Discovering Shortcomings While Making Lanterns

Recently, a few Falun Gong practitioners and I were making little lanterns for activities to let more people learn about Falun Gong. We needed to engrave, "Falun Dafa is Great" on some plates. The plates would allow us to spray paint the message on to the lanterns. I volunteered to do the engraving. When I finished the work, I gave the plates to Xiaota, who said, "Your plates are not so good. I will make them myself."

In one sentence, the plates that I had spent 5 to 6 hours to engrave became useless. I felt hurt. Seeing that my mind was affected, Xiaoli said, "My dear fellow practitioner, to tell you the truth, I felt that the plates you made were pretty good. But do you know why Xiaota did not want them? When we do work for Dafa, we need to use our hearts. Otherwise it would be like doing ordinary people's work. You should ask yourself, 'Did you use your heart to make the plates?' Xiaota may not be able to write words as well as you do, but he carefully copied the font of Lishu that appeared on the case of the Fa lecture video cassette."

What Xiaoli said allowed me to see my deficiencies. I thought to myself: "Exactly what am I doing? Am I validating Dafa?" At that moment, a paragraph in Teacher's "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York" came to mind. Teacher said:

"Recently, I have often stressed the issue of cooperating and coordinating well with each other. Whether or not those bad attachments of yours have been removed, you have to cooperate well with each other just the same. Why is it that at times you see arguments coming up a lot, and sometimes the arguments go on and on? Why is it that in validating the Fa, disciples' opinions are time and again not unified? This is something that's been quite prominent recently in Mainland China. What's the real problem? It's very simple--it is a question of whether you are validating the Fa or validating yourself. If you are validating the Fa, no matter what another person says about you, you won't be affected inside. If someone counters your opinion and you get riled up and don't like it, if when other people raise an opinion opposite yours based on some problem you have or disagree with your opinion and you don't like it, and you stand up to oppose it and argue on your own behalf, and when this leads to your going off topic and not listening to others, [in all such cases] you are--even if you are defending and explaining yourself with the best of intentions--still just validating yourself. (Applause) That is because you didn't put Dafa first, and at that time the thing that you couldn't let go of most was self."

I calmed down gradually as I was thinking. At this time Xiaota began to engrave, and said to me: "Watch. The characters that I engrave are definitely going to look better than yours." I told Xiaoli in a low voice, "They definitely are not going to look good. Last time I was telling Xiaota that my characters would look good too, but the end results were just so-so." Xiaoli chuckled and said: "You still did not see your own deficiencies. Do you still remember Teacher's lecture? ...." I interrupted her and said: "I know it. I know it." Xiaoli said calmly: "Why don't you tell me." I took out Teacher's "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York" and told her the paragraph that had been on my mind. She quietly let me finish, and smiling, she said, "It was not this paragraph that I wanted to tell you." Then she took out the "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A." and began to read:

"Dafa disciples, in your cultivation in the ordinary human world you all have understood something clearly that's based on the Fa's principles, namely, not to be attached to the "gain and loss" of ordinary people. So when things related to validating the Fa are involved, there too you shouldn't insist on voicing "my ideas" or on having things done "my way." It's not like only then can you establish mighty virtue in the cosmos. If you've got a good idea, well, you came up with it, you're being responsible to the Fa, and it's not important whether your idea is adopted or whether your approach is used. If another person's idea can achieve the same effect and you aren't attached to your own idea and instead you go along with his, then whether you've shared your approach or not, Gods will all see this and think, "Look, he isn't attached, and he's able to be so tolerant and broadminded." What do Gods look at? Isn't this what they look at? When you're attached to emphasising your things you are too caught up in it and the Gods watching above can't stand it. Even though you keep claiming it's for the good of Dafa, and that "my approach is good" and can reach such and such goal--and maybe that really is the case--still, we shouldn't have attachments that are too much like ordinary people. If you can really do that, all the Gods will say, "This person is truly remarkable." It's not like Gods see that your idea worked and then they raise your level. Instead, they only raise your level when they see that your understanding of it has improved. This is a truth in the Righteous Fa. If you're thinking, "I'll have XYZ happen to me if I've gained such and such amount of merit," well, yes, that's how it works for an ordinary person, and it might be what's looked at as far as certain facets of the cosmos's Fa-truths go or in a particular situation. But true improvements come from letting go, not from gaining."

I blushed from embarrassment.

Xiaota finished his engraving. I found it was indeed better than mine.