(Minghui.org) My fellow practitioner Anping (alias) passed away in 2021 because of sickness karma – she was only 53 years old. I still can’t get over her death, and often think of her. But this tragedy helped me in looking within to stop wondering why we lost her.
Anping worked in a school lunch supply warehouse and was in charge of food orders. She used a lot of paper currency with truth-clarification messages and exchanged them with food vendors.
She often took me along on her electric motorcycle when we clarified the truth. We hung up display boards, put up self-adhesive posters, distributed brochures, and clarified the truth to people face-to-face.
I had a dream on April 4, 2022. I ran into chubby Anping in a market, and she looked worried. She said, “I still owe you 2,800 yuan ($411USD), and owe others debts as well. I cannot pay you back even though I want to. I borrowed money to support my family, but my family didn’t want to help me. How can I possibly come up with that money myself to pay you back?”
I told her, “Forget it. Life is rough for you. You don’t need to pay me back.” At this point, I was roused from sleep and wondered, “Did I have something to do with Anping’s death? I didn’t even recall that she owed me money when she was alive!”
I worked with Anping and Bing (alias) on a truth-clarification project using currency with printed messages about Falun Dafa. I collected a lot of small bills through exchange, amounting to tens of thousands yuan at a time.
I split them with Anping, and we each ironed the bills before giving them to Bing to print truth-clarification messages on them. We then exchanged the bills with vendors for circulation. We circulated more than 100,000 yuan every month and were greatly encouraged by the volume.
Sometimes, however, I noticed a shortage of 2,000, 3,000, or 4,000 yuan when Anping and I gave the bills to Bing, but I had no idea which part of the process had gone wrong. To keep the project running, I took the initiative to make up the difference each time we were short. This occurred every once in a while and didn’t stop until the project was grounded when Bing was arrested.
On the surface, Bing was arrested because she had filed a lawsuit against Jiang Zemin (the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who had launched the persecution of Falun Dafa) with her real name. Her cell phone had been monitored for a year.
The authorities took advantage of the timing when Bing had just placed more than 100,000 yuan cash at home. More than ten officers ransacked her home and confiscated all her cash, bank cards, a dozen cell phones used for truth-clarification calls, and Falun Dafa books.
Bing’s family tried to get her out of police custody by pulling strings. However, hiring a lawyer and gifting individuals cost them another 100,000 yuan and did not help. Bing was still illegally sentenced to five years in prison and had all her assets confiscated. The loss was heavy.
Not knowing how to cultivate and how to look inside, Anping, Bing, and myself did not become alarmed. Nor did we look into what had happened to the money each time we fell short. We just carried on as if nothing happened. That was a a big loophole!
The authorities also arrested Anping and took her to a brainwashing center. Anping couldn’t bear the pressure and compromised by writing a declaration renouncing Dafa against her will. After she returned home, her family asked if she had been beaten. She lied and said no, fearing they would be upset.
In fact, it would have been a righteous action if Anping had told her family about the real situation by exposing the crimes of the CCP, so they would be convinced that good people are persecuted for following the principles Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. But she didn’t realize that.
After Anping was released from the brainwashing center, the substance of “fear” never left her mind. Her cultivation state was bad. She quit her job and excused herself from attending group Fa study. She also delayed writing a “Solemn Declaration” to nullify her renouncing of Dafa for several months, saying she did not know how to do it. Her children wrote a statement on her behalf in the end.
Anping did not reflect deeply enough to make up for her mistakes and start over. She excused herself from doing any projects to save people, using the excuse of taking care of her elderly mother.
Anping took care of her mother for a few months before she began to develop symptoms of sickness karma herself. She only told the coordinator about it and didn’t want others to know. So none of us knew how bad her situation was.
I asked her many times if she was okay, but she smoothed things over by saying, “It’s okay, I’m fine.” But her health was deteriorating, and she ended up in the hospital. After her life savings of more than 100,000 yuan was used for paying the bills, she moved back home.
Fellow practitioners all helped her, but it didn’t make a difference. Her husband, son, and daughter were all practitioners, but no one could turn the table. She eventually passed away holding onto regrets.
Anping’s daughter told me the following:
“When my father and I took my mother to the provincial capital for treatment, my aunt and uncle gave my father a black bag with grave clothes in it, as well as other things for dead people – the old forces had arranged for my mother to die in the hospital.
My father did not have a clear understanding of the Fa and was afraid that my aunt and uncle would give him trouble, so he actually brought the bag to the hospital. This action was an acknowledgement of the arrangements made by the old forces.”
The fact that Anping was gone left a hole in my heart. The dream made me look inside. I realized I had a big loophole in managing money. In addition, I was lazy, held onto saving face, the fear of offending others, and the attachment to getting things done.
I was often lenient when it came to myself and indulged others in their vices. I failed to take Dafa resources seriously and was also irresponsible to others, which resulted in serious consequences. I regret this very much!
Anping and I took the money bags from Bing’s home and cleaned and ironed the bills before returning them to Bing. We never counted the money during each transaction because we thought we did not need to use everyday people’s measures like paper trails to keep us in line.
I now realize that it was my human thoughts that harmed Anping because her attachment to personal interest was allowed to grow. She compromised Dafa resources, breaking the taboo. While I kept making up the differences, she kept taking. In the end, the old forces exploited the loophole and persecuted her to death.
It wasn’t until this dream that I realized I was in the wrong. If I had been logging the transactions on a daily basis when I discovered the shortage for the first time, the loophole would have been closed.
I must face my attachment to saving face and protecting myself. When I sometimes saw that Anping was doing things not grounded in the Fa or when her human side was showing, I never reprimanded her because I was afraid of offending her.
I did the same thing when it came to Bing. Before she was abducted, I noticed she was often opinionated, sarcastic, and jealous toward certain practitioners. She did not pay attention to safety, and had a strong attachment to getting things done.
Out of selfishness, I did not warn her and left her to her own devices, which allowed the old forces to exploit her loopholes by illegally sentencing her to five years in prison.
I remember a Minghui article that talked about how jealousy, lust, and the embezzlement resources are reasons for the old forces to persecute Dafa practitioners.
When Bing returned home, she told me that she had looked inside and recalled she had a crush on a driving instructor a few months before she was abducted. She was even thinking about him while in prison.
I recently listened to an article on the Minghui website titled “Long-term sickness karma seen in the state of gradual enlightenment” in which some specific examples were given. I was inspired and would like to share how the old forces targeted Anping.
The woman in the article couldn’t let go of her resentment against her husband, which kept her from passing the sickness karma test. But as soon as she let go, she got better. I heard from a fellow practitioner that Anping harbored a lot of resentment against her husband as well.
Anping rarely shared anything with others. Fellow practitioners and I often asked her, “Is your husband being mean to you in terms of not letting you have money?” She denied it every time and claimed that her husband was nice to her.
I failed to take seriously the Solemn Declaration Anping needed to write after she was released. She did not realize the gravity of her mistakes and failed to make up for the damage caused when she renounced Dafa under pressure.
Anping developed a strong fear after being persecuted and hardly did anything to save people, which failed to fulfill her vow.
Anping and her husband did not have a fixed income and lived on doing odd jobs. Their two children were at the age of needing support. So it was understandable that the couple had conflicts with spending money. But Anping needed to cultivate herself instead of lying about it. Cultivating truthfulness is the very minimum for a Falun Dafa practitioner.
While Anping was taking care of her mother, she often borrowed truth-clarification currency from me, ranging from hundreds of yuan to thousands of yuan, and paid me back in large bills. I lost track of her expenditures several times. She sometimes asked me if she had paid back what she had borrowed, but I honestly couldn’t remember.
Even then, I did not become alarmed. I failed to realize that my money was also a Dafa resource. It was not a trivial matter that my accounting was a mess. This was, in fact, an issue of great importance.
Every Falun Dafa practitioner has the opportunity to help save many people. So even losing a single Dafa practitioner is a huge loss!
Editor: This article only represents the author’s understanding in their current cultivation state meant for sharing among practitioners so that we can “Compare in studying, compare in cultivating,...” (“Solid Cultivation,” Hong Yin)