(Clearwisdom.net)
Greetings respected Master! Greetings fellow practitioners!
My experience sharing topic today is: "Solidly Cultivating Myself While Doing the Three Things Well". I'll discuss this in three parts:
1.The responsibility of an assistant
2.Using the SOS car tour format to clarify the truth
3. My experiences participating in the 2006 Global Chinese New Year Gala in
Sydney
1. The Responsibility of an Assistant
In "Cultivation Practice and Taking Responsibility" (in Essentials for Further Advancement I) Master told us that
"......because a person in charge is, first of all, a cultivator who has come here for cultivation practice rather than to be in charge....."
In these few years of cultivation, I have followed Master's requirement to study the Fa, improve xinxing, and clarify the truth. I always use the standard of a cultivator to do my best. I treat fellow practitioners kindly and encourage the Fa-study group to step forward together on the path of cultivation.
At our Fa-study group, we have an elderly practitioner who is less educated, and often when we read the Fa she does not follow along. She only listens and watches, afraid that her slow reading will affect others. We all encourage her and try to help her increase her confidence. At the beginning she experienced problems with reading the wrong words or skipping a line. I realized that no matter what, we must give her opportunities. While sharing with her, I learned that she rarely studied the Fa by herself. I suggested that she read the Fa for at least an hour or more every day. She replied, "This can't be done. I do not have that much time. I have to do this and I have to do that." I did not get angry and did not complain. I knew that she was actively participating in Dafa work and it was only that she did not understand the relationship between Fa study and doing Dafa work well. I then talked with her from a perspective that she could easily understand and accept. I said to her, "In your heart you know Master is very compassionate and that Dafa is very good. Why don't you want to study the Fa more? Master uses this Dafa to save us and if you don't study the Fa well, how will you be saved? You also know that this Fa is very precious, so if you cannot read Master's articles fluently and you make many mistakes, does this indicate that you treasure this Fa?" I patiently told her to study the Fa more and that reading out loud would help her to solve the problems of studying the Fa. I said to her, "You will then slowly remember those words that you couldn't remember before and you will read more fluently. Actually, whether a person can study the Fa well or not indicates a cultivator's attitude towards Dafa, which is a very solemn issue." After this sharing, she began to pay more attention to Fa-study and arranged a time daily to study the Fa. She can now read the Fa much more fluently.Participating in Dafa activities requires assistants to endure hardship, undertake great responsibility and put forth a lot of effort. Many times there are activities in Canberra. In the past, I either took the train or went with someone else, as I never wanted to drive myself. I had never driven long distances by myself before, therefore, I didn't have the courage to do it. When practitioners from my study group needed to go to Canberra, they had to go with practitioners in other areas because they did not have a car, so my reluctance to drive affected their participation in Dafa activities.
On this issue, I realized my responsibility. I realized I must step out of myself and improve my driving ability. The important thing is always whether we want to endure hardship or not, and are we are willing to put forth more effort. After that I decided to drive to Canberra by myself. The first time I drove there I had to borrow an old car from another practitioner. At that time I was very nervous because I did not know how to get to Parliament House. I repeatedly told myself, "If there is a road ahead there must be a way to get there, as long as we have righteous thoughts." I continued to send righteous thoughts along the way. As we entered Canberra, I saw another practitioner's car in front of us with a back window sign, "Falun Dafa Is Good." I then followed her car and arrived at
While validating the Fa, I have slowly come to understand the relationship between the cultivation status of the assistant and whether he/she can keep up with the progress and change of the Fa-rectification. When the crime of organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners was exposed, I was very shocked by the brutality of this crime. I then realized the format, angle, and depth of our truth clarifying should be different than in the past. The persecution methods used by the evil has reached the most vile state, and appealing to the world to stop the persecution must be intensified. We must develop an effective approach and actively carry it out.
So, I began by taking more notice of the news about the harvesting of organs from living practitioners on the Minghui/Clearwisdom and Epochtimes websites and collecting all the articles into a database. I then printed them out and sent them to Federal MPs, State Mps, and some Mayors in the Sydney North Shore area. I also wrote to Federal MPs to clarify the truth. In addition to actively doing Dafa work myself, I also used every opportunity to share my understanding with other practitioners at Fa-study and to offer suggestions about how we should cooperate as one body. We decided to expose this crime at the first press conference in Canberra and urged the Australian government to speak out against this crime of the CCP from a moral point of view. I shared with other practitioners the purpose of this activity and the relationship to our own cultivation and the progress of Fa-rectification. I helped them to have a good understanding and righteous thoughts to support this activity. In order to help practitioners to arrive at the activity in the best state of body and mind, I suggested they bring Master's "Essentials for Further Advancement" and Hong Yin. Our studying, memorizing and sharing of the Fa on the way to the activity made the field pure and righteous. Everyone arrived full of energy and ready to make their participation in the activity an opportunity for them to improve.
2. Using the SOS Car Tour Format to Clarify the Truth
Former Canadian MP David Kilgour and European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan Scott visited Australia in August. Following this visit, Australian society paid more attention to the organ harvesting atrocities. At first, Australian practitioners were not sure how to proceed in order to make good use of this opportunity to further clarify the truth to the government and citizens. We did not want to lose this opportunity! During sharing, a practitioner suggested we use an SOS car tour to clarify the truth. I thought this was a very good idea. An SOS car tour would allow us to clarify the truth in many different parts of Australia and collect petition signatures along the way. We would be able to spread the plan of the CIPFG to more people and urge the Australian government to help with the investigation of the CIPFG. I wrote a proposal about the suggested SOS car tour and asked the FXH to email it to everyone. Then I started to plan the SOS car tour with the practitioner who suggested the idea.
Our car tour team was made up of four adult practitioners and one child and lasted for three days. We went to eight councils, three Federal MPs' offices and one State MP's office. We also visited five local media and were interviewed by four of them. Out of the eight councils, we were able to meet with three mayors. After talking to the mayors, they all expressed their support. The mayor in Taree wrote a letter to the Chinese Government asking them to stop the brutal persecution of Falun Gong. He also promised to write to the Australian Federal Government, requesting their support for an independent investigation of CIPFG. Recently I received a reply letter from the Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, MP. In his letter he said that he has tabled the hundreds of petition signatures that we obtained from his constituents in Taree and Port Stephen and expressed his understanding and support.
This car tour helped me understand that belief in Master and the Fa are a cultivator's purpose for doing anything. Every step Dafa disciples take in the Fa Rectification process is arranged by Master. We must have a pure heart in everything we do. We will be able to achieve what Master has arranged as long as we do not go forth with a "work mentality," attachments, or pursuit. From forming a team, to planning the car tour, there were a lot of things to do! I did not think about anything, but just did it step by step. Whatever needed to come about just seemed to happen, and planning was done smoothly. All practitioners on the team were well organized and everyone's unique abilities were utilized. During the process, every one of us cooperated well, and no one became attached to their own idea or just did whatever he/she wanted. We also did not argue. I really felt the energy as a result of coordination of the one body, and the power of Dafa showed through the pure hearts and righteous thoughts of the practitioners. All this occurred because we were able to "do without pursuit," and therefore we were able to achieve much.
3. My Experiences
As part of the preparations for the 2006 Gala, I was responsible for selling tickets. This task was specific and complicated. If I treated this as a job but not cultivation, I really couldn't continue. Since the New Year Gala is a Dafa activity, all practitioners were needed to help. Assistance from Sydney practitioners made it possible for us to establish places for selling tickets in many suburbs that have a large Chinese population. Many practitioners wore beautiful Tang costumes or were made up as flying beauties when they went out to Martin Place and Pitt Street Mall in Sydney to distribute flyers. Epoch Times practitioners also took responsibility to sell some of the tickets. Practitioners with marketing experience also helped sell tickets. After Dafa disciples' hearts were moved, selling tickets became more successful, and all tickets were sold out three days before the performance.
From my perspective, because participating in Dafa activities is cultivation, even though I was very busy, I managed to maintain studying the Fa every day. I made use of travel time to study the Fa and read Master's articles every day. While reading Essentials to Further Advancement, I felt everything around me had disappeared except the article in my hand and myself. I felt every word and sentence in Master's Fa from the bottom of my heart. As I rectified the impure and non-righteous thoughts in my mind, I could feel the pure energy around me. Studying the Fa can help me to keep my mind clear and better understand what I am doing. On the surface, the work seemed no different than an everyday person's job, but I used a cultivator's heart to do it. I distributed two thousand tickets, and I have a clear record of every one of them. Every cent was accounted for. I saw that some practitioners' understanding of the Fa concerning the ticket prices and the sales of tickets was not very clear, and therefore they didn't do well. On the other hand, I also saw many practitioners who had righteous thoughts while selling the tickets. By seeing what was done right and what was done wrong, I could understand the meaning of saving sentient beings. All this reminded me that my responsibility was very great. It is very important to walk my path righteously. I should not back down on principle issues, but I also reminded myself not to be too attached to my own views. Since we did not have a lot of experience with this kind of activity before, we had to be understanding of others when we didn't do well. Through the preparation of the Chinese New Year Gala, I learned many things. Most importantly, I understood the solemnness of cultivation.
Preparations for the 2007 Global Chinese New Year Spectacular have begun! This year we have to organize four performances, so this task is even harder and more difficult than last year. However, I believe that if we meet our obligations as cultivators, believe in Master and Dafa, and have a pure heart in achieving what Master wants us to achieve, there won't be any barriers that we can't overcomeFinally I would like to quote Master's "Dafa is Great" from Hong Yin II to share with fellow practitioners:
Dafa is Great
Falun Dafa is great
The colossal firmament,
illuminated by the Fa's light
Only after the immense force
of Fa-rectification sweeps through,
Are the boundless wonders known
Falun Dafa is great
Gradually enters the human realm
The sentient beings need not worry
Gods and Buddhas are smiling
Thank you,
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