(Minghui.org) Shortly after I moved into my apartment building in 2013, I noticed how incredibly filthy the entire stairwell was. I believed myself to be a Falun Dafa cultivator who practiced Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I remembered that Master Li Hongzhi told us:
“Cultivating gong has a pathmind is the wayOn the boundless sea of Dafahardship is your ferry”(“Falun Dafa,” Hong Yin)
I felt I needed to take action in regard to the situation before me.
The stairwell was dirty and dusty. The garbage bags near the front door of each unit left black and oily stains on the ground. I rinsed them off with water and scrubbed the stairways clean. I started on the sixth floor and worked my way down. I cleaned all the filth, and bagged leaky garbage bags with new ones. I spent an hour every day cleaning the stairwells. It took me two weeks to make it acceptably clean.
There was a skylight on the sixth-floor roof. When the skylight was not closed properly pigeon droppings fell through onto the stairwell. I went up there to clean it about once a week, and washed it with water when it got really bad.
After a couple of years, I began to wonder how long I needed to continue doing this cleaning. I stopped cleaning for about three weeks and one day, a woman in the building said to me, “How come you don’t come and clean my front door anymore?”
“I am sorry. I’ll do it right away,” I replied. I felt it was Master prompting me through this woman, giving me an opportunity to elevate my xinxing.
The woman asked me while I was cleaning, “How much do they pay you each month?”
“No one pays me. I am a Falun Dafa practitioner. Our Master told us to follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance in all that we do. I am cleaning voluntarily.”
Later, this woman’s family of three learned the truth about Falun Dafa and quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations. And the pigeons disappeared!
In the first spring after I moved into the building, I found my doorway was all wet and sticky when I came home one day. It turned out that a unit on the sixth floor put an urn of pickles in the stairway; the juice leaked and ran down to the fourth floor. I thought I should not blame others. I needed to look inward and be tolerant. I mopped the stairways one step at a time. When I reached the sixth floor, the owner stuck his head out to have a look, then quickly retreated.
This problem with the pickles occurred again the following spring. I happily cleaned the floors up once again. I obtained a piece of plastic and covered the broken urn. Then I cleaned the outside of the urn, so it did not attract flies.
The owner said to me, “You’ve brought us good fortune since you came here.”I told him, “It is not me. It is Dafa and Master Li (the founder) who brought you the good fortune.”
After I clarified the truth to him, his whole family supported Dafa and quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations.
I cannot remember how long it used to take me to clean the whole stairwell, since it was so many years ago. The important thing was that I kept maintaining the cleaning regimen. Now things are much easier. My neighbors all know to keep the stairwells clean. They all know I practice Falun Dafa and support it. Most of them have quit the CCP.
Master said:
“If everyone searches internally and considers how to conduct himself or herself well, I would say that society will stabilize and the human moral standard will improve again.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)
Category: Improving Oneself
