Poland: An Unshakable Faith

Zhuan Falun [the main text of Falun Dafa] in the Polish language was officially published on the 21st of September 2007 in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Up to the present, the book has been translated into over thirty languages and published in various countries of the world.

Martin: “I have been looking for the meaning of life. My parents have died and I am in poor health suffering from leukemia. I have been looking for a kind of philosophy which is sitting in meditation. I have read many books. But this book Zhuan Falun is different from other books. I did not read this book at the beginning because it was free of charge and I took it for granted that there might not be any value in it. But, a few months later, I did not know why I came back to the website that I had searched. I downloaded and read this book which I feel is very good. Following which I started to practice Falun Gong which I felt was even better, better than those like Taiji, etc. that I had once learned from books. Then I went on with my practice.”

Thousands of people were attracted by practitioners' photo exhibition	When Zhuan Falun was published in Poland, activities were held for two days in Warsaw	Practising the Falun Gong exercises in front of the National Parliament Building

Maria: “It is already ten years since I began to practice Falun Gong. In my car I saw a very attractive exhibition board over which some people were sitting in meditation and looked very peaceful and quiet. The practice was free of charge. At that time there were two things that I wanted to know about further. One thing was that I wanted to be as peaceful as they were and the other was that they would not make money out of you. For this reason, I tried this practice of Gong. I liked it very much as I felt the enormous energy field. So, I started the practice and felt very happy.”

Thomas: “It was the summer of 2003 and just a few days before I went to the United States to partake in a practical training for the students that I found Falun Gong from my web search. I had some strange experience and I was looking for an answer. I found Falun Gong. I downloaded the book Zhuan Falun from the web and read it twice. Then I made contacts with Martin who was a contact person on the web page. I talked with him and his wife for a long time until three o’clock in the early morning and at 4:00 am, I went to the airport. The talk with Martin and his wife was very interesting. Before I left, Martin gave me some books. On my way to the workplace, I read Zhuan Falunonce from cover to cover”.

The above three Polish young people came to know Falun Gong and started to practice Falun Dafa, which seemed to be very accidental.

Falun Dafa belongs to the school of Buddha cultivation and is also a cultivation practice of both mind and body. The five sets of the Gong practice with gentle, slow and smooth movements are easy to learn and suitable for people of all ages. The practitioners cultivate themselves with the principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance”. They demand themselves to think of others before doing anything, to be kind to people and to be good people among ordinary people.

Martin is one of those Falun Gong practitioners who started the cultivation practice at the earliest time. His parents died in an air crash when he was a little child leaving him and his younger brother behind. Although he could still live a life without worrying about food and clothes, he had been looking for the meaning of life. He had found himself changed after practicing Falun Gong.

Martin said, “The truth from the books of Falun Gong has helped me enlighten my mind. During the time when my parents were alive, they sometimes wanted to hug me, but I always felt nervous. So, I did not like that very much. Of course this was only a minor matter on the surface. What I just want to say is that I have now changed. I have become more cheerful. I have learned a lot of things. The relationship between me and my wife has improved. Especially I have greatly benefited from the teachings of seeking the cause from one’s inner side. Seeking the cause from one’s inner side means that if you seek your own problem from your inner side, you will find that sometimes other people will change themselves just because you have changed yourself. It is like the reward of change and the chain of improvement. It changes for the better.”

Maria has found the peace of her inner heart after she has practiced Falun Gong. She and her husband lives in the United States. In the morning she practices Falun Gong with the local practitioners and exchanges her learning with other Chinese practitioners. She said, “I am married and am living a happy family life. My family relationship is very good. I had never thought before that I could have a happy family. Communism has made Poland deviate from the traditional family concept and to undermine the family structure. Now I am very happy that I have a family. I am very happy that I can get the peace of my inner self. I hope I will change for the better and do all I can to improve myself.”

Before his arrival in the United States for his training, Thomas had read Zhuan Falun once from cover to cover. During his training in the United States, Thomas read Zhuan Falun and other books about Falun Gong over and over again. Thomas was particularly fond of reading during his childhood, but he could not find what he had been looking for from all his readings and travels in Europe. Having read Zhuan Falun, he felt he had found what he had wanted at long last. At the same time, he set demands on himself and improved himself according to what he has learned from the books

It was two years after Maria started to practice Falun Gong that the Chinese Communist Party started a bloody persecution of Falun Gong. She said in her writing on her learning experience, “In 1999 when the persecution started, I heard a lot of from the America media retelling the propaganda of lies of the Chinese Communist Party. However, I was living evidence which could fully tell that the propaganda was lies. How could there be some one who wanted to prohibit people from cultivating truthfulness, compassion and tolerance? The truthfulness, compassion and tolerance is just the truth that all parents would naturally want to teach their children, isn’t it? Although it is not every one that can tell the truth all the time, all people will want others to tell them the truth; although it is not every one that can be kind and understandable to others, all people will want others to treat themselves with kindness and understanding. I can not imagine how this world allows the people to suffer persecution just for their belief in truthfulness, compassion and tolerance?”

Being a Pole, her heart was with Poland although she was in the United States. She thought that if the Polish people believed the media reprinting the lies of the Chinese Communist Party, how could the Polish people know the truth and make correct judgments? She started to try to let more Polish people know about this persecution.

“After the start of the persecution, I have often been to Poland for I feel I have a moral responsibility and I should help the Polish people. To help others is to help myself. The Polish people set great store by their history. We have experienced so many hardships and persecutions, Nazis, Communism. We have also experienced many wars. From which we have realised that we must come out to safeguard our own values. The Polish people say that when a person makes a mistake, many generations of the whole family will suffer disgrace. We have a saying that this person “makes the three generations suffer disgrace.” My grandfather fought the Bolsheviks. He saw with his own eyes the scene of the “Revolution” in Moscow and St. Petersburg”.

So, I felt I have the moral responsibility to let the Polish people know what was happening in China and let them take actions to help. Because when Poland suffered the persecution, other countries did not want to help Poland, because they thought: who would care about them? They were Polish and had nothing to do with us. So the Polish people know this feeling. When other people are suffering, we should take action to help.”

At the various news conferences held in Poland and together with other Falun Gong practitioners, Maria has told the media and important government officials about the various persecutions suffered by the Falun Gong practitioners in China and this has also been spread to many more Polish people. As far as the Polish people are concerned, they themselves have experienced the rule of the evil Communist Party. So, when they hear about the truth of Falun Gong, it is easy for them to understand the bloody persecution that the Falun Gong practitioners are suffering. After the first press conference was held, many attendees have started to practice Falun Gong.

In order to let more governments and people know about the truth of Falun Gong, Maria took part in the Global SOS Walking Activities in 2001. She and other Falun Gong practitioners walked for six weeks along the routs leading to the Warsaw Pack countries and spread the truth of the persecutions of Falun Gong practitioners to those former communist countries.

But Maria can only stay for a short time each time when she comes to Poland. In order to let more people get better knowledge about Falun Gong, Maria started to translate the books about Falun Gong into Polish.

Thomas was eager to learn foreign languages in his childhood. Now he has mastered many foreign languages. His experience of learning foreign languages has made his believe that every one can learn any one of the languages. So, for a period of time after he started to learn Falun Gong, he decided to learn Chinese on his own using the way of learning other languages read directly until he understood it. At the beginning, he studied Zhuan Falun with the help of Chinese Pinyin and a dictionary. He memorised it through word for word translation and repetitive reading. He studied Zhuan Falun one paragraph by one paragraph. After he had studied the whole book, he read it again from the beginning. He started to use Chinese to read Zhuan Falun after a couple of months.

At that time, the Polish Zhuan Falun had been in the process of proof reading for several years, yet had not reached the standard for publication. Following his continual study of Chinese, it occurred to Thomas that he could help translate Zhuan Falun directly from Chinese to Polish. He worked together with other Falun Gong practitioners and with their joint efforts, a ceremony was held in the Capital Warsaw in September 2007 on the first publication of the Polish Zhuan Falun. Since then, people have been able to buy the Polish book Zhuan Falun. This has become easier for those who want to learn the practice of Falun Gong to know about Falun Gong.

Being persistently against the persecution

Martin was somewhat at a loss at the time when he got to know the Falun Gong was persecuted. Because of his own experience, he did not believe at all the slander of the Chinese Communist Party of Falun Gong.

“I started to practice Falun Gong because I was very interested in this and benefited a lot from this. Then I got to know that Falun Gong was persecuted in China.” said Martin.

“Afterwards, I got much more information and met many of those who had suffered the persecution. Even my Polish friends who practiced Falun Gong were also beaten up in China. So I decided the Chinese in Poland have the chance to get the information so that they could make their own decision on what information was right and what information was wrong. It was very important to me. I felt that I had a kind of relationship with the Chinese. Just because Falun Gong is from China which helped me unconditionally, so I also hoped that I could help the Chinese. At the beginning, I only thought about the Chinese people. But when I considered this issue more and more in depth, I found that this had much to do with our Polish people. In fact, this also had much to do with the whole world. I believed that information was strength. So I started to distribute to the Chinese people the newspapers carrying the truth of Falun Gong.

Various press conferences, information days and routine practices of Falun Gong in the open air have made more and more Polish people know and understand Falun Gong. Martin told us, “More and more (practitioners), we do not know how many people are practicing Falun Gong because the practice is free of charge and has no regulations. You do not need to sign your attendance at any place. Sometimes some one will tell us, ah, it is over a year since I started this practice. We do not know how many people are practicing cultivation but more and more people around us have started to be interested in Falun Gong.”

When the high level officials of the Chinese Communist Party visited Poland, the members of the Polish Parliament invited the Falun Gong practitioners to protest and to spread the truth about Falun Gong. Maria told us, the government officials of all circles in Poland wish to send a message to the Chinese people. “I learned when I had talks with the members of Parliament that many of them were imprisoned for five years, ten years and twenty years during the rule of the Communist Party just because at that time they had distributed leaflets supporting democracy and telling people the crimes of communism against religion and humanity. They send one word to all the people in China: Do not give up, be firm in your faith and do not give up. I want to tell all the people that we are doing all we can and we hope you will be able to hold on for a little bit more period of time.”