In her view, life is like “a stream that extends forever.” “Right now, this is a very short, little piece of the stream. So what we do here will matter only insofar as what we’re going to go from here, down the rest of that stream,” she told The Epoch Times.
“This is a test, and how we live our lives in this test will determine what happens to us next,” she told The Epoch Times, adding that Mr. Li mentioned in his article different degrees of realms or glory for a being, which is in line with her belief, in different semantics or theories.
“I don’t think I would want to live in a world where there was no moral anchor,” she said. To her, a moral anchor is what religions provide. “In believing in any higher power, you are becoming a better person.” Therefore, she said she is grateful to anyone with a spiritual goal.
Mr. Li introduced the spiritual belief of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, to the public in China in 1992. Before the persecution started in China in July 1999, the number of followers reached over 70 million, and the Chinese communist regime praised the practice for its healing and fitness benefits.
‘Frame of Mind’ Drives Outcome
At 73 and currently living near Sacramento in California, she said she had gone through various difficulties all her life, starting from losing her father at the age of 11. The family was poor, and life in the 1950s for a widow—her mother—was very different from today.Martin had to make peace with and sense of her father’s death and the difficult upbringing, “They had to mean something.” And she finally achieved that when she joined the Mormon church at the age of 17. “One of the factors was the fact that I truly believed and felt in my heart that it’s true that we have another life after this,” she said, adding that she knew she would see her father again.
“I’ve found that when I’m happy and try to see the good in anything and everything, then those things [sufferings] are not so important.” She spoke of how different thoughts would bring about different outcomes. “Because it’s a frame of mind; it’s an attitude. It’s how you think because you become what you think.”
‘There Is a Creator’
Mr. Li mentions “the Creator” many times in his article.
“I know that there is a Creator,” Laura Seifert, a retired piano teacher currently living in Florida, told The Epoch Times, adding that she studied anatomy in college. “Once you see what’s inside the human body, that couldn’t have just happened. There has to be a Creator.”
She said she had thought of the Creator shortly before she came across Mr. Li’s article “How Humankind Came To Be.” She went to a nursing school but eventually went into music after having an opportunity to play the organ to accompany the nurses’ choir. In addition to teaching piano, she worked as choir director and organist in a Quaker Christian church.
To her, other messengers of God might be sent to earth for other people. Therefore, other religions might have different names for God. “I think about Buddha, who taught all these wonderful, good things and taught people how to be good in life,” she added.
As a member of the Mormon church, Martin said she looked at “similarities rather than differences” between Mr. Li’s teachings and her beliefs. “There are others who also believe, and it may not be exactly the same as my belief, but it is a belief system that, if practiced by all, would make a better world.”
Seifert has noticed some criticisms of the article: “Some of them were like from ‘Christians’ who have these walls built around their religion. So when Mr. Li’s saying doesn’t fit their idea of what Jesus says, they criticized the article.”
Society Needs a Moral Anchor
Seifert came across Falun Gong over a year ago and attended two webinars about spiritual belief. “This [The article] was beautiful. Thank you so much for publishing it. I am very interested in the practice of Falun Gong; I just haven’t found the time to do all the reading and try to find a group near where I live. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Li Hongzhi,” she wrote to The Epoch Times after reading the article.Asked how she sifted through mixed information online and formed such a favorable opinion of Falun Gong, she said, “I think he’s [Li Hongzhi] right.”
“I believe what he [Li] says about being good and living a good life. That’s so important.” She recalled the three tenets of the practice—truth, compassion, tolerance—and quipped, “Tolerance: that’s the one I have had to work on a lot.”
“I think what’s happened to the people in China has just been atrocious. It’s still happening, from what I gather,” Seifert added, referring to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
Martin also knows of the persecution, “He [Li Hongzhi] is promoting goodness and kindness; how come that is a threat?” “How is he surviving in China when they’re trying to kill what he’s trying to do?” she asked, relieved that Li is still alive and lives in the United States.
Seifert said she thought that Mr. Li was right in pointing out that the world was heading toward destruction. She was concerned that today’s people became very “ungodly.” “They are evil. They are doing terrible things to other people. That’s not the world I thought I was living in.”
Martin shares Seifert’s concerns about the rise of atheism and points to China as an example of a society intolerant of freedom of belief, “To try to navigate this life without a moral anchor leads exactly to what they are having in China.”
