(Minghui.org) When I read this passage in “Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference,” I was moved to tears by Master’s indescribable grace:
“Today Master just has a flesh body appearance in the human world, but Master has many, many abilities, and I have countless Law Bodies, and all of them are resolving the things that should be resolved for Dafa disciples, they're resolving Fa-rectification related matters during the Fa-rectification, and doing many, many things. But none of that manifests here.”
I thought back to earlier events that I had experienced, which I will recount below.
Finding Dafa
Since I was a child, I had always wanted to know why people lived in this world. While watching Journey to the West, I sighed in awe of the Buddha’s arrangements and abilities. I admired the spirit displayed by Tang Monk and Sun Wukong (the monkey king). Watching legends of deities and miracles, I believed them to be real and developed a wish to practice cultivation. In my first year of high school in 1989, I thought of leaving to find a master but had no idea where to go.
I later encountered qigong and experienced its extraordinary abilities, but over time I found them to be rudimentary. I decided against practicing qigong and instead vowed to cultivate Buddhahood. Meditation became a part of my daily routine. By early 1994, I had many problems in cultivation that could not be resolved on my own, and I could not make progress. I had a deep yearning to find my master.
In April of that year, a university instructor kept me after a lab. As we talked, he asked me a question related to cultivation. I told him my understanding. He was shocked and pulled out his copy of Zhuan Falun, the main book of Falun Dafa. When I opened it and saw the portrait of Master [Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa] with a compassionate expression and the Falun emblem, I found them extremely familiar but couldn’t remember where I had seen them.
The next morning, I went to a Falun Dafa exercise site. When I saw the exercise movements, I knew deep down that this was an advanced discipline of the Buddha School. I could not express my joy. I finally found what I had been looking for!
Coming back from the exercise site, I couldn’t wait to start studying Zhuan Falun. As I read the book, I came to understand many of the cultivation problems I had encountered over the years. That feeling of finding my master and Dafa was indescribable. I was too fortunate! That day, I began my true cultivation and stepped on my path home.
At the end of 1994, I attended Master’s lecture in Dalian. I listened quietly and felt an enormous field of compassion. When I returned to school, my classmates were surprised to see my changes. They immediately felt the compassionate power of Dafa. I knew Master had given me many things.
Diligence
A cultivator knows to cherish the Fa once he has obtained it. Only by being diligent would I be worthy of Master’s immense grace. On the path of cultivation, Master watches over me at all times, and the extraordinary nature of Dafa displays itself.
Winter in Northeastern China is very cold, and the temperature often drops to -20°C. I did the Dafa exercises outside every day and never wore gloves. My hands felt cold at first, but soon my entire body was warm, as if it was wrapped in a thick layer of energy. Because my university dormitory was locked early in the morning, most of the time I jumped out of my second-story window to go do the exercises. Once, there was light snow, and I went out as usual. My body was nice and warm. On my way back after an hour, I realized that I had forgotten to put on my wool pants. How strange–why didn't I feel it when I went out?
One day, I suddenly couldn’t move my head and had a high fever. I lay in bed and couldn’t move at all. My dorm mates were scared and asked if I needed to go to the hospital. I said, “No, this is eliminating karma.” Because it was summer break, students were preparing to go home. They wanted to stay and keep me company. I said, “It’s fine. You can go. Don’t worry. I’ll definitely be good by six o’clock tonight, and I have to go home on time too.”
In retrospect, it was quite miraculous–at six o’clock, I really got up. The fever went away, and I had no pain–it was as if nothing had happened. Just ten minutes earlier, I was still in bed with a fever and couldn’t move! My dorm mates who hadn’t left were dumbfounded. Seeing that I had recovered, one of them brought me a bowl of noodles. I hadn’t eaten all day and finished the whole thing. The three of us went home happily. I knew Master had helped me eliminate a large amount of karma. This type of event has occurred several times during my cultivation.
Dafa also gave me wisdom, which fully manifested itself in my studies. I had great memory and didn’t have to review some courses at all, while others I only had to read through once. I spent a lot of time studying the Fa and doing the exercises. It never affected my studies. I had good grades and continued to receive scholarships and merit awards. My classmates and professors alike admired the power of Dafa.
A Test
I graduated in 1996 and returned to my hometown. Having benefited greatly from Dafa, I wanted other people to be able to learn it too. So, I decided to start an exercise site and helped others learn. Because of Dafa’s extraordinary effect on health, the number of participants grew quickly.
At the time, however, several leaders in the Communist Party were preparing to take action against Falun Dafa. At the end of December 1996, I saw an official document defaming Dafa and requiring exercise sites to be dispersed. Practitioners knew it was slander because they saw each other become healthier after taking up Dafa and personally experienced Master’s compassion and Dafa’s upright principles.
We continued to do the exercises with the hope that the government would investigate the situation in good faith. Some practitioners started reporting that there were strangers monitoring them. I told them that Dafa exercise sites were voluntarily formed, open to the public, and had no secrets. Practitioners thus continued to do the exercises under surveillance.
One morning in March 1997, as I walked home from the exercise site as usual, a police officer stopped me. I immediately realized that this was a test. I had heard that some practitioners in the countryside had been arrested and their homes ransacked. I told Master in my heart, “I will definitely pass this test well.”
The officer first called the manager of the workplace that hosted the exercise site and demanded that he terminate the site. He then yelled at me angrily, “Who told you to organize this exercise site? I’m going to take care of you right now. I’ll call your workplace and make it as if you’d never gone to college!”
I had the Fa in my heart and felt Master strengthening me. I somehow managed to say to him, “You must be so-and-so. Can we talk it over calmly?” He was shocked and asked how I knew his name. I could only say that I guessed. I didn’t actually know him. He later said, “You can go home and eat. Then go to the political security section at the police station.”
When I got home and told my family, my mother was nervous and asked if she needed to clean up the house. I said there was no need–with Master and Dafa, I knew things would be fine.
Master said,
“The falun will protect those who genuinely do our practice. My roots are planted in this universe, and so someone would have to be able to harm me in order to harm you, which means that they would have to have the power to harm this universe.” (The First Talk, Zhuan Falun)
I went to the political security section on time. I held firm to my faith in Master and let go of all human notions. I knew that only Dafa could correct and balance everything. I did not position myself as a suspect to be interrogated, and I faced the officer with compassion.
He put on a tough attitude and threatened me with the official document. I told him it was defamation. I answered his questions using principles from Dafa and factual occurrences from the exercise site. His tone soon softened. I distinctly felt that Dafa’s compassion had gotten through to him. He went from angrily shouting Master’s name to calling him “Teacher Li” and “Master.” He also became respectful toward me.
After I answered all his questions, he pulled out prepared documents from a drawer and told me, “After talking to you today, I’ve decided not to detain you or fine you. But what are you going to do about the exercise site I broke up?” I smiled and said, “It doesn’t matter. We can go somewhere else and split up into small study groups. But you’re not allowed to interfere with us again.”
He happily agreed to my terms. He added that he would also learn Dafa in the future and asked me to teach him when the time came. He also expressed discontent with the national government’s interference with Dafa–he had been staked out at the exercise site for months but couldn’t find a single problem. Dafa had finally overcome the prejudice he developed from the “document from higher up.”
When I left, he walked with me for a long distance and said this was his first time going to such lengths to see someone off. I smiled, thinking this was the power of compassion from Master and Dafa.
The officer really kept his word and never interfered with practitioners again. I later heard that he was demoted as a result. I believe that every person who gives for Dafa will receive blessings in the future.
Master later purified my body again. Many dirty substances were suddenly excreted from my face. Afterward, my skin became as smooth as that of a baby. When my female colleagues expressed envy, I told them that it was because I practiced Falun Dafa.
(I’m sad to say that I started writing down the above cultivation experiences in 2004 after reading “Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference” but did not finish. I didn’t think it would be fifteen years before I picked it back up. Thinking back, I could still see every scene clearly. Master’s immense compassion is amazing.)
Safeguarding Dafa
On July 20, 1999, former Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin used radio stations, TV stations, newspapers, and other media to spread false accusations and slander against Falun Dafa and Master. The entire country was suddenly blanketed by lies. Seeing the upright and compassionate Master and Dafa being treated this way, as a Dafa disciple, I had to make the government understand our cultivators’ voices. I decided to go to petition the provincial government first.
That night, the train station had already stopped selling tickets to Beijing and Shenyang. I thought to myself, “How can they block things that Dafa disciples want to do?” I told the ticketing staff and their manager that they did not have the right to do this. After a few back-and-forths, they agreed to sell me the ticket, and I boarded my train to Shenyang.
I arrived after midnight to find the streets full of police and under martial law. Officers forcibly put us in vehicles and took us to a stadium. It was already full of Dafa practitioners who had been arrested.
We sat there quietly, waiting to speak to a provincial government official to tell him about Dafa and how it had improved cultivators’ health and uplifted their morality.
At dawn, the practitioners began to talk to each other to share experiences and study the Dafa books. A boy, eleven or twelve, began to read Zhuan Falun aloud. Some police officers jeered at us for being led by a child. I immediately enlightened that this was aimed at practitioners’ hearts. I took the book and started reading.
After a while, the officers who had gathered disappeared. Other practitioners had me lead a recitation of Hong Yin and Essentials for Further Advancement. The stadium was filled with the sound of us reading Dafa books, cleaning out the surrounding evil.
Police cars started gathering at around eight or nine in the morning. Another wave of officers came over and started arresting people.
The first to be taken away were professors and students. The police gave practitioners no opportunities to explain. One professor–an elegant, refined woman who appeared to be in her forties–was roughly pulled by the arm into a police vehicle. The men were treated even worse: teams of four officers simply picked them up and threw them in. At that moment, I knew that the provincial government would not hear our petitions.
The police appeared before me in a flash. I told them, “We’re here to peacefully inform the provincial government of how we’ve benefited from practicing Dafa. Dafa brings a lot of good to the country and the people and does no harm. If the government allows us to tell them what is going on, we would leave on our own without being dragged.”
An officer in charge shouted at them, “Don’t let him talk! He’s a leader!” I replied, “I’m not some kind of leader. We don’t have leaders.”
The officers came over to pick me up. The whole time, I was sitting on the ground with my legs crossed. I closed my eyes and conjoined my hands, immediately entering tranquility. Several officers tried to pick me up again and again but couldn’t. They could only look at each other, and their commander didn’t know what to do.
The arrests stopped.
I knew Master had dissolved the evil in other dimensions. Master’s teaching once again appeared before my eyes:
“My roots are planted in this universe, and so someone would have to be able to harm me in order to harm you, which means that they would have to have the power to harm this universe.” (The First Talk, Zhuan Falun)
By noon, practitioners who had lost hope in petitioning the government started leaving. Police from different regions started taking people back to their hometowns. Some practitioners realized that we shouldn’t get in police cars, so we decided to go home on our own.
It turned out that those who were sent home in police vehicles were all taken to their local police stations and then to detention centers.
When I returned to work the next day, they already knew about the incident and took me straight to the brigade office. The director came to talk to me and demanded my resignation. He made it clear that it was decided at a bureau meeting and he didn’t want to intensify my persecution.
But he told me, “First, you are the best person. Second, your work is the most outstanding, and you were recognized as a model employee after just a year of working here. Third, you’re the only person who the subordinate organization requested an award for multiple times. But asking for your resignation is a political task, and there’s nothing we can do. I hope you can understand.”
The manager of a neighboring group thought it was unfair. When everyone else distanced themselves from me to avoid being implicated, he publicly invited me to a meal. I truly felt happy for this leader who had a sense of justice. I believe Dafa will bestow blessings on those who make the choice to be upright.
Now out of work, I had to make a living by selling things door to door and performing manual labor. Even though it was difficult and tiring, I encountered all kinds of people and was able to improve my xinxing time after time. Master’s teaching would sound in my ear:
“A Great Enlightened One fears no hardshipHaving forged an adamantine willFree of attachment to living or dyingHe walks the path of Fa-rectificationconfident and poised”(“Righteous Thoughts and Righteous Actions” from Hong Yin Volume II)
Immersed in Dafa, I felt fulfilled and happy.
My Stand at Tiananmen
After the persecution started, practitioners discussed how to let the government know that Dafa is good and that Master is innocent. Many started going to petition the government in Beijing. But the arrests continued. Minghui.org continuously reported news of practitioners being persecuted to death.
I went to petition in Beijing before July 20, 2000. When I arrived, I saw that the National Appeals Office was only arresting people, without giving practitioners a chance to speak. I decided to go to Tiananmen Square to hold up banners and tell the world, “Falun Dafa is good!”
On the square that morning, I saw many practitioners holding up banners and then being arrested by police. I decided to go to the top floor of Tiananmen (the building itself, which is open to tourists).
Entering the building required layers of security checks, but I believed that no one could stand in the way of things Dafa disciples needed to do. I asked Master to strengthen me.
I walked toward the security checkpoint with a banner in my pocket. Four guards searched me twice. Even when one of them reached into the pocket holding the banner, my mind remained strong and firm. He grasped the banner but then let it go, appearing to be devoid of thought. Another guard also felt the banner. I smiled and asked, “Are you done? I’m going through now.” He nodded blankly. When I left, I saw they still had no idea what had happened.
Climbing to the top floor, I saw rows of plainclothes officers posted steps apart. If I took out the banner then, I wouldn’t have had a chance to unfurl it. I again asked Master to strengthen me.
One officer suddenly picked up his watch and said to himself, “What’s going on? What’s going on?” The others crowded around him to get in on the action. The tourists also left an empty space around me. I knew at that moment I had to act. I took out my banner that said, “Falun Dafa” and held it up for people to see.
At that moment, I felt my body was incomparably tall and as if time had stopped. Tourists saw the scene and surged forward. The police were unaware of what was happening, as if they were frozen. It wasn’t until a guard posted on the floor below saw it and ran up yelling that the officers came to their senses and advanced on me.
Several of them tried to pull my arms down, hitting them and trying to grab the banner. I had a scrawny build while they were burly, but the power of Dafa manifested itself. After they struggled for a while, I felt it had been long enough and let my arms down.
The officers surrounded me. They were scared because they had failed to see me ahead of time. A voice blared from their radios, “Was there any international impact?” While the police commander stammered and didn’t know how to answer, a quick-thinking plainclothes officer ran up and replied, “No, we found him before he took out the banner.”
They took me to a large office inside the building, where there was a female leader in uniform. They shoved me against a wall. The commander, who was 1.9 meters tall (6 feet 3 inches), drew his arm back and slapped me more than twenty times in one go.
I suddenly felt as if there were a metal barrel shielding my body. I only heard the clangs of his hand hitting the barrel while I was inside it. He stopped with his hand raised and told the female leader next to him, “Look, my hand is swollen from hitting him. How come nothing’s happened to him?” She told him, “Don’t touch him anymore. He’s a real Falun Gong disciple. Don’t you see there’s not even a mark on his face?” Those officers didn’t dare to get near me anymore.
After a while, the security guards ran up and asked me, “How did you bring the banner up here? Where did you hide it? We even searched your belt and pant legs. How is this possible? You must know some kind of sorcery!”
I was then taken to the Tiananmen police station. Many officers ran down to get a look at me. When they saw how scrawny I was, some of them gave me a thumbs-up and whispered, “Great job! Amazing!” There were also others who didn’t want to come near me and only cursed.
Detention
I was locked in a large metal cage with several other practitioners of different ages and genders. There was a boy of eleven or twelve from the south who was taken to be interrogated twice. Officers tried to get him to reveal his name and address. When he came back, there was a deep hand print on his face.
We discussed as a group and decided to meditate in protest. The guards cursed at us and stomped on some of us, but we were not moved. In the end, they left us alone.
There was another twist during this period. I actually had two opportunities to leave this evil den. When I was taken to the police station, I was only told to wait in the hallway. The officer escorting me had gone to report to his superiors. I could have escaped but did not think to do it.
Another opportunity came when an officer told me and another practitioner to help move something. When we finished, we had left the detainment area. Because the other practitioner felt that we were there to validate Dafa and didn’t want to be a deserter, we didn’t leave. When we walked back to the cage, an officer said, “Why did they come back on their own?” I enlightened that we should not have gone back.
We were taken to Miyun Detention Center that night. I told my interrogator about my cultivation journey. He first antagonized me but later became respectful. I felt that police officers who were forced to persecute Dafa practitioners were so helpless and pitiable!
He told me that the detention center had already persecuted several practitioners to death and hinted for me to leave. However, the officer who took me to the detention center was not as charitable. He told the inmates that I was a practitioner and hinted for them to abuse me.
There were more than a dozen inmates in the cell. When I walked to the center, the head inmate asked me, “Do you still practice?” I told them calmly that no one can change Dafa disciples’ cultivation. He told all the inmates to hit me with the soles of their shoes.
When they came toward me, my heart wasn’t moved. I suddenly saw them stop with their hands in the air. They were frozen and looked at me blankly. The leader said after a while, “This is a real Falun Gong disciple. We can’t touch him. Forget it.”
The entire cell was silent for a long time. The leader then asked me about cultivation. I told him about the goodness of Dafa. He was eventually moved and told the others, “Starting today, we’re going give our good things for him to eat. No one is allowed to touch him!”
The next day, that head inmate was released. He specifically instructed his successor to take good care of me. The inmates really did. When they bought instant noodles and soy milk powder, they would first give me the biggest share, and I couldn’t refuse.
Witnessing Brutality and the Solemnness of Cultivation
The night I was taken to Miyun Detention Center, the officers there took a female practitioner into a cell for male death-row inmates, telling them to torture the practitioner in exchange for food. The screams were hard to listen to. Inmates later told me that the female practitioner was tortured to death and that several others had already died the same way.
Later that night, a practitioner around twenty years old was brought in. He was a second-year college student. The inmates were woken up, and the leader asked him whether he still practiced. He replied, “It’s too hard. I won’t practice anymore!” The inmates went crazy and gave him a severe beating until I put a stop to it. But they still had him sleep on the floor after pouring water on it and didn’t give him a quilt.
This scene made me realize the seriousness of cultivation. This practitioner had only given a perfunctory answer. He later revealed that he had said it against his conscience and had realized his mistake. From that day on, the inmates shielded us from the guards when we meditated and did the Dafa exercises.
Eight days later, a local police officer and street-level Communist Party secretary from where I lived came to pick me up. The secretary threw away my shoes and watch. The police officer used to be a soldier and didn’t understand why I would practice Falun Gong as a college student. I told him about my cultivation, and he had nothing to say.
They marched me through the streets of Beijing in handcuffs and barefoot. The officer said to me, “Look how shameful this is!” I said that as a Dafa disciple, I had nothing to be ashamed of, and that their treatment of innocent people was what was shameful. Hearing this, he wrapped my cuffed hands with his clothes. I was taken back this way to my place of residence and to the local detention center.
Each new arrival had ten basins of cold water poured on them by other inmates in a custom called “smashing the basin.” When I entered the cell and revealed that I was a Dafa practitioner, they wanted to do the same to me. I enlightened that Dafa disciples have both compassion and dignity. I looked at them with a serious expression. No one dared to make a move. The cell leader then said, “Falun Gong isn’t the same as other inmates. Dafa disciples are all good people. Don’t touch him.”
I was later moved to a different cell, where the environment was extremely evil. People had been beaten to death there. The inmates were all violent criminals, including some who were on death row. The head inmate himself had taken several lives.
When he learned that I was a Dafa practitioner, he roared, “No one in my cell refuses to 'transform!'” I looked at him and said, “No one can change Dafa disciples.”
He ordered other inmates to hold me down and wanted to force-feed me feces and urine. At that moment, the power of Dafa again displayed itself. When they were half a meter away from me, they were instantly frozen stiff. They took a while to recover and had looks of shock. The head inmate quietly told the others, “We can’t touch this one.”
From that point on, none of them dared to give me a hard time. When I did the exercises each day, they would repel any officers who came to harass me. I told the inmates about Dafa, and they gradually understood. The two death-row inmates ordered by police to monitor me also didn’t dare to make a move.
Later on, there was one inmate who kept using a large needle hidden in the cell to stab another inmate who was only seventeen or eighteen. I couldn’t take it and told him to stop. He pushed me into a corner that wasn’t covered by surveillance cameras. He raised his fist but couldn’t bring it down. It was a while before he let his arm down. He had pain in his arm through the night and said he had incurred karmic retribution for persecuting a Dafa disciple.
Under Master’s protection, I left the detention center after two months and joined other practitioners in Fa-rectification. Throughout my journey, I experienced more miraculous things that came from Dafa. No amount of words can express my gratitude to Master. Only by cultivating diligently can I be worthy of Master’s benevolent salvation!
