PureInsight | July 5, 2004
[PureInsight.org] I have been cultivating Dafa for almost a year. I have felt deeply the greatness and wonder of Falun Dafa. Although I feel that I am ill-qualified to be called a good cultivator as there are still things I need to work on in my cultivation practice, I think that perhaps my cultivation experiences might be of help to my fellow practitioners so I decided to share my story with everyone. Sharing my story is also an encouragement for me because I get to review my progress in cultivation practice.
I started to cultivate in Falun Dafa in June of last year. I had come across Falun Gong as early as 1993 during my graduate study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China. Every morning on my way to work on campus, I saw a group of people not far from the entrance to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I remember they had a red banner with words in white that read "Chinese Falun Gong." I assumed that it was a new school of qigong, a new way to keep healthy and fit so I did not pay much attention. At that time, qigong was mysterious but did not interest me. Besides, there was a rumor of a student becoming mentally deranged due to practicing qigong and jumping from the third floor of a dormitory, breaking his leg. A friend of mine wanted to learn bigu to lose weight. [The word bigu means "avoidance of grains" in Chinese. It's an ancient term for abstinence from food and water.] Not only did he not succeed in bigu, but also he ruined his health.
When all sorts of qigong prevailed in China, a famous qigong master was invited to Fudan University for a lecture when I was studying there for my undergraduate degree. This lecture attracted a lot of students, and I went to check it out as well. Some people were very sensitive and felt strong energy during the lecture. However, I did not feel anything. I was skeptical of the responses others claimed to feel and was disappointed at not being able to feel anything. So I concluded that qigong may be a mysterious method of keeping healthy and fit, but I didn't have a knack for it. Along with the rumors of qigong cultivation insanity, I decided to stay away from qigong all together.
When I came to Houston for my doctoral degree, my co-worker's mother-in-law was practicing Falun Gong. I also read the news of Teacher coming to Houston to teach Falun Gong. At that time, I thought that Falun Gong was really something. It was getting popular even outside of China. However, I was too devoted to my Ph.D. studies to spend time on anything else. Thus, I missed this chance to learn Falun Gong.
Later, I heard that the number of people practicing Falun Gong in China was growing exponentially. The number of Falun Gong practitioners surpassed even that of the Chinese Communist Party. I started to worry about Falun Gong. Looking at the history of China since 1949 and the history of the Chinese Communist Party, I saw the persecution of Falun Gong on the horizon. There is a Chinese idiom, "The bigger the tree is, the more wind it will attract." It means that famous people attract criticism easily. It turned out that my hunch was right. The Chinese Communist government really started to persecute Falun Gong. All of sudden Falun Gong was vilified in the media. It was extremely unfortunate that my prediction came true.
There is another ancient Chinese saying, "If you really want to condemn someone, you can always trump up a charge." After witnessing the Chinese Communist government's massacre to suppress the June 4th Student Movement at Tiananmen Square in 1989, I have seen through the Chinese Communist government and its tactic of inverting things to justify its crimes. The patriotic June 4 Student Movement at Tiananmen Square became an attempt at subversion overnight in the Chinese Communist government's media mouthpiece. Young college students filled with patriotism and ideals and confidence in the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government were branded the enemy of "the people and the Chinese Communist Party" overnight. Stricken with disappointment and a feeling of helplessness, I became depressed for a long time. I became a more realistic, brooding person. I also saw through the Chinese government. After the June 4th Student Movement, I decided not to question any political affairs. After all, I was an insignificant civilian. What could I do to make a difference? I'd better concentrate on securing my own best interest and welfare.
Soon I read a long article in a local Chinese newspaper that introduced Falun Gong and its founder Mr. Li Hongzhi in detail. Out of curiosity, I carefully read the article. I found that the article was objective, calm, logical, with emphasis on facts and reason. It immediately helped me understand many things about Falun Gong, and I decided that Falun Gong was good.
After I had earned my Ph.D. degree, I decided to do my post-doctoral training in Boston. I had interviews with three laboratories in Boston. I saw a young woman wearing a yellow t-shirt that said, "Falun Dafa is Good," in one of the labs that interviewed me. I decided to accept the offer from that laboratory. I also told that woman, "When I start working here, I will immediately ask my mother to learn Falun Gong from you." She agreed delightedly. However, things didn't turn out as I had planned. When I finally moved to Boston, I did not take my mother to her to learn the Falun Gong exercises. One of the reasons was that I had a difficult pregnancy. Doing everyday work had already put a strain on me. Physical exhaustion amplified my selfishness. So I rarely thought about my mother. The other reason was that my mother was baptized in Houston, and she is not supposed to believe in two religions. At the time, I didn't know that Falun Gong was not a religion, so I hesitated to encourage my mother to learn Falun Gong.
Beyond those two reasons, the biggest obstacle was the reports of the persecution in China. Although I had already lost my faith in the Chinese government after the June 4th Student Movement, I didn't want to, or I was too terrified to, believe that, in the 21st century, there still existed such inhumane torture and persecution. As a Chinese person overseas, I have always hoped that one day China would be prosperous and powerful, and then I would feel proud of my country. Because of my patriotic sentiment and love for China, I didn't want to face the truth of the brutal persecution in my motherland. Moreover, the smear campaign in China was horribly rampant. There is a Chinese idiom, "three people can turn a rumor of a tiger downtown into an accepted truth." Lies, if repeated often enough, can be accepted as truth. The Chinese government's character assassination through the ongoing smear campaign thus affected my view of Falun Gong.
My co-worker did not feel offended by my ill-grounded concerns. She graciously lent me a copy of Zhuan Falun (Falun Gong's main study text) so that my mother could read it at home in her spare time, if she were interested. My mom read the book twice in a row very seriously. She decided it was much easier to comprehend than The Bible. She also kept prompting me to read it, but I always declined, telling her I was too busy.
My mother had suffered from diabetes, heart disease and bone disease for many years. She was a nurse for more than 30 years before she retired. She had to rely on medication every day to keep her chronic illnesses under control. She carried two large suitcases when she came to live with me three years ago. One of the suitcases contained clothes and other personal belonging, and the other contained nothing but medicines. She had to take a handful of medicines every day, and stay on a strict diet. She also had to watch her blood sugar level at all times and refrain from sugar in her diet. My mom loved Chinese foods made of flour, such as noodles and buns, but she had to cut down on these foods, as well as fruit. She would risk having a small bite of fruit only when she had a desperate craving.
My mother is a woman of very strong will power. She got up early every day and used to power walk or jog for over an hour almost every morning. Since she came to live with me in the United States, she controlled her diet even more carefully and did exercises every morning because she tried to avoid getting sick, which might cost me a lot, paying for her medical expenses. Mom often sighed, "If only there were a cure for diabetes…" My research field is biology and I have been conducting cutting-edge research. I knew it was impossible to cure diabetes with today's medicine.
Mom took Xiaoke Wan to control her blood sugar. Xiaoke Wan is a type of Chinese prescription drug that is a combination of both natural herbs and a western medicine. It contains Radix Puerariae, Radix Rehmanniae Preparata, Radix Astragali, Radix Trichosanthis, Stigma Maydis, Fructus Schisandrae Chinensis, Rhizoma Dioscoreae, as well as Glibenclamide. She brought a lot of Xiaoke Wan from China, but soon she was running short of it. She heard from friends that some Western medicine is also effective in controlling blood sugar level, so she was interested in trying it now that she was in the United States. I brought my mother to an American physician who prescribed a bottle of Western medicine. I cannot remember the name of the medicine now. I only remember that the doctor asked her to take one pill in the morning and one at night. My mother followed the doctor's instructions, but the medicine failed to reduce her blood sugar level. I called the doctor but he said she should try for a month first. During the following visit, the doctor told my mom to increase the dosage to two pills each time, two times a day, and come back in a month. I thought, "It'll be two months if mom's blood sugar level doesn't drop by the next visit. High blood sugar level for two months can cause serious complications." I suggested that she stop the Western medicine and go back to Xiaoke Wan. It happened that a colleague of mine told me that there were several Chinese herbal pharmacies in the Chinatown in Boston and suggested that I try to find Xiaoke Wan there. It turned out that a Chinese herbal pharmacy did carry Xiaoke Wan from China and its packaging looked exactly the same as the type that my mother had brought from China. My mother and I acted like we had discovered the biggest treasure in the world when we found Xiaoke Wan in Chinatown. I thought, "Now Xiaoke Wan will never run out." However, several days later, my mother said to me, "For some strange reason my blood sugar level remains high. I have already increased the intake of Xiaoke Wan, but it is not as effective as before." I compared the description labels of the two types of Xiaoke Wan to discover that the version of Xiaoke Wan sold at the Chinatown does not contain Glibenclamide. [Note: Glibenclamide is an anti-diabetic medication that is used in those patients with mature-onset or non-insulin-dependent diabetes (NIDDM). It works to lower blood sugar levels by stimulating the production and release of insulin from the pancreas. It also promotes the movement of sugar from the blood into the cells in the body which need it.] I realized that the version of Xiaoke Wan at the Chinatown pharmacy contained natural herbs only because it is imported to the United States as a "health supplement" and must not contain any western medicine in it, such as Glibenclamide.
It wasn't until then that I sensed the urgency of the matter and asked my relatives in China to send the version of Xiaoke Wan with Glibenclamide to us as soon as possible. Another month passed before the Chinese medicine finally arrived. Since mother was on Xiaoke Wan, her blood sugar level was under control again. However, mother's eyes had already started to suffer complications. Often times, her vision would suddenly become blurry. and it would take a long time for her to recover. As time went by, the frequency and duration of the problem continued to increase. I lost hope and thought that she probably would become blind.
Fortunately, one of the advantages of working at the Harvard Medical School was that there were many doctors around, and I could quickly find specialists for immediate consultation. One of my colleagues, who used to be an ophthalmologist in China for many years, was very experienced in the area of diabetic retinopathy. After asking about mother's situation in detail, she suggested that I take my mother to have an ophthalmoscopic exam first, and told me that she might need surgery. She also told me that surgery would only slow down the progression of the complication and that it was impossible to completely eliminate diabetic retinopathy. I quickly made an appointment for my mother with a diabetes retinopathy specialist at the Massachusetts General Hospital; however, the earliest available appointment was one and a half months away.
I am the type of person who always speaks her mind, so I would often discuss my mother's diabetes with colleagues at work. This time, the colleague who lent my mother a copy of Zhuan Falun recommended that I have my mother study Falun Gong books and practice the Falun Gong exercises with other Falun Gong practitioners in the area. She said to me, "There are several uncles and aunts who used to suffer from terminal illnesses like your mom at our group practice site. Perhaps your mother would like to have chats with them, even just to kill time. You are also welcome to bring your son along to play with the children there." I felt her suggestion was good so I took my mother to participate in the group Fa-study. [Note: It is common for the Chinese people to refer to older men and women outside the family as uncles and aunts as terms of respect and affection.]
I decided to read Zhuan Falun on my own first, so that if I found something bad, I would bring it to mother's attention and caution her to be on guard. It turned out I had a wrong expectation. From the moment I picked up the book, I didn't want to put it down. Zhuan Falun contains many things that I've always wanted to know but could never find any answer to. The book covers a vast array of knowledge, and it appears that there is nothing the author doesn't know. I somehow felt that the author has already surpassed the wisdom of a human being. I also came to understand that cultivation does not merely involve the issue of improving physical health, but also the core meaning of life.
At the group Fa-study site that we went to, there are several elderly Falun Gong practitioners who are close to my mother's age. Prior to cultivation, they all suffered from long-term illnesses and took medication by the bottle. Since they started practicing Falun Gong, they no longer need to take any form of medication, since they became increasingly healthy. In the beginning, I would stay with the children in a room while my mother studied the Fa with others in another room. Even though I felt Falun Gong was good and I supported my mother in her cultivation in Falun Dafa, I found it extremely difficult to conduct myself with the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance at all times. I felt cultivation was too difficult for me and wasn't able to commit myself to it. I didn't know the content of the conversations between those elderly practitioners and my mother, and I was still somewhat skeptical about the miracles of Falun Gong in treating illnesses.
Two weeks later, I took my mother to see the diabetic retinopathy specialist for her checkup. After the medical exam, the doctor told me that there was nothing wrong with mother's eyes, and that her eyes did not show any complication of diabetes. I was astonished and openly questioned the doctor's diagnosis. He was very confident of the diagnosis and probably thought I overreacted when I scheduled my mother for a checkup. Because I conducted the entire conversation with the doctor in English, and my mother didn't understand English, she thought the result of the checkup must be terrible when she saw my stunned expression on my face. After I finally said to her, "The doctor said you don't have any symptoms of diabetes," she said happily and confidently, "Teacher must have removed my illness." She then whispered to me, "It's been a week since I stopped taking Xiaoke Wan and all the other medications." At the time, I was not entirely convinced that my mother no longer had diabetes, so I said to her, "Let's not be rash. Why don't you keep taking your medication for a while before we are absolutely certain that your diabetes is gone?" Mother didn't say anything. After we got home, the first thing we did was to prick our fingers to test our blood sugar levels. I compared my result to my mother's to find that my mother's blood sugar level was indeed normal. After lunch, we tested again and her blood sugar level was still normal.
Mother's miraculous recovery from diabetes shattered me. Even though I knew Falun Gong was good, it wasn't until I had witnessed a miracle that I was truly filled with awe and respect towards God. I remembered a Chinese fable about a man called Yeh Gong who was smitten with dragons. His love and respect toward dragons touched the hearts of the real dragons in heaven. One day, however, when a dragon flew down from the skies to show himself to Yeh Gong, Yeh Gong was so terrified that he held his head and ran in fright. I'm slightly braver than Yeh Gong since I didn't run away in fright, but I felt I was equally as shocked as Ye Gong in my heart. Finally, I totally believed everything that Teacher had claimed in the book. I further realized what a precious predestined relationship it is to obtain the righteous Fa.
Then I took my mother and son to the 2003 International Falun Dafa Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference in Washington, DC. Because no children are admitted to the main conference location, we had to go to another location in a hotel where we watched the live conference broadcast on the projection screens in several different rooms. Yet we saw Teacher close to us when he graced our location. Only one sentence can describe what I felt at Teacher's presence:
"The Buddha-light illuminates everywhere, and rectifies all abnormalities." (From "Energy Field" in Lecture Three of Zhuan Falun)
Teacher has over 100 millions students worldwide, but he appears to be naturally and immensely tolerant and compassionate. I was holding my son in my arms in the hallway when I saw Teacher. Teacher walked from one room to another, and kept stopping to greet and shake hands with Falun Gong practitioners. An elderly Falun Gong practitioner was excited to see Teacher in person and burst into tears. She kept holding Teacher's hands and would not let go, and kept talking to Teacher. A fellow practitioner at the Falun Dafa Association accompanying Teacher was worried about delaying Teacher's trip, so he tried to stop her. I heard Teacher saying in a kind and gentle voice, "It's okay. Let her talk." Teacher listened to her patiently, and nodded at her when she finished. "I see," Teacher said. He also comforted the elderly practitioner kindly before he walked into a noisy room full of effervescent kids and their exhausted parents. After Teacher entered the room, the children quieted down immediately, and a peaceful smile registered on everyone's face. After I met Teacher in person, I decided to cultivate to the end. I resolved to purge all the bad notions from myself and return to Truthfulness.
My husband couldn't quite understand why I started to believe in Falun Gong. He found it incomprehensible that a person who has received so many years of scientific education would suddenly believe in God in all sincerity. He also believed that the miracle that happened to my mother was purely a coincidence. I said, "It is scientifically impossible that so many people encountered "coincidental miracles" after they started to practice Falun Gong. I believe that true science should be based on evidence. A genuine scientist will not turn a blind eye to real evidence, even if she cannot account for it yet." Although he said he didn't agree with my argument, I think in his heart he actually accepted it because he no longer called me "superstitious" all the time.
In my heart I have always felt that my husband has better inborn quality than I when it comes to cultivation, although I am more amiable and sociable and can easily be mistaken as a better person according to everyday people's standards. But if I evaluate both of us according to the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, my husband actually conforms to the principles better than I do in many aspects. Therefore, I truly hope that he will obtain the Fa as well. To attain my wish, I make an obvious effort to share with him my cultivation experiences from time to time. However, I often forgot that he hadn't even read Zhuan Falun yet and I would often share with him some of my understandings exceeding his level of comprehension, which made matters worse. Before I started to practice Falun Gong, my husband had a very positive perception of Falun Dafa. After I started to practice Falun Gong, he felt somewhat lost and lonely because he couldn't understand the changes in me, and because I was not as emotionally dependent on him. As a result, he would take it out on Dafa and sometimes make unreasonable comments about Dafa. At first, I felt offended when he made such comments and ended up bickering with him. Because we never really resolved our differences, I began to avoid the subject of Dafa with him. I even became indifferent [to him] and began to neglect his career and life. When there was a Falun Dafa experience sharing conference, a truth-clarification activity, or a Fa-promotion event, I would not bother to ask for his permission before I took my mother and son to the event. I misinterpreted his negative sentiments towards me as his statement of opposition to Dafa, and I mistook his complaint about me as a test of my faith in Dafa. I thought, "My cultivation is my business, and no one should have a say on my decision, except myself. If I stop cultivating because of your protest, then obviously I have never truly cultivated at all."
Except for attending Dafa-related activities in my spare time or during our family time, I tried to make compromises on everything. I thought that restraining myself from losing my temper was the key to enhancing my mind nature until one day he said to me, "Your temper has obviously improved, but your heart is growing distant. If this persists, we will part from each other sooner or later." When I first heard his honest confession, I immediately concluded that he was impossible to please. Later a fellow practitioner offered me a most insightful feedback. She said, "I feel that you made compromises on the surface because you don't care about him. It is not enough for you as a spouse to maintain harmony on the surface. You need to care about him from your heart."
I thought long and hard about her advice. I started to feel ashamed of myself. She was right. I was not tolerant; I was arrogant. I didn't fight with him, because I was too proud to fight with him. I realized I was very cold to him. I thought I had removed my attachment to sentiment, but it was not replaced by Compassion, but by arrogance. I had never put myself in his shoes, cared about him, or helped him resolve his misunderstanding about Dafa since I started to cultivate in Falun Dafa. All I thought of was myself. How can I be so cold to him and watch him walk past Dafa when I have obtained such a precious Fa? How can he possibly have any negative thoughts about Dafa if he witnessed the righteousness and magnificence in me? I remembered that many fellow practitioners in China repeatedly endure curses and sneers when they called the Chinese people to clarify the truth about Dafa, until the people called were touched by their great Compassion that could melt steel and finally believed that Falun Dafa is good. In contrast, I had been so cold to my own husband, a man that must have had a profound predestined relationship with me, in order to avoid conflicts. What an enormous disparity between those fellow practitioners and me!
After I discovered my attachments, I started to spend time chatting with my husband about his work or trivial stuff about our family. When he argued with me or when he did not agree with some of my actions, I no longer conclude that he must have low enlightenment quality. Instead, I would first search inward for any attachment that might have caused the conflict or would think that my husband is helping me upgrade my character with a test. Of course, it is far from enough to help him correct his misunderstanding about Dafa through endurance. I must also educate him at opportune moments. Sometimes, I would not talk back during an argument; otherwise, I might accentuate an already stressful envvironment. I would patiently wait until he finishes his opinion before I expressed my own. Sometimes, he make strange comments about Dafa, that I didn't know how to answer at the time, and I was silent and thought of a good response. Usually, he repeated these strange remarks at a later time, which provided me with an opportune moment to tell him my opinion. I have discovered from my experiences that good results come when I try to persuade him clamly with reason.
On better days, I share with him the benefits that my mother, he and I have obtained because my mother and I practice Falun Gong. Although my husband has not started to cultivate in Falun Dafa, he now supports our cause of ending the persecution and supports our cultivation practice. Sometimes, when I bemoan the fact that I am lagging behind many fellow practitioners because I have so many remaining attachments, he gave me positive encouragement: "You are doing very well in your cultivation practice. Take it easy. Don't be so hard on yourself."
My mother has been conducting herself strictly according to the Fa and has become increasingly tolerant towards my husband. She is now very affectionate towards him, regardless of his attitude. In the past, they would bicker from time to time. Nowadays, they have become increasingly affectionate to each other.
Since my mother and I started to cultivate in Falun Dafa, our physical and spiritual health has improved immensely and our family has become increasingly harmonious. Although cultivation includes bearing hardships, I am grateful for Teacher's protection, constant guidance and reinforcement of my righteous thoughts. It is because of Teacher's help and protection that I am able to overcome all obstacles and challenges in my cultivation practice. I am also grateful for the many fellow practitioners' help, encouragement and support. I hope that we will continue to help and encourage each other to remain diligent in our cultivation practice.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2004/6/5/27443.html
