Two North American Practitioners' Unexpected Relationship with China

Ze Lin

PureInsight | June 7, 2004

[PureInsight.org] Nothing is too strange in this world. Y and P are a married couple residing in the northern suburbs of Padelphia who have established a relationship with a traditional Chinese culture --- Falun Dafa. It was not through a Chinese person's introduction that the couple learned Falun Dafa, but through A, a pastor from Brooklyn, New York. This pastor is a senior monk of Ifa, an ancient cultivation practice from Africa. There is a Chinese saying, "A monk coming from afar or a foreign monk is better at chanting Buddhist scriptures than a local monk." In this case, this western monk was studying Chinese scriptures!

From Y's description, Pastor A is highly admired and respected by all attending his church. A is famous for dedicating his life to pursuing wisdom and truth. He is very familiar with Eastern spiritual beliefs, Chinese martial arts, qigong (a form of traditional Chinese exercise which cultivates qi or "vital energy") and cultivation practice. Pastor A was born in the United States. Because of his experience in fighting in Vietnam, he has come up with his own explanation of life and death. A also married P and Y in May of 1998, with vows to God, in a city 100 miles north of Manhattan in New York state.

In July 2001, three years after the wedding, Y and P went to Long Island, New York for vacation and visited Pastor A. Before the trip, Y had a dream in which A told her, "Come and see me", without giving any explanation. So she hurried to see the pastor once they arrived. At the time, they faced many difficult and important decisions in life, such as where to live, where to work, career change and problems with interpersonal relationships. They believed they could really use some advice from a wise man. It was this very visit to him that led them to an extraordinary relationship with Chinese culture via Falun Dafa.

Y was born in Brooklyn, New York. She has a twin sister and a brother three years older. Before she was five years old, she lived with her grandparents in Panama, so she is fluent in English and Spanish. Her parents were originally from Panama. They told her tales of dredging the Panama Canal. During that time, many foreign workers from different nations lived in Panama, including Chinese, Indians, Greeks and South Americans. When it was almost time for her to attend elementary school, her parents brought her back to America, and sent her to a private Catholic school.

During the summer when Y was eleven years old she went back to Panama to visit her grandparents. One day while sitting on the long bench on the porch and staring down at her feet, she suddenly felt that someone was watching her. No one was around, not even her grandparents. However, she could sense that there was a living being in another time-space dimension watching her and protecting her silently. Although she did not know who it was, she did not feel afraid at all. Instead, she never felt lonesome again. It was several decades later when Y started an eastern cultivation practice, Falun Dafa, that she completely understood the unforgettable and wonderful feeling she had experienced as an eleven-year-old girl in Central America.

Y majored in the Humanities at college at first, and later on she changed her major to Interpersonal, Corporate and Labor Relations in business school. After graduation, she started working at the sales department of the well-known Xerox Company, responsible for the copy machines sales in Rochester, New York. She often asked herself, "Will my whole life be like this? Going to work, getting off work, taking vacation and watching TV? Is this all that my life has to offer?" While attending high school, she had asked her mom, "What is the ultimate goal of life?" Her mom replied, "It's a good life to have a decent job and to be able to afford a vacation." Now Y had a good job and could take vacations, but she still felt it was far from what she wanted.

She believed that there should be more in life. But what? She didn't have the answer. When she saw her coworkers addicted to drugs and alcohol, she was very depressed. Many times she didn't even want to cook after returning home from work, and would just have stir-fried corn for dinner. She became very thin because of this and would often cry alone at home because she felt lost in life.

Later on, she moved from Syracuse to Albany, the capital of New York. The environment had changed, but her feeling of pursuing true spiritual freedom had become even stronger. She said that she was looking for "home," a place where she would feel comfortable to stay forever. She failed to find "home" in religion. She found the pastors' hearts had already deviated from the doctrines they imparted. Therefore, their words lacked the genuine power to fill her feeling of emptiness.

Y once tried to gain some strength from her ancestors' culture, so she started taking classes in the Masters and Ph.D. programs at the State University of New York at Albany. She focused on research on Latin America and Regional Politics. But she soon found that she could not find any spiritual strength in the traditional textbooks. She felt disappointed and went back to work for corporations again. She worked at companies such as Xerox, Sprint, and even the New York State Department of Education. Later, she took a position in a health food company as a food sales agent responsible for introducing the newest food products to every major supermarket chain. It was at that time that she met her husband, P.

How did she meet P for the first time? She was expecting a new client whom she had never met, and was getting ready for the scheduled meeting. P, who had noticed her for a long time, gathered lots of courage and smiled at her. This was actually the second time for P to meet Y. Seeing the friendly smile from P, Y smiled back, thinking P was the customer she had been expecting!

P was born in a strict, religious and traditional Jewish family. P had been disappointed by the materialism he saw in Jewish temples and synagogues since he was little. When P was a child, he had a recurring nightmare in which a blue demon in human form with a pair of wings watched him from behind a glass window in a "hi-tech" control room full of various kinds of scientific apparatus. When P, who was watchful of his actions, picked up a needle or did some other simple things, the demon would shriek in excitement, "Aha! He finally made a mistake!" Then the demon would come and seize little P. This nightmare always ended at that pivotal moment.

P was not good at sports as a child. He did not like competing with others, either. He felt that, in a competition, someone is bound to lose, and the one that loses is bound to feel sad. In contrast, he preferred a custom of the Native American Hopi tribe in which all the participants took turns at being the winner of games. In an unfortunate turn of events, P went camping with his high school classmates when he was 15. Under peer pressure or the youthful desire to blend in and be accepted by peers, he smoked marijuana for the first time.

During his undergraduate years at the State University of New York at Albany, P wanted to understand his own behavior and explore the human thinking process. As a result, he majored in psychology and social welfare. However, his addictions to marijuana and alcohol worsened while he was at school. Eventually, after seeing the dreadful consequences of drug abuse among his classmates, P stopped smoking marijuana. In 1986, right after graduation from college, P was diagnosed with severe chronic fatigue syndrome. He had a swollen pancreas and experienced insomnia, weight loss, and an immune system disorder. His situation was so serious that the doctor declared that he only had a few months to live. When all hope seemed to have abandoned P, death was not what P feared most. He only silently prayed that he could die in peace. Then a miracle happened. His prayers were answered and he returned from death's door. Just like a Chinese proverb says, "One who survives a disaster is bound to have good fortune afterwards."

After P recovered, he worked in social services at a hospital, and later for the Social Security Administration under the federal government. In 1994, he met Y. They married four years later. Because of his excellent writing skills, he served a stint as a reporter. He even wrote a sci-fi novel describing beings from another planet in the Milky Way Galaxy reincarnated on earth in order to evade their fate of destruction on their home planet. They also wanted to learn certain things on earth and bring them back to their own world. These beings even established a society on earth based on the principle of "all debts must be repaid."

Y and I both laughed when P said this.

In that trip back to New York after three years of marriage, Pastor A gave them a lot of advice. The most unexpected advice came when they were about to leave. Pastor A said, "I want you to go back and read these two books. They are at an extremely high level." The pastor then showed them the covers of the books: Falun Gong and Zhuan Falun. He also gave the couple additional information, including Falun Gong flyers and the URL of Falun Dafa.org. This all happened back in July of 2001 during their trip to New York.

Under the guidance of Pastor A, they ordered the two books right away. They even went online to search for the nearest group practice site to their home and attended a nine-day lecture class. It was a biology professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) named Dr. W who taught them the Falun Gong exercises. P described Dr. W as a petite Chinese woman with a kind heart and powerful energy.

The first day P received Zhuan Falun in the mail, he read 40 pages of the 385-page book. When he read the book, he was somewhat skeptical about the content and talked to Y who was busy in the kitchen. "Honey, you should take a look at this paragraph, it's indeed very interesting. " "Honey, this paragraph is just so incredible." "Hmm, if he said that, then compared to all the other enlightened beings on earth, he must be …" Although P still had some doubt about Falun Dafa, he woke up that night in the middle of sleep. His body was trembling as a tremendous force of energy enveloped him. His pelvis, which was originally out of position, was adjusting itself into place and he was miraculously healed. He also felt bad energy continuously driven out from his body. Then he saw an eastern God with six arms appear above his bed. "This is real," he thought. He felt revitalized and fell asleep again.


Y and P doing Falun Gong's sitting meditation in their backyard

Since then, the couple studied the Fa and practiced the Falun Gong exercises together. But they felt they could not bear to see their fellow Falun Gong practitioners suffering when they saw the pictures and stories of Falun Gong practitioners who were persecuted in China. I asked them, "Given your background, how could you come to accept Falun Dafa which is very traditional and authentic Chinese?

Y said that she couldn't fully understand the contents of Zhuan Falun at the beginning. Because of her Catholic background, such terminologies as karma, cultivation, and transmigration were very foreign to her. But she seemed to know that as long as she continued to read and study Zhuan Falun, the inner significance would be revealed to her. It turned out that she was right. When she repeatedly read Zhuan Falun, she gradually understood its contents. One day, while Y was doing Falun Gong's sitting meditation, all of a sudden, a golden Eastern face appeared in front of her and slowly approached her. As for the concept of saving people and offering salvation, Y understood and accepted them right away.

As for P, after a few weeks of practicing the Falun Gong exercises, he bid farewell to the doctor who had been trying to adjust his bones for ten years. All the fears that originated from his childhood nightmares were being removed layer by layer. P's third eye was open. Sometimes he would check the weather in advance with his celestial eye so he could decide the best days for them to take a vacation. P's colleagues at work often ask him, "You carry a tranquil and peaceful energy. Where does it come from?"

P's father is a famous attorney in Manhattan who is more than 70 years old. For many years, he had been going to the best hospitals in New York for his cardiovascular disease. The heart vessel blockage eventually increased from 70% to 90%, so he had no choice but to prepare for bypass surgery. During a family gathering, the old attorney told the guests that his son and daughter-in-law were both practicing Falun Gong and he had high regard for it. Afterwards, P's father's heart disease was mysteriously cured without any surgery. His father didn't know what happened nor did the doctor. Only P knew that his father's one good thought had brought him God and Buddha's blessing and protection.

One day when P was reading Zhuan Falun, a line of words suddenly rotated like a window blind. That line of words became a window through which he clearly saw New York City's skyscrapers and a helicopter hovering over the skyscrapers in the sky. After the window was closed, he found the same Zhuan Falun still in his hands and that window turned back into a line of words. A few minutes later, while he was still amazed by the experience, he checked his e-mails and found an e-mail from one of his friends in New York asking for emergency help.

Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2004/5/16/27193.html

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