Improve My Xinxing During Fa Rectification

(Shared at 2001 Chicago Conference)

Hello,

My name is Tim and I'm a practitioner from Cincinnati Ohio. I'd like to share just a few of my recent cultivation experiences with you. Over the past several months I've attended several experience sharing conferences and it has really helped me a lot. In February I went to Los Angles. The first morning of the Conference we had a press conference, which was followed by a parade through Chinatown. While walking in the parade I noticed that the people that were stopped in traffic by the parade didn't seem annoyed or upset by the traffic. Mostly they just seemed curious or smiled. After the parade there was a break for lunch. My friends from Cincinnati had a meeting to attend so I was own my own for lunch. As I walked away from the Plaza where all the practitioners were gathered I noticed I still had on my bright yellow Falun Gong T-shirt. I felt a little uncomfortable and I was afraid that people would think I was part of some strange group or something. This was due to all my own attachments and fearful thoughts. I considered taking it off, and I was really uncomfortable about it for a few minutes and then I decided it would be good to keep it on. I walked through an open-air market and a few people seemed to notice the shirt but I was feeling more at ease with it and eventually stopped feeling awkward at all. I stopped in front of a busy Mexican restaurant to look at the menu, as I was looking it over; two women at an outdoor table began asking me questions about my T-shirt, "Who are these people in yellow shirts and what is Falun Gong?" I started to tell them a little bit about our cultivation practice. They quickly became interested and invited me to join them at their table so I could tell them more. This was really nice, as the restaurant was very busy and in this way I was seated immediately and I got to sit with these nice people and talk to them about Falun Gong. I understand these moments, when people ask me about Falun Gong, as very precious. Sacred. No matter what doubts sometimes linger with me about Falun Gong I always see these clearly as my own attachments and make an effort to speak very truthfully and plainly to anyone interested in Falun Dafa. I think this may be their opportunity to begin their cultivation. The two ladies and I talked all through lunch about Falun Gong and they were very interested and enthusiastic, though the one lady felt that to improve the situation in China we needed a big time celebrity to endorse Falun Gong and that that would solve the problem. I explained that it might be a little more complicated than this, and thought to myself that this was LA after all.

One day in March in Cincinnati a few of us went downtown to collect signatures for petitions to the U.N. The first 10 or 15 people that I spoke to flatly refused to sign and wouldn't talk at all. I began to feel that this was a reflection of my cultivation and felt sad and a little self-conscious. I was thinking that I must not be a very good practitioner. There weren't many people downtown on this Sunday afternoon and it was so windy and cold that I began to feel very discouraged. Slowly people began to stop and talk and some signed the petition. Sometimes I thought I could predict who would and wouldn't sign by their appearance but I was often incorrect. I found that to be a valuable lesson, that I shouldn't ever deprive someone of their opportunity to obtain the Fa due to my assumptions. Many of the homeless and the street people were very concerned for the practitioners in China and were happy to sign. Many of them seemed to have great compassion for others amidst their own suffering. Sometimes the homeless were embarrassed or ashamed that they didn't have a home address to write on the petition. I tried to assure them that what was in their hearts was more important than their address. A lot of the black people were sensitive to the issue of police abuse and were eager to help as well.

One very old lady was waiting to cross the street when I asked her if she would like to sign a petition. As I held it out to her she told me that she had cataracts in her eyes and was mostly blind and that she didn't want to sign anything she couldn't read. I told her I was happy to read it to her and explain the situation in China. She said O.K and I read the petition to her and she seemed a little hesitant to sign. I didn't want to be pushy so I told her that was fine too. A young couple came up next to me and they seemed curious about the petition so I talked to them for a couple of minutes, and they both signed it, the whole time the old lady stayed at my side so when the young couple had left I turned back to the old lady and spoke with her some more about Falun Dafa and the people in China. She seemed to perk up a little and asked me " are these people serving God? " I told her that they were and seemed to think about that for a minute and then she told me that she would say a prayer for them. I told her I thought that would be nice too. She still didn't want to leave and I asked her again if she wanted to sign our petition. She seemed to really want to, but something was holding her back. For her sake I hoped that she would, but I felt she should do so of her own volition. She stayed around a few moments longer and then left without signing. I felt a little bit sad about that, until few moments later Ce-Ce, our youngest practitioner in Cincinnati, came running down the sidewalk to me and told about an old lady that had just walked right up and signed the petition. I asked Ce-Ce to describe her and it the same old lady. I felt very happy for her.

When I went to the International conference in Geneva, I went to the practice sight the first morning, near the big chair and the U.N. headquarters. It was raining and cold and muddy and I felt irritated by the soggy conditions. When we were lining up to do the exercises some practitioners were helping to get everyone in straight lines and one person would ask me to move a little to my left and a minute later someone else would come by and ask me to move a little to my right and this also irritated me. I even snapped a little at the second guy and said something about well, which is it? a little to the left or the right? I felt embarrassed as soon as I said it and the guy next to me looked over at me like he was a little surprised. As we began to do the exercises I started to become more aware of the thought karma that I was being bothered by and by the time we finished several sets of the standing exercises and a little while of sitting meditation I was astounded at the change in myself. I felt light as air and very free of the karma that was trying to pull me away just a little while earlier.

I was supposed to go to a meeting at the U.N. with some of the others that proofread the reports from China, and I had to find another practitioner to show her where we were to be picked up for the meeting. I walked through the practitioners and found her and offered to take her to the meeting place and asked if she would like to get some lunch before we went to the meeting. She said yes, and we set off. As we walked away from the practice sight I was telling how much more peaceful I was then when I got there and how grateful I was for that. She was in a fit of thought karma and was thinking seriously of stopping practicing and told me of the terrible time she had in even getting herself to the conference. I have had such struggles with thought karma myself, very strong at times, that it was easy for me to share a lot of these kinds of experiences with her over lunch and I think we both found it beneficial to share honestly all the doubts and fears we had experienced. I think now that maybe Master Li had arranged for us to meet each other before we went to the U.N. so that we could have a clear mind and a benevolent heart when we went to meet the U.N. representatives. When I was flying home from Europe I got up to use the restroom and I saw a big basket of chocolate bars that I thought the flight attendants must be about to offer, and they were also about to show a film. I thought this will be really nice, I'd like to watch a film and eat a big chocolate bar. But when I got back to my seat I had another thought. I wondered if I could get my legs crossed for meditation in the airplane seat if I lifted the armrest next to me, as there was no one sitting there. When I tried that I found that I could, so I got out my CD player and put in the music for the 5^th exercise, and then I wondered if I could sit for a whole hour with my legs crossed. Up to that point I had always stopped at 45 minutes, I was afraid of the pain that might come in those last 15 minutes. So I sat there with my legs crossed for a full hour as I flew over the Atlantic Ocean and it was very nice. I felt so good sitting there like that. Just as the music ended, and I put my hands into the Heshi position, the flight attendant was at my side asking me if I wanted a chocolate bar. I thought that was very funny, like a nice little reward for trying a little harder as a practitioner.

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At the recent conference in New York I experienced for the first time attending an experience sharing conference without being plagued by thought karma and also without getting sleepy during the papers, as has always been the case with me. This was a really big change for me and I felt so grateful for this. I was happy to be in the parade and wear my yellow shirt and I kept a calm heart amidst all the hecklers from China. During one of the papers, when Noah from New York was talking about how he had often heard others talk of having their heart moved by the beauty of the Fa or being brought to tears he felt that this had not happened to him, and then told a story of seeing the Chinese character for heart in his meditation. As he told his story I felt that I hadn't ever been moved to tears in Falun Dafa either, and then I instantly thought "I have so many attachments" it was a very clear and honest thought and I felt a little sad and resigned to it. Immediately following this thought I had a very sharp pain in the center of my forehead and then I thought of that old lady that finally signed the petition and in my heart I was truly moved. I was so happy for her, and I thought that she might have waited many lifetimes to do that, to take that one action that might change her forever.

Over the past weeks I have been struggling with a test at my job. Some of the guys I work had been behaving very badly and I was really trying to be a good practitioner and not have anger in my heart for them but every day it seemed to get worse, both their behavior and my anger towards them. The place I work in is a scenery shop. It's often loud and these guys would never clean up their area, so it was also very dirty and the work is sometimes quite physical. Right now we are very busy so I'm working long hours and every day I come home very tired and dirty and unhappy with my job and myself. I felt that this must be where my karma has led me, and that I'm not a very good person, and I think that I must have got the idea that good people work in clean places and are surrounded by other nice people, not a bunch of guys that are mean to everyone all day. At times I tried to see this as a really good environment in which to cultivate, but often I was struggling with an attachment for comfort and ease. And each time I found myself getting angry with my co-workers I felt worse about myself. Amidst the long hours and the unhappiness that was growing each day I was trying to be sure to practice two hours a day, which was getting hard to do. Sometimes I would try to get up early and do the standing exercises in the morning so I only needed an hour in the evening to do the sitting. But often I was so tired in the mornings it was all could to get myself to work. I think I even began to resent all the time I needed to practice. During lunch I would read from Zhuan Falun or Essentials for Further Advances, and I would gain a clear insight into the problems I was having, but as soon as I came back from lunch I would be upset again and even more disappointed with myself. I began writing e-mails to a friend that is a local practitioner, and this was very helpful. One day this attachment became so painful that I was actually surprised at how much pain I was in. I started to really look into myself as much as I could. I could see many times in the past when I had been a bully and a big shot and said a lot of bad things about others, just as my co-workers were doing. I also saw that when I was very small my older brothers often treated me much the way these guys were, and how I often reacted with anger, and I thought maybe this was my opportunity to react with benevolence despite their behavior. I thought about the practitioners in China and the awful abuses they are subjected to daily, and the guards that act shamelessly. After a while I noticed that I no longer felt heavy and angry and in pain; but I actually felt quite good. By this time everyone else had left work for the day but I had some things I wanted to finish before I left. I ended up working 12 hours and still when I went home I didn't even feel tired. I felt that maybe this problem had been solved until the next day when I went to work and I was and angry all over again and they acted worse then ever and I felt so discouraged. I e-mailed my friend that I felt that I couldn't pass this test and that I wasn't a good practitioner at all. I read Master Li's article that day that says:

áá A wicked person is born of jealousy.á Out of selfishness and anger

he complains about unfairness towards himself.

áááááá A benevolent person always has a heart of compassion.á With no

discontent or hatred, he takes hardship as joy.

áááááá An enlightened being has no attachments at all.á He quietly observes

the everyday people blinded by delusion.

I felt that I was being the wicked person that was complaining about unfairness towards myself. I was completely discouraged. My friend, meanwhile wanted to forward our e-mail discussions to the other practitioners in our area, as he felt it would be helpful to others. I didn't think that I was a very good example as a practitioner but agreed to let him do so. I didn't even practice the exercises that night and just went to bed. I was very tired of this very hard life I had been living. I hadn't skipped practicing in a long time, really since I was new and didn't practice regularly. I think I had been trying so hard to practice the test perfectly and to do the exercises perfectly that I thought that anything less was unacceptable. For about two days I just stopped trying, because I couldn't anymore. Meanwhile my friend e-mailed our letters to the others and also replied to me with encouragement and clear thoughts. The following day I went into work and walked over to the two guys and just talked to them for a few minutes about nothing important, just kidding around about stuff. And then the problem seemed solved. I have had no more anger towards them and they seem to be trying to act a little nicer to everyone and work a lot harder than they were. Master Li may give me another opportunity to pass this test again in the future. Some of the other practitioners told me how much my experiences had helped them, one e-mail in particular I felt so moved by, as a local practitioner told me of how much she struggled at times and felt so disappointed in herself. I think this was the first time I really felt that we had shared some of the harder parts of being practitioners with each other honestly. Although she had shared some difficult thoughts, I felt we were really sharing our experiences to benefit each other as practitioners. That night as I slept, I saw Falun spinning in my dreams. I had never seen them before. They are as others have described, very beautiful to see, and just seeing them will move your heart with joy. They seemed to me to be innocent and wise and playful and benevolent.

There is so much that I would like to share but I feel that I would speak too long, I would like to say that over this weekend we attended a festival in Cincinnati and had a booth and did a demonstration and I was so happy to talk to the people about Falun Dafa, I think we all were. Thank you Master Li, thank you fellow cultivators.