(Clearwisdom.net) I was part of a recent Truth-Compassion-Forbearance Art Exhibit in the German city of Cham. Here, I wish to share some of my experiences with all of you.

Preparation

1. Locating the art exhibit site

I live in a very small city, yet the site for the art exhibit should be large. In March of last year I went to the City Cultural Office and Cultural Divisions to inquire for a suitable location, but they could not find one, and the only gallery in town already had a full schedule of events for 2006. Later, I remembered Stadthalle. We held Dafa activities there over the last two years. But its schedule showed only one open week in September. We talked about the rent. The manager, showing understanding toward the nature of our activities, leased it to us at his most preferential price. I discussed the possibility with the organizing group and all felt that we could host the art exhibition there.

The nearby city of Passau is relatively larger than our city. The local practitioners there spent a lot of time and energy to find a place. Churches, galleries, and cultural venues were all fully scheduled. Because of the time limitation, practitioners from Passau could only host the art exhibit before October, so they finally rented a conference room at popular hotel chain. The rent was high. Considering every aspect, they still made the decision. I felt that the hotel environment was gracious and was a good place for the art exhibit. I felt it was worth the expense if our practitioners could afford it. Furthermore, the visitors would also regard our art exhibit as a high quality exhibit.

I have a suggestion: if some practitioners plan to hold an art exhibit in the near future, yet they can only find locations that charge fees, they do not have to worry. Venues often offer well-discounted rent after they know what our purpose for renting their facility is.

The whole process of seeking the exhibit site provides us with a great opportunity to clarify the truth and positively influence the arts community with righteous thoughts. We can also meet people that we would not have a chance to meet otherwise, and they can connect to Dafa via our efforts to seek the exhibition site. So it will never be a waste of time, even if we cannot find the art exhibit site. Moreover, many obstacles will be broken through layer-by-layer. In the end it could appear as if we found the art exhibit by chance, yet in reality it was because we constantly clarified the truth and eliminated obstacles (that we found it). It seemed that at last our efforts were reflected into this human dimension and we found a site suitable in every aspect for our art exhibit.

2. Transporting the actual pieces of art work and the opening ceremony

There are forty paintings. Some of them are even taller than a person; therefore we used a minibus to transport them. The tasks that needed to be done included transporting the art to the exhibit site, carefully unpacking the art, arranging the exhibit, taking the art down after the exhibit, re-packing the art works and transporting them back to the storage room. This bit of work required the cooperation of three to five practitioners. It was a large amount of work, and there was lots of inference as well. Trouble would arise if we slacked off even a little bit.

A new practitioner suddenly got the feeling of being heavily beaten on the back when he moved the pictures. He really couldn't move. Later on he recovered quickly through studying the Fa. This event also became this new practitioner's experience of validating the Fa.

My husband is not a practitioner. After he helped us take down the art frames and pack them up, he also suffered a heavy "illness." His symptoms appeared in the same way as some symptoms I suffered before when I handed the German President a petition letter. It felt easy and smooth in the process of handing over the letter, but I felt bad after I got back home. The "illness" almost made me collapse. Later, I enlightened to the importance of relaxing but not slacking. When I felt that I had already done my job, my righteous thought vanished. Whenever I have strong righteous thoughts, the evils are unable to persecute me. Once I slack off, the evils immediately try to hurt me.

As for this art exhibit, I held a clear understanding that no matter if the art exhibit was on or it was already over, under all circumstances I should keep righteous thoughts. This time I was fine. However my husband, who is quite supportive to Dafa, collapsed. This incident illustrates that I need to improve my understanding of the Fa. Each time we will encounter different tests and difficulties. I happened to read an experience-sharing article around that time. It talked about "jumping out of personal cultivation and sending forth righteous thoughts." When in the face of persecution, the righteous thoughts that Dafa practitioners should send out are: "Completely eliminate the evils that persecute me" or "Completely eliminate the evils that persecute Dafa." Such righteous thoughts could completely change the situation around. I found my problem. I still hadn't completely melted into the "Fa-rectification" with my thoughts.

After the art exhibit in Cham was over, a warm-hearted person helped us with the transportation. He once attended the nine-day Fa lecture video classes, but later attended some other lectures. When he came to see the art exhibit, it deeply touched him. When he stood before the statue, "The Lord of Buddhas" an imperceptible power lifted him up and pulled him forward. He lost his balance when standing there. He also continually said, "The energy is very powerful. The energy is very powerful." After he finished viewing the exhibit, he sat down on a bench to sleep in the exhibition place. After he woke up we were just about to have group Fa-study, so he stayed and listened to us. It happened that the chapter we read was actually describing his situation.

We shared our understandings based on the Fa with our friend. He then thanked us by voluntarily helping us with the transportation using his minibus. He also consented to the use of his minibus to help us transport the art to Passau without requesting any payment. We thought that everything was so well prepared that we got careless in our thinking again, and the day before the art exhibit [in Passau], we heard that our friend was hospitalized. I personally felt that I was too careless with this issue. It was fortunate that practitioners from Passau were able to rent a minibus before the opening of the art exhibit.

As for that man, he was surprisingly misdiagnosed and thus suffered many days in the hospital without any real health problem.

All of these things were obviously interference. Part of the reason we were interfered with was because I didn't treat the art exhibit in other cities the same way as I did the one in our city. They were all for rescuing sentient beings. Why did I pay attention to them differently? We also found that the evil was waiting for opportunities. As long as we had a loophole, it would immediately do damage to us. However, we have the Fa. "While a demon is one foot tall, a Tao would be one yard high." It seemed from one vantage point that the phenomenon was chaotic, but in actuality, everything was being rectified according to the Fa. The entire process of preparing for the art exhibit let me witness the Fa's aspect of "encompassing everything and leaving out nothing." Building on past experiences of Dafa activities, I also became calmer when encountering unexpected situations. This calmness originated from my firm belief in Dafa, because what I saw was that no interference had a way to surpass Dafa.

During the opening ceremony of the Cham exhibit I couldn't figure out how to switch on the power, so we couldn't use the lighting and sound system. After a brief discussion we decided not to use the speaker. The voices of the two honored guests were loud, yet the voice of Volker, the main coordinator of the art exhibit, was very soft at the start. He seemed to be oppressed by something. Gradually, his voice became clearer and louder, and we could hear him very clearly, even backstage. The overall atmosphere became very calm. Every person was listening carefully. Time seemed to stop at that moment. The opening ceremony was a success. A new practitioner and her friend were deeply moved. She said that we were covered in a strong merciful energy. Her friend said that the opening ceremony touched the most inner part of her heart. The mayor visited the exhibit before it opened. The mayor had told us previously that his schedule was quite full, and that he had another engagement to attend to right away after the opening ceremony. In actuality, the mayor did not leave until after the entire ceremony was over, including the dance performances, speeches and exercises performances. For a busy politician, "coming early and leaving late" is a rare occurrence. I thought it was the right and pure harmony of Dafa that let him stay.

I would like to mention what our group did in preparation for the opening ceremony. One practitioner bought a Chinese tea set that included one pot and six cups. Another practitioner brought Chinese tea. Another practitioner took the responsibility of infusing tea and changing and washing the cups. After the ceremony, we found that the practitioner put too much tea in the cup and the tea was too bitter. We need to be more careful about even such small details next time. We also bought some snacks from the Chinese grocery store. We covered the table with a yellow paper tablecloth, and decorated it with all sorts of lotus flowers. A practitioner prepared potted landscape grown from new chlorophytum shoots to make the table look more vibrant. The practitioner also prepared many decorated pots filled with flower shoots and sent them home with visitors as souvenirs. A German practitioner came up with that idea. I think German practitioners are generally more considerate in such respects.

I thought that as long as we have the mind to do something, we would for sure have the wisdom to do it properly. No need to mention that we are beings cultivating according to Dafa. Dafa already endowed us with all the capabilities that we need to rescue sentient beings. The only thing is that we need to have the righteous thoughts to use them.

3. Promoting the Art Exhibition

We used two main ways to promote the art exhibition. One was to distribute the exhibition flyers and the other was to hang posters. Practitioners printed many inexpensive but attractive flyers. Hanging the posters was also a process to validate Dafa. Because the evils were afraid of the posters being posted publicly, immediately the weather became bad. For two weeks it was cloudy and raining. Again and again I was hesitant to go out to distribute the posters and felt much pressure. I needed to ride a bike to distribute the posters, but as soon as I decided to go out it would rain. After giving up several times I felt I shouldn't accept the negative situation. The evils would not retreat or disappear automatically; practitioners needed to take action for the weather to change. I decided to wear a raincoat and protect the bag of posters from the rain. In fact, the evils had no strength. Once I had this righteous thought, the rain stopped after I had posted only a few posters.

The week before the art exhibition I got temporary work distributing a newspaper. While distributing the newspaper I distributed our exhibition flyers as well. This temporary job was unimaginably laborious. Because the newspaper headquarters did not support Dafa and refused to advertise our art exhibition I felt very bad. The newspaper that week seemed weightless in my hand. In fact, when I didn't do well, the sentient beings all felt disappointed in me. Later when I went to the newspaper agent to clarify the truth, I even cried when talking about the persecution. The human mentality in my mind made me cry since I felt the persecution was so serious and the newspaper agent did not seem to see it. The reporter understood my feeling and published a short news blurb about the exhibition. If at that time I would have had more righteous thoughts and looked at the issue from the perspective of Fa-rectification (instead of just the persecution), the situation might have been different.

About posting the posters, I suggest that fellow practitioners could prepare some gifts, such as the bookmarks with small lotus flowers hanging off of them, and send them to those who allow our posters to be posted. People were all very surprised and pleased when we did this. Some immediately hung the lotus flowers in their stores. I told them the lotus flowers would bring them luck. I also suggested that others put three to five copies of flyers at every place that gives permission to leave information there. Everything is for the Fa. The people at these stores are waiting for the Fa. Sometimes, when I hadn't even told people yet what I came for, their expression indicated that they knew a good thing was coming. I believed that everyone who allowed us to post our posters would have wonderful futures, so I tried my best to give opportunities to more people. According to my experience, if for any reason a poster was not posted immediately, I would kindly ask them if they could hang it up right away or chat with them briefly. The effect was much better, and at the same time I could send righteous thoughts to clean out the field.

Hanging up posters takes a lot of time. One practitioner would be quite limited on their own. We need to communicate with other practitioners and get more people involved. Initially I tried doing this job by myself, and other practitioners didn't seem to have the understanding to help. When I encountered difficulties I always thought of quitting. Other practitioners even initially felt I should not take the initiative to hold the art exhibition in our city. Through sharing our thoughts we became clear on the meaning of the art exhibition - to awaken the kindness in sentient beings' minds, to inspire people to think about the meaning of life, and to help end the persecution through awakening the conscience and righteousness of people. Moreover, the art exhibition was new to Germany, even in Europe. A good beginning could help the future exhibitions; therefore, we should put more effort into this exhibition and also ask more practitioners in Germany for support. Many practitioners wrote emails to help and to encourage me. I then felt the load on me had become lighter and I no longer felt puzzled. Our team also operated more proactively.

There is another way to promote the exhibition, that is, to hang a single banner along the main road. In the city of Cham, we usually hang the banner on a metal fence that surrounds a sports field along the main road. I noticed many banners there previously. Later, when we went to the Ordnungsamt for a permit, although we got the permit, the person in charge seemed reluctant to issue the permit and did not show much patience for us. Maybe he thought what were doing was meaningless. China was too far from this small city. Nevertheless, I needed him to grant the permit. His permit could make more people hear the positive news about Dafa.

Later, I kept contacting him and clarified the truth further. A new practitioner who had a business contact with him came forward to clarify the truth as well. The person in charge knew this new practitioner. When he saw she practiced Falun Gong and even stood in the city square calling for a stop to the persecution, he was very shocked. Last year our banner elicited negative comments from another city office. The Ordnungsamt stepped forward to resolve the misunderstanding. Now the situation has improved a lot and things have become easier. We prepared a 0.8m x 3m banner for the art exhibition. If we could hang it in a high-traffic area two weeks before the exhibition, it would be very good promotion. Cham does not charge for hanging a banner. When we had an "Information Day" the city government also didn't charge us.

Since the staff knew our activities were non-profit, with the purpose of exposing the persecution, they often gave us special deals. This was the knowing side of the human beings at work.

What was really a pity was that our banner could not be hung in front of the Hotel venue in Passau City. I felt we hadn't clarified the truth to a certain depth. On the same day as our exhibit the hotel was the site of a cosmetology health conference. Since their banner was hung high and was quite attractive, some people with predestined relationships came to visit our exhibition.

I have read articles on the Clearwisdom website where young practitioners are describing how they saw our banners sending out Falun and cleaning up people's energy fields as they walk by. If one reads the banners carefully, their bodies would benefit. Of course, we should not be attached to such results. I knew it was good for people and just did my best. Whenever I hung up a banner, I would send out a righteous thought and hope the banner would do its best in rescuing sentient beings.

4. Sending invitations to clarify the truth to the media, politicians and cultural offices

We prepared two types of invitation cards for the art exhibit. One was to invite people in person. We designed our own art exhibition bookmark (designed with Publisher software, printed on photo paper, with nine bookmarks per page) with the exhibition time, place and contact on the back of the bookmark. We attached the invitation bookmark on the small lotus flower and delivered it in person to particular people we wanted to invite. Another type of invitation card was designed for mailing, without a lotus flower, but with a golden string. It could be kept as a useful bookmark. Besides the invitation card, we also prepared a one-page letter. The letter included the text of the speech of a European Parliament congressman given during the opening ceremony of an art exhibition in Sweden, as well as an art exhibition news piece from the German Epoch Times. Whoever received our invitation would know the exhibition was somber and meaningful, and would also know the existence of the Epoch Times.

Those who received our invitations were all fortunate; therefore, we tried to send out more. I was initially hesitant about whether it was worth it to spend so much time on this. Practitioners later told me that the opportunities should be given, but whether or not people accept them depends on them. I realized we should not make any assumptions while choosing whom to send out the invitations to. I spent one night searching out contacts for many TV stations, radio stations and other major media, and sent the invitations to the people in charge. I sent forth righteous thoughts as well. Later I contacted the TV reporters I knew from before when I sent an appeal letter to the German president.

Although a chief editor decided not to report the art exhibition, the staff thanked me for thinking of them and letting them know the exhibition information. We also tried to contact the weekly Kaufland Supermarket in-house flyer and hoped they would introduce Dafa and the art exhibition in their health section. During this communication we found that they misunderstood us and thought we were involved in politics. We replied with a letter that stated clearly why Dafa suffered persecution.

With consideration for the politicians and media who were quite busy, one week before the art exhibition we reminded them through email about the meaning and value of our art exhibition.

I am quite familiar with the local media because I have visited them many times in the past two years. One of the reporters told me that because I always went to their newspaper agent, they all knew about the persecution of Falun Gong and knew me. I didn't realize when I clarified the truth to the chief editor that the reporters around listened to me as well, and that they might discuss Falun Gong among themselves. As a matter of fact, the local newspapers had reported on Falun Gong quite a bit. Some reports were very good. I would clear the field whenever I went to a newspaper agent. I always send an email first and then go there in person to talk about what activity we are going to have. A face-to-face meeting can make a reporter feel the importance of the event and pay more attention. If something goes wrong, it is easy to communicate in time. Thinking from the point of view of those reporters, they will receive many emails every day and they may not specifically pay attention to Falun Gong. When we visit in person, it may take just three to five minutes. Sometimes it will be longer if the reporter is interested. Master has talked about how the old forces separated things on the surface from truths in other dimensions. Because of the old forces' separation, many ordinary people are restrained and show insensitivity toward Dafa. No matter what the situations are, and what the attitudes of the worldly people are, we just do what we should do, clarifying the truth persistently.

Based on past experience I expected the local newspapers to report on the exhibition; but they did not. This was a big xinxing test for me. The paper didn't write detailed reports in their major sections like before. One reporter even said that the newspaper headquarters had instructed him not to report on Falun Gong any more. The same newspaper reported our activities on their front page last year. Other reporters that I knew did not wish to attend the opening ceremony of the art exhibit. The two reporters who did go wrote very brief articles on the event. This situation reflected my attachments, including my complacency after achieving proactive media reports earlier, as well as the strong mentality of validating myself.

We've encountered similar difficulties when inviting the Landratsamt congressman and cooperating with the local Cham District Cultural Department on the art exhibitions. The people we were in contact with all went on vacation. The person in charge even thought Dafa practitioners were getting political, so they didn't provide any support for Dafa. Through clarifying the truth we made them change their point of view of Dafa. But our righteous thoughts were not strong enough. We gave up after encountering the difficulties and didn't take further actions in clarifying the truth to the congressman and the headquarters of the various news agencies. There weren't unanimous opinions amongst practitioners about what to do, which resulted in non-action and made it a regret overall. Looking back, continuing to clarify the truth, reaching out to the congressman, and reaching out to the reporters could not be wrong in and of itself. It was an issue with our mindset. The German practitioners thought we should respect others' decisions and not approach them again and again. But I personally think that they didn't provide support to Dafa because they didn't know the truth. We have to let them know the truth. I then thought of what Master said in Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York:

Many newspapers outside of the Cham area published information about this art exhibition. Maybe it was because we sent invitations to the neighboring cities' newspapers. The majority of the invitations went to city hall. From organizing activities for Dafa in the past, I've met lots of personnel from different city departments. I have always sent the invitations myself. I thought this might be an important factor towards the mayor coming to address the opening ceremony. Although most of the government officials didn't come to the art exhibition, sending the invitations helped clean up their environment. Certainly, the more important thing is that we, along with Mr. Romer, a member of the German Human Rights Commission, we got a chance to make an appointment with the mayor and were able to clear up the obstacles in his mind ahead of time. I also remember that last year I sent the majority of the invitations to the news agencies. I invited all reporters from different agencies. Although only one reporter came, at last there was a full-page report in the newspaper. Mr. Romer said it was very rare for a newspaper to use this much space on human rights abuses. And of course, I didn't want to have attachments to results. I only thought of it and did it. So I feel that every invitation has its function, no matter whether or not the invitee actually shows up or not.

Preparing the exhibition layout and some experiences during the exhibition

Many practitioners cared to make sure that the exhibition hall was the right size for the pictures. Cham's exhibition hall was at least 300 square meters. Passau had about 150 square meters of space. We did not display all of the art works in these spaces. Based on the exhibition layout and practitioners' understanding of the art works, we made some selections. Because the art exhibition encompasses such profound content, if we were to explain each one of them it would take at least one hour. During the opening ceremony of the Passau Art Exhibition, practitioners explained each painting in detail. One elderly lady found it too long, and pulled up a chair to listen. She moved her chair when the guide went on. If we were to allow time for interaction with the visitors, it would take an even longer time.

At the exhibition hall in Cham we arranged an artistic guest information desk. We had elegant notebooks for visitors to leave their comments, Dafa books, exhibition brochures; a booklet called "The Truth about the Persecution of Falun Gong," and postcards. In the middle was a painting depicting different lotus flowers. On the other two desks were different printed materials, such as "The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party," flyers for withdrawing from the CCP, truth-clarification materials, and petitions for the International Human Rights Committee.

A good exhibition guide is critical for fully bringing into play the power of "Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance" in the art exhibition. Prior to the art exhibition I had an extreme understanding, which was: "as long as the visitors see the art works, they will understand everything." So all we had to do was display the paintings for visitors to enjoy themselves. But in reality, this was not the case. We needed to help the visitors understand the true meanings of the paintings. Even our practitioners did not truly comprehend the meaning of some of the art works without the guides' explanations. When practitioners practiced being exhibition guides with each other, the inner meanings of the paintings often made us cry.

At first I didn't pay attention to the importance of the exhibition guide. I didn't spend too much time preparing for it. German practitioners took the responsibility for guiding visitors during weekends. One time when I was the only one at the exhibition, I noticed a couple walking around. It took them only about ten minutes to see the whole exhibit. I thought to myself: such a wonderful exhibition; how come they were not moved? It didn't seem right. When they took the Dafa newspaper, they said they still didn't know what Falun Gong was and wanted to take the paper home to read more. I realized that it was very necessary to guide this kind of visitor. Later, I tried to guide more visitors and communicate with them; subsequently their experience was quite different. Many visitors actually had their own understandings of the paintings, which were very helpful to us as well. In the meantime it helped us deepen our understanding of the Fa.

The moment I saw the painting Vow I felt it was so beautiful. To me it depicted the idea of sanctity in heaven. Later, fellow practitioners told me that the Buddhas, Taos and gods in the painting were all practitioners in heaven. I suddenly felt very close to the painting. But how do we explain this to non-practitioners? We can't say it directly. We understand that this painting represents the time before Dafa practitioners came to the human world, when they made their vows to Master to come to the human world to help with the Fa-rectification. I felt that I could only tell our visitors this truth in the form of a legend. I told them: "There were once deities that came from the heavens, but before they came down, they made vows that they would fulfill in the human world. Our practitioners' understanding of these vows is to spread the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance. At last, with the turning of the Law Wheel, they will return to the wonderful places they came from."

After a lady listened to this introduction she was moved and said that the muddy river [in the painting] represented the human world to her. She said that once you come to this world, it's too hard not to drown in the river. Then she said that she hadn't been happy at all in life, she always felt very tired. I told her that in this muddy world, as human beings, we are truly suffering. But the real purpose of life, I told her, is not to suffer; it's to understand the true meaning of life and jump out of the suffering by taking a path back to our real home. Her eyes brightened as if she had recognized the Great Way. She showed enthusiastic interest in Falun Gong. I lent her some Dafa books. She said she would read the whole book right after she went home. In the guest book she wrote that she was very thankful for the opportunity to share, and hoped Falun Gong could be spread all over the world. I understood that this painting had awakened a long-lost memory in her, which is why she was so excited. I suddenly understood what Master said in Zhuan Falun, that De "is accumulated from a remote age." What's in that painting is that remote age. It contains the thought of coming down to the human world to save sentient beings!

All in all, practitioners who were involved in the two art exhibitions have gained many good experiences. The art exhibitions rescued sentient beings and purified us as well.

Practitioners have put together introductory materials for the art works. In fact, there are many introductions of the art works published on Zhengjian.net. The artists' commentaries helped us greatly as exhibition guides.

The practitioners in Cham didn't read the detailed background information prior to the exhibition. They viewed the art works with their own mindsets, which caused interference later. We should all pay attention to this lesson.

I hope the above experiences will help promote future art exhibitions. The Truthfulness- Compassion-Forbearance Art Exhibition is a great thing in the Fa-rectification period. If all Dafa practitioners try their best to do it well, the path of validating the Fa will get wider and wider.

My own level is limited, so please point out anything improper. Thank you!