My Responsibilities During Fa Rectification

[PureInsight.org] Today, the topic of my cultivation report is "My Responsibility during Fa Rectification". I started to practice Dafa in June of 1998. To today I have been practicing it for almost 6 years. Presently, the Fa-rectification process is going very fast, and everyone is busy with Fa-rectification work. I think that for cultivation in the Fa-rectification period, we not only need to participate in Fa-rectification, but also need to cultivate ourselves diligently. Next I am going to discussion some of my personal experiences in this regard.

(1) Responsibility to Little Disciples

I have two boys, the elder one is Max, who is almost nine years old; the little one is Austin, who is seven years old. When my wife and I first started to cultivate Dafa, they were very little and didn't understand anything yet. As our cultivation practice progressed, we realized that since the two boys were born as children of Dafa parents, they must have come for the Fa.

When they were too little to read, how could we help them keep Dafa in their hearts? We always thought about it. Later, we started to ask them to burn incense to show respect to Master, so that they could learn to believe. When they didn't feel well or fell down and were injured, we told them to burn incense for Master, and that they didn't need to fear anything since we have Master to care for us. When they were a little bit older, they start reciting some Hong Yin poems. Along with our participation in Fa-rectification, they went along with us to many places for Hongfa activities and Fahui.

Two to three years passed, and they started going to school and started to read. My wife and I realized that they have been doing enough; they need to know more about Dafa. And we needed to pay more attention to them from the Dafa's perspective.

In May 2002, my wife went to Canadian Fahui in Toronto. She had a good experience sharing with several other mother practitioners; they discussed how to care for our little ones from Fa's perspective. She brought back a lot of new ideas. We realized that the kids are Dafa disciples, too. Master has guided them to our family, and we should be fully responsible for them.

From at point on, we started to read the English version of Zhuan Falun with Max. When Max was in first grade, his reading skills were at the third grade level, but he still had difficulties. At the beginning, we read in turns, I read a paragraph, and then he read a paragraph. Each time, we only read about 2 pages. Still, it took more that forty minutes, and he could not do it persistently everyday. It was like a test everyday for us. We tried different approaches to persuade him to keep going. While he was getting closer to Dafa, he made rapid progress in his English, too. Coming back from summer break, the first thing he did after school was Fa-study. During the weekends, the first thing after breakfast was Fa-study as well. He can read loudly six to seven pages of Zhuan Falun at one time and keep reading it everyday, even on Christmas or New Year's Day. The New Year present that Max gave Master was reading an extra three pages of Zhuan Falun.

About one year ago, my wife and I started reading together with our younger one, Austin, every day.

Since the kids were diligently studying Dafa, Master opened their celestial eyes. They can be with Master's fashen everyday. Master's fashen guides them to read the Fa and send forth righteous thoughts every day.

One time, Max told me that whenever he finished reading 50 pages of Zhuan Falun, his universe would become 10 times more beautiful. His words helped me understand that although they were young and their human sides might not understand the Fa very well, when they read Zhuan Falun, the cultivation progress they made was not slower than ours. This gave my wife and me more confidence to study the Fa together with the kids every day.

They now can read Zhuan Falun fluently. The elder brother even reads more fluently than we do. However, cultivation needs to be "…diligent without letting up…" (From "A Righteous God") Six month ago, my wife and I decided to read the Chinese version of Zhuan Falun with Max.

Reading Chinese Zhuan Falun was a big challenge for him and for us. Though Max understood some Chinese characters, it was very difficult for him to read Zhuan Falun. At the beginning, in every paragraph, Max could only recognize a few words. It took much effort for him to read Chinese. Sometimes, he forgot the words he just read or was taught. This required more patience from my wife and myself. But we didn't feel discouraged. We knew that this was not an ordinary book. This was cultivation. And we firmly believed that Zhuan Falun was powerful. As long as we were persistent, Dafa would give them wisdom.

As expected, within a few months, Max's Chinese reading capability increased a lot and sometimes surprised both my wife and me. Now when he read the Chinese Zhuan Falun, many often there were only a few Chinese words he didn't recognize. When studying the Fa, we also enlightened that we should try to let the children recognize characters by themselves. That way, they would make better progress.

After all, they were kids. Though they read the Fa a lot, they sometimes they still acted like naughty children. Once, I asked them: "What kind of person does Master most want you to be?" I expect them to answer: "A Falun Dafa practitioner." However, surprisingly, each said, "Master most wants me to be a Fa-rectification period Dafa disciple." There are three things we adults need to do during the Fa-rectification period. It should be the same for the kids.

Currently, both my wife and I write letters to people in China, mail them materials to clarify the truth about Dafa. Everyday, we mail a lot of letters and kids become our messengers. Every morning after breakfast, they put stamps on the letters and put them into a mailbox 150 feet away, no matter what the weather is. We know that this is an opportunity for kids to establish mighty virtue. So, no matter how busy we are, we spend some time preparing letters for them. Day by day, their progress made them establish their own virtue.

When we were not home, they always want to eat at McDonalds, or buy Cokes. And they always said: "This costs two dollars, and Coke only costs 50 cents." Sometimes I would say, you see, the Dafa fliers only costs 5 cent a copy. If a flier can save one person, then 50 cents will save 10 people. Every person connects with countless sentient beings. Then 50 cents can save countless sentient beings. Thus we cannot look lightly at 50 cents. Whenever I told them this reasoning, they did not ask to buy these things.

Later, whenever I rejected their expensive plan, I would tell them how much money they have saved. And the elder brother would calculate with me: "one flier costs 5 cents. If a flier can save one person, then we can save this and this number of people, right Dad?" I said, "Exactly right."

Now, our two kids study Fa, send forth righteous thoughts and do Dafa work everyday. None of the three things has been neglected. They have become genuine Fa-rectification period Dafa Disciples.

(2) Harmonizing Family and Friends Is My Responsibility

During the Fa-rectification period, a harmonious family environment is conducive to our personal cultivation and Fa-rectification, and leaves a good cultivation path for the future. Then how can such a harmonious family environment be established? It requires each practitioner's effort.

All four members in my family are Dafa disciples. So, it goes without saying that it should be very peaceful and free of any conflicts. However, since we are still all in the process of cultivation and have human thoughts, there also exist conflicts or occasional disagreements. After we started cultivation, my wife and I gradually learned how to look at conflicts from the perspective of cultivation. Through conflicts, we found out our human attachments and improved our xinxing. This way, conflicts became fewer and fewer.

Since I lost my job in 2001, I have been staying at home working on Dafa projects, while looking for job at the same time. Soon, my wife got a well-paying job. Therefore, she became the bread earner of the family, and I took the supporting role of cooking and babysitting.

In the beginning, my wife thought I had plenty of time at home and arranged lots of household chores for me. I didn't really care much about them and kept myself busy with Dafa-related work. Therefore, I often times did not finish my wife's assignments. As time went on, my wife began to complain and conflicts began to arise more frequently.

Seeing the conflicts, I started looking into myself. I thought, my wife now spends all day at work; back home, she also needs to coach our child on their schoolwork, deal with household chores and work on Dafa projects. It's really not easy for her. So, I should be more considerate and share more of the workload. Therefore, I made a rule for myself that I should finish at least one household task each day.

Since then, I indeed finished at least one household job each day. Whether it's washing the car, scrubbing the floor or washing dishes, I really put my heart into it. As a result, our conflicts gradually disappeared. Noticing that I was always busy with Dafa-related work in the daytime and sometimes even skipped meals, my wife gave me fewer and fewer household assignments. Eventually, conflicts gave way to our mutual understanding and respect.

Salty dish

I'm the cook in my family, cooking three dishes and one soup a day and taking pride in their delicious taste. Occasionally, I make mistakes: some dishes may be too salty. Before, whenever this happened, my wife would start complaining, which made me pretty embarrassed. I would feel very sad that she didn't give me any credit, and I would have to "enjoy" the salty dish by myself. Why were they so salty? I kept thinking to myself: This could not be accidental. Was I too subjective and self-oriented? Next time, I should taste it first before adding too much salt. Later, I paid more attention to this issue. Soon after, I noticed that my wife also changed. Even if I didn't perform well, she no longer complained. I thought: if neither of us improved our xinxing, we might continue to have salty dishes often.

Model Husband

Before my cultivation of Dafa, I always thought that I was a model husband. I am good at cooking, entertaining the kids, making repairs, etc. And I have good temperament. After cultivation, I tried to do better. However, my wife sometimes was still not satisfied, saying I didn't do well in this and didn't finish that. I said to myself: "What man does better than I? Where can you find such a model husband?" I was upset. Then I thought: "Now, I am a practitioner. I should look inward. How can I compare myself with everyday people? As a practitioner, I should be a model for all model husbands in the world." When I thought this, I didn't feel angry any more, but tried to think what is my problem and see if there is something that I didn't do well.

Now my wife's xinxing has also improved a lot, and she doesn't criticize me. We work hard together to accomplish our historic commitments.

Harmonize with relatives and friends

We moved to the city about 7 years ago. Because our family is so harmonious and treats friends very well, we established a very good image with our friends. Some even treat us as confidants.

One friend told me: "Although I don't believe in Falun Gong, I think you are really good people." I said: "Aren't we all good people? In what way do you think we are better than others?" He said: "You see, the last time I invited you and several other friends to a birthday party for my daughter in a park. We prepared all the food. You are the only family that took the initiative to offer help in preparing the food. Food is not expensive in the U.S., and we definitely can afford it. However, you can consider things from our position, which others cannot." After hearing his words, I felt that every word and deed of Dafa disciple is very important. Every disciple is a spokesperson for Dafa. If we do well, we can save more sentient beings. If not, we will incur losses.

We often attend ordinary people's parties in order to clarify the truth. During one Thanksgiving Holiday, my family was invited to a party at a friend's house. I thought of this party as a good opportunity to clarify the truth about Dafa. So, I brought many Chinese "Journey of Return" with me.

Many people know that I practice Falun Gong. Since they did not know the truth, they avoided me at the party. I did not pay too much attention to their attitude and still tried to introduce Dafa to several people. Later, one or two Westerners asked me questions and tried to learn more about Dafa. One guy asked me: "Why do the Falun Gong practitioners believe so strongly?" "Why are you Falun Gong practitioners so persistent and fearless?"

After these questions were brought up, I tried to "use different medicines for different symptoms" and tell them the truth and beauty of Dafa. As we spoke, more and more people gathered around and listened. It turned out that many people wanted to read Zhuan Falun. At that time, I didn't have any books with me. I felt sad.

Then, I felt a great weight on my chest. I was thinking that it is difficult for friends to get together in the U.S., and many of them I even didn't know that well and didn't know when we have a chance to meet again. I felt strongly that I should go home and take the books to them. So I drove back in the rain and brought all my Zhuan Falun books back. I handed them Dafa, the most precious present I could ever give a friend.

Every year, we allocate some time to organize a gathering, and invite our friends. Not just for them to eat and drink, but to tell them the truth of Dafa. Almost all of my friends have a copy of Zhuan Falun, which I gave them. I think I have the responsibility to plan those seeds. When the time comes, these seeds will sprout and bear fruit.

(3) Helping Other Practitioners to Participate in Fa-Rectification Is My Responsibility

For a long time, I felt helping other practitioners to participate in Fa-rectification diligently is my responsibility, too. Sometimes, some practitioners had just some small difficulties preventing them from joining in, such as some needed to be picked up or driven home; some needed to be provided with a means of participating in Dafa work. I believe that if we give them a hand, it will make a big difference in their cultivation. Master told us: "The next person's things are your things, and your things are his things." (From "Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference") We should care for other disciples from the bottom of our hearts.

New Mexico is a neighboring state of Colorado. There were very few Falun Dafa practitioners there, and there was no group practice site the year before last. In 2002, coincidently, we came to know a forgotten veteran practitioner there. She was an old lady who spoke little English and did not know how to drive. She ever participated the "4-25" event in Beijing. Due to other reasons, after she came to the U.S., she had few opportunities to contact other practitioners. Her cultivation environment had not been good for a long time, and she had not participated in Fa-rectification.

After we got to know her, we realized that the old evil forces arranged her situation and set up a lot of barriers to prevent her from joining Fa-rectification. In order to help her to catch up with Fa-rectification as soon as possible, the first thing we did was to mail her Master's new articles, Essentials For Further Advancement II and "Touring North America to Teach the Fa." We suggested that she study these new articles often, so that she could catch up with Fa-rectification as soon as possible.

At that time, it was in the mid-October 2002. The huge battle of eliminating evil in Houston was coming. Most of disciples in North America were busy doing all kinds of preparation. I did not want this disciple from New Mexico State to miss this huge event in the universe. Therefore, I called her and emphasized the importance of this event and recommended that she join us. Moreover, I promised to pick her up if she would like to join us.

Several hours later, she returned my call and expressed her interest in going with us and hoped that we could pick her up. At that time, my wife and I sat down and started to study the way to get to her. Later, we found out that we needed to drive six more hours one-way. To do that, we also needed to leave one day earlier.

We had no other choice. It was our historic responsibility. If we were not going to help her, who would? We felt strongly that it was our responsibility to help her break the arrangements of the old evil forces and help her join the current of Fa-rectification.

Finally, we left home one day early with our two kids, with the nine ancient style flags made day and night for three weeks by the practitioners from Colorado Springs, with our pure hearts and our great responsibility for Dafa.

After a six-hour drive, we got to her home with no difficulty. However, soon after we arrived, we were told that her granddaughter was having a fever and her symptoms seemed very severe. I realized immediately that the evil forces were trying to prevent her from going to Houston. We sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate them.

The next morning, the granddaughter was well, and we left for Houston with the old practitioner. In Houston, she participated in the event with us with great effort and overcame a lot of difficulties. She strode forward with a huge step in her Fa-rectification cultivation.

(4) Doing Dafa Work Is Cultivation Practice

I enlighten from Fa-rectification that Dafa work is cultivation practice. This can manifest in all aspects of our work, such as sending forth righteous thoughts as a group, participating in group practice, delivering newspapers, participating in group experience sharing and all kinds of Dafa activities. Every Saturday, I drive my whole families 60 miles to Denver to join group sending forth righteous thoughts and group Fa-study. No matter how severe the weather is, we have done our best trying to get there, since we believe that only being persistent can we truly improve ourselves.

We also take the responsibility of delivering the newspaper for our city. We always tried to be persistent in delivering them. Once, in order to fetch the newspaper from Denver, I drove four hours in a snowstorm. Finally, I got the 100 copies of the newspaper from Denver. The number of the copies was not large, but it has the same cultivation meaning.

The State of Colorado has a small population, and it is widely dispersed. Since it is a long way between cities, we often have to drive very long distance to attend Hongfa parades.

My most unforgettable parade is the Shiprock Parade in New Mexico in 2001.

It was 11PM on a day in October 2001, when I drove eight hours with my whole family to Shiprock, New Mexico to be ready to attend the parade the next day. Since there were so many people who wanted to participate in or watch the parade, all the hotels were fully booked, we could not find a single room. With no choice, we had to stay overnight in my minivan. Since we did not bring enough quilts or sleeping bags with us, I was awakened many times by the cold. Later, I found out that four other practitioners from Denver arrived by car at around four o'clock in the morning and only rested for three hours in the car.

The next day, the parade started. My wife drove our float, our minivan decorated with Falun Dafa banners. All other practitioners, except our two kids who stayed with my wife, spread out to distribute flyers. The parade was huge and had more than two hundred floats. The audience was large, too. We walked along with floats for almost four hours and distributed 7,500 out of the 10,000 flyers we brought. At last, an elderly lady practitioner strained a tendon in her foot. However, she told us that the sun turned into a rotating falun that looked very magnificent.

Continue to fulfill my Dafa responsibilities despite my personal attachments

At the beginning of this year, we decided to participate in a light parade in the town of Durango on January 30. Durango is in southwest Colorado. Its population was between 10,000 and 20,000. It was about six-hour drive from Denver area. Our Hongfa had not reached this town yet. However, since Durango was in the mountains, the road conditions were bad, and the driving was a challenge.

Somehow, I was the best candidate to be responsible of driving there with our float trailer. Moreover, we had to finish decorating the light float after starting from scratch within three weeks. Suddenly, I felt a lot of pressure. With the attachment of being afraid of hardships and preferring the easy life, I thought of not going. Therefore, I started to look for all kinds of excuses to support my "not going" idea. The excuses I found were like "the road conditions were too bad, and I could drive nowhere if we have snow in the mountain," "it was impossible to finish the light float decoration within only 3 weeks," "the number of practitioners who promised to go was too small," etc. The more I kept thinking of these excuses, the more I thought that I should not go. Thereafter, I started to share my excuses with some other practitioners. It seemed that no one else wanted to change the decision of going. Then, I was having a dilemma and did not know what I should do.

However, I realized that if I decided not to go, this Hongfa might be cancelled because of my absence. From this, I could see my responsibility as a Dafa disciple, and the historic responsibility on my shoulders. Sometimes, I talked with myself, "Frank, what is wrong with you, you always spoke of this enlightenment or that sharing experience. At the critical time, where are your righteous thoughts and righteous actions? What's your mission as a human being?" On second thought, I finally decided to go and did not want to fail any Dafa work because of my personal problem.

Another problem surfaced after I made my decision to go: the light float. I immediately requested a meeting with some practitioners regarding the design and construction of the light float. After we agreed on the light float design, we went shopping for materials for the light float and got ready for its decoration.

A good light float should not only let everyday people enjoy it, but also manifest the beauty of Falun Dafa. It was not an easy job to make such a light float with such limitation of manpower and time.

One week passed; there were only two weeks left. At this critical time, we found out that our light float decoration design was not at all feasible. Then, I had to visit Home Depot stores several times to research the float design. Soon, I came up with a new design by using different materials.

On the day before the parade day, we finally finished making all the decoration components for the light float. In the evening, it took about three hours to load everything needed for the light float into my minivan.

The next day, we drove the minivan with the float trailer about 6 hours to get to Durango. In the afternoon, just when we arrived we had to start putting all the decoration components on the float without delay. With everyone's effort, it took us more than three hours to finish the light float. On the light float, we were proud to have two light boards consisting of several thousands of lights spelling out "Falun Dafa" in English. They were very beautiful and shinning in the dark. This was our best present from the Falun Dafa practitioners to the people of Durango, "Falun Dafa."

After the parade, a practitioner told us that there were many people who could not help but say "Falun Dafa" on seeing our float.

About 9 PM, we drove back in the dark. When we arrived home, it was 4 AM. Although everyone was so tired after the hard work all day, nobody ever complained. In order to provide salvation for sentient beings and spread Dafa to the every corner of the world, we did not have any regrets. I also felt good that I did not fail in my Dafa responsibility and did not fail in Dafa work due to my personal attachments.

To me, cultivation is a serious matter. It can manifest anywhere in my life. We should not only improve our xinxing step by step, but also fulfill all kinds of our Dafa responsibilities and accomplish our pre-historic wishes.