The Local Cultivation Environment is Important

In my town, we are a couple of Falun Gong-practitioners who have been practising since the spring of 1998. Since I began practising Falun Gong, I have been sleeping well at night, and I hardly ever feel ill. I’ve also stopped smoking and drinking and gained a new understanding of life, which makes me cherish it more and I always try to act according to the principles of "truth, benevolence, forbearance". Despite the fact that Falun Gong is very good, very few people have come to learn it the past few years. One reason might be that they have been exposed to the misleading information about Falun Gong that was being spread in the media around the time the persecution in China started in 1999, but today it became clear to me that this is not the whole truth.

Usually we practise together on Sundays at an indoor practise site at our disposal. This Sunday, I couldn’t practise at the usual time, so I decided to go outside and practise by myself in the park. For the past years, when we have been practising indoors, I’vie begun to feel more and more restless, wishing to finish the practise as soon as possible, but today as I was practising outside, in the cold but lovely weather, I suddenly realised what that restlessness had been trying to tell me.

Many practitioners are quite busy these days, revealing the truth about Falun Gong and the persecution, often through national or international projects. Also, most practitioners have jobs and families, and when all is said and done, the first thing that comes to mind might not be to go outside and practise. You might do it by yourself, at home, instead. That has been the case for me, anyway. Most of the time, I have been with the others practising indoors on Sundays, but that has also been suffering lately, due to my own complacency.

I was standing in the park, I had turned on the practise music and was about to start the practise, when a woman came up to me and started a conversation. I recognised her. She said she had heard of Falun Gong, but didn’t really know much about it. She said that she was going to stand by the side and watch me do the exercises. I closed my eyes and started to practise to the sound of the slow music. I heard many people pass by on the path a few meters in front of me and I felt that no one could resist looking at me. I wore a yellow jacket with "Falun Gong" written on it.

My thoughts came upon Master’s answer to a practitioners question in the latest lecture from New York. The question was how practitioners in Romania could do better in helping more people see the true nature of Falun Dafa. Master answered: "I said earlier that relative to the number of people in the world, the number of Dafa disciples right now is very small, but you have a great mission that history has bestowed upon you. So as for the Dafa disciples in any region, you are basically the hope for the beings in that region to be saved--their only hope, in fact. The beings there need to hear the Good News, and they need to hear you clarify the facts to them so that they can understand what Dafa is. That is why Dafa disciples' responsibilities are weighty. Then you might ask, how can you do better? I think that for you disciples, if each of you uses simply your mouth to tell the people in each region the facts, then we won't get to all of them. The energy disciples carry as they cultivate and stick to righteous thoughts and actions, as well as the mighty virtue from their cultivation, have an additional effect.

On the other hand, everything that disciples have done and everything that disciples have said when clarifying the facts causes the facts to circulate in ordinary human society and creates an environment that fosters communication among the people. Then with that environment, the discussions people have are another way for those beings to get saved, in an indirect way."

I thought about what I had achieved myself in my hometown, and I felt a little sad for having done so poorly. It was now time to finish the second exercise. I opened my eyes and found that the woman was still standing there, watching me. She came up to me, gave me a hug and said that she felt like it was predestined that she should meet me today. I smiled at her and told her to come back next Sunday to learn the exercises.