(Clearwisdom.net) Recently, I bought Shen Yun tickets for my family and later returned them. From this experience, I learned that I had taken seats that belonged to ordinary people. They could lose the opportunity of being saved due to my selfishness.
A few months back, my parents planned to visit me from mainland China. They intentionally chose to visit around the dates of the Shen Yun shows in my city. When the show's tickets started selling, I had the thought of selecting good seats for them. Although I was thinking to buy the tickets later, when I saw good seats being sold quickly, I could not wait any longer. I did not mind where I was to sit, but I thought that I should buy good seats for my parents. So I bought three tickets in the middle of the first row. Later, my parents' visas were rejected and they could not come, so I returned the tickets. Two days later, two of the returned tickets were sold.
This experience made it clearer to me that if we were selfish and wanted to watch Shen Yun ourselves, we would take the seats that belonged to other predestined sentient beings and they would thus not be saved. This would have negative effects. How would this help with selling tickets? The selfishness would block sentient beings from being saved. My mother is a practitioner, and my father knows the facts about Falun Gong and has withdrawn from the CCP. Because of my human attachments and selfishness, several sentient beings could have lost the opportunity to be saved.
I felt ashamed. We should consider others first instead of finding good seats for ourselves. This showed my selfishness and other attachments. If the performances are sold out, we should be happy even if we ourselves cannot watch the show. Similarly, if we have the chance to watch every show yet a lot of tickets remain unsold, we should not be happy. When Shen Yun tickets sell out, we should be pleased even if that means we cannot see the performance ourselves.