Article From UK 2002 Fa Conference

I would like to share my understanding of some experiences.

Recently I had an experience of truth clarifying which made me stop and take a look at my overall progress and how I was behaving as a practitioner.

My daughter and I went to a small fete hosted by the local community Scouts Association near where we live. It was pouring with rain but I insisted on stopping after our class to deliver leaflets. We walked round the green and almost everyone took a leaflet, some people wanted to talk about the exercises but most just smiled and moved on to look at the next stall. I thought no more of it until the lady whose name appears on the leaflet as the Guildford contact, telephoned me to say that the Guildford Rotary group would like to have a speaker on Falun Gong at one of their local meetings. Did I want to do it? I said Yes

Well, things have a way of being arranged to get the most out of a situation for the benefit of us practitioners. I understood this at the time but needed a deeper lesson in order to trust the Fa [The principles of Falun Gong] and my own cultivation process more fully. On the day of the talk, the President of the Rotary Club called me to ask if I needed directions to the venue. I had not looked at the map at that point but said I would find my way. He immediately offered to collect me and take me there. What a great opportunity to make a start on clarifying the truth.

As it happens, the tables were turned on me. I learnt all about the Rotary club and found it was an all male audience of local business men who had heard about Falun Gong on the news and were amazed to find someone in their local area who practiced. They all wanted to know more about Falun Gong itself and why it was being persecuted. I was to be the after-dinner entertainment.

All throughout the meal I felt sick. Normally when speaking to people about Falun Gong and the persecution, I talk willingly and freely; now my brain was working overtime and I had no idea what to say, my mind had gone blank. In the end I escaped to the toilet and had a serious chat with myself. What is your motivation for talking here tonight?? I questioned myself sternly. ? Is it to be so influenced by external factors that you are an ordinary person doing Dafa work, or is it as a practitioner of Falun Gong demonstrating the Fa [the principles of Falun Gong – namely Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance] by your demeanour and speech.? Well, the practitioner part won. I went back to my chair and made up some handouts to distribute after my talk. I only had 17 Compassion magazines left and, you guessed it, there were exactly 17 people.

Then it was my turn to speak. I stood up, thanked the President, introduced myself and started talking. My piece of paper to prompt myself read
1. Myself
2. Falun Gong historically
3. Persecution
4. Awareness

I covered the first three subjects very quickly as the meeting had overrun; instead of half an hour in which to speak and answer questions, I had only 10 minutes. I condensed everything to a minimum. Had I planned a talk, it would have been difficult to rearrange last thing, as it happened, I was able to gauge the mood and feelings at the time and jumped in with both feet. Imagine my surprise when at the end, everyone had questions. Everything was reversed and I had spoken for 5 minutes then answered questions for over 30 minutes. It was the depth of these questions that was unexpected; I had been given the impression that there would be little participation. Not the case at all.

Everyone accepted that the persecution was unnecessary, showing great awareness that really surprised me. I wrote that word down as my prompt to remind me to be open minded. People wanted to know more about Falun Gong itself, the philosophy, where it came from, historical perspective and so on. I managed to speak of many of the lectures in Zhuan Falun almost directly, as if reading from the book. The understanding of many of the men there came from an appreciation of Buddhist practices and yoga so they found it easy to relate to what I said.

When I first found a Falun Gong class I had been studying to be a Dharma teacher of Mahayana Buddhism, at least that had been my intention, but I was a very poor student as I was dissatisfied by the inherent restrictions and materialism with that particular path. When I first did the Falun Gong exercises I knew in my heart that I had found what I was looking for. When I read Zhuan Falun, my attachments made it easy to agree with what Master Li was saying because from my perspective his theory agreed with mine. All this had been arranged to help those people that I was now assisting directly because my erstwhile attachments meant I could understand directly where these people were coming from and could appreciate the views they were holding. I was able to be more sensitive towards their questions. Some of the men had done their homework on the Internet and had up to date information about Hong Kong, which they shared directly with the others, almost as though by my presence they had permission to speak freely and clarify the truth for themselves.

Speaking of attachments, I made a discovery as a result of this talk which has made me answer the question of why I had difficulty in clarifying the truth to some members of my family and why my friends thought that all I did was things for Falun Gong. I have had a fundamental attachment to Falun Gong itself. I have reacted selfishly and not behaved as a particle. I was not fitting in with Master Li‘s requirements of a practitioner, which is to act well in society. I was not helping because I was acting from my own point of view, rather like my initially accepting Master Li’s book because it agreed with my own thinking. This has been very well buried within me but has seriously inhibited my progress. I now realise that I need to consider all aspects of my life as a whole because I have a direct impact on my surroundings, either for positive or for negative. Just because I practice Falun Gong, it does not mean that I can ignore my responsibility. It seemed that things had been arranged to wait until I had softened up enough to accept this, at which point I would speak at a group with the same name as myself and would at last get the message by seeing my reflection. My surname is Chantry. The name of the Rotary club I spoke at, Guildford-Chantrys. Some food for thought.

Thank for you listening