Looking within

Dear Master! Dear fellow practitioners!

The sale of Shen Yun tickets for 2013 kicks off today. Looking back on what happened over the past few months in my journey of cultivation and saving sentient beings, I realize again here that looking inward rather than outward is the only way to put down my attachment to self and cooperate well with fellow practitioners.

Shen Yun in Berlin

I went from Vienna to Berlin this February with a fellow practitioner in order to help the preparation for Shen Yun performances in Berlin. This was an excellent opportunity to save sentient beings by assisting other countries to promote Shen Yun shows.

Over the past few years, I have gained experience in selling Shen Yun tickets at various places. Before leaving for Berlin I read again the training guidelines for promoting and selling Shen Yun ticket in the hope that I could do the same in Berlin at the ticket-selling site. However after our arrival in Berlin we were assigned unexpectedly to a busy area in the city instead of working at the ticket-selling site as the site had enough people. As we walked among the hustle and bustle of the busy streets, we introduced Shen Yun to people, put up posters and handed out flyers. I knew it was my responsibility to ensure the assignment got done well. Our first day in Berlin passed very fast, and we finished with only a couple of shops left to be visited the next day.

In the context of cultivation practice, uplifting Xinxing and letting go of attachments are the key to becoming a selfless, righteous, enlightened being. The next day when we were sent again to the same area to promote Shen Yun, I was surprised to find the shopping streets we were supposed to walk down much less crowded with only a few shops around. Although we walked across several streets we couldn’t find the right shop where we could easily promote the tickets. The situation was totally different from our first day.

Gradually a bad idea occurred to me: there were no suitable Shen Yun audience here. It was simply a waste of time. Master told us that we should go to the right place to promote Shen Yun shows. Apparently, right here was not at all suitable for Shen Yun. Accordingly we called the local coordinator but he insisted that we have to stay in the designated streets. He told us that in the near future practitioners would be no longer sent to the area we were in due to limited manpower.

At that moment it began to rain. It was cold and dark outside. In my eyes, this was a poor and broken area. How wonderful it would be if I could promote Shen Yun tickets at the main ticket-selling site, where there is usually a large crowd of people. The more I thought this way, the more I became distracted from the work I was supposed to do. We finally reached a building that a fellow practitioner wanted to go in to have a look at. But I thought it was not worth our effort due to the appearance of the building, which did not match with the charm of Shen Yun. So I said reluctantly that I would stay outside of the building, sending forth righteous thoughts. When the fellow practitioner came back, she told me that there were a lot of doctors and lawyers in the building, who all had positive attitudes towards Shen Yun. Her words made me realize that my thoughts had become a big obstacle for me to save sentient beings via promoting Shen Yun. However it was quite tough for me to put aside my own mind.

That night I was told we would continue to promote Shen Yun the next day in the same area instead of at the Shen Yun ticket-selling site. Attachments! Attachments! How could I put them down? Fortunately that night the Fa study group in Berlin helped me out. Although the room was not quite comfortable, I could see everyone had a sincere desire to help Master save sentient beings. While reading the Fa I felt a strong energy field around us that disintegrated all my everyday thoughts. I felt I had been washed and pushed up.

After Fa-study, a Chinese practitioner shared her experience. Her words left me lost in thought. She told when she distributed the special edition of Shen Yun in a residential building, a resident came to insult her. But in the process of talking to the resident, the fellow practitioner found there was change in the resident’s attitude. Later the resident even opened the door to the building and helped the practitioner deliver the special issue to the household mailboxes. The practitioner said she had only one thought at that time – to save the resident and other sentient beings – so there was no fear and no other thinking. I saw a genuine heart that was really trying to save people.

Master said in 20th Anniversary Fa Teaching: "You have to get personally involved, cultivate, and go and put things into action. Working hard is part of your cultivation. You need to think of ways to find the people that you are meant to save. All of these are things that Dafa disciples should do."

I thought a lot after that. It was not that simple for the coordinator to send us to this area to save sentient beings. Could it be simple to save sentient beings? It certainly relied on my efforts to find predestined people. Over the past few years I had been practising cultivation based on Shen Yun ticket-selling sites. But now I was assigned to promote Shen Yun in the streets. How could I hesitate due to the difficulty of the job of saving sentient beings? My fellow practitioner reminded me that it was not always the case that the ticket selling sites were full of people. Sometimes within one or two hours we had only a few chances to introduce Shen Yun to the potential audience. That was our process of cultivation during which we maintained a clear sense to look within ourselves.

Sometimes it was not easy to find the right target audience for Shen Yun in the street. However we could always introduce Shen Yun to people from our own initiative for there were always enough people in the street. The form is not critical – what really matters is our state of mind. So that evening we asked the coordinator again for information about the local residences. We soon worked out how to establish contacts with local companies and shops in the area.

The next day everything went very smoothly. As we were leaving a pharmacy, a shop assistant came out to express his wish to see Shen Yun. I knew Master was very pleased as another life had been saved. I was also happy that I let go of my attachments, which were due to my internal obstacles and suffering. As a Shen Yun coordinator, I know there exists a number of practitioners who are just like Master mentioned in his Fa teaching ‘Dafa Disciples Must Study Fa’: "I did a great job selling tickets last year. Why are they making me send righteous thoughts here when I could be out selling tickets?"

I did not realize that I had had the same thought. In Berlin, cultivating as a practitioner instead of the coordinator, I was given the opportunity to look for my attachments, and accordingly find and get rid of them. I am very grateful to Master for the help.

Developing a positive attitude to break negative thinking

Another example helped me look inward. Once we were exchanging our experience online about the truth clarification activities we had taken part in. On one hand we found several issues in our truth clarification that needed to be improved. On the other hand we saw the progress we had made in our joint effort to save sentient beings. However everyone’s heart felt heavy when a fellow practitioner shared that from his point of view our group had had lots of negative problems.

No one spoke again after the fellow practitioner’s speech. I could feel the atmosphere was quite negative, and I felt the need to encourage everyone present including myself. But I failed. I was helpless with the negative feeling, as if a pot of plant was dying in front of me but I could do nothing to help. Even though we held a long meeting we still hadn’t resolved anything.

For a long time afterwards I wondered why I couldn’t help my fellow practitioners to solve problems with a positive mind. Then I asked myself how I could encourage fellow practitioners and myself to continue with our efforts in truth clarification. But I felt like I did not have the power to break through this negative feeling. I was thinking this negative factor was a problem. One day, all of sudden, it occurred to me that I had to find the true nature of the problem. According to my understanding, when I was a God in heaven, I realized that I had deviated from the Fa, and had lost all the power to make my world better again. And today the reason why I have come to this world is to assimilate with the immeasurable Dafa and cultivate mighty power to help everything change from worse to better.

Now that I am a Falun Dafa practitioner, I should always develop a positive attitude to break the negative thinking that is influenced by other people, for problems will inevitably arise in me if there are loopholes in my own cultivation.

Because of their different states of cultivation, practitioners could sometimes be negative inadvertently, which sometimes positively impacts other cultivators. What we should do is to find the positive influence that hides in the negative effect, and further promote it. Sticking to the negative factors leads to poor cultivation of myself. I should keep looking for my own attachments and put them down. Therefore I developed a further understanding of the saying: Diamond will never degenerate.

In What is a Dafa Disciple, Master said: "Can you handle it in a manner befitting a cultivator? Is how you handle it worthy of a Dafa disciple? That’s what cultivation is, isn’t it? Could ordinary people handle things this way, or see things this way? When you meet with a conflict, it doesn’t matter whether you are in the right. You should be asking yourself, “What on my part isn’t right in this situation? Might it really be that there is something wrong on my part?” You should all be thinking this way, with your first thought being to scrutinize yourself to try to find the problem. Whoever is not like this is not in fact a true cultivator of Dafa. It is a magical tool in our cultivation. This is a distinguishing feature of our Dafa disciples’ cultivation. Whatever it is that you encounter, the first thought should be to scrutinize yourself, and it’s called “looking within.” "

I have gained a lot of experience over the past few months. However there is still a long way for me to go to meet the requirements of Falun Dafa. I will work harder with fellow practitioners and cherish this valuable opportunity of promoting Shen Yun.

Thank you, Master! Thank you all!