Experience as a Dafa practitioner
Greetings Master!Greetings Fellow Practitioners!
Chew Boon Kiang
I am glad to be given this opportunity to share my experience as to how I stepped into the door of Dafa and the successive events that took place which brought me forward along my cultivation practice. Prior to 2009, my son who is a Dafa practitioner used to show me the Falun badge, Falun emblem and even brought me a book which I later came to know it is Zhuan Falun. At that time, I did not pay attention neither did I ask him what were all these about. I just left the book and the other items in the drawer and did not think of them.
One morning in September 2009, I took my usual morning stroll in the park near to my house. It was supposed to be a normal routine exercise but on that particular morning, there was a feeling of emptiness and my mind wandered far searching for something which I could not explain.
I remembered the park was very quiet at that time and there were not many people around. I sat on the bench looking blankly into the space ahead and at the same time pondering aimlessly during which all of a sudden, I was thinking of doing meditation hoping to find solace. Question was “how to meditate to bring peace to our mind”? It was only a spontaneous thought and I did not expect that I will pursue on it that led me to the door of Dafa.
I had seen my son doing meditation before so I talked to him. He told me about Falun Gong and the five sets of exercise. This time I listened intently. Even though, I was only searching for meditation practice, I did not question him as to why there are four more sets of exercise. He made it a point to take time off his schedule to show me the steps of the individual exercise. It was from here that I learned and gradually improved (until today) through correction and guidance by other practitioners during group exercise.
Five sets of exercise; my health improved and old sickness miraculously disappeared
After doing the five sets of exercise, my health improved a lot. Prior to this, I was suffering from slip discs and high cholesterol. I had been seeing doctors but medication could not cure me. Doctor did a CT scan and even MRI on my spine which detected herniated disc in the C4-C5 level of the cervical spine. Every 3 months I had to visit the doctor for review and to get medication for the nerves which had to be taken twice every day and this was said to be long term prescription. The doctor recommended physiotherapy and also other forms of everyday people exercises to relieve pain. For the high cholesterol, medication prescribed by doctor only had temporary effect. After doing the five sets of exercises, the pain from slip disc gradually diminished. I came to realize the strength of Falun Gong and from then onwards, I threw away all the medicine prescribed by doctors. For my cholesterol, I went back for another test and the result showed that it has returned to the normal acceptable level. Since then, I stopped seeing doctors.
Studying the Fa; beginning of my cultivation
All I did so far was only the five sets of exercises and yet to study the Fa. My son handed me the book on Zhuan Falun for some time. He even downloaded Master’s lectures in text version onto my mobile phone. I did not think much of it until one day (it should be few months later) when I was on an official trip to London. The flight arrived at Heathrow early in the morning. I took my breakfast before leaving the airport. When I reached the hotel, the room was not ready and it was still too early to check in. I then left my luggage at the hotel reception desk and walked to a park nearby. With nothing to do and all the time I have, I ran through my mobile phone for messages and missed calls. Then I saw Master’s lectures that were downloaded by my son earlier on. At first, I just browsed through to have a glimpse of the contents of the Lectures not realizing that I was drawn to Master’s words as I started to read the First Lecture. There was a sense of awakening and no words could express the feeling that I had during that moment. It was from this instance that I started to read the book Zhuan Falun and also Master’s other articles that my son had brought back to me.
Knowing the responsibility of a Dafa Disciple
As I study the Fa, reading Zhuan Falun and Master’s articles, I was enlightened to the historic responsibility of a Dafa disciple in the saving of sentient beings. On this part, I was completely lagging far behind and started to search for the things that I can do within my time schedule to fulfill this obligation. By nature of my job in project management and co-ordination that involved drawing up and writing proposals, I was thinking why not use my basic writing skill to clarify the truth in the saving of sentient beings.
In May 2013, it was my first time attending the Fa Conference in New York. A group of us had the opportunity to visit the Epoch Times office and talked to the people there. When I returned home, I was still contemplating on the idea of finding some works (linked to media like Epoch Times) that can be done online from home. Two months later (through my son’s introduction), someone from Hong Kong Epoch Times sent email to me on whether there is any task that I can fit in.
However, both the New York and Hong Kong Epoch Times require full-time commitment mainly on sales therefore I could not meet their criteria and requirement.
Few months later in late 2013, a practitioner from another state (whom I have never met before) called me over the phone regarding petition through DAFOH (doctors against forced organ harvesting) to the UN High Commission for an immediate end to forced organ harvesting in China. He told me he has been compiling lists of email address of lawyers, doctors, accountants and other sectors. He asked me whether I can write covering notes in English and send out emails to the list of contacts to clarify the truth and to expose the evil deeds of forced organ harvesting that is happening in China as well as to urge them to join in the petition through DAFOH to the UN High Commission. Without hesitation, I immediately accepted the task and thanked the practitioner for giving me this opportunity. I started off by sending an average of 50-100 emails a day to call upon mail recipients to visit DAFOH web-site. Most of the mails that I sent out were either rejected by the other end’s server or blocked by the mail service provider. There were nasty replies negating and disputing the truth while some expressed their disbelief that such inhumane and evil acts are happening in China.
Since then, every year, I would follow the same lists (total of around 5000 contacts) and tried to send out emails to as many contacts as possible by the time-line or closing date set by DAFOH for the submission of the petition to the UN High Commission.
It was only in late 2016 (almost 3 years later), I was contacted by a Taiwan practitioner who is working with Taiwan Vision Times (I came to know only recently that he is doing on voluntary basis). They were trying to find people to do English translation on Chinese text containing information from interviews with practitioners who survived and came out alive after been locked up and brutally tortured in labor camps in China. The interviewees described the situation in the evil detention camps and how they were tortured by the Communist to force them to give up their belief in Falun Gong and to sign the so-called repentance letter.
I had my early education in English and could only read very little Chinese so how could I handle this task? I then discussed with my husband who is bi-lingual (Chinese and English) but not a practitioner. When I brought up the subject to him requesting for his help to assist in the translation, he did not hesitate and accepted my request. For each text, he would read to me in Chinese and we discussed the contents to make sure the English translated text is in line with the Chinese text.
After these translations, Taiwan VT contacted me asking whether I can join them as part-time translator which I accepted to do it on voluntary basis with my husband’s support. From then onwards until today, I did an average of 2 (at times up to 3) assignments per week. All the articles are related to China.
Send Forth Righteous Thoughts
My cultivation in Dafa can be seen as a gradual process as it was only after 2013 that I came to realize the seriousness of sending righteous thoughts. This was further strengthened after I had done the few translations pertaining to the persecution of practitioners in China. Just to share some crucial touching points from the translated text of the interviews with practitioners who were brutally tortured by the Communist and survived to tell the world. This happened in late 1999 to early 2000. The evil den in Masanjia was said to be the most fearful. Interviewees described the brutal persecution using physical and mental tortures and how the Communist had tried to destroy human nature and dignity and to eliminate practitioners spiritually and physically. Types of inhuman tortures were described among which include pressing hands repetitiously against nails until the skin were torn and covered with blood, using electric baton to shock practitioners leaving behind severe marks, injections until the nervous system was in disorder and twitched with spasm, forced feeding, sexual assault and so on. From the interview, it was also pointed out that Jiang Zemin had declared war against Falun Gong without using fire arms. Some of those locked up and tortured vowed to live on and go out alive to tell the world. Some survived and there were those who died from the tortures. One of the interviewees survived through strong determination and was carried home paralyzed and half alive.
The truth was shocking and the only thing to do is to send our righteous thought to dissolve and eliminate those evils.
At the time of writing this part of the report, I am again reminded by Master’s words in the article “What is a Dafa Disciple” from the Fa Teaching Given at the 2011 New York Fa Conference: (Quote) “My Dafa disciples, your righteous thoughts do have an effect. And the combined effect of each of you together is powerful beyond compare. The reason you can’t achieve such an effect is that your faith is lacking, and your righteous thoughts at the same time, 100 million plus Dafa disciples sending righteous thoughts together at the same time globally, would that not be terrifying to the evil and the old forces?” (Unquote)
Re-cap
Apart from studying the Fa and doing the five sets of exercises as well doing my bit of contribution to clarify the truth using the internet, I started to allocate time to participate in outdoor activities starting late 2015.
In the old days before I entered the door of Dafa, I used to think that whatever that happened were either destined or just coincidental. Today, after studying the Fa, I come to know that all that happened to a Dafa disciple (whether trials, tribulations or even compliments) are the arrangement by Master to test or guide Dafa disciples in the cultivation. Guided by Master’s words: (Quote)“…….But, as long as you go by Dafa, go by what Master has told you, you will have a path to walk, and that will be something nobody can change. But the path will be very narrow ——- narrow to the extent that only if you are extremely righteous will things work out and will you manage to save people. Only if you can go about things in an extremely righteous manner will there be no problems”. (unquote)
Again, in looking inward and evaluating myself based on the values that make up xinxing as what Master has said in Zhuan Falun; “What is xinxing? It includes de (a type of matter), tolerance, enlightenment quality, sacrifice, giving up every day people’s different desires and attachments, being able to suffer hardships, and so on. Every aspect of xinxing must be improved for you to make real progress”.
I asked myself; “Have I worked hard enough towards the direction of meeting the values of xinxing”?
The above is my personal cultivation experience. If there is any shortcoming or omission, please correct me.
Thank you Master
Thank you fellow practitioners