Seeing Master for the First Time and Upgrading Xinxing at the Canada Fa Conference 2003

I never once let my mind become attached to Master Li coming to the conference, knowing if I did that somehow he might not.

I saw the top of a door open behind a screen, bringing the thought back that I might really see our Master. I noticed this thought but did not hold on to it. I also noticed my heart was very calm like a still pool.

A little later I suddenly felt something deeply mystical, yet unmistakably familiar, pervade my whole body. I knew then that he was nearby. I never even thought to speak of this. My mind remained still even when he was announced but did not actually appear. Later he came in and my heart was instantaneously and powerfully uplifted.

Before he had been announced for the first time I had needed to go to the loo! I did not dare to go after that in case I was outside when he came in. I remember thinking, “Oh no!, while Master is lecturing on the Fa, my mind will be distracted by my full bladder!” Imagine my happiness when I sensed my whole metabolism completely stop as soon as he came in! It did not start again until the moment he left!

There had been problems with earphones earlier. I had made sure those around me had some. Looking back I see I did this as an elaborate way of making sure I myself had some. It turned out I had to share a flexible set with a US practitioner. I was already upgrading having given my complete set to the one next to me. Master started to lecture, the practitioner beside me’s headphones inexplicably failed despite being checked before! Seeing there was no other way, I was amazed to find myself handing over my equipment to her with no regret whatsoever in my heart! I was actually about to give my headphones away which would mean I would not be able to “understand” what Master was about to say! Of course inside I knew that I would “hear” no matter what the language. I had never seen him before but his benificent proximity transformed me to a kindness I could not have achieved before except in mere “form”! He had hardly even begun to lecture. But that other practitioner being similarly upgraded could not take them from me! This produced another contingency that neither of us had predicted. For a moment we didn’t know what to do! Suddenly it was noticed that yet another practitioner had a flexible set that could be shared. The one with the broken set was afraid to move to where the working phones were a few seats away, mindful of respect for Master while he talked. We all encouraged her. We somehow knew he would not mind. She quietly moved without a sound. We all heard the translation.

I knew I had gone to Canada to hear the experience of the practitioners and learn what I could to help the UK environment. We also went for “higher reasons” (as one practitioner put it), that we did not know. How right he turned out to be.

I stayed with Westerner, Canadian organisers. They generously let me help a little in the writing of an opening speech for the Vancouver parade and I sent righteous thoughts whilst the media volunteer contacted journalists by phone. I thought I’d learn a lot from their techniques but they are in many ways no more sophisticated than we, but they are much more open. This gives a purity that is harder to tarnish with hidden attachments. They are much more honest about conflicts. They seem to know that just because one sees an attachment in another, doesn’t mean that that person does or doesn’t have that attachment. Indeed pointing out just as often can reveal the pointer’s attachment! What matters is that things are out in the open and Dafa work is therefore less repressed. Some of the sharing was remarkable in it’s honesty and clarity and served only to bring us very close together, blocking the evil’s way in through hidden loopholes.

Facilitated by a good cultivation environment, a broader horizon and a deeper, more realistic understanding of my own Fa-given wisdom opened. A knowledge that I should use it to “just do it” whenever I saw what needed to be done in the rectification also came. An aspect of this wisdom is to see the great(er) wisdom of my fellow disciples and trust in their understandings too. I shared with one practitioner that I often did not feel my understandings were good enough to be of benefit to others, which still prevented me sharing openly. She said “You study the Fa too, right?” I said “Yes.” She simply said “Then your understandings are valid and sharing them is being responsible to Dafa” These kind words did not make me feel complacent at all, but rather made me resolve to study even harder.

On parting with this same practitioner, I told her that when I had first met her, I had thought “I won’t be able to get on with this person” but that by looking inward I now saw that that was just a notion. She asked why I had thought this. I said “Because I thought you were too conservative” She was pleased with my honesty, perhaps it reminded her not to be too conservative. She announced to the whole room “Hey, Mary has seen through seeing things in others as THEIR attachments” Everyone applauded with their smiles. We laughed and embraced, mutually improved. We parted good friends.

Another said “Don’t be afraid to share, the disciples don’t judge your sharings by your standards, but by Dafa’s.”

Another time a practitioner said something that seemed to show an attachment to a suspicion that I was this or that kind of person. I was amazed to see this “black” thought suspended as an actual substance hovering between us in the room. I noticed that I neither persecuted him in my mind for having thought falsely about me, nor did I persecute myself for having somehow caused this thought to be produced in his mind. My heart was absolutely calm and my mind empty. I had never really experienced the purity of being truly not attached before. As the black thing was eradicated before my very eyes, I was reminded of Master’s fundamental teaching that karma is transformed outside the body.

I also learned that being hard on other practitioners risks karmic consequences for oneself.

Another time at the end of the Victoria Island Parade, I noticed a practitioner in charge of arrangements was trying to control a wonderful banner that was flapping at the corner making the photographs less than perfect. I got behind it and settled down to hold down the banner, the better to display Dafa’s sacred words and images. I and another practitioner had to crouch so that we were not visible behind it. I recalled that the last time I had done such a thing at another meeting in another country, I had done it as a “chore”, felt trapped, and secretly hoped that someone would relieve me! This time I had no such mean thoughts. I could have sat there indefinitely. I was so grateful for this small but noticeable upgrade.

After a while I mentioned to a Western practitioner standing nearby holding one of the banner’s upright poles, that I wished I had brought my small copy of Zhuan Falun from my bag so that I could have used the time to read. As he said “It’s good just to look at the characters”, I accepted his offer of his Chinese copy and opened the book at the “back” as directed. He then offered to recite Lunyu in Chinese, mentioning each full stop and new paragraph to keep me in the right place. As I followed, each character’s upper edge lifted and peeled up from the page. Out poured steams of miraculous microcosmic substance steadily flowing in swirls across the page! Collecting myself I resolved to concentrate so as not to miss the synchronicity with the spoken words. I remembered the Fa that each word of Zhuan Falun contains layers upon layers of Buddhas, Daos and Gods. My fascinated mind became curious and perhaps just as I began to look with my flesh eyes, the practitioner was removed from his post of holding the banner pole for “talking out loud”!

This profound experience was no surprise to me. What was remarkable , however, was that even though I had had hidden thoughts (perhaps for the purpose of this very occasion?) from some time ago about the practitioner who had caused the divine experience to be cut short, I did not blame her at all in my heart but said sincerely “I understand completely”.

Having endured some pressure from elements in myself and in the local environment which had pushed me to a rather “depressed” state, making my cultivation path almost too difficult, I was under a cloud as I boarded the plane for Vancouver. What I did not fully realise then, however, was that inside my heart my Buddha nature had emerged anew. My ardent wish to cultivate again from the bottom of a higher level had stimulated the righteous Gods to help me just as it had done when I had first obtained the Fa. Master gave me an understanding that he knew each and everyone of us, even I, was there. I felt he “saw” us and what specifically we each needed at that time and that this was all precisely and benevolently predestined to be exactly as it was.

He taught the very high level Dafa yet spoke of realms, of which these were not, and maybe not even anywhere near, the highest.

Master raised me up and did not exclude me from his stupendous mercy. His gong swept through my body with the merest movement of his hand as he lectured, eliminating debts I had tried my best, but in vain, to repay. I sat transfixed and somewhat transfigured, at times almost numb, within his pure and benificent field.

I was struck by a deep knowledge that all is given to each and every one of us by Dafa without any exception. I was taken to this understanding by the amazing kindness emanating from Master’s face. I began to glimpse how fully he is different from everyone of us, no matter what our function or position, from the elderly and devout Taiwanese practitioner encountered in the middle of the night preparing for righteous thoughts with tears running down her face as she stared at Master’s picture in the front of her book. When asked why she cried she, who no-one could imagine could have done ever done anything wrong said something like “I hope Master can forgive me, for I am so bad”
--from her to those who hold “position” or are “in charge” in certain areas, who are “intelligent” or “skilled” or “accomplished”-- he is absolutely not the same as any one of us. No matter who we are or who or what we think we are, we are all yet only his grateful disciples. We all of us only have one Master. May I, may each and every one of us follow him ever more closely each and every day.

“The Buddha Fa is most Profound”

From the bottom of my heart I thank you, most venerable Master.