Forming One Body is Superior to Personal Achievements

Revered Master, dear fellow practitioners,

I am a practitioner from Czech Republic. Let me share my cultivation experiences with you. Though I had no idea what to write about at first, I still decided to write since sharing is also a process of improving oneself.

I started my cultivation of Dafa seven years ago. Just like many other practitioners, I have experienced, directly or indirectly, many things Master mentions in Zhuan Falun. Although it doesn’t seem like I have made great progress in cultivation, looking back I feel I've changed a lot. It is just like what our Master said in article Learning the Fa of Essentials for Further Advancement: “Actually, in cultivation practice you ascend by improving yourself gradually and unknowingly. Keep in mind: One should gain things naturally without pursuing them.”

Validating the Fa in my Family
My close family members have changed their attitude to my cultivation of Dafa from objection to full support.

Once my younger brother told me my mum said something bad about Falun Gong. I was shocked to hear this, but after a while I realized I hadn’t actually clarified the truth to her. I treated her as my mum, who was very close to me, instead of treating her as a sentient being.

One day, I drove her to the clinic for a check-up. I took the opportunity to talk about Falun Dafa. I told her not to say bad things about Falun Dafa. I explained to her what Dafa was. I asked her whether she noticed how much I had changed since I started practising. She listened and agreed with what I said. She said she was sorry about her previous words about Dafa and she didn't mean it.

Since then, I try to keep her informed about what I do and why I do it. I gave her Falun Gong materials to read. I do cleaning, cooking, ironing, gardening and other odd jobs to help my parents. Seeing the great changes in me in reality, my parents support me a lot in my Dafa activities. Both of them have signed the petition against the persecution of Falun Gong in China. My mum even asked the neighbours to sign petitions.

I try to be a good husband at home. Though we don't see each other much due to my work patterns, my wife supports me in everything I do including doing the three things. She even financially supported an important Dafa activity. Occasionally she does the exercises and studies Zhuan Falun, trying to be a good person at her work and elsewhere. Her righteous behaviour has a good impact on the people around her. She told many people about Falun Gong and some of her friends have seen Shen Yun. Our harmonious relationship allows me to devote more time to studying the Fa and clarifying the truth to sentient beings.

Last year, my grandma was quite ill. She had a tumour on her kidney and other problems. I visited her more than any of her other grandchildren. I brought her some Dafa materials. She liked the book about Gao Zhisheng. She got better and better and she was moved from one ward to another as her condition improved. Nothing happens by chance. I used this opportunity to ask the nurses and doctors to sign the petition. The nurses were surprised to find a young fellow who took such good care of an old granny. Whenever I was in the country I would visit her frequently, which I did enjoy. I cooked and helped her with her personal needs. I was there more then her own children, she came to trust me more than anyone. I would always fix a paper lotus flower on the bed frame when she was in a new room. I urged her to remember Falun Dafa is good. Sometimes it was hard for me to see her suffer. Sometimes due to strong drugs, she wouldn’t recognize anyone, not even me.

Her condition gradually deteriorated and several times we thought she wouldn’t survive yet she always managed to pull through. Once I gave her the petition to sign and she did it, although she was very weak. When I told it her daughter, she couldn't believe it as she had tried unsuccessfully to make grandma sign a paper for a notary or sign for her pension money. For her to be able to sign the petition was a small miracle. Once she even urged other family members to sign it.

I took good care of my grandma whenever I had time. Others said her eyes always shone when she saw me. Although her journey in this world has ended after a year of suffering I was not sad. By supporting Dafa she chose a good future for herself and her suffering helped her to eliminate a big chunk of karma. I think my conduct showed many people the goodness of a Dafa practitioner.

Joining the Epoch Times
When I first started my cultivation in Dafa, I wasn't very diligent. But a year later I repeatedly read through all of the Master's lectures and Zhuan Falun. No films and hobbies could catch my interest any more; I only wanted to read the Fa. After attending my first Dafa activity in Edinburgh in 2008 I felt I wanted to do more. Master said in Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston: “If you remain stagnant, you definitely won’t be able to keep up with the Fa-rectification.”

The time had come to fulfil my historic mission, to help save more sentient beings and not just focus on my own cultivation. It was a natural feeling and an inner drive. I contacted practitioners in the Czech Republic (I didn't know there were any until then as I was living in England) and started working for the Czech Epoch Times. My advantage was my English so I could do translations. Still, it was not easy. Now I know Master has arranged everything. I was made to go abroad to learn English to use it during the Fa-rectification.

I had no experience with translations, let alone writing articles. As time went on, I grasped from the original articles how to write. Apart from the translations, I can now write my own news articles and readers find them good. Master gives me wisdom and I'm constantly improving. I could never do it without diligent Fa-study. Master also said in Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston: “If you don't study the Fa well, you won't be able to do Dafa work well.”

I have failed before and learned many lessons in this respect. Without the solid foundation provided by concentrated and regular Fa-study combined with the purifying effects of sending righteous thoughts, the work on projects does not go well, there is no inspiration and the cultivation state stagnates or drops. Then it's easy for the evil to use our gaps and we start looking for others' mistakes.

Sometimes when I wasn't within the Fa, I got so furious in my mind about my fellow practitioners' shortcomings that my anger would flare up ten metres high. I had many negative thoughts about the coordinator and other practitioners feeling hurt. Sooner or later I would come back to my senses and calm down. We are not here to validate ourselves but to validate Dafa. And when you find out how difficult the situation was for the other person at that time, you feel ashamed and become more tolerant next time. In the past I would often start blaming someone or something else when problems came up. I have gradually become better though and I can now usually look within first and look for problems there. This is the magic tool Master has given us.

When I come across some errors or inaccuracies in the already published articles or see a low-quality title I just quietly fix it so that our paper can be higher quality. When the errors occur repeatedly, I think it's all right to tell the responsible person kindly and calmly. After all we all want to improve as a whole. In everything I do, I try to work hard and be responsible, meeting deadlines and keeping a strict standard for myself.

For years the Epoch Times project in Czech Republic just stagnated because there was neither long-term coordination nor visible results. Many people have joined the project and many have left. I think it was because there was not much cooperation. Everyone did what they thought was good. The situation is changing now however. Now we have a coordinator with a vision and a heart to lead people. I'm truly happy about this. I believe we will only grow and get better from now on.

Master said in “Be More Diligent”, 2010: “In the near future, people in this world will realize that Dafa disciples are saving people. It is something that you definitely have to do better at, and do with greater strength. So this requires that you cooperate well. If you fail to cooperate well, the evil really will exploit your weaknesses and you will suffer major losses. Losses, that is, in terms of both individual cultivation as well as our group projects that are meant to save sentient beings.”

I've realized one important thing that our coordinator also emphasized. We are one body and so even if I do well in the entire task and succeed in everything I do, it is a success only at the surface. From a higher point of view however, if the project fails or stagnates, I am the one responsible for the failure because we are one-body and as one-body we weren't successful. What is crucial therefore is to support those who lag behind or are going through difficult times. This is something I really have to improve on.

Shen Yun 2013
In the past I worked on Shen Yun much less, I didn't regard it as a top priority. This year, however, the situation was different. Right from the start in autumn 2012 I felt I wanted to be involved wholeheartedly and this feeling only grew stronger. I still worked on the Epoch Times and NTD but Shen Yun became my priority. The performance was set to be in Prague, which is some 180 miles from my home. Still that couldn't stop me. I enjoyed going to Prague. I felt like Master helped me on different levels by pushing my understanding higher so everything felt easy. There was neither fear nor nervousness like in the past, only joy and keenness. Since I work abroad, usually 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off, I could spend those two weeks in Prague. I would stay in the city during the weekdays and come back to spend the weekends with my family so they wouldn't feel neglected.

While working for Shen Yun I volunteered to go to meetings in Prague whenever possible. Sometimes we were dealing with very rich and influential people. Before I would have fear in such situations but not this time. I knew Master had arranged everything and chose who are we to meet. We are just simple messengers doing what needs to be done. But doubts and human thoughts occasionally came up to see which side we take – are we practitioners or ordinary people?

The poem “One Thought” from Hong Yin III would often occur in my mind:
“Secular and sacred, one creek apart
Forward or back, two different realms
Enter the temple in the woods,
One step and you've reached heaven.”

The first two weeks after I started going to Prague on a regular basis I had strong thought karma manifested as being bothered by other practitioners' behaviour. Every single detail – manners, frame of mind, habits – I would find fault with. I felt very unhappy and upset about this. I managed to eliminate it through regular Fa study with others and sending righteous thoughts. Later I noticed other practitioners were going through the same and I tried to share with them. These sort of thoughts need to be eliminated. The best weapon to do it was studying the Fa and sending forth-righteous thoughts together as a group for the whole day. After that nothing bad was left in my head, there was only an immense compassion and understanding. Actually, every practitioner has some attachments. Someone feels it's very hard to deal with this, another feels it’s hard to let go of that. What can be easy to pass for one person can be difficult to pass for another person. If no attachments are present, we shoot upwards.

Our Master mentions in Lecture Eight of Zhuan Falun when he talks about Heavenly Circuit: “When our great heavenly circuits are about to open, a situation will occur wherein some people will lean forward during the sitting meditation. Because the circulation in one’s back is opened better, one’s back will feel very light while the body’s front will feel heavy. Some people lean backward and feel their backs are heavy while the fronts of their bodies feel light. If all of your body is opened well, you will feel as if you are being lifted up, like levitating off the ground.”

We would feel tired after whole days of promotion at the shopping mall or meetings but we still needed to go and distribute flyers at the theatres in the centre. At times my human notions of my body being tired or having no strength to go persisted. Besides, it was freezing outside and was bound to be tough. Sometimes I gave in to this notion but other times I had enough righteous thoughts to overcome it and go out. And every time I actually managed to do that, the results were great, the theatre was full of people from the mainstream society, and people gladly accepted the materials and were interested in what we had to offer. That was always a massive encouragement and we were really happy we went out after all.

One month before the performance I took time off from my work and during the week I was in Prague. However, during the weekends at home I relaxed and slacked off in my cultivation. Although I was giving a lot to Shen Yun I didn't give it all. I didn’t let go ALL of my attachments unconditionally thus leaving gaps for the evil to interfere. I was also focusing more on myself rather than the whole body of Dafa disciples in our country. I thought as long as I do fine everything is fine. But it wasn't.

Although I had a good feeling about the preparation process, the ticket sales were not doing so well. Ticket sales had been really low as if we got stuck somewhere. We all believed that we will break through but the situation was still critical and I started having doubts. About a week before the performance I even succumbed to the illusion that everything I did was for nought, that I have failed in everything and that I was just a burden to the whole project – a total failure. Later I realized though that such notions are really not right, that it's only the evil trying to knock me down into depression and self-contempt.

Master said in “Be More Diligent”: “You should cherish all that you have done, for this amounts to cherishing yourself! Remember Master’s words!”

The main coordinator along with other key persons concentrated all their strength into contacting the mainstream media and the rest of us were sending righteous thoughts. We created a strong field and several miracles happened. There was a promotion campaign in the mainstream media, which had really big impact, and ticket sales finally started to climb.

Eventually we managed to sell 70 per cent of the tickets. But it was a disappointment for me – so much effort put in yet only this! But there was no one to blame but me. As I didn't give 100 per cent, perhaps the others didn't either. How could we sell all the tickets? On the other hand, it was a strong impetus for next year to work harder, cooperate better and introduce the saving grace of Shen Yun to more people in our country. At the same time I realized it is not important to do as much as I can on my own like a super-hero. What is more important is to get more practitioners truly working well together. Our effort will be then multiplied and our impact as well as the effect of our work will be much better.

I thank our Master for his tremendous compassion and patience and you fellow practitioners for support and attention. Finally, I would like to end my sharing with one poem from Hong Yin III, “All For This Day”:

When disciples walk righteously the path of Dafa
Their light illumines the world, purging evil completely
Diligent disciples – plum blossoms in winter's chill
The eons of hardship were all for this day.