(Clearwisdom.net)
Greetings, Master!
Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I began practicing Falun Gong in 2001 on a quiet college campus in Florida and later moved to New York, where I am currently finishing up graduate school. I have cultivated in an educational setting for the past 10 years, and I would like to share my experience cultivating and clarifying the truth in this setting. I would like to start out with a short story.
In 2007, the Chinese Students' Association (CSSA) at Columbia University, influenced by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), tried to use this Ivy League school as an overseas base to slander Falun Gong and create trouble for Shen Yun promotion. The CSSA leaders, acting as overseas agents of the CCP, tried to physically disrupt a forum on organ harvesting and later posted propaganda material on their student club website, slandering Falun Dafa and Master Li Hongzhi. We didn’t back down, instead we used this as an opportunity to completely saturate Columbia University with truth-clarification material and expose the vile CCP and its student secret agents. The CCP’s actions ended up being the perfect opportunity for us to visit every single college and department, meet with the deans and high-level administrators and clarify the truth to them face to face.
We printed truth-clarification material specifically targeting the CCP special agents in the Chinese student club and flooded Columbia University’s campus with this positive information, hoping to make every single student, faculty member and staff there aware of Falun Gong, the persecution, and the vileness of the CCP and its using the Chinese student club as its overseas propaganda arm. Some practitioners traveled about 90 minutes each way from as far as Flushing to come to help clarify the truth.
A few months after the incident started, the Chinese student club was forced to completely back down and remove the slander from their website. Several of the CSSA leaders were chastised by their college deans, and told not to interfere with Falun Gong activities again.
An even more excellent result came out of the CSSA interference. A few months after the CSSA incident, we had our annual group meeting with the student government. In previous years, we had always asked for funding for the Falun Dafa student club, but were turned down for various reasons. However, the year after the CSSA incident, the student government told us, "You've done an excellent job this year, so we have decided to start funding and sponsoring your activities.” They allotted us $500 for activities and told us, “Use it to hold more activities and let more students know about Falun Gong." I later heard that $500 was the maximum funding they gave student clubs in the first year of funding.
But the next year, for various reasons, we slacked off and held almost no activities. When we went for the student government meeting, they were upset and asked us, "Why didn't you use your funding to hold any Falun Gong activities? Since you didn't use the money, we'll have to re-consider whether we can sponsor you this year." We were worried that we had missed an opportunity. We requested that they give us a second chance. That day, I went back home, kowtowed to Master’s photo, and said regretfully, “Master, you gave us such a good opportunity, and we have done so poorly! Please give us another chance, we will definitely make up for it this coming year.”
A few days later, someone from the student government got in touch with us and said, "We’re not going to give you $500 this year. Instead, we will give you only $400. But make sure to use the money to hold activities to raise awareness about Falun Gong this year. Otherwise you’re not getting any funding next year."
We thanked Master for giving us a second chance. We used the sponsorship money to hold a forum on organ harvesting as well as a large poster display in the center of campus, both of which had an excellent impact. Whenever most student clubs hold large events, they have to cover the cost of security, but the university staff was worried that the CCP would cause trouble for us, so they provided us with security free of charge. This year, we will be getting around $1,000 in funding, which will allow us to print even more truth-clarification material and posters and hold larger events.
Hence, the CCP's evil actions several years ago had the exact opposite effect of what they had hoped to achieve.
We used the opportunity to establish a situation where ordinary people are now giving us money every year to hold Falun Gong activities, clarify the truth and expose the CCP. Thus it came to be that at least for that one year, the Falun Dafa Club became the most active club on Columbia’s campus. We’ve seized the opportunity to work hard to clarify the truth, expose the ugly face of CCP, secured funding for future truth clarification and established a good relationship with the student government.
The whole incident was truly like Master said in “Fa Teaching at the U.S. Capital” in 2007:
“So whether it is vilifying us or doing bad things, it's the same as telling the whole world to look at its wickedness while simultaneously promoting Falun Gong for us and expanding the influence of Falun Gong on the thinking of people everywhere. No matter what it does, it is promoting us.”
Clarifying The Truth In A University Setting
College is a good place to clarify the truth about Falun Dafa. Being in the engineering department, I am in close contact with many Chinese students and try to use what opportunities I get to clarify the truth. I tell them how I love Chinese culture because I practiced Falun Gong, and use this as a means to clarify the truth naturally to them. In addition to face-to-face truth clarification, we put up posters and banners about Falun Dafa and our club at bulletin boards, distribute the Chinese and English Epoch Times at select visible locations in busy buildings and put up posters about Shen Yun and the NTDTV competitions.
As for Shen Yun promotion, we started off selling tickets at a booth at the college entrance, reaching out to various student clubs and organizations and using student discounts to promote the show, and one year we sold over 300 tickets that way. But as Shen Yun’s caliber keeps rising, we have adapted our promotion methods and now focus more on reaching out to faculty and college deans using personalized invitations. We still have a lot to improve on in terms of how to promote Shen Yun.
While we do sometimes have interference from CCP student spies, most Chinese students are actually quite receptive. One Chinese student told me, “I know that our government is doing a very bad thing in persecuting Falun Gong.” I gave him a copy of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, he said, “Thank you, I read this book when I was in China already.” Another Chinese student told me, “I really love the Epoch Times. I am a big fan of the Epoch Times! It is the only Chinese newspaper that I can easily find around campus, and it’s the only independent newspaper that I can get real news from! Also, the Shen Yun ads and posters – they are so pretty and so appealing. I really wish I could go and see the show, but I have family back in China, and I am afraid for them.” He indicated that was the only reason why he was not able to see the show.
Oftentimes, well-known people from mainland China as well as western society come to our campus to give talks and meet students. If we have an opportunity and time, we clarify the truth to them either directly, as Falun Gong practitioners, or indirectly, as members of the media. My understanding is that by establishing contact with some of these established people as members of the media, we have very good opportunities to build a long-term relationship with them and invite them to Shen Yun performances and our other activities.
There are many ways to clarify the truth on college campuses and reach a large number of people without having to use too many resources. For example, in both Florida and New York, we were able to display huge Falun Dafa banners in the main area of the student center for free and reach hundreds of students who use the building every day. We often get inquiries from students and even student groups who see these posters and are interested in learning the practice.
My understanding is that even though establishing a Falun Dafa Club in a university looks like a formality on the surface, it can allow us to clarify the truth in depth to the community. When the CCP tried to use Columbia University as a base to slander Falun Dafa, it was because we had a student club that we were able to meet directly with senior administrators and deans of various colleges, and take truth-clarification material right to their desk. Having the Falun Dafa Club means we are invited to participate in the annual Club Day events and other events on campus which are attended by thousands of students, and thus introduce Falun Dafa to them. The Falun Dafa Club allows us to reach influential members of the student government and the university administration; we have to meet them at least once a year during our annual meetings and we use this opportunity to clarify the truth from various angles. And sometimes, all it takes is one practitioner – during my last few months in Florida, I remained the only practitioner in the university, and I had non-practitioner friends who signed on to keep the Falun Dafa Club running so we could keep holding events.
Despite sometimes exciting experiences, the whole process of cultivating over the past 10 years has mostly been a slow and sometimes grueling process of letting go of human attachments. There have always been challenges in one form or the other during the process of cultivating and doing the three things, whether in school work or while working on Falun Dafa projects. And possibly similar cultivation opportunities await the young Falun Dafa disciples who are now starting college.
Young Falun Dafa Disciples
In “Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference in Australia” in 1999, Master said,
“But among those who cultivate Dafa, often there are many families who have children, and it’s very likely that they are no ordinary children. Before reincarnating, the child knows—“This family will study Dafa in the future. I want to reincarnate into this family”—in which case it’s very likely that he might have an extraordinary background.”
Well, the little kids that Teacher talked about then are no longer little kids. Next year, 2012, will mark 20 years since Master started spreading the Fa, and the kids who are in college are exactly that age - the young Falun Dafa disciples who were born after Master started spreading Falun Dafa in the human world. They are no longer little kids, rather, they have become extraordinary and capable young adults who assist Master in Fa-rectification.
As far as I know, many of the major colleges and universities across the United States and maybe even Canada are covered; most major colleges have at least one young Falun Dafa disciple there. And of course, there are also plenty of young practitioners who have fully immersed themselves in the various projects that aim to clarify the truth to the world’s people. An entire next generation of Falun Dafa disciples await in the wings, ready to fulfill the promises they made before history and to assist Master in the grand task of saving sentient beings.
The situation is different now than it was years ago, the evil is no longer as vicious as before, but my understanding is that the responsibilities that await the young Falun Dafa disciples are no less, and the missions that history has bestowed upon them and the promises they vowed to fulfill are quite significant as well. At Columbia, we have started taking our local campus Fa-study and cultivation environment more seriously as well.
Thank you, Master!
Thank you, fellow practitioners!