floating in the air. In the second dream, a huge hand took a fox-like, skinless animal out of my body when I was lying on the bed. I knew it was Master cleaning up my body, getting rid of the root cause of my diseases.
My physical condition soon recovered quickly. After I became more stable, the doctor told us it would be a long-term recovery process, maybe more than 10 years, and that it would be very expensive. He also told us I had to take hormones permanently, which could bring long-term side effects such as calcium deficiency, osteoporosis, and femoral head necrosis. Nevertheless, the result was that I recovered and was discharged in two months.
The director of the hospital also said my recovery was a miracle. My extraordinary recovery fully demonstrated the miraculous nature of Dafa, and I knew it was Master who gave me a second life.
When I studied “What Has Teacher Given to Students” in “Lecture Three” of Zhuan Falun, I understood that Master started taking care of me even before I was a real Dafa disciple. In spring 1997, I led a team to repair a water tank on the top of a six-floor building. It was a very old building, and since there was no safety protection equipment, we had to use a ladder to go into the tank. When I was climbing the ladder, the ladder suddenly slipped and tumbled onto the roof of the building. I didn’t fall down, and I felt so cared for. After I became a practitioner, I understood that Master protected me at the time.
Master said:
“I knew how trying this affair would be, and so I resolved many things for Dafa disciples over the course of history, and for this reason I protected you life after life, watching over you all the way through.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2015 West Coast Fa Conference”)
After I started practicing, I experienced sickness karma twice. One time my body suddenly appeared to have the illusion of a neuromuscular disease. I saw things as if in a haze, spoke with a lisp, had swallowing difficulties. But I was not affected by these. I repeatedly listened to Master’s lecture recordings. If I could not eat, I drank liquids instead. I kept doing the exercises. The sickness karma illusion disappeared in three days.
The other time, the sickness karma illusion on the surface was more serious. Once at midnight, I wanted to vomit. I felt dizzy after getting out of bed and was unable to control my own body. I fell down on the bed and struggled several times to stand up, but failed. I begged for help from Master and restrained the ordinary thoughts in my mind. Since my middle-aged father suddenly died when he was sleeping, and my brother died in the same way, I tried to get rid of those bad thoughts. I believed in Master and knew deep down I would follow him to my real home. I only followed Master’s arrangements.
Master said:
"When you feel very uncomfortable, it indicates that things will turn around after reaching the extreme point. Your whole body will be purified and it must be completely purified. The cause of your illness has been removed, and what remains is only this bit of black qi that will come out on its own to let you suffer some and have some pain. It is forbidden for you not to suffer even a little bit. " (“Lecture Two” in Zhuan Falun)
My wife also sent forth righteous thoughts for me. I kept listening to Master’s audio recordings when I could not sit. When I could sit, I watched the video of Master teaching the Fa. When I could get out of bed, I did the exercises. I returned to normal in only one week.
Without Master’s protection and care, I would have died. My family would have been broken apart as well.
When I was in the hospital, several colleagues collected donations totaling 50,000 yuan for me. We did not use the money, not because we have lots of money, but because we know Dafa's principle of “no loss, no gain.”
After I was discharged from the hospital, my wife and I returned most of the donations. For those that we could not return, we bought gifts to express our gratitude and took the opportunity to clarify the truth. One of my wife’s colleagues said, “It is impossible to return the donations now, and no one does this except for Falun Dafa practitioners!”
I also used this experience to tell people that the “Tiananmen Square Self-immolation Incident” was staged by the CCP to discredit Falun Dafa. It is impossible for people to talk after they have a tracheotomy. After I had a tracheotomy, I could talk. I also told them Falun Dafa is good and about the miraculous nature of Dafa. Many people thus quit the CCP, and some of them started to practice Falun Dafa.
One of my colleagues suffered from hemiplegia, a type of paralysis that affects one side of the body. It was difficult for her to talk. Her husband thus read Zhuan Falun to her every day, and he did the exercises with her every day too. As such, he also became healthy. He had been sick for many years. After a period of time, all of his diseases disappeared. He has been practicing Dafa since then.
I worked in the logistics department at my company. I usually handled the public funds and some project items. Yet I always followed Falun Dafa's principles. I refused anything related to the company, and I didn’t use public money to eat or drink. One manager from another supply company could not understand me or why I didn’t partake in such “free money.” After clarifying the truth to her, her whole family quit the CCP. Her son suffered from a serious brain tumor, and the doctor told her there was no cure. After her whole family quit the CCP, she took her son to Beijing for a health check. The doctor told her that her son’s situation seemed much more stable. Her son recovered completely after a short period of time.
Every time she saw me, she thanked me. I told her that she should thank our Master and Falun Dafa. She also read Zhuan Falun. She said the most impressive part in the book for her was this:
“Thus, our practitioners should be like this even less so, as a practitioner should follow the course of nature. If something is yours, you will not lose it. If something is not yours, you will not have it even if you fight for it.” (Zhuan Falun)”
We set up a family-based Dafa materials production site to print Dafa truth-clarification materials. We also established a group Fa study. We clarified the truth by phone and sent righteous thoughts for different projects. Because of the fearful environment, many of my attachments were deeply hidden.
After we moved to Toronto, we became involved in many other projects at tourist sites such as the Pacific Mall, the Chinese Consulate, and Chinatown. While clarifying the truth to people, lots of ordinary thoughts and attachments came out. I tried to correct myself by studying the Fa.
I thought I was an easygoing person, but since practicing Falun Dafa, I realized that I always pursued fame and fortune. I also hoped everything I did would be perfect and I wanted praise from others. When I worked in the company, I liked to help others. I gained a good reputation in our company. Yet I always sounded like I was better than others.
When I was clarifying the truth in public, I met different kinds of people. Some could understand us and encouraged us. However, some people did not accept the truth. I was sometimes accused of being a “traitor” or a “reactionary.” I also felt aggrieved at times. But when I thought of Master’s Fa, I realized that the conflict was really a good thing for me.
Master said:
“People such as those whom we see with bad attitudes toward Dafa or who are vicious toward Dafa disciples are actually pitiable. They have been poisoned by the CCP’s lies, in fact, and that is what causes them to act as they do. Of course, in some instances people have been driven by money. But whatever the case, we should try to save whoever we can, including these people. You might not be aware of it, but the person you see now acting so evilly might have once upon a time been a holy divine figure in the heavens, and he is now here as a human, having come to this earth to gain this Fa.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2015 New York Fa Conference”)
With improvements that came from Fa study, my xinxing improved a lot. It was hard for me to believe that these kinds of things happened again. One time, I was in Chinatown, and a young student verbally abused me. He used very dirty words. I was very calm and told him, “I just want you to know the truth about Falun Dafa!”
I also met a middle-aged man. He came over to me angrily and asked, “Where are you from?”
I smiled. “I am Chinese,” I said.
“You, you…,” he said.
“I just want to let you know Falun Dafa is being persecuted in mainland China,” I said. “Please don’t be fooled by the lies.” The man’s expression became soft and he walked away.
As he walked away I said, “Please remember Falun Dafa is good! Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good! Best wishes to you!” The man stopped and turned around with his hands in a greeting posture and said, “Thank you!”
The first time we went to Chinatown, other practitioners told me that someone was taking photos of me. At the beginning, I felt someone was monitoring me, and I felt scared. The more fear I had, the more frequently those things happened. I started to look inward and found that I still had an attachment to self and that I still hoped I could go back to China after the situation changed. After I got rid of the thoughts of going back to China, I realized that the attachment of fear disappeared as well.
I knew that every time we were clarifying the truth outside the Chinese Consulate, it would be a deterrent force toward the evil. I always dressed well, and I realized that the environment would be changed by our hearts. One time I offered a flyer to a woman. She smiled, but she refused the flyer. After she left, my wife asked me, “Do you know who she is? She is an officer working in the Consulate.”
I said, “It doesn't matter who she is—she needs to hear the truth.”
I usually take a whole day to clarify the truth at tourist sites. We always grab something to eat, and then we go to another site to do truth clarification. One time we went to Chinatown and my wife asked me, “Isn't this like we are wandering around in the world?” I thought about it: On the one hand, our conditions are much better than practitioners of the past. On the other hand, our previous lives while in China were more comfortable.
My wife and I worked at a university back in China. Our workload was not heavy, and we had a good and stable income. At that time I thought I had already removed my attachment to pursuing a comfortable material life.
After we moved to Canada, we faced a xinxing test since we had no income and it was hard for us to get a job. We felt anxious about the pressure. Finally, we realized our problem while we were studying Fa with other practitioners: The problems were from not having enough faith in Master and Dafa and from the attachment to self. As human notions and the CCP culture poisoned my mind, it became natural for me to take myself as the starting point. I usually emphasized my own feelings and cared about my own self-gain and loss when assisting Master in Fa-rectification. As such, it enlarged the difficulties in my cultivation since I was using ordinary thoughts to handle them.
All of the tribulations we face during our cultivation are to improve ourselves, to bring us to high levels, and to fulfill our promises. While assisting Master in Fa-rectification and saving sentient beings, I cannot focus on my own self-gain or loss. As I find the problems, I need to rectify myself and let go of my human self. I must do everything that Master wants and believe that whatever Master gives me is the best.
These are some of my understandings. Fellow practitioners, please point out anything inappropriate with compassion.
Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners!