Putting the Fa First; Stepping Out of “Hardship”

Greetings, respected Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!

My name is Ying and I am from France. I obtained the Fa and began cultivating in 1996.

In all the years I have spent covering Shen Yun, “hardship” has been my strongest memory. The fear that grew out of resisting that hardship then put me under enormous mental pressure ahead of the following year’s coverage, and I went round and round in negative thinking, unable to break out of it. This year, though, that sense of how hard and bitter it all was grew fainter. For the first time it did not feel so hard, and I finally came out of the hardship. The process was really very simple: let everything take its natural course, and think only of what is good for others.

1. Letting Everything Take Its Natural Course

During the second half of last year’s Shen Yun coverage, I could no longer manage my regular job alongside it, and with great reluctance I resigned. My manager asked me again and again to stay, and I did try, but in the end I truly could not do both. I was completely drained, and I chose to leave. In 30 years of cultivation, this was the first time I had been unable to keep up a regular job and a Dafa project at the same time. I had joined that company mainly because I admired its reputation. Once I was there, my attachments to fame and gain and to vanity, together with all the comparing and competing among colleagues, meant I had to pour a great deal of time and energy into the work, with overtime every day and even at weekends. The strain on me, physically and mentally, was considerable. My manager knew that I did Shen Yun coverage at weekends, and she told me, “You can only choose one of the two.” At that moment I already knew what my choice was: I would let go of my attachment to “empty fame”.

Because I had resigned of my own accord, I received no unemployment benefit or any other support. Once the Shen Yun coverage was over, I had to think about how I would live from then on. Should I look for another regular job, or should I stop looking for work altogether, sell my home, move to a small village where the cost of living was low and live in a completely different way? I was worn out in body and mind, and I had no confidence at all that I would be able to hold down a job through the following year’s Shen Yun coverage. Nor could I change jobs every six months and then spend six months on Shen Yun. That was no long-term solution either.

And so I looked at house prices in the countryside and at job adverts side by side. In the past, the first thing I looked at was the salary, and I would only apply for jobs that paid more than the one I had. This time salary was no longer my priority. What I looked at first was the content of the work: whether I was genuinely capable of doing it, and whether I could complete the tasks within normal working hours and so keep up the Shen Yun coverage as well. That, I felt, was the only attitude that was truly responsible towards both. So for the first time ever, I sent out just five applications in all: five jobs I was genuinely able to do, applications I could make with a clear conscience and full confidence, applications that were fair to the company rather than made from a starting point of personal fame and gain. I also told myself that whatever the salary turned out to be, I would accept it and not haggle. After sending them off, I gave myself a week’s holiday. While I was travelling I was invited to an interview, and a week later I was offered the job. The salary advertised for the post was considerably lower than what I had been earning, but when the offer came through, the figure was higher than my previous salary. I had not expected that at all. This is just what Master says, “You are not really asked to lose anything materially… The key is whether you can let go of the attachment.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)

After I started the new job, because it was a field I knew fairly well, within a few months I had mastered the skills the post required. There was no pressure and no overtime, and everything seemed perfect. But just a week before Shen Yun was due to begin, my manager told me that from January I would be moved to another department that was badly short of people, in a field I did not know. I was devastated, too upset even to cry. Enormous pressure bore down on me again, because I knew that every time I moved to a new post the early stage demanded a great deal of time and energy, and this would fall exactly over the period of the Shen Yun coverage. Was I going to have to resign all over again?

That evening I was in a very low mood, and I was still thinking it over while I sat in meditation. Then a thought suddenly surfaced in my mind: my fundamental attachment was the pursuit of extreme comfort, comfort of the body and comfort of the mind. I knew this was Master pointing it out to me, and that the time had come to remove my attachment to comfort. Righteous thoughts suddenly rose up in me. I firmly believed that I could pass this test, that I could endure this hardship, and that I could get rid of this attachment to comfort. My heart then settled, and I felt I could face calmly whatever uncertainties lay ahead. I placed myself in Master’s hands and let things take their natural course.

A cultivator’s righteous thoughts really do matter. What followed was remarkable. The new post was not at all as difficult as I had imagined, and it did not take up a great deal of time. On the contrary, the handover and the closing-off work during the transfer brought about a qualitative leap in my performance. It felt like the saying, “only when cornered does one find new life”. I had more room to manoeuvre than in my previous post, and my heart grew calmer, more at ease and more relaxed. It is just as Master says:

“The bigger you perceive the challenges to be, the harder things will be to carry out, since “the appearance stems from the mind.” And so the task will become increasingly burdensome. When I say “the appearance stems from the mind,” by that I also mean that the difficulty stems from your overstating the importance of the matter itself and seeing yourself in a lesser light. Don’t take any such things to be a big deal, for with something as significant as saving sentient beings you should just do what you are supposed to do, going about it in a composed manner. When you encounter things that don’t sound so good or that aren’t what you hoped for, don’t take it to heart, and just nobly and confidently do what you are supposed to. If you don’t let the evil’s interference sway you, bad factors won’t arise from you, the evil will become trivial, you will become towering and massive, and your righteous thoughts will be ample. That’s truly the case.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the Epoch Times Meeting”, Collected Teachings Given Around the World Volume X)

2. Sincerely Wishing Others Well

Covering Shen Yun is something that goes far beyond any one person, and it takes close cooperation from the whole team. This year our NTD reporting team grew from two people to four, and new members joined the other parts of the work as well. During the coverage, with pressure coming from every direction and a very heavy workload, the team on the ground was also affected by things such as the accommodation and often did not rest well. Inevitably there were small frictions, complaints, a certain amount of looking down on one another and so on.

My deepest realisation this year was that whatever happens that does not go my way, I should think positively as far as I possibly can. That means wanting good things for the other person, hoping they do well, genuinely acting for their sake, and peeling away jealousy layer by layer. When I held myself to thinking that way, I felt as though I was no longer pulling against the universe, and a great many things resolved themselves easily.

For example, two reporters in turn were unable to cover certain cities this year as originally planned. When I learned that the first of them could not go, my thought was to fill the gap myself. But just as I was about to book my ticket, a thought flashed through my mind: was this the best arrangement? It occurred to me at once that there was another reporter who had never taken part in Shen Yun coverage, and that it would be better to send him, so that someone new could gain the experience. When I asked him, he gladly agreed. A few days later, work kept the second reporter from two of the cities. As it turned out, this new reporter naturally filled those two gaps as well, and a problem that had looked thorny was easily resolved.

It turns out that as long as your starting point is for the good of others, your heart is at ease and light, and a great many things need no deliberation at all, because Master has already arranged them. I also learned to let go of the things I could not control. For several years I had felt a tightness in my chest, as if a stone were pressing on it. Then, without my noticing, the stone was gone. Matter and mind really are one and the same. My heart grew lighter and lighter. Cultivation is truly remarkable: when an attachment is not removed, the tests only grow bigger and harder to pass, whereas once you pass a test well, that too sets off a chain reaction, and many things then resolve themselves readily.

3. Letting Go of Self and Taking Responsibility for the Fa

Besides NTD’s Shen Yun coverage, I have also been responsible all along for producing Shen Yun promotional videos. As soon as each year’s coverage ends, I have to start preparing audience feedback films and various advertising videos, right through until the following year’s performances begin. As the number of Shen Yun performances has grown year on year, the demand for promotional videos has grown with it. A few years ago, the practitioner in charge of advertising and promotion told me that all the advertising material should be backed up and passed to other practitioners so that others could help, and that it should not all sit on my shoulders alone. If something were to happen to me, what would become of the Shen Yun advertising?

When I first read that message it did not sit well with me. I felt this practitioner had no idea what I was up against. There were more than 10 years of accumulated video material, and even I found it a headache to search through them, taking me a great deal of time. There were seven or eight external hard drives involved. A handover like that would be very complicated. Far from helping me, I thought, it would simply add to my workload. The time to sort the material out and the time to teach someone else would only pile more onto an already very tight schedule. Just thinking about it made me irritable.

But once I had calmed down and read the practitioner’s message again, I saw that it made perfect sense. This is how companies in ordinary society operate too, and it really was the responsible thing to do for the Fa. All my irritation had come from my own starting point: I was protecting myself rather than safeguarding the Fa. As a Dafa disciple, shouldn’t safeguarding Dafa come first? Wasn’t this exactly what I ought to be doing? My irritation went, and I could face it calmly. After I resigned last year, I happened to have a month free, and I finally got those ten-odd years of video material organised and made into templates, so that someone else could take this part of the work over from me. I benefited from it myself: I hardly ever have to hunt through those seven or eight hard drives now. Today, for virtually every part of the Shen Yun work I take part in, there is someone who can step in for me. I am no longer the “only one”. My heart has grown lighter and lighter, and step by step I have come out of the misguided state of validating myself and removed my attachment to self.

Conclusion

During this year’s Shen Yun coverage, Master let me see how other practitioners deal with hardship. Their state, with no negative thoughts at all, straightforward and pure, giving of themselves wholeheartedly, believing in Master one hundred per cent, free of the attachment of fear and free of worry, made me simpler and more composed too. Having come through the 2026 Shen Yun season, I feel I am becoming cleaner and cleaner. My hope is that in next year’s coverage I can truly work with a joyful state of mind, have happy conversations with the people I interview, carry on the joy that Shen Yun brings to its audiences, and improve together with the whole team based on the Fa.

Thank you Master, thank you fellow practitioners.

 

(Speaker at the European Fa-Conference 2026 in Prague)