By a Dafa practitioner in Germany

(Clearwisdom.net)

When people were unwilling to listen to me clarify the truth, I could always find some reason, such as, "because that person had been deceived too deeply," or "there were evil low level beings controlling him," etc. But through studying the Fa, I realized that I myself was usually the real reason. When clarifying the truth, I did not stand from the perspective of being completely considerate of others' well-being. I was perplexed by their apparent rejection. Later when I clarified the truth, I would look into the eyes of the other party an make myself indifferent to all false impressions. I believed only what I saw in the eyes of the person I was clarifying the truth to. Then, those false impressions no longer had any effect on me.

In the process of clarifying the truth during five weeks at the Wagner Opera Festival, I realized that my ability to move someone while clarifying the truth was also a test of my understanding of Dafa. Each time after clarifying the truth I saw that if I was unable to make the other party have righteous thoughts towards Dafa, it was due to my not taking cultivation seriously, not being steadfast, not being rational or not being mature.

Master's article "Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston" made us understand that the demeanor of Dafa practitioners is to be considerate of others first when encountering any problem. When clarifying the truth to everyday people, it is difficult to determine how much depth to go into. When we said too much, everyday people would say, "I just enjoyed seven hours of Opera; it is so wonderful. Why must you talk to me about the murderers in China?" With respect to this matter I thought about it for a long time, and did not make any breakthroughs even after a few days. One day after studying the Fa, suddenly a scene appeared in my head. The scene I saw was that of a mother feeding a baby by chewing the food first and then feeding it to her baby with a small spoon. I did not understand the meaning. Then one day, a few practitioners exchanged views about a book called, "To all Audiences" that I was going to distribute. One practitioner said, "You are pushing down half a bun [into someone's throat]" Another practitioner said, "It is not just half a bun, it is two buns." At that point in time I suddenly understood the wider meaning of the profoundness and depth of the scene with which Master kept trying to enlighten me during my Fa study: When a mother chews food for her baby, this is a selfless action for the good of the baby. [Note: Since grains are to a large extent digested by the enzymes in saliva, it was customary in many traditional cultures for mothers to chew them for their babies until they were old enough to chew for themselves.]

Master told us many principles of the Fa that we cannot tell an everyday person directly. An everyday person might not be able to accept it even when he has heard the principles of the Fa. How much care we put into clarifying the truth and the degree of our carefulness and patience are manifestations of our realm. Their reactions will correspond to our realm.

One day, three Chinese people came to the opera festival, but we did not go and clarify the truth to them. We instead continued to clarify the truth to the westerners. In the end, the number of westerners who refused to listen to the truth suddenly increased greatly. On the second day, when all of us were studying the Fa and exchanging experiences, we realized that we did not pay heed to the words of Master. Master has already told us many times about the importance of clarifying the truth to Chinese people. But we backed away when faced with the actual situation, with the thought deep in our hearts that Chinese people are difficult to save. The end result of this thinking was that we refrained from mentioning Falun Gong when meeting Chinese people, or when people were not willing to chat, we would beat around the bush. The thought, "Since we were not good in clarifying the truth, we might as well not clarify the truth" always had the upper hand. Actually this was having the attitude of taking the easy and comfortable way. Our thoughts were not righteous enough and so we had descended into the state of everyday people doing the tasks of everyday people. After recognizing the problem, those practitioners who again came across the three Chinese a few times subsequently clarified the truth to them.

In the beginning, we realized that we should not just give out flyers, but should instead clarify the truth. Therefore each day, we only managed to clarify the truth to one, two, three or four persons. Later we felt that this was too slow. Therefore I started to practice the Dafa exercises to the accompaniment of Dafa music during the intermissions at the opera in a place that the audience would definitely pass by.

The audience of the Opera took an interest in watching me practice the exercises in the garden. Some people waited around to have long chats with us. They even expressed that they would definitely read Dafa websites and read the original works of the founder of Falun Gong. Some even said, "We saw that you were no longer in this dimension when you were meditating. We would like to ask you what this is all about." One requested me to let him help me distribute Dafa newspapers back at his own city and also offered to help me approach the local media there. All this made me realize that we shouldn't stiffly stick to the old methods that worked yesterday. Later, one day it was raining so I could not practice the exercises, so I started to clarify the truth during the intermissions at the Opera by collecting signatures [for our petition]. That day I clarified the truth more than any other day. The next few days, I found that in a half hour's time [during the intermission] we couldn't manage to clarify the truth to more than a few persons. During the two hours before the start of the Opera at 4 p.m., many audience members would stroll around, which would give us ample time to clarify the truth more deeply. Therefore we made a breakthrough from the method of the day before. Sometimes, people would tell us to go upstairs at the opera house to collect signatures. Even the Opera security guards encouraged us to "quickly go upstairs, the crowds are bigger there." During the fourth week, when the new article "Hurry Up and Tell Them" was published, we felt that Master was fully aware of the situations here, and that he was speaking exactly about us.

With A Righteous Heart, The Evil Dares Not Bully

During the intermissions and at the end of the Opera, we clarified the truth and distributed newspapers, and no one objected. During the fifth week, two people in the audience separately said that we were getting involved in politics and scolded us loudly. We kindly explained to them why what we are doing was not getting involved in politics. Through studying the Fa, we realized even more that this was a good chance to clarify the truth. In the end, when this thought came out, on the second day we waited for them but they did not come. At that moment, we really felt that "...all that's happening is targeting different human thoughts. Those who do well will change the environments around them, and those who do poorly will make the environments around them change according to their states of mind." (Year 2002 Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference)

Today, over 1700 Chinese have been brutally killed by the Jiang dictatorship for believing in Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance. The persecution is still going on. This is the evil dictator's challenge towards the civilized world, because those who are against Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance are really the most dangerous terrorists.

The value of the opera festival lies in preserving the wonderful civilization of mankind, and Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance safeguards civilization and the goodness of mankind. We hope that more people will come together to help us uphold Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance.

Posting date: 10/3/2002
Original article date: 10/3/2002
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Translated on 9/30/2002
Chinese version available at http://minghui.cc/mh/articles/2002/9/17/36668.html