(Shared at the First Inland Northwest Falun Dafa Conference, October 14, 2000)
Hello everyone, greetings to Master Li, practitioners, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I have been a practitioner for almost 3 years and I would like to share my experience with everyone present today. It was about 4 years ago when one day a friend of a friend invited my wife Karen and myself to an open house. At this open house, was a 9-day seminar on the subject of Falun Dafa, which of course I had not heard of at that time.
Because it was a long drive to this open house and we did not know what this subject was, we only attended about 3 out of the 9 videotaped lectures. Master Li was lecturing in Mandarin Chinese and I was totally lost. All my formal education was done in English and Chinese was merely a convenience and a way to further my understanding of martial arts, Tai Chi, and other aspects of Chinese culture. The words and terminology used in this 9-day video was beyond my Chinese vocabulary. By the third day, I was feeling kind of bored and started to walk around the living room. At first, I ignored a whole set of books on the shelf, but out of boredom, I picked one up and found that it was written in English despite the Chinese words on the cover. Flipping through the table of contents, I found the topics very fascinating. I selected a couple of topics and started reading a couple of paragraphs here and there. Wow, I was surprised to find that the writing style was very casual and down to earth, yet it was explaining things with such simplicity unlike any of the qigong and martial arts books I have at home. I insisted on buying a copy of this Zhuan Falun in English. After this seminar, I continued to pick those topics that I felt was relevant to my personal knowledge base, understandings or curiosity and ignored those topics that I felt did not apply to me. After I read what I wanted, I went back to the beginning of the book and started to read from the beginning. I was not a very big fan of Buddhism or any other religion for that matter, so the term "Buddha Law" was something I figured did not apply to me. Being un-enlightened to this sacred book, I put it on my bookshelf along with all my other qigong, martial arts, feng shui, and astrology books.
Shortly afterwards, my wife and I moved from the east coast to Seattle. While in Seattle, I met a person who was fascinated with Tai Chi and I told him if he wanted to learn it so much, I would gladly teach him. Having practiced and taught Tai Chi for 10 years, it was an easy task for me and I figure it would be a good review since I was away from this practice for about 7 years. After a few months of practice and teaching, that old feeling of emptiness started to haunt me again and started to remind me of why I left Tai Chi. That deep emptiness that kept replaying in my mind over and over again. Okay, what is the next step beyond this practice. How do I make advancements toward Tao? How can I reach that state of wisdom and understanding even if I cannot achieve it? What do the sages know and how can I become one or at least understand that path? Who will show me the next step in life? My favorite book at that time was Tao Te Ching. I figured that no master is going to come from the mountains and knock on my door.
Feeling lost and aimless after stopping the Tai Chi practice, I noticed that my wife was practicing that "Buddha stuff", that Falun Gong qigong. I decided that qigong was probably my next challenge and Tao is not here at least not here yet, so why waste time waiting and why not try out Falun Gong. At first, it was just a try, but after a month or two, I read the book and watched the 9-day video and discovered that there is no try. You are either going to do the cultivation practice or not. I kept doing the exercises, but did not make up my mind whether I will commit or not. Maybe it is some attachment to Tao over Buddha, but after a couple of weeks, I figured why not since I am doing the qigong exercises everyday anyway. About two months later, I got what appears to be a flu, but I know it was not the flu because I got all the symptoms except for the high temperature. Knowing that this is both a test and getting my body cleaned up I endured it. I figured that a flu would last 3 to 5 days, but by the 2nd week it was still there. The 3rd , 4th, and 5th week it was still there. It finally cleared out of my system on the 6th week.
My body never felt so cleaned-up in my life. I worried that my co-workers at the office must have thought I had some health problems with the constant blowing my nose and clearing my throat. Since my work does not entail meeting people from outside of my work area and much of the work is done over phones and computers, there was no impact on my job performance. This was all arranged by Master's fashen, yet this concept was not clear to me at that time.
One day, my wife said Master Li is calling for all practitioners to start practicing outdoors instead of at home. We finally found a nice park by the side of Lake Washington with a large gazebo.
When I first started the Falun Gong exercises, I treated the practice of the exercises much like martial arts. I figured the more I did it, the more proficient I will be in it, and the benefits come from putting in more effort in the exercises. Again, Master Li's fashen made arrangements for me to give up this martial arts exercise mentality. One day, I woke up from sleeping. I checked the bedside clock and found that I got only a little over 5 hours of sleep. Normally, a decent sleep is 7 hours for me. Eight is better and nine is best. One day I was so wide awake, I could not even snooze for 5 or 10 minutes. The next day, the same thing happened. I woke up over 2 hours ahead of the alarm and was so wide awake, I had to get out of bed. Figuring that Falun Gong has given me the benefits of extra hours, I was going to re-invest these extra hours into practicing in the morning. Why not, compound interest I figured. So now I am practicing twice a day everyday. One evening, a couple showed up and wanted to learn Falun Gong. They brought their baby son with them about 20 months old. When they practiced, the father would do a few moves and past the baby over to the mother, then the mother did a few moves and encourage her son to walk over and hug his father's legs.
I figured I'll be nice and baby sit while both parents get a good practice. Each day I insist that I will baby sit and each day, I went home after the evening practice group to practice at home so that I will not loose my perceived benefits of practicing twice a day everyday.
One day, after a very long day, I was practicing at home and feeling so tired and sleepy that I nearly fell asleep and crashed into the wall while doing the standing meditation of exercise number 2. I stopped the exercise and told my wife " I am not going to do any more of this baby sitting. I am just going to get my evening practice done at the park and they will have to take care of their own kid". The next day I thought about this carefully.
If I get my morning and evening practice done, then both the mom and the dad will not get a good practice passing their child back and forth, but if I get one good practice in the morning, and baby sit for them, then they would get one good practice in the evening and the 3 of us would all have one good practice per day. If I insist on my twice a day practice, then I will have 2 good practice sessions and they would not get any good practice. So that evening, I chose to baby sit while the parents got a good exercise and I went home without feeling I needed to make up for the lost practice. The next morning, I was back at the park and the sitting meditation felt so good, I did not recall it ever being so good. After practice, I went to work and a co-worker stopped me and said "Look at you", "look at you, you're so different, there is this energy in your eyes, you must be doing something to get this. You look terrific." I didn't know or feel any different, but from this incident, I have learned that the true progress in Falun Dafa lies in understanding and putting to practice Zhen, Shan, Ren and not in that martial arts exercise mentality of trying to practice more to obtain more benefits for myself. By putting the needs of the parents ahead of my selfish desire to practice more is an example of Shan: kindness, benevolence and compassion.
As I continue to study the Fa, I have come to realize that elusive Tao that I have been searching for hopelessly is right here in Falun Dafa. Master Li is not from the mountains. And he is not coming to knock on my door, but what I have learned and the progress I have made is astounding. Moreover, I am glad and thankful that upon my realization of learning the Fa, I no longer want to pursue the Tao, yet to obtain the Tao and to be in the Tao is achievable in Falun Dafa.
Since I voluntarily offer to teach newcomers and introduce Falun Dafa, one of the more important points in promoting Falun Dafa is looking at the outcome of the efforts. When people come to learn and quit, I sometimes try to look for reasons why. In doing so, I have discovered that how well one has cultivated is how good the outcome of Dafa promotion is. One time, three other practitioners and myself went down to the waterfront during the summer because of the large crowds gathering in this popular tourist area. On the first day, no one knew where or how to setup and start promoting.
I looked around and chose a space and while the other practitioners demonstrated the exercises, I did some talking to people passing by. The results were very good. Many people were interested, responded favorably, and we were able to distribute many flyers.
Even the exercises felt good during practice in this heavily populated tourist area. The following weekend, the four of us came back to this location again. This time we disagreed on how to place the mats, how big of a circle when standing and thinking about how to make what we did last week better. When this happened, the end results were not that good as the public was not as interested and it was more difficult to disseminate Falun Dafa information and flyers.
Master Li's fashen will use every opportunity in every situation to help us advance in cultivation. Give up the thoughts about how to make things better. What we need to make better is ourselves in accordance to Truthfulness, Benevolence and Forbearance in every aspect of every activity including promoting Falun Dafa. Master Li says "One should not pursue and will gain naturally."