Farmers and gardeners know that you have to plant many seeds if you want a few healthy plants to take root and grow to maturity. It seems to be this way, too, in sharing Dafa with people: you hold many events, pass out many leaflets, put up posters, keep up Web pages, talk to friends and family, and even show the exercises to people but in the end, you see only a few new practitioners. Some people may be discouraged by this, they want a higher "success rate." I think that not only is this normal, but also, we must not judge too quickly or too soon in deciding if, and how, and where the many seeds we have planted will grow.
Even from an everyday perspective, you dont know how your leaflet, your kind word, or your seminar might affect an individual months from now. You also dont know to whom those people will say good things about Dafa, and what effect that will have. Our Teacher has said that not everyone can become a practitioner. But I think we can try to tell everyone, even those who will never practice, that Falun Dafa is a good thing, a noble and upright practice. Many of our attempts to share Dafa will seem to have no immediate effect, but they are like planting seeds that will grow much later. They are also like tossing a tiny pebble into a pond of ordinary water, which sends out ripples far beyond the place where the pebble entered the water.
Today I want to share with you some good ways we have found of "planting seeds and tending the soil" for Dafa in the Midwest, particularly in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Since we have gone through a process of trial and error, Ill also share a few mistakes we made.
Community Education Classes
The public school districts in many towns and cities have evening adult education programs, sometimes called community ed. Classes are offered in foreign languages, home repair, travel, dance, and many other topics. The school districts are always looking for interesting topics. In the Twin Cities, each individual school handles the scheduling of these classes but the coordinators talk to each other, so if you establish credibility and hold a good class, other locations may want to sign you up to teach later. Normally they pay instructors and charge some low fees for the classes. We have been successful in explaining our principles of not accepting money and making Dafa available for free, so several different locations in three local school districts now offer classes in Falun Dafa for free.
One practitioner needs to fill out an application to be the designated instructor of record. If you have instructed people to do the exercises at any practice sites, seminars, or events, this is probably enough relevant experience. Usually we have 2-4 practitioners come to add personal experiences and instruct with the movements. School districts usually plan a few months in advance so that they can publish their catalogs, so be sure to inquire at least 2-3 months before you want to hold these classes.
We have a course outline, which we would be happy to share with everyone, for the two-hour classes. Most of the first hour is talking and watching the 8-minute introductory video produced by Chicago practitioners. The second hour is teaching the movements, including watching the last segment of the exercise instruction video, the "Five Exercises in Succession" segment. We try not to talk during this time, just let them watch and try to imitate Teachers movements. As one practitioner says, "Teacher is communicating with the students then."
Advantages of Community Education: the school district does the advertising through their catalogs and Web pages; they provide classroom space and TV/VCR; these classes are respected and trusted by the community; students who attend are genuinely interested in learning something new.
Heres an example of the "ripple effect." A local high school teacher who saw the advertisement for our community ed class in a school could not attend the class, but she was interested in hearing about Falun Dafa. So she invited us to speak to her high school class. I was apprehensive about the attention span of teenagers after lunch, but we saw very few signs of boredom during our 80-minute presentation and exercise demonstration, and a few seemed very interested in practicing. This opportunity is an example of a positive unintended consequence: we did not plan to speak at a high school, but because we planned to teach the community ed class, this other opportunity appeared.
Also, one reason we were able to offer the community ed classes is that we had previously given classes at a local non-profit health resource center and at a local "New Age" book and herb shop. And because we offered classes at the health resource center, they considered us to be a "service provider," and they agreed to allow us to use the entire building on Sundays to hold group practices, at which we now instruct drop-in newcomers in the exercises. This is a great arrangement for everyone.
We start small and slow, and gradually grow in our activities, building our reputation in the community, building relationships with people in various organizations, and building up our own skills as a group to handle new projects.
We also realize that, due to psychological and cultural factors in the US, it is best if the team of practitioners who facilitate classes is mixed: some men and some women, some Chinese and some Westerners. Attendees will believe that they can do it themselves, and they will also believe its a genuine practice, when the group is mixed.
Outdoor Practice Locations
The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and their suburbs have many lakes with bicycling and walking paths. People of all ages and from all parts of society walk, bicycle, and skate on these paths. We found that moving the spot where we practice to immediately next to these paths makes a big difference in how comfortable people feel in approaching us to pick up flyers and ask questions. When we were in a shady spot that was comfortable for us located 20-30 meters from the paths, few people inquired. When we put up a sign and a rack with our local leaflets, and moved closer to the action, more people stopped, and even those who didnt stop got a good look at us and saw the words "Falun Gong."
We also found that trying to hand out flyers on a city sidewalk received little interest from passersby until we had two or more practitioners performing exercises then people stopped, asked questions, or at least took a flyer after they had walked by the practitioners. We handed out at least at least 600-700 leaflets this way on a beautiful afternoon when we had 2-4 practitioners doing the exercises next to a sidewalk while people were walking to or from a nearby outdoors art fair. Teacher has said that doing the exercises outdoors is one of the primary ways he has given us to spread the Fa, and we know we should get outside whenever possible.
Boosting Workshop Attendance
We hold our 9-lecture workshops over a period of eight days in a meeting room on the University of Minnesota campus, where we are a registered student organization. One workshop had zero new students, another had one new student who attended every session but never returned to practice. This April we had a workshop at which about four to nine new students appeared at each session. Why the change?
We dont know all the reasons, but one was clear: more advance promotion. For the April workshop, we passed out hundreds of flyers at a weekend health expo and held a Saturday open house shortly before the workshop. The open house idea has been successful for us with a couple of different formats, and we hope to do them regularly. Chinese practitioners were unfamiliar with the concept of an "open house," so please talk to a Western practitioner if you arent clear on the meaning.
The handling of time is a major cultural difference between Chinese and Western cultures. As a consequence of this, we learned that you need to give Americans a lot of advance notice for an event. A week or even two before a major commitment like a 9-lecture workshop is not enough time for Americans to arrange their schedules. They need to know far in advance, and if you want to advertise in a monthly magazine, you may have to contact the magazine to place the ad almost two month ahead.
Our experience has shown that planning ahead is important and brings positive results.
One event for which we did plan ahead adequately did not work out well, for other reasons. We entered a float in a local parade, for which we were required to wear uniforms. Some of us had doubts, but we decided to wear the yellow exercise uniforms that resemble the clothing Teacher wears in the instructional video. By the way, for cultural reasons, we strongly advise practitioners in the future not to wear the yellow uniforms in the US they will not achieve a good effect. But on that day, with more than 30 practitioners, a beautiful float, and some practitioners demonstrating the exercises, the display was colorful and beautiful. Too soon, we ran out of 500 flyers to hand out along the parade route.
After the parade, we received an angry e-mail objecting to the display of the Falun emblem. Fortunately, we were able to correspond further with the sender and reached an understanding with that person. However, another person wrote a similar letter to a morning drive-time radio show that was read on the air. Our flyers did not explain the emblem and the Buddha symbol, and we inadvertently offended people. Is displaying a Falun bad? Not necessarily -- it depends on the situation. We learned the following key point from this experience: We know now that we should not display the Falun unless we are fully prepared to explain its history and meaning directly to all the people who see the Falun.
People of different backgrounds have different levels of understanding on various matters. What seems simple and low-level, or what seems compassionate or beautiful, for one individual, group, or culture, may for another actually be too high-level, or distracting, or even offensive.
Tending the Soil
One successful way we have found to nurture the seeds we have planted and provide a good cultivation environment for ourselves is to hold a weekday-evening study group. We experimented some with the format and now have one that works well. We start at 7:00, and read from Zhuan Falun in English. Although about 70-80% of our regular local practitioners speak Chinese as their first language, we read only in English. Non-native speakers read one paragraph each and native English speakers read two paragraphs so that the others can hear correct pronunciations and the flow of English. The English-speakers jump in with pronunciation corrections, and the Chinese-speakers help us pronounce words like "xinxing" and "zhu yishi" close to correctly. We read until 8:30, then discuss the reading, ask each other questions, or share experiences until 9:00 or sometimes later, all in English.
This was difficult for some of the non-native speakers of English at first, but as they stuck with it they have benefited a lot. Their English language skills have improved significantly, they will tell you, and its true, they are better able to communicate with other practitioners in English, but also, they are better able to talk about Dafa to non-practitioners. So speaking only English serves a "hongfa" function. It also provides a welcoming environment for local people who are uncomfortable or unaccustomed to gatherings at which people are speaking other languages.
But also, the non-native speakers have said that reading Zhuan Falun in English helps them to understand the Fa better than if they had read it only in Chinese! I think this surprised all of us, but when they have to struggle with some words and use their minds in a different way, different insights and meanings come to them. Of course it works the other way around, too: based on their previous reading of the Fa in their native language, the Chinese speakers are able to clarify some points for English speakers. We all learn from each other.
Without being told so, it was apparent to me when I began to practice that the local Chinese practitioners who organized activities had made a rule for themselves to speak only English to each other at times that people who dont speak Chinese are around. I found this decision, and the way that they follow it consistently, to be both very brave and very benevolent on their part.
We have much mutual respect in our group. Everyone learns from and listens to everyone else, whether its about language, cultures, or Dafa. We know that there is more to culture than only language, and that we cant learn everything about each others cultures, but we can learn some things, and its worth the effort. Learning about other cultures is not just accumulating knowledge about the everyday human level of the Fa, because learning about human cultures enables us to do two important things better: one, share our personal cultivation experiences with each other so that we can learn from each other and improve, and two, share Dafa with non-practitioners in the context of their own culture, in ways that they can understand it. Even for those people without the predestined relationship, we want to get across our message that "Falun Dafa is good." When we know the language and the culture of the person listening and watching, we can get across that message most clearly.
We applied to have a booth at the Minnesota State Fair this year, which well over a million people attend each summer. We thought it would be the best possible way to reach the largest number and the most diverse audience. But our application was not accepted. There is probably a good reason for that. We dont get a lot of media attention or produce big events in the Twin Cities, but we do seem to be slowly and surely reaching the hearts of many people.
A Minnesota Practitioner