Remembering My Father

[PureInsight.org] My father passed away more than four years ago. Everyone around my father knew that he was a kind-hearted person with high integrity. He spent the first half of his life helping out the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). When he was young he used to be a battle field journalist reporting on the CCP’s struggle to gain power in China. He almost lost his life on many occasions. My father never complained about the risks he took for his job. As he was not interested in establishing connections with high ranking officials through the so-called “backdoor” way, and he refused to bribe any CCP leaders, my father lived a meager life even after the communists took power in China; he didn’t even own his own residence when he died.

Nonetheless, my father never made any negative remarks about the CCP; on the contrary, he used to tell us that it was not too bad for our family. He would cite certain people who had been beaten to death during the Cultural Revolution, or some other individual who had committed suicide during Mao’s “Three Anti Campaign” (an Anti-corruption, Anti-waste, and Anti-bureaucracy” campaign launched in 1951 right after the CCP gained power in China) as examples and say: “Look, we are still alive even after all these events.” My father’s tolerance and self-comforting attitude led the family in a quiet and peaceful life, however, he didn’t see through the evil nature of the CCP. He joined the party in his youth, and he had been deeply indoctrinated by the evil party’s ideology, most notably, its atheistic worldview. In 1997, when Falun Dafa was introduced to my father, my father immediately found that the five sets of exercises were very good; however he didn’t dare to believe in the existence of higher beings. My father practiced the exercises diligently without letting up. Due to his kind nature and his non-combative attitude, he started to do things in a similar manner to how a genuine Falun Dafa practitioner would. My father was behaving like an individual who was “in the Dao without cultivating the Dao” (Zhuan Falun, Volume II). As a result, my father was blessed by our merciful Master.

One year, our family was celebrating the Chinese New Year in Beijing. The whole family went out of town for the New Year celebration. Upon returning home, it was found that nobody had the key to the house and it was impossible to open the front door. All of the local locksmiths had left the city for the New Year celebrations and everyone started to worry about how to get inside the house. My father silently walked to the front door, took hold of the door handle and shook it a little bit and miraculously, the door opened. Everyone got excited and asked my father what he had done, and he said: “Well, it just occurred to me that Master mentioned that one could get help from Master in critical moments. Now, this door was locked and I asked Master to help us out, and it worked!” My father smiled so happily that day. It was obvious at that moment that he believed in Master and the existence of higher beings. However, the influence from the CCP’s doctrine was so deeply ingrained in him that he began to forget about this incident soon afterwards and continued to apply the so-called “materialism” theory towards people and events.

Later that year, my mother’s feet were burned severely; both of her feet were covered with blisters. As my mother was also practicing Falun Gong, she refused to apply any medicine to her feet. To the surprise of many neighbors, my mother simply washed her feet every day in cold water, and she kept doing the exercises and listening to Master’s Fa Lectures all the time. In ten days, my mother’s feet had recovered. A think cast-like piece of skin had peeled off from her feet and after that my mother’s feet looked like nothing had happened to them; there was not a single scar. My father witnessed all of it; he had witnessed yet again the power of Falun Dafa. He started to believe in Zhuan Falun again, saying that Master was telling the truth.

After the persecution of Falun Dafa started in 1999, I was illegally detained by the CCP for refusing to criticize Falun Dafa. When my father learned of my detention, he felt extremely sad. He was so afraid that I might undergo even more torture and punishment in jail that he cried for a couple of days. My elder sister later told me that he was trembling with fear around that time; it was almost like the sky had fallen upon him and he even threw away Master’s Fa lecture tapes in distress (he later made a solemn announcement that he was wrong to do that). All of my family members and all of my friends and relatives were worried about me. My elder brother took time off from his work and travelled more than one thousand miles to get back to my hometown to try and help me out. My father became so afraid that he stopped practicing the exercises and became silent and kept to himself most of the time. He also began to write notes, page after page. I had thought that if my father had used that time to write down Master’s Fa, it would have helped him a lot, both physically and spiritually. However, I had not cultivated to a high enough level and my compassion was simply not strong enough so I couldn’t change my father and I have felt a lot of pain because of it since then.

As the persecution continued, I myself also started to slack off. I didn’t read Dafa books and do the exercises for quite a long period of time. My father had already become an ordinary person; he sometimes would even utter Mao’s words: “How can it be possible for so many Chinese people to not fight against each other?” My father was an individual who had been so kind-hearted and so law-abiding throughout his whole life, yet in the end, he still mentioned such twisted words. One can easily conclude how much harm and influence the evil CCP doctrines have had upon the Chinese people!

After around two years of confusion and lackluster progress in cultivation, I was once again awakened by the immense compassionate power from merciful Master and my father also began to practice the exercises daily again. However, he still didn’t want to study the Fa. Even when I was reading the Fa right in front of him, he appeared as though he was not listening to me at all.

In 2008, my father started to behave strangely. He would stay in his room all day long, sitting in his chair or lying on his bed. He would eat only a little bit and it seemed that he was having difficulty with eating. After a visit to the hospital, it was found that he had developed stomach cancer, and the cancer was already at an advanced stage. My father told us that in his dreams, he was trying very hard to cremate stuff, but we couldn’t figure out what my father was trying to burn. After he passed away, we cleaned his bedroom. We found numerous CCP books and many fortune-teller books in his bed. It then dawned on me that Master was hinting to my father in his dreams to get rid of all those messy books. I felt extreme regret that I had not enlightened to it earlier.

When my father returned from the hospital after having the physical exam that revealed his illness, I asked him seriously to study the Fa and he accepted. He started to study Dafa in earnest. He later said to me: “How could I have never realized how wonderful Dafa is! The more I read it, the more I feel Master is telling the truth to us. How wonderful it is!” I told him about the evil nature of the CCP and its inhuman history, and he nodded sincerely and told me that he had been wrong in believing in the CCP. He then wrote down a solemn declaration that he wouldn’t give up practicing Falun Dafa and he also quit his CCP membership.

Once someone approached my father and told him to kill some live eels and eat them so as to cure his illness, and my father refused and said: “I won’t kill other lives just to treat my illness.” He didn’t want to stay in the hospital and he continued to live with the family in our house. No one ever noticed any pain or suffering from him and sometimes he would even hum some delightful tunes while lying in his bed. When asked whether he was feeling any pain, he would retort: “What pain? Where is it?” He was not administered a single pain-killer throughout his remaining time on earth, and he never shouted out in pain at all. Doctors from the hospital were all amazed; they claimed that they had never seen such a patient with this particular illness who didn’t suffer an excruciating death. There was one patient in the hospital that was diagnosed with the same illness and the patient cried out every day in pain. We then mentioned the power of Dafa to the doctors and clarified the truth to them. My father had practiced Falun Dafa, and he left this world peacefully and quietly. All the doctors were moved by the miracles of Dafa.

Even though my father had been indoctrinated by the evil CCP very deeply, the great power from Master Li Hongzhi rescued my father, protected him and helped him walk his last steps in life without any suffering from his terminal cancer, and let my father return to where he belongs. Once my mother dreamed that my father was living in a very clean world and he appeared like a heavenly boy with two twisted tails on top of his head. He was watching over our family.

Master said: “However much you put in, that’s how much you get out. That’s how it works” (Zhuan Falun “The Ninth Talk”). I believe that my father had reached his own level based upon his efforts that he had put in his cultivation.

Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/113253