PureInsight | February 7, 2005
[PureInsight.org] When I first arrived in Canada as a new immigrant, I had difficulty finding a good job that matched my education and previous experience. In order to make ends meet, I made a compromise and worked as a part-time assistant to care for elderly and immobile folks for a few months. During those months, I met Sandy and her family and we became lifelong friends. Our two families would spend all the major Chinese holidays together. During each year's Chinese New Year, we would make special holiday dishes together, such as Year Cake and Year Dumplings.
We have known each other for five years by now, but at each gathering we would repeatedly recall the first day we met. Each time we recalled our first encounter, Sandy would become excited and joyful like the first time I saw her. She always says that it is as if we were friends or family members that hadn't seen each other for a long time and suddenly reunited.
It was February 2000 when we met each other. I went to an address given by the employment agency and knocked on the door of Mrs. Li's apartment. When the door opened, I was met with a cheerful face. The woman exclaimed, "Oh, it's you! Please come in!" I was somewhat taken back by the woman's cheerfulness. I decided that it must be a common trait of people from Southern China and quickly got over the cultural shock. The woman was Sandy.
Sandy immediately explained why she needed someone to help with her mother's house chores. Her mother Mrs. Li suffered from a disease that damaged her cerebellum. As a result, she had to rely on Sandy's care. Mrs. Li is a very neat person and insists on keeping her home spotless. The problem is that Sandy is already in her 50's and did not have any strength left to keep house when she had to care for her mother all day long. Besides, Sandy and her husband live elsewhere, so she had a lot of chores at her own home. As soon as she explained to me what needed to be done, I stood up and started cleaning the apartment, starting with the stovetop. As if she had found a rescuer, Sandy immediately sank into the sofa and started massaging her right shoulder. Her cheerful face turned gloomy, signaling the pain she was suffering on her right shoulder. She moaned to herself, "Oh, my goodness! What am I going to do with my right shoulder? It never stops aching. It is giving me hell." Then she asked me, "Say, you were a medical doctor when you were in China. Do you know how to treat old injuries on the shoulders?"
I stopped the cleaning work and answered, "Yes, I am a medical doctor, but even a doctor has difficulty treating her own stubborn illness. I used to suffer from lower back pain, but even the best hospital in Beijing had no solution for my problem. I was treated with advanced medical equipment, but it only relived my back pain temporarily. The pain always returned after each treatment."
"Are you still suffering from back pain? From the way you are cleaning the kitchen, you don't look like you suffer from back pain at all."
"Of course I don't have back pain now. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to apply for this job. It disappeared a long time ago."
"How did you treat your back pain?" Sandy jumped up from the sofa and approached me.
"The secret is cultivation practice."
"What type of cultivation practice?"
"Falun Gong. Have you heard of it?"
"I didn't know Falun Gong had a miraculous power in treating illness. I have heard a long time ago that the Chinese Communist government persecutes Falun Gong, but I had no idea it was so wonderful. Please stop the work and tell me more about Falun Gong."
"Why don't we do this tomorrow? Let me finish cleaning the apartment first."
On the following day, I went to Mrs. Li's home and cleaned the apartment again. As soon as I finished the cleaning, Sandy anxiously pulled me to the sofa and asking me to tell her about Falun Gong.
"It is actually a fairly common story. At first, I didn't believe in qigong at all. But I was willing to try everything because I was desperate. It just happened that one of my college classmates who lived overseas had started to learn Falun Gong and wrote me about it. I read her letter and found a Falun Gong group practice site inside my residence community. After practicing the Falun Gong exercises for a few days, the back pain that had tortured me for two years went away without a trace. In order to verify if my back pain had completely vanished, I knelt down to clean the floor of my home and felt fine. After that, I knew my back pain had truly disappeared and I started to believe in Falun Gong."
Sandy's eyes sparkled after she heard my story. She pulled me up from the sofa by my hands and said, "You must teach me to practice Falun Gong right away!" From that day on, Sandy would ask me to teach her Falun Gong exercises each day after I finished cleaning the apartment.
Sandy struck me as a kind and sincere person. She trusts people implicitly and does not suspect everyone else of ill intentions. I think this may be why she started practicing Falun Gong right away.
After she had learned the exercises, Sandy came up with her first question. "Falun Gong is such a wonderful cultivation practice. Why on earth would Jiang Zemin want to persecute Falun Gong? It does not make any sense."
I asked Sandy, "Did your husband agree to your practicing Falun Gong?"
She smiled. "Guess what he said. He said, 'Everything that Jiang Zemin is opposed to must be good. Go head and practice Falun Gong. It must be good.'"
On my way home, my eyes became moist with tears. I was very touched yet I couldn't quite describe my feelings. Teacher said, "Of course, we believe in predestined relationship. Everyone sits here all because of a predestined relationship." (From "Genuinely Guiding People Toward High Levels" in Lecture One of Zhuan Falun.) I couldn't quite relate to it before I met Sandy. But now I finally understood what Teacher meant by "predestined relationship."
Since I started to practice Falun Gong and benefited from its cultivation practice, I had a strong wish to help more people benefit from Falun Gong's cultivation practice because I know it is an extremely rare and precious opportunity to be able to cultivate under the tutelage of a righteous Fa school. It is true that Falun Gong practitioners benefit from good spiritual and physical health, but that's just the surface benefits. In fact, Falun Gong practitioners obtain what all the Chinese cultivators throughout Chinese history had tried to obtain but in vain.
One of the reasons why I chose this part-time job was to have opportunities to meet people with predestined relationships with Falun Gong. However, none of my previous clients ended up practicing Falun Gong. I guess it was because I was too attached to my wish.
My first client was a late-term lung cancer patient. She had just finished a surgery, so she could hardly talk, let alone learning Falun Gong or asking about Falun Gong.
My second client was a young man, but he is retarded and does not have a clear main consciousness. People without clear main consciousness must not practice Falun Gong.
The story with the third client was even more dramatic. He was an elderly man and I was asked to look after him for three hours a day. I was anxiously anticipating the first day of my job because I certainly would have many opportunities to tell him about Falun Gong during the three hours of time we would spend together each day. However, when I arrived at his home in the morning of the first day at work, his son opened the door and told me that his father had passed away last night. The elderly man did not even have the opportunity to meet me, not to mention hearing me talking about Falun Gong.
I became disappointed and frustrated. I said to Teacher in my mind, "Teacher, why were there so few people with a predestined relationship with Falun Gong? Is it because your disciple's intention was impure?" During the inner dialogue, I gradually discovered my attachment of pursuit. Teacher said, "One should follow the course of nature since you will harm others with your efforts." (From "The Supernormal Ability of Precognition and Retrocognition" in Lecture Two of Zhuan Falun.) Thus I stopped making conscious efforts and decided to follow the course of nature. That's when I was notified by the employment agency to go look after Sandy's mother.
Since Sandy started her Falun Gong cultivation practice, she became increasingly healthy each day. Even after I no longer worked for her mother, we still kept close contact with each other. It is as though there was a mental telepathy between us. Often times when I thought of her, she would call me or call on me at home.
Soon after Sandy started to practice Falun Gong, she called me and told me that she felt she was fit enough to work. She decided to go help a friend at her restaurant because she was feeling bored sitting at home now that she is perfectly healthy. When Sandy's friend saw her transformation into a healthy and energetic person, she was curious to find out her secret. She was struck with disbelief at first when Sandy told her that she became healthy because of Falun Gong's cultivation practice. She watched CCTV4's programs everyday over the satellite dish, and CCTV4 portrays Falun Gong practitioners as lunatics and murderers in its news reports. She could not believe her personal friend Sandy would practice Falun Gong and benefit from its practice. Sandy said to her friend, "You must not believe those phony news reports by CCTV. I am a living testimony that Falun Gong is good. I am a real Falun Gong practitioner." It is wonderful that her friend now knows the truth about Falun Gong. Since that day, Sandy's friend would introduce Falun Gong to all the regular customers of the restaurant. She would say to them, "You should consider practicing Falun Gong if you wish to have good health. See how healthy and energetic Sandy has become! She is in her 50's yet she keeps an hour glass figure because of her Falun Gong cultivation practice."
After a while, Sandy called on me and told me about her uncle's birthday party. She had just attended her uncle's birthday party at his home at another city. There are more than 20 members in her uncle's household. When her uncle saw Sandy, he immediately asked, "You were sickly last time I saw you. However did you become so healthy?" "I now practice Falun Gong," she answered promptly and confidently. Then everyone in her uncle's household gathered around Sandy, learning Falun Gong's sitting meditation.
In the following year (2001,) Sandy attended a relative's wedding reception. The bride and the bride's mother asked to learn Falun Gong after Sandy introduced Falun Gong to them at the wedding. When Sandy returned from the reception, she came to ask me for Falun Gong exercise instruction videotapes. After two months, Sandy called on me again and told me she had just returned from the U.K. She went to see her friend who had traveled from China to the U.K. in order to visit her son. Her friend was ill, so Sandy taught her Falun Gong's exercises. After her friend started to practice Falun Gong and read Falun Gong's books, she was astonished and exclaimed, "I did not know Falun Gong was so wonderful! The Chinese Communist government has made a big mistake!"
There are a lot more stories. Once Sandy accompanied her husband on a business trip. While her husband was having a business meeting with a client, she sat on the bench in the lobby waiting for her husband. When she got bored of waiting, she crossed her legs and put them on top of each other, and started to practice Falun Gong's sitting meditation. She thoroughly enjoyed the meditation and did not hear it when someone approached her. When she finished the meditation practice and opened her eyes, she saw a middle-aged Caucasian woman standing in front of her. The lady introduced herself and said, "I have been watching you and waiting for you to finish for a long time. When I saw you peacefully doing the meditation, I decided to learn it from you." Sandy said, "Why don't I help you find a local Falun Gong volunteer group practice site because I don't live in this city. I am on a business trip with my husband." "What a coincidence," the lady said, "I don't live here either. I came from X city." Sandy burst into laughter. "What a coincidence! I came from X city, too!" After returning from the business trip, Sandy called on me again asking for another copy of Falun Gong's exercise instruction videotape on behalf of that Caucasian lady.
Sandy and her husband now live a full and happy life. Their business keeps booming, and she becomes increasingly busy each day. I once asked her if she is overloaded with work. She replied, "I am a Falun Gong practitioner. What is a little hardship to me?"
All the wonderful changes originated from the day we met each other at her mother's apartment. To this day, Sandy would repeatedly recall the first day we met. "I felt I had known you for years the first time I met you. You brought Falun Gong to my home. It is truly wonderful that we met each other."
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2004/6/28/27887.html
