My Cultivation Path

At the end of 1997, I was a student at Ohio State. Every time I called home to China, my father spoke to me about a type of qigong that he was practicing. When my father was young, he once donated blood when he was seriously underweight. Later, in a physical examination, he was diagnosed with anemia and cardiomyopathy. I was three years old at that time and my mother's health was also poor. My father clearly knew that his health would determine his family's future. For as long as I can remember, my father practiced qigong. He continued practicing for more than twenty years. Many people knew he had heart disease, but nobody, including his family members, ever saw him have heart attack. For many years, he practiced many kinds of qigong. He never suggested that I practice any of them. What happened this time? I was curious. Finally, I agreed to have my father send me a set of Falun Gong books. Two months later, the books finally arrived. For many years, I regarded my schoolwork and career as the most important things. Additionally, at this time I was pregnant. As a result, Zhuan Falun was left on the bookshelf for more than half a year and almost never opened.

In the summer of 1998, I came to Chicago and was about to give birth. In order to help me take care of my baby, my father came to live with me. During the first month, I took care of my child at home. Even though I was fairly busy, my mind was quite relaxed. For the first time in years, I felt I could throw off my schoolwork and live a light-hearted life. The other thing I liked to do was to chat with my father. Of course, he always talked about Falun Gong. I could not recall what he said at the time, but I saw him reading the same book everyday. I was very interesting to know why he needed to read the book in order to practice qigong. One day, I quietly listened to my father reading "Lunyu" out loud. I felt it was very profound. One day, I decided to read Zhuan Falun, and my father was very excited. He took the baby out for several hours, and I read several chapters without a break. At that, while I was sitting on the bed and reading the book, my legs felt bursts of warm currents, one after another. As I went on reading, I could not control myself and jumped off the bed. Buddhas, Taos and Gods, the things that I considered to be superstitious before when other people mentioned them, suddenly seemed to be the most natural things in the world. There was a kind of powerful righteousness in the book that shocked me.

Since then, everyday, besides taking care of the baby, I read the book and practice Falun Gong. I lived happily and peacefully for more than half a year in the early days after obtaining the Fa. One day in April of 1999, I read about the Zhongnanhai incident on Clearwisdom. However, at that time I never thought the test would be so difficult and extreme that it would affect everyone. In the summer of 1999, my father's visa expired and he needed to go back to China. Before he left, he told me, "Pingping, please don't worry about your mother and I. I will certainly encourage her practice Falun Gong as well." How could I be at ease? Shortly after my father went back to China, the nation wide crackdown on Falun Gong began.

In July, my father-in-law came to America to help us take care of the baby. On the second day he arrived in America, I gave him all of my Falun Dafa books and said, "Dad, please take a look, these books are very good." One day, he was very depressed the whole day. It turned out that he found out that I gave a copy of Zhuan Falun to a neighbor and worried that it might cause me some trouble. That was the first time that I clearly understood how the slanderous propaganda had harmed everyone.

At the end of 1999, my husband changed his job and our whole family moved to New York City. My life changed considerably in this new environment. I soon found an ideal job. The only drawback was that it was very far away. The daily commuting by train and bus took about 3 to 4 hours. I then realized that the 3 to 4 hour travel time was really a good time to read the books. Otherwise, after coming home, the child, my father-in-law and the housework would take up almost all of my time. Time went by quickly. It was the summer of 2000 and my father-in-law's visa was about to expire. For various reasons, we decided to have my child go back to China. After the child left, we were relatively more relaxed. I hoped to quickly find the practice site. In the two years after I obtained the Fa, I almost never exchanged experiences with fellow practitioners. On one bright and beautiful day, I came to Central Park in New York City. After I arrived, I found that there were many people practicing Falun Gong. Most of them were young people. There were also quite a few young Americans. Everybody was so friendly, sincere and honest. After the exercises, we spoke with each other. Gradually, I found that many of the young people were quite wonderful. Everyone tried his or her best to promote Falun Dafa. One time after the exercises, a practitioner told me, "Teacher asked us to let go of life and death." I suddenly felt a kind of pressure. I thought, "They already let go of life and death, but I still do not know what I should do."

Finally, in September 2000, two years after I obtained the Fa, I attended the experience sharing conference in New York City. It was the first time I attended an experience sharing conference. I listened to almost every practitioner's speech with tears in my eyes. The selflessness and benevolence of fellow practitioners touched me deeply. During the past two years, what had I done for others except read the book and practice the exercises? I thought that I went to such a remote place to work. Was it simply arranged by Teacher to let me have time to read the book? I then thought of those tens of thousands of people that I could meet while traveling on my way to work and back to home. I wanted to promote Falun Dafa, to tell people that there is such a good thing spreading around the world. In the beginning, I prepared a small recorder so I could practice one to two sets of exercises while I was waiting for the bus or train. My intention was to let people see me practicing Falun Gong. Those who were interested could take the Falun Dafa materials placed next to me. I did this for a while. Later, while I was practicing the moving exercises, there was always somebody saying "Tai Chee," and while I was practicing the meditation, someone would say "Yoga." I did not feel right about this. One day, after the meditation, I opened my eyes and found there were some coins scattered around me. I felt badly. I wanted to present Falun Gong exercises to the public, but they regarded me as a beggar. Afterwards, I thought about this calmly, and felt that I was probably doing something incorrectly. One day, I came out of the train station to get on the bus to go back home. Because there were many buses and people on the street, the bus moved very slowly. I stood on the bus looking out of the window and saw crowds of people, male, female, old and young. I felt grieved, and tears dripped down my face thinking that people are really to be pitied. They do not know the true meaning of their lives, and just let life after life pass by. I decided to tell people on a large scale that Falun Dafa is being taught throughout the world, and let them know what is happened in China.

At first, I wanted to promote Falun Dafa at more than ten bus and train stations. Because I needed to distribute flyers, sometimes, several hundred per day, I needed a lot of materials. With the help of a fellow practitioner, this problem was quickly solved. The second thing I needed was enough time. Using the time waiting for the bus was not enough. I went to work earlier in the morning and came home a little later in the evening. I spent one more hour outside everyday. In this way, I went to all the bus and train stations along my route. I had only one thought in my mind, "Let more people know about Falun Dafa." The ones to whom I wanted to promote Falun Dafa were those waiting for the buses and trains, the residents of the area and those in the shops around the bus and train stations. One time, a young man who took the material was so surprised and said, "I know of Falun Gong, but I did not think I would see Falun Gong in this small town." Some owners of the small shops let me post the flyers in their windows. Because my time was limited, in order to distribute more flyers I often had to run. Sometimes, even though my body was already very tired, Teacher's benevolence always encouraged me. Once, when I was distributing flyers in a residential area, I forgot about the time. When I looked at my watch, the train going to the city was about to leave and it was too late to catch the bus. I thought I was in trouble. I would be home too late and would not know how to explain it this time. While I was thinking this, I heard someone calling my name. I looked back and saw a girl coming out of a building. I was surprised to see it was a fellow worker who just changed to another job at a different company. She asked me if I would like to ride with her in her car to the train station.

Another event that also impressed me very deeply was the following. Once, at the bus station, I met a young man. After I handed him a flyer, he was very interested and asked me some questions and also wanted to know my email, phone number and so on. Soon after, he sent me an email and said that he hoped I could become a salesperson for his company. He saw that I could distribute the flyers one by one into people's hands, so he thought I must have some special skill in this area. I replied to him that I used to be a person who was not sociable, and I never thought I would someday come into contact with so many people. During the initial period of my practice, I just practiced and read the book quietly by myself. Later, I learned that the Chinese Government was slandering Falun Gong. In such a situation, I, who had benefited greatly from practicing Falun Gong, could no longer keep silent. I want to tell everybody in the world that the Chinese Government is deceiving the Chinese and everyone else around the world! Later, he replied that he was very happy to know me, wished our success and hoped that "Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance" would succeed! Another time, when I was promoting Falun Dafa in Harlem, I met two African-American young men. After I handed them the flyers and gave a brief introduction, they said they wanted to learn Falun Gong right away. Looking at the sneers, I knew they were not serious. I wanted to pack up and leave, but then I thought, "The people who do not know the truth about Falun Dafa are so pitiful!" I immediately took out the recorder from my backpack and performed the first through the fourth sets of exercises for them while playing the "Pudu" music. They watched quietly for more than ten minutes. After the performance, their initial expressions completely disappeared. They sincerely accepted the truth-clarifying materials. The family members read them. They nodded.

After I had been to all the cities and towns along the train line on my way to work, one day I suddenly paid attention to the New York subway map which I had previously ignored. The human body has pulses, and these subway lines are so much like the pulses of the City. When I thought that there were very few practitioners in uptown New York City, I strongly felt it was my unshakeable duty to let more people here know about Falun Dafa. I was a person who was not good at directions, but I began to study the New York subway lines earnestly, and studied the transfer points between trains in order to reach more places. By accident, I found that the destinations for two buses near my office were the uptown terminal points of the subway. Then, using these points, I began to shuttle back and forth in more than a dozen New York subway lines. All of a sudden I felt as it is described in Zhuan Falun, "…we require that hundreds of energy channels be opened up and make simultaneous rotations."

Time went by so fast. Spring of 2001 came and we decided to bring our child back from China. My mother's visa was not approved, so my father brought my baby to America. My mind was somewhat unsettled. I did not know how my father had been in the past year, and how his practice had gone. At first glance, my heart sank. Compared to the last time when he left me one year ago, he seemed twenty years older. I was in tears. Later, I found that although he still practiced the exercises, he stopped reading the book. During that time, my heart was very heavy. My father said that, of those who practiced Falun Gong with him, some had their celestial eyes opened, and some had supernormal abilities, but they all no longer believed in Falun Gong. I told my father, "Father, previously I believed in Falun Gong not because of those people and their abilities. Of course, I will not disbelieve in Falun Gong even if these things no longer exist. What I firmly believe in is the book written in black and white." Later, I gave him Teacher's new books and articles one after another, but to no avail. He was already unable to understand the things that happened around him. Little did I realize how a government's slanderous propaganda could deeply change and ruthlessly destroy a person! My father had been practicing qigong in the hot summers and in the cold winters for over 20 years. Wasn't he waiting to obtain the Fa? He had received it, but was deprived of what he had gained. All of a sudden, I wanted to cry but had no tears. Someone asked me, "How do you know the articles on Clearwisdom.net are real? How do you know those persecutions are real?" Before, I always felt that such questions were very annoying, but I was unable to give a convincing reply. In the future, I will use my own experience to tell people, "The real people who are being persecuted are not only the Falun Dafa practitioners, but also the millions upon millions of the kindhearted Chinese. Under the Chinese Government's propaganda that turned right into wrong, people do not have the chance to distinguish the good from the bad, the righteous from the evil. Their thoughts are controlled." When my father came the second time, I rarely joined the group activities and did not even attend the New York Experience Sharing Conference in 2001. I thought that accompanying him would make him feel better. I knew I was wrong, so I decided to use my real actions to tell Father that what he saw and heard were not true. "There are still millions of practitioners who are cultivating steadfastly and validating Falun Dafa." At first, Father was still critical. "Just be a good person. Don't go out to cause trouble." Because of this, I wrote a letter to him, "Being a good person is not only what you think, not gaining advantages by unfair means and bullying others. A good person should also have a sense of justice. When there is something unfair happening, he will step forward bravely even if he will be harmed like the Falun Dafa practitioners today!" Gradually, Father did not say anything else about my participating in the group activities. One day, I found him again holding Zhuan Falun in his hands.

Let me use this opportunity to thank our benevolent Teacher and thank my fellow practitioners who have always given me help on my cultivation path. Also, I thank my family members. Finally, please allow me to use a practitioner's poem to end my experience sharing: