Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy

Doing More Good Deeds to Redeem Wrongdoing

I had a bad temper when I was a kid. Even though my father used to be an elementary school teacher, he often found me to be the most challenging child among the seven children in my family. I could cry from day to night and was the most strong-willed and dominant kid. I was therefore nicknamed the "Fiery Girl." I would like to order all my sisters to listen to me. For example, I would force my younger sister to have me dress her up and show her around on the street.

When I was in middle school, there was a boy in my class that was very small and skinny. In each class I would use one leg to hold up his chair and tease him. Even when he begged me to stop, I would insist on teasing him. When I grew older and came to Tai Ji Men to practice qigong, my Shifu has been encouraging me to mature physically, spiritually, and emotionally. When I looked back at my growth path, I realized that we do need to self-reflect and that I have a lot of areas for improvement. Shifu frequently reminds us that people need to do more good deeds to redeem the wrongdoing from the past. This encourages me to work harder to redeem my wrongdoing. Later I heard from others that this classmate of mine had lost eyesight in one eye, and I felt really sad. Now I can only confess to the sky of my guilt and regrets and wish him the very best. I have realized from this event that opportunities won’t be there for us again if the time has elapsed. We really need to try to be nice to others and value the opportunity to get to know others and be nice to them.

When we make a mistake, it takes a multitude of efforts to redeem the mistake. When I became a teacher, during a role call one day a student could not stop talking and would not stop after I asked him nicely to stop. So I yelled out, "You are a very bad boy. Stand up and listen to me." Immediately he complied and was very quiet. But I knew that my comment was too harsh for him and I could not take it back any more. Even worse, the negative impact had already taken its toll. Whenever there was a roll call in class and his name was called, the whole class would unanimously say, "You are a very bad boy" and then burst out laughing. I knew I did something wrong and the negative comment had hurt this student unexpectedly. Although I had explained to the class and apologized to this student in front of the whole class, the students were still behaving the same way and continued to laugh at this boy.

Shifu always reminds us to say good words and think positively. As a teacher, I should be a role model for my students. So I decided to use "good words" to undo the damage of the "negative words." When I noticed that this student was calmer, I would praise him for being "much better than before." When he was attentive in class, I would tell him, "You have made good progress." Once his haircut was really short, nearly bald. When I called his name during the roll call, I said, "You are so handsome!" The whole class laughed out loud again and repeated after me, "You are so handsome!"

Finally I was relieved as at least the class did not say anything negative like before. I used nearly six weeks to correct the whole class’ perception because of the thoughtless negative comment I made. I realized and understood that we as human beings need to improve ourselves since we were born and we need to do more good deeds and say more good words to undo the damage we have caused. Aside from practicing this daily in my teaching career, I also volunteer as a member of the Association of World Citizens to spread the ideas of love and peace in various schools and encourage people to participate in the "Global Endorsement of Declarations for Human Rights of World Citizens and Peace" to reduce conflicts, fear, worries and anxiety and promote love, harmony and happiness in our society.