The Reluctant Practitioner

Dianna Roberts
Houston, Texas

 Dear Master Li and Fellow Practitioners,

I would like to tell you how it came to be that I now find myself to be an enthusiastic student of Falun Dafa and some of my experiences during my first few months on this path.  I hope I don’t bore you too much. 

About a year or so ago I found that seemed to be getting stuck trying to maintain the practice I had been following for the previous five years.  Under the tutelage of that teacher, I had become a vegetarian, entirely changed my career, and quit smoking and drinking alcohol. I was still faithfully doing the 2 ½ hours a day of meditation required by that path and trying hard to keep the precepts.  But I wasn’t seeing much, if any, improvement in the quality of my meditation or in my inner self.  Nonetheless, I considered myself at least on a good path and thought I just needed to open up some blocked energy channels or something to get things back on track.  I had heard that qigong opened energy paths and so I thought I would look into it.  So, I ordered four books on the subject from the Amazon and started reading. The books seemed to promise pretty fantastic results but it became clear that one really needed a teacher to get a good start.  Meanwhile, the April 25^th demonstration in Beijing by the 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners had come and gone with, much to my amazement, no bloodshed.  I was thinking that this must be some kind of pretty amazing group that would just come and sit quietly in meditation as a form of protest and did not even provoke the government to call out the tanks.  Eventually, of course, the retaliation came and continues to this day.

One day last November, I was reading about the Chinese government’s crackdown on Falun Gong and its practitioners, wondering again just what kind of cultivation system this was that could inspire such heroism in its adherents and such revulsion in powerful government officials.  I started following links from the CNN.com article and eventually found the web page for the Houston group, which was going to have a workshop the very next Saturday.  “How lucky!” I thought, and resolved to go.  So I printed the notice and started browsing the books and articles on the Falundafa.org site.  

At the workshop the following Saturday, I was a little overwhelmed by trying to learn all five exercises at once but, more importantly, was very impressed with the enormous sense of kindness and inner calm I felt radiating from the people teaching the class.  I think you can tell the quality of a discipline by its followers and so, by and large, the Falun Dafa practitioners I have met are its best advertisement.

After the class I went home and downloaded all the exercise instructions and printed all the books and articles I could find on the website. Then I tried to read it all in no particular order.  Needless to say, I got very confused and decided that, while the exercises might be OK or even really good, the philosophy was probably not going to be a good fit for me.  About the only thing that seemed to make good sense to me was Zhen, Shan, Ren---Truthfulness, Benevolence, Forbearance.

The next Saturday, I came out bright and early to the practice site where complete strangers greeted me cordially and helped me with the exercises.  Afterwards, someone explained that China Falun Gong was the beginners’ book and lent me a copy, to be followed by Zhuan Falun, which was the core book.  The reading of China Falun Gong went quickly and was mainly useful as an introduction and for the color photos of Master Li’s demonstration and instructions for the exercises.  In a week or so I began Zhuan Falun and found it interesting but difficult to read.  Soon after that, I was on the bus headed home and had started reading the book when I saw another flash of that distinctive blue color near me on the bus.  Indeed, there was another Western practitioner on that bus that day.  I noticed that there weren’t any gold letters on her book.  She said they had worn off because she had read the book so often.  Thus was my introduction to the seriousness with which Falun Dafa practitioners study the Zhuan Falun. This very friendly practitioner also had that strong atmosphere of inner calm about her that I had noticed early on among other practitioners.

So I decided to read Zhuan Falun in earnest.  Whenever I would read it, though, I would feel a throbbing pressure in the lower forehead, as if the contents were trying to get into my head over a great gulf of conceptual incomprehension and through a great deal of resistance. Although I found parts of the book to be really interesting, it was still very difficult to read and I really did not and do not understand sections of it. It was largely determination to finish what I had started that got me through the book that first time.  I did find, however, a definite sense of well-being from doing the exercises, so I occasionally did them at home and continued to attend the group practice on weekends.  Meanwhile, I found that, although I had largely dismissed the book as something I could not really relate to, I found ideas from it kept coming into my mind in response to whatever was going on around me.  I discovered that, whether I liked it or not, that book had irreversibly changed the way I looked at everything.  It had indeed bored its way into my thick head after all. 

When I ordered the books from Universe Publishing, I had also ordered a set of videotapes of the lectures because I wanted to hear the Master’s teachings in his own voice, even if I couldn’t understand a word he said, and see his face and body language. At about the time I was finishing the book for the first time, I also began watching the tapes of Master Li’s lectures, sometimes alone and sometimes along with another fairly new Western practitioner and very encouraging veteran Chinese practitioners. The first three times I watched it, I fell asleep during the second lecture, always waking up just in time to hear the translator saying “some of you may even fall asleep during the lecture…” I guess my head needed a lot of adjusting.  Another very positive and useful experience has been listening to and sometimes participating in the veteran practitioners’ discussions at the group practice sessions.  These practitioners have been through many of the experiences we newer practitioners are going through and they offer extremely helpful advice from their own experiences and from Master Li’s teachings. These days, a few of us also participate in an English language reading and discussion group that meets weekly.  From time to time, I attend workshops given by the Houston group, partly to help out but also because the gentle and patient veteran practitioners help me correct errors in my exercise technique. Besides being enjoyable, all these experiences have enormously improved my understanding and deepened my appreciation of this cultivation system. 

But there were certain phenomena that I observed directly that really convinced me that this Fa was indeed the true Fa that I should cultivate exclusively and with strong resolution henceforth.  First, in the physical realm, there is the very strong feeling of energy coursing through the body.  This is always apparent to me after doing the standing exercises, but especially so when, for one reason or another, I do the exercises shortly before going to bed.  Then, when I am totally relaxed and attentive to my body, I really feel the energy flowing powerfully throughout.  The rotation of the Falun in my lower abdomen is also especially apparent then.  But there are other physical effects as well.  It says in Zhuan Falun that elderly ladies would experience the menses once again.  When I first read that, I laughed and thought “I hope not,” but, indeed, even though I had not had any such experiences for at least four years, I recently again went through an entire cycle.  As a young person, my skin and hair were oily, but they both had become a lot drier in recent years.  Now they are becoming oilier again.  I have a fairly responsible full time job and have also been enrolled in a graduate school program for the past year.  These two activities, added on to Falun Gong practice time, have left little time for physical activity and so I am really not very fit.  A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to work some exercise into my schedule and resolved to take a walk during my lunch break.  Well, I walked five miles and enjoyed every bit of it, even if it was a balmy 85^o F.  In the past, when I tried to walk even two miles after a long period of inactivity, I would be very tired when I got back and very sore the next day.  But this time, after my 5-mile walk I felt just fine and went right back to work without really even thinking about being tired.  The next day I wasn’t sore or tired at all and went out again for another 5-mile walk.  And so it continued for the next two weeks until I got really busy again. My stamina seems to have risen to a new level. And so I can say without equivocation that Falun Gong has had very definite positive physical effects on me.

Sometimes, during the meditation or in dreams, I “see” a Falun, usually only for a short time. It often seems to be moving fast, as well as rotating, but it is always very bright and distinct with a very bright Buddha symbol in the middle. One time when three of us were watching one of Master Li’s lectures in my living room, I seemed to see a very large, somewhat hazy Falun right in the living room, though it was too large to fit entirely.  I really don’t know what to make of this.  Perhaps, as I thought the first time it happened, it signifies a strong affinity with Falun Dafa, a sign that this is to be my Fa and that I should follow it closely wherever it should lead.  There have also been some other dream experiences that I don’t remember well enough to relate that have strengthened my bond with Master Li’s teachings.

There are also the transformation of karma and upgrading of xinxing aspects of this cultivation path.  This was not a component of my previous path and has already, I think, had profound effects on me.  Although, as mentioned above, I am certain that I am now quite healthy, from time to time I have “illnesses” which appear very suddenly and then disappear equally suddenly.  One Saturday morning I was feeling very well and drove over to the practice site for the morning exercises.  Precisely as I was getting out of the car, I felt a terrible pain in my right upper leg and lower back which made it very difficult to walk.  I got through the exercises but later in the day the pain got worse.  Some of us were in the midst of a nine-day lecture series at the time, so, later, two other practitioners came to watch a tape. They confirmed that this could have been a karma-transforming experience. The next day it rained so I didn’t go to the park and did the exercises as best I could at home. The pain was worse than it had been the day before.  Later, as the other practitioners and I were about to watch the ninth lecture, a veteran practitioner said to me, “Your pain will be much better after the lecture.”  And so it was.  I noticed a big difference right after the lecture and, by the next morning, I was good as new.  Some mornings when I do the standing stance exercise, it seems I have huge lead weights on my arms, especially when holding the wheel over the head and on both sides.  Not only is it hard to hold my arms up but I also feel nauseated and faint, break out into a cold sweat, shake, and seriously wonder if I am really going to be able to make it.  I always have so far, though after that exercise is done I sometimes have to interrupt my practice session to visit the bathroom facilities.  This only happens occasionally at home and never, so far, during the group practice.  Five days ago, I stumbled and fell down in a parking lot, landing my not inconsiderable weight on my left knee (mostly) and elbow.  Although I scraped off a lot of skin and had some soreness for a few days, there is no bruise at all and I’m healing very rapidly. Inside and outside the house I now expect tribulations.  As one who has long suffered from impatience, I now expect that all traffic lights will be red, there will be a long train on the track, the car that pulls out in front of me will go half the speed limit or less, the bus I am trying to catch will just be pulling away when I come so I can wait for the next one, and so forth.  If I just persevere gracefully through these and future tribulations, I will eventually get to the flowers and the next village. 

The biggest struggle, though, is in day-to-day interactions with my fellows.  One of the reasons I was at all open to even considering any path other than my previous one was that it seemed to me that my numerous character faults did not appear to be improving at all, even though I really wanted to improve and was trying to do the recommended practice as best I could.  The emphasis there was on intense meditation to look and listen inwardly to experience the universal Divine/ Buddha and thus to better reflect the all-loving, compassionate qualities of the Divine /Buddha.  This, as we who have read Master Li’s teachings know, leaves out two of the three characteristics of the Universe.  Not long after I had read Zhuan Falun for the second time, it seemed to me I was even worse than I had been before I even heard of Falun Gong.  I was snapping at people, being judgmental, wanting to have a lot of recognition at work, just generally exhibiting many ego-driven attachments.  I was beginning to think that, even though Falun Gong didn’t teach people to do those things, it wasn’t helping me and maybe I should just go back to doing what I was doing before.  Then it somehow occurred to me that what I had been doing before was like putting a gooey, sweet, attractive covering over a festering sore.  It might make it look nicer but it wasn’t ever going to help the sore heal itself.  I understood that what I was getting was a dose of truth.  With the teaching I had absorbed so far I was beginning to identify my attachments, without which they could never be rooted out and I could never improve.  That realization, as elementary as it now seems, really firmed my determination to be a genuine practitioner of Falun Dafa, to cultivate in accordance with Master Li’s teachings, to move toward integrated cultivation of Zhen, Shan, Ren.

So today I am a very happily committed practitioner, stumbling but trying hard to pass the tests, looking forward to eventually improving in cultivation.  Just think what I’ll be able to do if I can ever cross both legs!

I am very, very grateful to Master Li for teaching us Falun Dafa. I am also extremely grateful to the veteran practitioners for spreading the Fa and for their generosity in sharing their time, knowledge of the teachings, and their experiences to help us newcomers.