[International Online Fahui] Elevating in Cultivation and Maturing

(Minghui.org) Greetings, esteemed Master and fellow practitioners!

My mother started to practice Falun Dafa in China in 1997, and I obtained the Fa through her. In 2002, my mother and I immigrated to the United States to reunite with my father.

Some practitioners introduced me to NTD (New Tang Dynasty) in 2006. I was still attending school but worked as a volunteer at the NTD television station every week.

I’m an only child, and my father, who is not a practitioner, had high hopes for me. I never planned to work full-time at NTD, because I had to support my family, and NTD’s financial situation was not very good at that time. But my coworkers had high expectations and hoped I would become a full-time employee.

My project coordinator told me that she had managed to secure a full-time position for me in early 2013—very rare at that time—after discussing it with several managers. But, I would have to do an internship for three months. I told my parents about it. My mother has always been very supportive, but my father was upset. He said that I had volunteered for seven years at NTD without taking a penny, and switching to full-time would mean another three months of free labor. Also, I still wouldn’t earn much, and he didn’t approve of me accepting the opportunity.

Honestly, I was a bit unhappy, too, but when I thought about all the time and energy my coordinator and the managers had spent on training me and how everyone was looking forward to me working full-time, I just couldn’t say no. After a fight with my father, I accepted a full-time position.

Three months soon passed, and the thought of being able to earn wages after the internship and how I could finally get my father’s approval gave me a wonderful feeling. But in May, the day of the Fa conference, the TV station changed leadership. A week later, the show coordinator told me that the whole team would be disbanded, she’d be returning to her home country, I’d be assigned to a new department, and we’d start everything from scratch. I remember asking her what it meant to start from scratch, and she told me that I would need to do another three months of internship in the new department, and all the promises made before wouldn’t matter now.

That day I took the train home. I started to think about how much money I would need to run away from home, which clothes I would need, and which fellow practitioner I should stay with. I couldn’t imagine how furious my father would be if he learned that I would have to be an intern for another three months. When I got home, I didn't have the courage to mention it.

For several days I tried to stay calm. The end of the month kept getting closer, but I couldn’t find the right time and words. I waited until the night of the last day of the month and told my parents. My father’s reaction was unsurprising, my mother's reaction was also as expected. One flew into a rage, the other was calm as usual.

My father told me to hurry up and find a new job and stop wasting my time, but my mother wanted me to make my own choices. From that day on, my father asked me every day if I had quit my current job or found a new one. I knew I wanted to work at the TV station, but I didn’t know how to convince him. Every conversation ended in a big fight, and neither of us wanted to look at the other. I spent more and more time outside, just to avoid my father. It was fine during the week, but on weekends I didn’t dare stay home, fearing being seen by my father. As the days went by, my relationship with him became more and more strained. I asked my mother to help me convince him, but she told me it was my tribulation to get through, and I couldn’t avoid it.

One night I came home late. Standing outside the door, I heard my father saying to my mother, “Look at this girl. Every day she is like a thief, afraid of being caught.” Tears covered my face at that moment. I hated myself for being so useless and feeling like I couldn’t return home. I didn't act like a Dafa disciple. As I was crying, Master's Fa appeared in my mind, “...cultivate openly and with dignity.” (Teachings Given on Lantern Festival Day, 2003)

This thought gave me courage. I opened the door and went straight to my room. My father even forgot to ask me about work, because I was crying so hard. I was physically and mentally exhausted from all the pressure I faced in my cultivation. In bed I was lost in thought and couldn’t fall asleep, so I got up to study the Fa.

Master said,

“No matter how much I say, you still have to walk the path of cultivation yourselves. To walk this path well and progress to its end--nothing is more extraordinary. I say that because during the journey you will have hardships, tests of every sort, unforeseen ordeals, and you will have unexpected interference from all kinds of attachments and emotion. The interference will come from family, society, good friends, and even fellow cultivators. And along with this there is interference from changes in the state of human society and from human notions that were formed in society. All of those things can drag you back to being like an ordinary person. But if you can break through all of it, you can advance towards godhood. So as a cultivator, what is truly remarkable is when you can be steadfast and have righteous thoughts so firm that nothing can sway you.” (“Teaching the Fa at the Western U.S. International Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. VII)

Looking Inward

Looking inward, I found that my heart was not pure. I’d joined the TV station partly because of human sentimentality, and I didn’t understand and recognize the media project’s significance in assisting Master to rectify the Fa. Secondly, I had all kinds of attachments: of complaining, jealousy, comparing myself with others, and wanting to prove myself. Some who’d joined the media at the same time with me, or even after me, were already being paid, but I hadn’t gotten a salary yet. When I heard about a coworker with the same qualifications as me earning more than me, my jealousy emerged again. When my father scolded me, I felt wronged, and I began to complain about the coordinator not being responsible to me. Thirdly, I also had the attachments of fear and selfishness: Every time I talked to my father, I was imposing my ideas on him—I was always right, I didn’t think of what he would feel when it came to certain issues.

I thought that my father was watching to catch me doing something wrong, but from his point of view, he was waiting for his daughter to come home because he worried about my safety. After I thought over everything from both his and my viewpoints, I realized that I was not even as good as an everyday person, because my father was always thinking about me, but I was only thinking about myself. Finally, when conflicts happened, I always tried to get out of them. It was a big loophole for me not having strong righteous thoughts and not studying the Fa solidly.

Now that I’d found my attachments, I started to put my feet on the ground and cultivate steadfastly. A few days later, I talked to my father again. I kept saying “Truthfulness-CompassionForbearance” to myself so that I didn’t lose control. Our conversation, of course, turned out to be better than before, and my father understood me better. I also had a deeper understanding of having a righteous mind and righteous thoughts.

I joined the Chinese news department in 2013 and transferred to another department in 2019, and my father has been my most loyal audience. He watched the news on time every day and often gave me feedback. If he didn’t hear my name in the news, or there was one less news story (we have a fixed number of news stories each day), he would be the first to ask if I’d been at work. Over the years, my father has gone from avoiding mentioning my job to showing off to his friends and relatives, promoting NTD to his neighbors, and even clarifying the truth to his friends. I always feel this comes from the great power of the Fa and Master’s immense compassion.

Getting Rid of the Attachment to Comfort, Improving Professional Skills

Everyone who has worked in the news department knows that it is exhausting. Every day rushing to finish the news stories and making sure everything goes well with the broadcast. TV news is different from print news. Every step involves a huge amount of manpower and energy, from scriptwriting to translation to script editing to narration to finding footage and video editing to exporting and uploading the final video.

I started in the Chinese news department translating articles. The editor gave me different topics each day, depending on what news was hot. Besides staying on top of the daily news, it’s also vital for every journalist to improve their skill.

One time my boss came to talk to me. She spent 10 minutes trying to talk me into taking on a new challenge and learning some new skills outside of work. I spent 30 minutes explaining to her my regular workload and time limits and politely declined her suggestion.

After our conversation, she opened the door and headed out. Just as I was secretly glad at having avoided a huge responsibility, my husband, who is also a practitioner, happened to be passing by. He told my boss, “My wife watches Korean dramas at home after work. You should give her more work to do!” He was talking so loudly that everyone around us heard him and laughed. I was beside myself and looked at him without saying a word. After we got home, I started a cold war with him, but it was only on my end. Seeing that I seemed calm, my husband thought I’d improved and was maintaining my xinxing, not realizing I wouldn’t talk to him unless he apologized first.

The next day my boss came to me again and asked me to reconsider what we had talked about. To save face, I agreed, but I couldn’t let go of the fact that my husband caused me to lose face. Giving someone the cold shoulder is actually very tiring, especially when the other person doesn't realize it. This made me seem even more unreasonable. After I got home, I started to do some research, but couldn’t help feeling angrier and angrier, so I went to argue with my husband.

He saw how angry I was, so he said we should study the Fa together first and then talk. After Fa study, I was less angry. He began to share with me from the standpoint of the Fa. I acknowledged that sometimes I watch TV at home, but it was just to see how others do the news, only that after a while it turned to watching Korean dramas. Whatever he said, I always had an excuse to get back at him. At last he laughed, and I laughed, too. I’d found so many attachments, how could I be not happy?

Master said:

“Yet when we run into problems, we often look outwards—“Why are you treating me like that?”—and feel that we’ve been treated unfairly, instead of examining ourselves. That’s the greatest and most fatal obstacle for all living beings.” (Teachings at the Conference in Singapore)

To cultivate solidly we need to elevate our realm, change our mindset, and discipline ourselves with Master’s Fa and the principles of cultivation. On the third day I went to apologize to my boss and told her about the attachments I’d found when looking inward, the biggest of which was the attachment to comfort, but also not wanting to suffer or endure and the fear that I couldn’t do things well and thus ruin her good impression of me.

Master said,

“In the process of doing things, what’s looked at is your hearts, not your success itself. In the process of doing things you can save people! Your process of doing things is also a process of you elevating in cultivation, which, at the same time, plays the role of saving sentient beings! It is not that only if you succeed in doing that thing can you play the role of saving sentient beings.” (Fa Teaching at the 2016 New York Fa Conference)

My boss also shared with me her experience working in the media for over 20 years. Many of us didn’t come from a journalism background when we first joined the media. Compared with ordinary media, we are way behind in this respect. To meet industry standards, it is essential to learn outside of work and improve our professional skills. To become number one in the world is not done by shouting slogans; we really have to make a lot of effort to see the results.

I set a small goal for myself: No matter how busy I was, every day when I got home, I would take the time to dissect one news story from mainstream media, including its story structure and the video presentation. Usually, I had to see it more than a dozen times for me to get the gist of it. After a while, I could easily tell what footage was good, and how to create an engaging story. After my boss saw I’d changed, she started to teach me one-on-one each week about news writing. She also did case studies with me to help me improve quickly. I was very busy every day, but I was thankful for Master’s careful arrangement and my boss’s attentive training—this was such a precious learning opportunity.

Harmonizing with the Whole Body

With the progress of Fa-rectification, the requirements for a cultivator also keep getting higher, and I can feel myself being pushed forward. Once I improved a little bit, there were new requirements, but the speed of my improvement was not keeping up with the increased requirements.

NTD began to set up the English news team at the beginning of 2017. I was transferred to the English team in 2019. We had to start from scratch, but this time it was not that our wages dropped to zero, it was that we were making a fresh new start. Three months later, my boss asked me to take over a news show because of personnel changes. Despite my experience in the Chinese news team, I was not sure if I was up to it, since I was not familiar with the new work environment. During my discussion with her, the thought of refusing the job came to me again, but when the words came out of my mouth, they were, “I’ll try.” I don’t know where I got the courage, maybe my knowing side understood how great the responsibility was.

New environments, new teams, new colleagues, new challenges, even the mistakes are new every day, and there are no examples to follow. My experience doing live broadcasts with the Chinese team helped me to get started quickly, but managing a team is a new challenge for me. Before managing others, I actually needed to take on more responsibility myself. I used to do the news on my own, so I only had to make sure I didn’t make a mistake. Now I’m the producer and I’m responsible for any problems with the show: Did the reporters upload a video in the wrong format? Did the anchor eat a chocolate snack between readings? Did the narrators misread the script? Was the wrong footage used? And so on and so forth—all problems that had nothing to do with me before have now become my responsibility. If one day someone suddenly asks for time off or I face an emergency on any of these steps, I need to transform myself into “all-purpose glue” to fix the loophole.

A fellow practitioner once asked me why she rarely sees me angry or upset. I told her sometimes I also want to blow a fuse, but when it’s almost broadcast time I don’t have time for that, and when the show is done and everything has gone well, I’m no longer angry.

Master said, “...looking within is a magical tool.” (“Fa Teaching at the 2009 Washington DC International Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. IX)

Whenever we encounter a problem, we should first think about why our heart was moved and what attachment was triggered. In summary, how the team cooperates and how well we manage things is a reflection of our cultivation state. Only by cultivating diligently can we keep up with the progress of Fa-rectification.

This year marks my 15th year with NTD. There are so many memories and reflections along the way. I want to thank Master for giving me the opportunity to participate in the media projects and for his benevolent salvation. I’ll strive to achieve what Master wants, help Master with Fa-rectification, save all beings, and fulfill my vow.

Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners!

(2021 International Online Fa Conference)