(Minghui.org)
Greetings Master! Greetings fellow practitioners!
During the process of promoting Shen Yun ticket sales, I have deeply experienced the wonderful feeling one experiences after removing ordinary people’s thoughts, and again and again I have felt Master's compassionate care and reinforcement.
My German is not good, and I can only do simple communication with native Germans. As the Shen Yun ticket sales project was short of manpower, I decided to help. I memorized some introductory sentences from the Shen Yun promotional materials and went to the sales station to sell tickets. On the first day, I repeated to customers the sentences that I had learned. Later, a beautiful young lady came to me excitedly and said, "I have heard of Shen Yun and I have a great feeling about it. Could you give me a leaflet and I’ll go back and discuss it with my friends."
I gave her some leaflets without a word, because she had already heard of Shen Yun and it wouldn't make sense to directly recite those introductory words to her. She took the flyers and left. I felt very depressed that she was so excited and was certainly very likely to buy tickets, but I had just let her go without any further words. If she had come across a fellow practitioner with good German she would have definitely bought a ticket immediately. I wondered, maybe I should not be standing here, or should I go distribute newspapers …?
I was frustrated and moody. All of a sudden, the young woman stood in front of me again and said, "I want to buy a ticket." I realized it was Master’s encouragement for me to stick to it, so I told myself to not give up so easily.
The next day, when other practitioners introduced Shen Yun to customers, I listened attentively and wrote down some simple sentences. For more complex sentences, I tried to change them into simple sentences that I could say easily. Day by day, I gradually accumulated a greater vocabulary for introducing Shen Yun. Meanwhile, I paid attention to adjusting the tone and speed of my talk, gradually changing from reciting into a natural introduction. Little by little, almost imperceptibly, I could sell tickets independently. Even some hesitant customers decided to buy tickets right after talking with me. Occasionally, there were also cases where some customers who had heard other practitioners’ introduction and were ready to go home to consider further, changed their mind and decided to buy tickets after talking with me for a while. This gave me a lot of confidence, but also many attachments unknowingly developed.
More than a week later, another fellow practitioner and I were assigned to the same ticket sales station. During the first two days, both of us sold tickets. Suddenly, one day I did not sell a single ticket. I was very sad and felt time pass slowly. I was sure that there was something wrong with me. Thinking about it, I discovered that during the past few days I had competed with her on the number of tickets we sold. Every night I counted which tickets were sold by her and which tickets by me. I very much hoped that I had not done worse than her. I realized that this was a strong heart of validating myself instead of validating the Fa and saving sentient beings. I knew I had to change.
The next day, I did not sell any tickets all morning, but she sold tickets. I said to myself, “I know this is a test and I will be able to pass this.” I settled down, cleared out all other thoughts, paid attention to every person passing by, and seized the opportunity to introduce Shen Yun. Not long after, a woman walked up to me and said, "A few hours ago I took newspapers and flyers from you. I read them carefully and feel good about the content. I discussed it with my family, and we decided to go to see the show.” When she left with Shen Yun tickets, I again reminded myself to steady my heart and not be moved. After this, tickets sold very smoothly. I felt that my heart was very calm and pure, focusing on nothing but selling tickets.
That evening, as we were leaving, the fellow practitioner asked me, “Today almost all the tickets were sold by you. Do you have a feeling of complacency?” I said, “No.” That evening when I was back home, I studied Zhuan Falun Lecture 2 and read, "I mentioned the other day that the key to increasing gong lies in our cultivating xinxing and becoming assimilated to the characteristic of the universe." My body shook with an indescribable feeling, and I was filled with infinite gratitude to Master.
When selling tickets those days, we often felt encouragement and reinforcement from Master. We were selling tickets from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. On the first day, we found that there were more people in the shopping center in the morning and less people in the afternoon. So we decided to go there one hour earlier, and leave for home one hour earlier.
One day when we had a group experience sharing, fellow practitioners exchanged ideas on how they coordinated with each other: One person would try to engage with passers-by, someone else was responsible for introducing Shen Yun, and another for selling tickets. They worked in a cooperative way to sell tickets. The next day, the two of us were on the way to the ticket-selling site when my fellow practitioner asked how we could cooperate with each other even better. I said, “Our situation is not the same as theirs. Our stand is in the middle of the road, where people can pass by on both sides, and the two of us can handle ticket sales from start to finish independently. At critical moments we help each other by sending righteous thoughts; I think that's how it should be.”
Then the fellow practitioner frankly mentioned that when I sold more tickets than her she was jealous of me. I admitted that I was always competing with her in ticket sales. Both of us realized that when we had these attachments, in fact, we were not one body. We were still distinguishing which was yours or which was mine. How could we talk about one body? Both of us needed to discard these attachments. We were determined not to distinguish between who did what, and we resolved to simply cooperate with each other well.
That same day, we met a married couple and their daughter. At first, when my fellow practitioner introduced Shen Yun to them, the whole family seemed very drawn it, but the father was hesitant because three tickets for the family was not a small sum of money. I went over with Shen Yun tickets in hand. By listening to them talking, I knew which show and which ticket price was more appropriate for them. I quickly came up with three tickets, found the right time to interject and said to the father, “You see that we have such good seats. Do not miss this opportunity to buy three tickets.” The father still hesitated. My fellow practitioner and I kept on talking with him, and tried to help him make the right decision. The fellow practitioner and I helped each other. Finally, the father nodded. I handed the tickets to the daughter; the little girl took them with a happy smile on her face. The father laughed. Seeing that the family had made the right choice, I was really happy for them.
This was the first time that the two of us cooperated with each other. When I came back that night, I told this story with delight to other practitioners. Before going to sleep, a fellow practitioner said she had just read an experience sharing paper on the Minghui website. The main point was that it was dangerous to have the attachment of zealotry. Upon hearing this, my heart was startled. I immediately realized that when I talked about the process of selling tickets with a great deal of excitement, it was dangerous too. I was very grateful for the experience sharing from the practitioner, and also very grateful for Master's ingenious arrangement of letting me realize my attachment before it became a problem.
During the next group experience sharing, I shared how I worked on cooperation and got rid of the attachment of zealotry. The next day, on the way to the ticket sales station, my fellow practitioner said, “Yesterday you said the same words that we shared before. However, I felt that your manner was not good.” I said that maybe it was because the first few practitioners had been talking about the interesting people or things they'd encountered during the ticket selling process, rather than sharing xinxing improvements, and I was feeling a bit impatient. I went on to express my displeasure about the meeting, and said that I would not go to this kind of experience sharing any more. I thought it was simply a waste of time. My fellow practitioner said that this was not a righteous thought. I then responded that I would just sit in the corner and wouldn’t listen to that meaningless sharing. I would study the Fa and recite a few poems from Hong Yin instead.
After getting out of the car, I found that my water bottle lid was loose and water had leaked out and gotten our informational cards wet. I realized I was wrong again, and said in my heart to Master, “Master, I know that I was wrong. I must change.” Fortunately, the wet part of the cards was on the bottom, which did not affect their use. I knew that Master was watching over me, allowing me to realize my own problems, but without affecting our ticket selling efforts.
Getting rid of the heart of an ordinary person is a painstaking process. After a period of time, I was moved to another location to sell tickets. The situation was good in the beginning. I did things well, with a lot of enthusiasm. After a period of time, however, fewer people stopped at our site and my momentum got weaker and weaker. I felt that every day, those passers-by were familiar faces; some people had received our flyers many times. I had no alternative but to stay there for a couple of days more with a feeling of suffering. After a few days I would be going to Vienna. I was really looking forward to getting out of there and doing something else.
That weekend, the overall ticket sales were four tickets less than I expected. A thought popped up that it might be my cultivation state that was affecting the ticket sales. If it was because I was not doing well, the people who were supposed to be saved could not be saved; this sin would be too great. I began to look inward: I felt I was too focused on results and concerned about achievements. When I saw that my achievement was not good, I was sad – this was again validating myself and seeking recognition.
I told myself that these attachments must be put down. I could not be driven by any circumstances, but must steadily and surely do everything well. The following day, I constantly reminded myself, "Forget about yourself; just save people." Then I found that there were a lot of unfamiliar faces, and there were people interested in the show. I finally came out of that negative state. Whenever I felt happy about selling tickets, I would remind myself to be careful not to disturb my heart. When I left the ticket sales station for Vienna, I was no longer going with an escapist mindset.
Back from Vienna, I was grouped with fellow practitioner A and fellow practitioner B. Practitioner A could not speak German, and B, who spoke very good German, did not have confidence in selling tickets. It was a weak team for selling a good number of tickets. I said to myself: I did not have the skills for selling tickets at first, and I did not speak good German, so the only thing I could do was to maintain righteous thoughts and request Master's reinforcement.
That day, not long after the beginning, practitioner B introduced Shen Yun to a middle-aged couple. Because her behavior was a little inappropriate, the couple quickly left. I told myself not to be angry, and then walked over to remind her to avoid this problem next time. She nodded. That day I paid attention to my every single thought and made sure not to have any negative thoughts about the other practitioners, especially when I saw others doing something that did not comply with my ideas or that made me feel uncomfortable. I reminded myself to keep away from any bad thoughts and just put my focus on introducing Shen Yun or selling tickets.
I went almost the whole day without food or drink, but I felt full of energy. Whenever I caught a bad thought and cleared it away instantly, I would feel that my body and the whole field around me was clear and transparent. I instantly felt tall, and filled with the power of compassion. Fellow practitioner B did well thereafter. Several people listened to her introduction, and then she directed them to me naturally, and the tickets were sold.
In the following group sharing, practitioner B said that once, a fellow practitioner was not very friendly to her, but she thought it was a test to her to remind her that even when ticket sales go well she should not have the heart of zealotry. Then she heard the practitioner herself say, “I don’t know how well sales are going in other ticket selling stations, but I hope we sell a great many.” She suddenly saw the practitioner’s lovely heart for saving people. Hearing her sharing, I saw my gap; I did not have bad thoughts about others, but had not been able to see others’ merits even when they were unfriendly to me.
Selling Shen Yun tickets over a period of several months is a process of continuously discovering and removing attachments. Sometimes there were low points and sometimes painful times. Meanwhile, I have felt the magnificence one feels after discarding an ordinary person’s heart.
Thank you, Master, for giving me this rare cultivation opportunity. Thank you fellow practitioners who have helped me in the process.
Thank you, Master. Thank you, all!
(Presented at the 2013 European Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference in Copenhagen)
