PureInsight | October 21, 2002
I am an Associate Professor in the Management Information System Department of a university. My husband is a researcher. Both of us worked for 40 years. During this period of time, I fully devoted myself to teaching, and he dedicated his work life to the scientific research of missile technology. Now we are both retired.
We began to learn about Falun Dafa in November 1994. Before then, we didn't believe in the Buddha, Tao, God or any forms of qigong. One of the reasons was that we were very involved in our work and could hardly find time for anything that was not related to our research. Another reason was that we were unfamiliar and uninterested in any thoughts other than our own research topics. We have not had time to seek pleasure for even one day, but devoted every day to our work. We had the first of our two children 11 years after we got married, and set up a household together 16 years after we got married. Until then we had been working in two different cities. Even after we finally ended up working in the same city, my husband still spent almost 2/3 of the time every year traveling for his work. We seldom shared weekends or holidays during the 40 years that we worked. Instead, we could look back on our achievements at our work posts and to the commitment we made to the progress of mankind.
But sometimes people are a little bit like machines, which eventually wear down. When we got into our 50s, we each found that there was something wrong with the "spare parts" of our body. Our physical conditions deteriorated so badly that our lives began to face life-threatening tendencies. For example, I suddenly was in the state of ill health in 1990 when I was sent to a hospital where I was told that I had a serious heart disease. A team of cardiac experts in a Beijing hospital examined me and told me that common medicines would be totally ineffective in my case and that my condition would not improve at all unless I had my cardiac valves replaced, at a cost of RMB$100,000. Furthermore, they could not guarantee that the operation would cure the disease. When I heard the diagnosis from the doctors, I was stunned by the RMB$100,000 figure as I had never earned that much money in the 40 years that I worked. The funds at the university were so limited that I decided not to cause more trouble for the university by demanding that they pay for the operation. Since the hospital could not provide an effective way for me to get well, it didn't make sense to me to stay any longer. I decided to leave the hospital to save the country my health care fees.
I got weaker and weaker after I left the hospital. Not only did I have heart disease, but also I got wasting, gastritis and hydrohepatosis. It seemed that there were no healthy internal organs left inside my body. The demons of diseases tortured me so much that I just hoped to die to free myself from the suffering.
It is said that misfortunes never come singly. My husband suddenly got extensive cerebral thrombosis in May 1992. His mouth was askew, and he became demented and was unable to speak or walk. He was admitted to a hospital immediately. The state of the illness was improved a little bit after treatment at the hospital, but because the area of the blockage was so large, his symptoms were still quite pronounced. At that time, both of our children were very young. The boy was in senior high school and the girl was in junior high school, and so they could not take care of us. Living, to us, became very weary and painful.
But there is always a way out. When one of our friends visited us on National Day (October 1ST) in 1994, she told us Falun Gong was very good, saying, "Both of you are honest and tolerant, and so you should do well if you take up Falun Gong." She passed along the book, "China Falun Gong," to me, but because my enlightenment level was very poor at that time, I said, "There is too much cheating nowadays to let me believe this book. Please take the book away. I don't want to read it." She said, "You can keep it. You can read it when you are free." After she left, I browsed through the book for a while and gradually I found the more I read, the more I wanted to read. The more I read, the more I found this book was very different from other books because it brought out profound philosophical principles.
The book is totally different from others because it clarifies the profound mysteries of the universe, space-time and the human body. After I finished reading the book the first time, I wanted to read it for the second time. While I read the book, I learned the exercises taught in the book. I felt very comfortable while doing the exercises, and my heart did not hurt anymore. What happened? I could not understand, and so I called my friend to ask her. She said that it was a good thing, and told me to continue reading and exercising. This is my experience of how I obtained the Fa. We frequently visited sites of cultivation practice where our fellow practitioners were all very warm-hearted, helping us correct our movements. Each of practitioners was peaceful and candid. I liked these people from the bottom of my heart.
There were many marvelous things that happened to me during the first month that I started to practice. One example is that before cultivation practice, sometimes the ache from the heart disease made me faint, but I haven't suffered that for more than a year since I began practicing Dafa. Before I could not lie down to sleep because of heart angina, but had to sit up while putting the quilt on my back against the back of the bed. Now I can lie down to sleep after having practiced Falun Gong no more than a month. I sleep very well every day, and the dreams have decreased. I can sleep for the whole night, and feel very comfortable. During the first month, I learned to read the books and do the exercises every morning and evening. My heart didn't hurt anymore, the wasting has gone away as well, and my face, which used to be an ill yellow, started glowing with a reddish tint. I am a completely different person.
The changes that occurred for my husband were also dramatic. His mind became clearer than before, and he could think about questions. During experience sharing discussions, people liked to hear him talk. Sometimes he cracked a joke when seeing his colleagues, making them burst into laughter. His legs became more flexible enough to walk. Now he can even run a few steps on his way to the practice site. He smiles so often every day that both of the retired and the on-the-job military personnel around us called him "living Bodhisattva". The miracles are so many that I can hardly tell them all. It is Falun Dafa that gave us new lives.
Through learning Zhuan Falun, our xinxing levels have improved greatly. Dafa did not only give us new lives, it also changed our lives. Through reading Zhuan Falun again and again, I have come to understand that the principles of the universe, Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance, are the standards we should apply to ourselves to be good people for the future. For example, when one of my friends invested jointly with a clothing company in Hong Kong, they imported some clothing, costing RMB$2,000,000. Because they didn't apply to customs, the goods were detained, fined, and they were told to return the goods to Hong Kong. This friend asked me to intervene. I thought at that time that I should help her because one helps a friend in trouble. I wrote a brief, informal note to a student of mine who was in charge of the customs department to ask for mitigation of the penalty. My friend was able to return the goods to Hong Kong by just paying RMB$10,000 as the fine. My friend praised me for what I did for her, and I also felt pride in that. But after I learned Falun Dafa, I realized what I did was totally wrong. What I did was neither good for the country nor for my student.
One of my husband's colleagues who is retired now runs a clothing factory with others. In March 1995, they wanted to export their product, but could not get the certificate of shipment. They knew that the official in charge where the certification is processed was my student. So, they came to my home to ask me to intervene, and promised to give me RMB$10,000 for the commission, and bribe my student with RMB$20,000. I didn't wait for him to finish his words and immediately replied to him, "I am a practitioner of Falun Gong, and I can not do anything harmful to the country. Sorry, I cannot help you." They left disappointed.
In a reunion party of high school alumni someone suggested that I utilize the relationship between teachers and students to make a fortune, since I had many students working in the fields of business, customs and foreign trade inspection. There is no need for me to live under arduous conditions, they said. I said, "I cannot do anything wrong. As a practitioner of Falun Gong, I cannot take the ill-gotten wealth no matter how hard my living conditions are."
Many people cannot understand me and take me as a fool. I hold myself to a higher moral level as a practitioner. I have taken a different path in this world: "They will distinguish the righteous from the evil, obtain true teachings, lighten their bodies, enhance their wisdom, enrich their hearts,…" (From "Enlightenment" in Essentials for Advanced Cultivation). I am grateful to Master for teaching us Falun Dafa that has guided us to find the land of purity in the human world.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/9/9/18474.html
