Lucia Dunn is a professor of economics at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. She obtained her PhD from University of California, Berkeley in the 1970s.
In 1973, she started her teaching career at the University of Purdue as an Assistant Professor. In 1987, she joined Ohio State University as a professor in Department of Economics. Over four decades, she has taught thousands of undergraduate and graduate students from all over the world.
After a miracle happened 17 years ago, she says she completely changed and it made her regret how she’d been in the past.
“I really regret that I didn’t get it sooner. Because I would have been a better mother to my children,” said Dunn.
Professor Dunn was a straight-A student, and she demanded the same from her children. It was only after they’d grown up, that she realised how wrong she’d been. After her life changed, she realized she’d been fixated on the wrong things.
“I gave up my attachments, which I think were harming them—my attachments for them to get ahead and be straight-A students, things like that. When I gave up my attachments, everything became better for them. They noticed it, everybody in my family noticed what a better person I had become. But I am just sorry that I couldn’t have been that way when they were little. “
As a successful professor, Dunn has a strong personality, which also created tensions with her husband Steve.
“I wasn’t getting on so well with my husband. It wasn’t his fault, he is a very nice person, it was my fault. I wasn’t tolerant enough, I didn’t appreciate him. And it opened my eyes, and it made me appreciate that, it made me nicer to him, nicer to my family,” said Dunn.
All these changes were because of the miracle. “We all say it is a miracle. Things just sort of straighten out in my life. And it has a lot of benefit for the people around me.”
The miracle she refers to is Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline she started practising in 2000. Falun Dafa consists of gentle exercises, meditation, and living by the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. People who practice it report becoming healthier of both mind and body.
“Everybody talks about recovering from illness and things like that, getting a healthy body. But to me the most amazing thing about Falun Gong is how it changed my mind. After I became a Dafa practitioner, my whole world view changed, and I literarily changed my behavior. ”
“Psychologists always say nobody can change after the age like 7 or 8, that your personality is formed, it’s hard to change people. We all know it’s hard to change people, but it changed me. It made me a different person, that is the most wonderful that happened to me,” Dunn said.
Now in her 70’s, aside enjoying a happy family life, Dunn shares that she has one very strong wish too:
“There are so many good people here, really good people, they wanted to be good people, and they just don’t have the Fa to guide them, and so I hope in the time we have left, we can help as many as those people as possible come to understand Zhen Shan Ren,” said Dunn. Zhen Shan Ren are the Chinese words for truth, compassion, tolerance. The Fa literally means “law,” which refers to the teachings of the practice.
“I hope I can live up to my responsibility and do what I can to help those people in the time we have left,” said Dunn.
