(Minghui.org)
Greetings, Master and fellow practitioners!
My name is Alexander. I am 13 years old. I started learning Dafa with my mother when I was a child. Today, I have two stories I would like to share with everyone.
The first one I am going to talk about is my experience in the Tian Guo Marching Band. Participation in the marching band has helped me discover many of my shortcomings. For example, prior to joining the band, I was extremely afraid of facing physical hardship. However, being a part of it has made me realize that facing physical hardship is sometimes a necessary part of saving more sentient beings on this earth. A good example of this was that during the July 4th parade in Huntington Beach, it was very sunny and hot, which made the parade quite difficult to complete.
Toward the end of it, I felt like I could no longer play. At this time, I remembered one of Master’s lines in the first poem of Hong Yin.
Master stated,
“...Physical pains count little as suffering,Indeed, cultivating mind is hardest....”(“Tempering the Will,” Hong Yin)
At the end of this poem, Master also stated,
“...The world’s miseries endured,One departs the earth a Buddha.”(“Tempering the Will,” Hong Yin)
I interpreted this as, if one can endure all the hardships in the world while still saving lives on earth and keeping up with one’s cultivation, one will become a true Buddha. Considering these lines, I realized that my physical tiredness wasn’t too much suffering and decided to keep playing in the parade. We were later told that around 500,000 people were there by the road, watching the parade. That many people had heard the music and would now be aware of Dafa, which gave them a chance to be saved. Once again, my main takeaway from this parade was that facing physical hardship was indeed necessary for saving more beings.
Another event that happened recently was a candlelight vigil. During this, I was giving pamphlets to passersby. I saw a large group of teens (probably around 15-16 years old), who all looked quite rowdy and were very loud. Seeing this, I hesitated about whether to offer them pamphlets or not, due to being unsure of how they were going to react. Despite this, I still eventually went over to offer them a couple of pamphlets. One by one, they all refused the flyers, until the last person, who seemed extremely curious about what the protest was about. Seeing his curiosity, I briefly explained to him what we were protesting and offered him some tickets to the State Organs movie.
He seemed to be listening to every word I said and was genuinely taking in the information, contrary to my expectations. This encounter taught me that when passing out flyers, one should not judge whether to offer a brochure or not simply based on the person’s looks.
This is my understanding at my current level. Please kindly point out anything inappropriate.
(Selected article presented at the 2025 San Francisco Fa Conference)
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