My name is Liang Shunjing. I’m a 55-year-old native of Meizhou, Guangdong Province. In June 1998, I started to practice Falun Gong for the sake of obtaining a longer and healthier life. My wife Deng Xiufen, my elder sister Liang Baozhu and my elder sister’s former classmate, Li Meiyun, were also Falun Gong practitioners.
My elder sister used to be a Guangdong province Meizhou Meijiang District Catering Service company cashier. She later lost her job because of her employer’s poor operation. What’s worse, she got divorced due to the troubles with her relationship with her husband. She remained unemployed for an extended period, so she had to work temporarily in her younger sister’s dessert store whilst also taking care of her son She supported her family with her meager income. The career and family problems caused my elder sister to bear a heavy mental burden. Depressed and sighing all the time, she was found to have gastrointestinal disease.
Li Meiyun, also a Falun Gong practitioner, went to visit my elder sister in 1999. She said her health had improved after she practiced Falun Gong. She gave several books of Falun Gong to my elder sister and promised to help her with her practice of Falun Gong. Later on, my elder sister often practiced Falun Gong on Saturday evenings with other practitioners to improve their health, near the Meizhou Hydraulic Building. However, despite practicing Falun Gong for years, her gastrointestinal disease did not improve.
Li Meiyun went to visit my elder sister in the dessert store in March 2005. When she noticed my elder sister was haggard and languid, she asked how much time my elder sister spent in the practice of Falun Gong. Then she criticized my elder sister by saying; “Baozhu, the time you spend practicing Falun Gong is not nearly enough. How can you improve yourself like this?” She shared her own enlightenments and reminded my elder sister to frequently “cultivate mindfulness” and to take no medicines. Only in this way could my elder sister “eliminate karma” and have her disease cured sooner. My elder sister practiced Falun Gong but still suffered from her disease. When noticing much confusion in my elder sister’s face, Li Meiyun loudly stressed that “Master said karma can’t be eliminated by going to hospitals. No doctors are practitioners. People with no prestige and virtue can only get rid of their superficial pains. Their diseases can go even deeper because taking medicine forces the diseases further into their bodies.” Li Meiyun reminded my elder sister repeatedly that she should read books during her practice of Falun Gong.
My elder sister seemed to understand that she should learn the basic laws of Falun Gong after the practice of Falun Gong had done little help to her. Accordingly, she started to read the books. My wife and I sometimes gave guidance to her. She gradually indentified herself with the “truthfulness, compassion and tolerance” as preached by Falun Gong. She was convinced that she herself, and even the whole of society, could benefit from this fundamental principle. In her eyes, this guideline to conduct could teach her how to be a good person and help enhance her moral standard. She was also convinced that Li Hongzhi could help his followers “eliminate karma”, clean up their bodies and get rid of diseases. She was especially impressed by Li Hongzhi’s solemn commitments like “I possess countless incarnations of dharma, which can never be numerically counted….I can control as many people as I want and even all human beings”. She thought that, as a disciple of Falun Gong, she was well protected. She was full of gratitude and pride. Therefore, she constantly prayed to Li Hongzhi during her practice of Falun Gong so that she could get protection from his “incarnations of dharma”.
Yet the harsh reality is that practicing Falun Gong and reading related books could never cure her gastrointestinal disease. We were all very worried as my elder sister became extremely frail. We worked hard to persuade her to seek medical help in a hospital. My mother offered 30,000 yuan out of her life savings and my younger brother, a migrant worker, even sent 20,000 yuan from Shenzhen. A total amount of 50,000 yuan could surely meet the urgent need for medical expenses. However, my elder sister was so obsessed with Falun Gong that she firmly believed that “Falun Gong practitioners must go through trials and temptations”and that her disease was caused by karma, which could eliminate karma only by practicing Falun Gong and reading books. Going to hospital could do nothing but make her suffer a more serious disease next time. So she refused to seek medical help and returned all the money intended for her medical expenses.
I shared her opinion at that time. From May 2005, my elder sister often asked me, Deng Xiufen, Li Meiyun and Aunt Liu to help her “cultivate mindfulness”, pray to Li Hongzhi for elimination of her “karma” and to regain her health.
One of my friends, who worked in the hospital, was very shocked and annoyed to learn about this. He hurried to my sister’s home and immodestly dispelled those practitioners. He persuaded my elder sister, my wife and I to believe in modern medicine and to get medical help in the hospital. As he said, the symptoms showed that my elder sister was troubled by a gastrointestinal ulcer, an ordinary illness within the digestive tract. This disease may be caused byhelicobacter pylori infection and by somemental factors like stress, anxiety or sentimental volatility. So it must be treated without delay. If not treated in time, this disease could lead to bleeding in the upper digestive tract, a perforated ulcer, pyloric obstruction, carcinogenesis and other complications.
However patiently he persuaded my sister, she, together with myself and my wife found his words to be exaggeratedly alarming and strongly opposed him. We insisted that Li Hongzhi could help my sister eliminate karma and tide over this trouble as long as she didn’t give up halfway.
But my elder sister’s practice of Falun Gong, reading books and requesting other practitioners to “cultivate mindfulness” could not eliminate her disease. Li Hongzhi’s “incarnations of dharma” did not appear, nor did any miracles. My sister health continued to decline and her body became ever more feeble. On the third day of the lunar new year in 2006, my eldest brother took her to the hospital by force. The medical check revealed that she was in the late stage of colorectal cancer and there were signs of diffusion of cancer cells. My sister had missed the best time for treatment during her seven-year practice of Falun Gong and reading books and for her stubbornness in refusing medical help. Regardless of an operation and several chemotherapies, my elder sister died at the age of 50, in 2006.
One decade later, I was awakened out of my illusion about Falun Gong. When reviewing the past experience, I can still be reminded of her look and manners. I have come to learn from this bitter experience that Li Hongzhi’s fallacy of “eliminating karma” was the “murderer” of my elder sister.
(Executive editor: Feng Yuan)
