Greetings, respected Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I am from France, and I obtained the Fa in 2003. I would like to share, in four parts, my cultivation experiences during Shen Yun’s 2026 tour in France.
1. Becoming Aware of My Own Character: Cultivating Away the Self
This year I made up my mind to work properly on my character in my cultivation. As soon as last summer’s Shen Yun weekend meeting ended, several of us practitioners with free time got together and began studying the Fa at five o’clock every morning. We have kept it up ever since, and we did not break off even during the tour. Fa study has benefited me greatly. In the early morning there is no one to disturb me and my mind can settle, and if there is time during the day I can read a little more. During this year’s tour, Fa study helped me enormously. It made me more willing to look inward, and it made it easier for me to keep a distance from outside affairs so that they did not sway me. I paid attention to what attachments I had and tried to stay clear-headed. Being able to raise both the quantity and the quality of my Fa study played a very important role for me, and compared with the previous year I could see clearly for myself where I had improved.
Master mentioned in Fa Teaching at the 2007 New York Fa Conference: “Breakthroughs will occur if you keep up your Fa study. Only by studying the Fa well can you validate the Fa, and only by studying the Fa well can you do better. Many practitioners have found themselves able to think about things that they didn’t know how to do before in a more creative, comprehensive way thanks to Fa study, and they are able to do anything with great proficiency. That is what comes about when you study the Fa well.”
By nature I am blunt, impetuous, and stubborn about being right. Sometimes this works to good effect, but there is also a great deal in it that needs to be removed. Under the influence of the self, I sometimes become insufficiently humble, and sometimes I cannot control my emotions, flaring up in anger, for instance, or becoming afraid. I also become fond of validating myself and grow arrogant, so that when I ought to be steadfast I turn rigid instead. Over these years, and especially through taking part in the tour, I have gradually come to understand one thing: whether a person is capable is not, in itself, what matters. What matters is whether that capability is put to use in projects that save sentient beings. If it is not, then under the influence of the self it can very easily do damage instead. Having understood this, I remind myself constantly to be as calm and as kind towards others as I can.
Of course, ordinary people cannot begin to imagine how detailed and how precise the gods are when they prepare these tests. As for me, I have stumbled along the whole way. Sometimes I pass a test smoothly, and sometimes a test bears down on me until I can hardly breathe, over and over again. I have heard and read many cultivation stories about cultivators and sages who, whatever they met with, were able to hold themselves steady, with hearts that were calm and pure and wholly sincere in thinking of others. I truly hope that I can always be like that. It reminds me of when I had just begun cultivating. Every time I read the passage in the French edition of Zhuan Falun about Han Xin crawling between that man’s legs, I would mutter to myself, “Surely he won’t crawl through this time…” And yet Han Xin still crawled through, every single time. So many years have passed, and looking back, this path has been hard going for me right from the start.
What is interesting is that when I meet someone who is plainly unfriendly, I am able to stay calm instead. For example, when a journalist from the Arte television channel sent over a string of belligerent, fault-finding questions, I only had to tidy up my thoughts a little and I could treat her calmly and evenly. My heart was compassionate. Another example: my meeting with the department responsible for matters concerning minors was rather like a trap disguised as a banquet. They interrogated me about issues to do with minors, kept twisting my words, and pressed me hard for a full two and a half hours. I came out with a splitting headache, but at the time my mind was calm and my thinking clear. I was not angry, not flustered, and not in the least resentful. Yet in another setting, my temper would have carried me away in an instant.
On one occasion I had a phone call with the person in charge of ticketing at one of the Zénith venues. Before that, she had sent me a sharply worded email demanding that I send her the complimentary tickets as the contract required, although I had already taken care of that back in November of last year. I had never spoken or corresponded with her before. All I could tell was that she came on very aggressively, insisting that I send the tickets at once and saying that this was simply unacceptable… At first I held steady (tests like this rarely come singly, and when a hundred hardships descend together one tenses up straight away), and I was even quietly pleased with myself, thinking that in the past I would never have reacted this way… Little did I know that this small flush of pleasure would have me regretting it a moment later. The way I saw it, this was probably a misunderstanding: she had been rude and unpleasant, so I ought to ring her and clear things up. But the call turned out worse than the email. My temper flared at once, and in the end I simply hung up. Afterwards I was both angry and upset with myself for failing to maintain my xinxing in this test. The next day, the FXH coordinator said to me, “I spoke to that contact at the Zénith, and she told me you hung up on her. I said to her that surely it could not have been that, and that the line had probably just dropped because of a bad signal.” But I told him, “No, it is true. I really did hang up on her.” He gave a little smile, probably somewhat embarrassed on my behalf.
2. Breaking Through My Own Rigid Notions: Accepting and Preparing to Endure Hardship
Master told us in Hong Yin “Falun Dafa”:
“Gong cultivation has a way, the heart is the path
Dafa has no bounds, hardship serves as the ferry”
Wearing these various emotions away bit by bit is far from easy. The anger in me is like a set of defensive tools arranged long ago, protecting me from suffering, from having to watch myself suffer, and from being humiliated, so that I can save face. Fear is the same. In this world of delusion, fear is like a bulletproof vest that shields me from greater pain. Yet in the end, fear is itself a form of pain. For what these emotions protect and serve is nothing but the self, in all its changing guises. I came to understand that qing is really a set of incorrect notions, and that they feed the self and make it grow ever larger. If a person is willing to stop using these emotions (the attachment of fear, anger, liking, disliking) to protect himself, then he is free and indestructible as diamond, because he has recovered that great ease and freedom that comes from being connected with the divine.
I feel that I must have the courage to feel and to face the pain buried deep in my heart and awakened by reality, along with the pain bound up with my own life experiences. Emotion is really an excuse that speaks on behalf of the self and lets the self dig in and refuse to leave. Put simply, the self means thinking only of oneself. In everyday life, tests to do with the self are everywhere, and they look very much like the things ordinary people go through. What really matters is what we are thinking when we meet them.
Here is an example. On one occasion there was a problem with a lady’s ticket: her seat had been double-booked with someone else’s, and we notified her more than ten days in advance. Everyone in the ticketing team who had phoned or emailed her told me that she was very fierce, that she made threats, and that she said she would demand an explanation face to face when she arrived. She would not listen to any change, any discussion, or any explanation. She was plainly coming to have a row. As the day when I was to meet her at the ticket window drew near, the thought of it left me rather uneasy. I mentioned it to my husband, and he offered to come with me, but I declined. Before going, I set aside the anger and the defensiveness in my heart. To be honest, all that it really came down to was that I was afraid of losing face in public and afraid that I would not be able to bear it. In the event, the meeting went entirely smoothly. It was a small matter, but I felt that I had passed this test: not only because it went well, but more because this time I did not want to rely on things connected with the self, such as validating myself, flaring up, fear, and being on my guard, to protect me.
Another experience has to do with doing the fifth exercise. I have always liked the full lotus position, and settling into it feels like coming home. But the last ten minutes are usually very hard to get through and very painful, and most of the time I got through them by gritting my teeth and forcing myself to hold on. Once, when the waves of sharp pain in my legs had only just begun, I tensed up as usual and braced myself to endure. But in that very instant I suddenly understood: if there is a debt, it should be acknowledged and it should be repaid, and I had to bear this pain. At the moment my whole body relaxed, I saw a shadow flash past. It had the shape of a person, and as it went by it struck me. I thought to myself, “I am willing to repay what I owe. This too is what Master has arranged for me, what should be repaid on the path of cultivation.” All at once the figures multiplied and gave me a severe beating. I watched myself from one side, and there were so many shadows around me that my body could no longer be seen. I do not know how long it lasted, but the shadows suddenly dispersed, and my body seemed to collapse and dissolve away. I thought that it was probably a body made of karma, and that at this level the debt was finally paid off. From that day on, for several months in a row, I felt no pain when I sat in meditation. I only felt my two legs bound tightly, as though a rope were pulling them in. I am not attached to whether there is pain. I think this is simply one stage in the process of cultivation, much like whether or not one eats meat: when the time comes for things to be a certain way, they naturally will be. I decided to let it take its course, because I felt sure of it in my heart. This meant a great deal to me. Through it, I learned to accept suffering and to face my own suffering squarely, and I understood the true meaning of suffering.
In “The Closer to the End, the More Diligent You Should Be” Master said: “Going through hardship and suffering is an outstanding opportunity to remove karma, be cleansed of sin, purify the body, elevate your plane of thought, and rise in level—it’s an extraordinarily good thing. This is a correct and upright Fa-truth. But as cultivation is lived out, when the suffering bears down on you and conflicts come up that hit upon the deepest part of you—and especially when it rattles the rigid notions you have—the test is really hard to pass. It can even be to the point that you know full well it’s a test but still can’t let go of your attachments.”
3. Distinguishing Between “Doing Things” and “Cultivating the Heart”
I have noticed that my temperament really has improved somewhat. This change came about because I have been learning to keep others in my heart and to genuinely put myself in the other person’s position, thinking of others first, learning to “cultivate the heart” before going on to “do things”.
At the theatres we sometimes come across people with a poor attitude, and sometimes they charge us fees that were never agreed in advance, practices that seem to me neither fair, nor proper, nor in keeping with the contract. In the face of this, I try my best to keep my composure and to word my emails more politely and more warmly. At first I felt I was being somewhat false, that it did not come naturally. But then it occurred to me that I genuinely do want to be a better person, a kind and sincere person. That is what I truly want. So I carried on doing it, and before long I found that our dealings with these people had become far more harmonious and far more courteous, even with people I had previously found difficult to get along with.
This year we added a many new requirements in logistics, administration, and finance, and during the tour I had to trouble the team coordinators with more matters than in previous years: bank cards, reimbursements for travel and accommodation, administrative meetings, scheduling, sharing, following up with each team, supplies and logistics, and so on. At first I threw myself entirely into the project, thinking only of getting everything in good order and running smoothly. But on several occasions I saw the pure heart of a few fellow practitioners, and I was often moved to tears. These were not big things, yet they moved me deeply.
For instance, I asked each coordinator to fill in a form for their own team, with the formulas for travel and accommodation already built in. To me the method seemed simple, and it made everything easy to look up at a glance. Before long, though, I found that nobody was using the form at all. I simply assumed that perhaps it was not convenient to work with. I also knew that for some coordinators, administration is not their strong point. But when I saw each of them labouring over that pile of documents and invoices, and in the end organising the files their own way and passing them to me (files that were perfectly workable, as it turned out), I understood how much heart and effort lay behind them. One coordinator had even drawn a crying face in her file to show how many difficulties she had run into… Things like this moved me deeply.
There is another fellow practitioner who is exceptionally conscientious, steady, and responsible in what she does. I often hear her say that her workload is heavy, and there is no doubt about that. She works remotely and did not travel with us on the tour. One day I learned that before every performance she would light a stick of incense, keeping us company and wanting to be a little closer to each of us. That simple, silent gesture moved me deeply. In it I felt her sincerity, her purity, and that wordless companionship. What touched me about this thoughtfulness was that I saw the sincerity and tenderness within her, and not merely her work itself.
4. The Success of a Project and the Improvement of Xinxing
Personal cultivation and saving sentient beings are bound together, yet I still remind myself constantly that improving one’s xinxing and the success of a project are two different things. They correspond to each other, but they are not the same thing. What matters is whether we understand who fundamentally creates all of this.
The difference between the two is very subtle. I came to realise that however good the results of a project or an event, and however well it is run, that does not amount to an improvement in xinxing. The two are separate. It is not that when an event goes well my xinxing has risen, or that when it does not go well my xinxing has failed to improve. We need to tell apart “doing things” from “cultivating the heart”. The success of Shen Yun is an arrangement by Master and of the gods, and it is also won by the courage and the selfless dedication that every participant has put in so that Shen Yun could be realised and staged.
In Fa Teaching Given at the 2016 New York Fa Conference, Master said: “For example, when Shen Yun Performing Arts recruits a highly skilled artist, it might turn out that the person doesn’t cultivate. In that case, even if you force things through and bring him in, he will have to leave due to some excuse or other. And in cases where the person doesn’t cultivate but wants to stay with the company, gods will find a way to make him leave. And the old forces won’t allow him to remain, either, for they will think he isn’t worthy. Shen Yun is saving sentient beings, which is something to be done by Dafa disciples.”
“And as you go about doing it, it will be your heart and mind, rather than your success, that count. And as you work on it, you are saving people! The process of doing those things is also a process of improving yourself in cultivation, and at the same time you are helping to save a multitude of beings! It’s not as if only when you’ve accomplished your task or initiative will you have helped to save beings.” (Fa Teaching Given at the 2016 New York Fa Conference
Conclusion
I know that I still fall far short of the standard of a true Dafa disciple. And yet, having been able to become a Dafa disciple and to have found the happiest thing in this life, my heart is filled with a gratitude and joy I cannot put into words. I will keep working at it, and keep cultivating away those things that belong to the self. To put it plainly, these things are only an illusion in my life. I will keep striving to recover my own freedom and self-determination, and to give myself wholly to Dafa.
Thank you, Master. Thank you, fellow practitioners.
(Speaker at the European Fa-Conference 2026 in Prague)
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