Clarifying the Truth to Colleagues at Work
By a practitioner in Canada
(Clearwisdom.net) (Shared at 2006 Canada Falun Dafa Conference) Greetings, our respected Master! Greetings, all fellow practitioners! I was very fortunate to obtain the Fa in 2002. During the past four years, I
have been extremely fortunate to have changed from a selfish person to a Dafa
disciple of the Fa-rectification period. I thank Master for giving me this
precious opportunity to join the mission of saving sentient beings during Fa-rectification.
In my following sharing, I would like to discuss how I have clarified the
truth to colleagues at work. Please feel free to point out any
inadequacies or omissions. 1. Handing Out Chinese and English Copies of The Epoch Times I work in the Quality Assurance Department of a Toronto vehicle parts company
doing CMM testing. At work, I distribute both Chinese and English copies of The
Epoch Times newspaper every week. Everyone knows that I am a Falun Gong
practitioner. When I first started giving out newspapers, I only distributed them to
offices near me. Later I realized that there were also a lot of Chinese workers
on the assembly line, so I began making use of my lunch time to hand out papers
in the company cafeteria. In order to attract more people, I told them that I
was a volunteer for The Epoch Times and that I wrote articles for
it once in a while. As a result, whenever I handed out the papers, they would
ask me curiously, "Which article did you write this time?" I began
writing fewer articles as time went by. Nevertheless, by then, they had already
become "hooked" on the paper and it no longer mattered whether I wrote
or not. Currently, there is a group of people who wish to obtain both language
versions of The Epoch Times. Some say that their husbands want to
read the English version while others say that their neighbors are Chinese. Some
also tell me that while they read the English version, their parents like to
read the Chinese version. Once, a male employee from Mainland China asked me, "How much money do
you earn each time you give out this paper?" I replied, "Not every
person regards money as so important." Embarrassed, he said, "Doesn't
the U.S. government give you money?" I knew that he was a victim of the
Chinese Communist regime's propaganda so I began clarifying the truth to him.
Afterwards, he took a copy of the newspaper and said, "Since none of the
other papers contain anti-Communist articles, I might as well just look at
yours." After some time, he came up to me and said, "Now, not only do
I take your weekend editions, I go to the supermarket and get all the daily
editions as well! It looks like I have become more hardworking than you. You
should be distributing daily editions as well." There is also a Quality Assurance worker who works on the night shift and
always asks me to save a copy of The Epoch Times in English for
him. Once I forgot to do it, and he came to me the next day complaining,
"Why didn't you save a copy for me? I had to search through all the garbage
bins throughout the company and even then I could not find one!" A Western colleague also once told me, "This paper is written so well!
Why don't you charge money for it? You can start with me. I'll pay you for this
paper. If you're embarrassed to collect money from others, I can do it for you,
too!" When I explained to him the reasons behind the set-up of the paper,
he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "You are truly great. If I
could, I would like to say thanks on behalf of all the persecuted Chinese
people." Once, when I was distributing the special edition of The English Epoch
Times, a Western colleague came up to me and asked, "Are you against
the Chinese government?" I began telling him about the nature of the
Chinese Communist Party and how the evil party has been persecuting Falun Gong.
After he understood the truth, he said, "It looks like you are representing
another voice for China." There have been occasions when I collected the papers and distributed them on
Mondays because I had to leave Toronto to participate in activities on Fridays.
I would say, "I am terribly sorry. I am late in distributing the
papers." Some colleagues would say, "No problem, that's fine. Your
newspaper contains good information because what it contains cannot be found
anywhere else. To me, whatever I have not read before is good news." Another Western colleague also told me, "I have a double feeling of
happiness whenever I see you." I asked him jokingly, "Why is that? I
don't think I am that pretty to look at." He answered, "Well, first of
all, whenever I see you, it means that it's Friday and so the weekend is just
around the corner. Secondly, whenever you arrive it means that I will have
another copy of The Epoch Times to read." When I was distributing the newspapers another time, a fellow worker walked
by as she was reading the paper and muttered to herself, "These are truly a
group of compassionate people." I felt very touched, knowing that she has
already understood the truth from the paper. One lunchtime, I saw almost everyone in the cafeteria with their heads bent
over their copies of The Epoch Times. The entire room was silent
without any conversations at all. The only sound audible was the sound of
flipping pages. It is no wonder that a colleague told me, "You have
transformed our lunchtime into newspaper-reading time." I was filled with
indescribable joy seeing the group of awakening sentient beings. Due to the popularity of the newspapers, words of praise and gratitude
flooded in and it was not too long before my attachments to joy and showing off
surfaced. One time I forgot to distribute the papers during lunchtime, thinking
that since everyone already loved the paper, distributing them during work
should be no problem. After that, I began distributing the papers during work.
On the second day, Colleague A came up to me and said, "Is Colleague B a
good friend of yours?" I answered that she was. Colleague A continued,
"Then how can she speak such bad words about you in front of everyone? She
is telling people that you always do your own things when you should be working.
She even said that she is going to complain to Human Resources. I think you
should not be friends with a person like that anymore." I was stunned and
started to cry. Colleague C is a good friend of Colleague B and me. When she
heard about this incident and knew that I was very sad, she came to comfort me.
After comforting me, she said to me suddenly, "Didn't you say you are a
cultivator? Forgiving her should be no problem, right?" I was enlightened
immediately, and from then on I treated Colleague B liked a good friend, just as
if nothing had happened. Not long after, B came to me and said, "I only
said it as a joke; I did not complain to the HR department." I replied,
"To tell the truth, I should thank you. It was I who had done something
wrong, or else you would not have had such thoughts. Thank you for your
reminder. I will think twice about my actions in the future." Master once told us, "Your path is, and I think you've all seen this now, actually very
narrow. If you deviate just a little bit you won't measure up to the standard
of a Dafa disciple. There's only one very righteous path we can walk on, and
we can't deviate even just a little bit, because this is required by history,
and required by the lives of sentient beings in the future cosmos. The cosmos
in the future can't have any deviation or errors due to your having omissions
during the Fa-rectification, so it's important for you to walk each and every
step well during your own validating the Fa." ("Teaching and
Explaining the Fa at the Metropolitan New York Fa Conference") After this incident, I truly became enlightened to the fact that our
cultivation path must be walked righteously without any deviations. I thank
Master for once again giving me an opportunity to walk my own path right. 2. Distributing Petition Letters and Petition Forms During every petition event, I used the petition letters to clarify the truth
at work. For instance, the letter to our Canadian Prime Minister and Member of
Parliament to appeal to China to stop the persecution of Falun Gong, the
petition to support New Tang Dynasty TV, etc. I always collected signatures at
my workplace with these petitions. A colleague said, "I would sign anything you asked me to. I know that
you are always doing good things." A Western colleague told me after signing his name, "I am not Chinese,
nor do I speak Chinese. However, we all live on the same Earth, therefore, we
should support anything that is righteous, right?" I answered, "Yes,
you are truly noble." A Vietnamese colleague asked me while signing his name, "Will I get
arrested and thrown into prison if I sign this? My grandfather signed his name
for a righteous cause decades ago and was thrown into prison by the Communists
in Vietnam. He stayed in prison for his entire life as a result." Before I
had a chance to answer, he answered himself, "But I know that nothing like
that would happen in Canada. That's why I dare to sign my name." A Chinese colleague asked me after signing his name, "Now you have a
newspaper and a television channel, what's next?" I replied, "We also
have a radio station called 'Sound of Hope.'" He was stunned for a moment
before shaking his head and saying, "Then it looks like the CCP is really
going to die out soon." 3. Sending Emails to Colleagues Encouraging Them to Visit the Clearwisdom and
Epoch Times Websites I have been using all my vacations to participate in Fa Conferences and Dafa
activities. Every time I return from these activities, I tell my colleagues
about what I have done. After coming back from the L.A. Fa Conference this year, I used emails to
communicate my activities to my fellow colleagues. This is what I wrote:
"Greetings to all my fellow colleagues, I most sincerely recommend the
following link to you. This is what I did over the weekend in Los Angeles. You
can even find pictures of me on these web pages." The links that I sent out
included both English and Chinese reports of the L.A. Fa Conference on
Clearwisdom as well as The Epoch Times Websites. There were also
reports on the Divine Land Band. Initially, many colleagues were simply looking for me in the pictures. There
were non-stop calls asking me where I was and which instrument I was playing in
the band. I replied, "You can find me right after you finish reading all
the reports and pictures." It was not until the end that I revealed myself
by stating, "I'm in the picture taken in the Fa-Conference." My
colleagues zoomed into the picture until they finally found a pin-sized picture
of me. Nevertheless, by then they had already seen and read all the reports and
pictures. They were already exclaiming, "Your band is utterly
majestic!" Others said, "Maybe we don't have to wait for your
newspapers so eagerly the next time, we could just read it on the Internet
instead." Some colleagues walked over to my table and sat down, asking for
a thorough introduction to Falun Gong. What's even better is that some
colleagues have come in to ask some questions that they felt embarrassed to ask
previously, and I answered all of them one by one. The fact that they are my colleagues in this life shows that we have very
strong predestined relationships. I will definitely try my best to save all of
them. After the incident of harvesting organs from live practitioners in the
Sujiatun Concentration Camp was exposed, Toronto practitioners decided to go and
appeal on Parliament Hill. I took a day off on very short notice to participate
in the hunger strike and also made some reports. Before I left, I told my
colleagues with tears in my eyes about the atrocities committed in Sujiatun.
After returning from the hunger strike, I sent all my pictures and reports to my
colleagues. When I was eating in the lunchroom, I saw a plate of good food that
my colleague had especially made for me. I burst into tears. I was reminded of
the thousands and thousands of fellow practitioners in Mainland China who are
suffering tremendously, as well as the old practitioners who are on a three-day
long hunger strike outside Parliament Hill. I could only mumble these words,
"Thank you all for your concern. I'm terribly sorry but I don't have any
appetite." Without a word, my colleagues silently began to get teary-eyed
as well. One of them said, "Don't worry, you can eat it whenever you
want." The awakening and sympathy of sentient beings can only be obtained through
our clarifying the truth. If our fellow colleagues, people that we see everyday,
are not able to hear the truth and are left behind in the Fa-rectification, how
great a let-down would that be? We have to make use of our time well and use all
kinds of methods to clarify the truth to them. 4. Cultivating Oneself Well to Validate the Fa I started learning Dafa for the purpose of curing my health problems. After
practicing for two weeks, all of my sicknesses and health problems vanished.
Afterwards, I began avidly telling my colleagues about the beauty of Dafa. Many
of my colleagues have read Zhuan Falun and have learned the
five sets of exercises from me. However, none of them persevered in continuing
to practice. Once, a colleague of mine fell very sick, and I told her,
"Didn't I tell you to practice Falun Gong with me? Then you wouldn't be in
so much pain." Two weeks later, I had very strong sickness karma and was in
a lot of pain. This colleague saw me and said, "Didn't you say that you
would not fall sick anymore after practicing Falun Gong? Why are you in so much
pain now?" I replied, "I am sorry I had such a grudge against you when
you were sick, so I am repaying the bad karma now." As this colleague of
mine has read Zhuan Falun before, she understood what I was saying and
smiled back, "Then it looks like you are improving your xinxing." I have three weeks of vacation each year, and I use them mostly for Dafa
activities and Fa conferences. By November of last year I had used up all my
vacation time, however the HR department in my company told me that I still had
two more weeks of vacations left. I knew that they had made a mistake in giving
me extra vacation time. I thought: Isn't it good then? I can use these two more
weeks to participate in more Dafa activities. However, immediately after I had
this thought, my righteous thoughts emerged. I have to walk my path straight for
I cultivate Truthfulness. I notified the HR department immediately. The HR
department knew that I was a Falun Gong practitioner and told me, "Many
people come bargaining for more, I've not met anyone who gives vacations back.
You have done really well." Later, when a colleague asked me, "Why don't
you take it anyway? It's not even your fault." I explained, "You all
know that I cultivate according to the principles of 'Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance.'
I cannot take anything that is not rightfully mine." My colleagues smiled,
"It looks like you are really truthful then!" Sometimes, my work requires me to write a computer program for the quality
assurance department, to use in conducting quality tests. Sometimes, the QA
department workers deleted the program I wrote as a joke, and I had to rewrite
the entire program in another one or two days. There were several times when I
could not bear it any longer and complained to them. Once, a program of mine was
deleted again, and the QA worker walked up to me timidly and said, "Sorry.
I have deleted your program again. But today is Friday, you won't be mad, will
you?" My initial frown dissolved and I smiled back. After re-writing the
program, I sent an email to all my colleagues thanking them for their
cooperation. That particular QA worker was very touched and replied with an
e-mail to me saying, "Thank you so much for your understanding. You have
truly kept to your principle of Tolerance in Falun Gong's teachings of 'Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance.'" Master teaches us that, "Human society is a good place for cultivation, since everything here
can lead to attachments. Precisely because of this, a person who is able to
step out of it and get rid of all his attachments to human society is
magnificent and is able to reach Consummation." (from Essentials for
Further Advancement II) I will do my utmost to follow Master's teachings. Every environment is a good
cultivation environment for us. To me, my work environment is even more special.
All my actions and words are under the vigilant eyes of my colleagues, and so
the demands on me are even greater. I will cherish this wonderful cultivation
environment and do my best to save all these predestined colleagues of mine. To end, I would like to share Master's poem: "Where now are the gallant heroes of yore? (" Predestination Formed, the Lotuses Bloom" from Hong Yin II,
provisional translation subject to improvement) Thank you, our magnificent and compassionate Master! Thank you, everyone!
One after another they have come
since the spread of Dafa commenced
So long and drawn out the years--
hundreds, thousands, their measure
The predestination formed, with
true fruition, the many lotuses bloom "
Chinese version available at
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2006/6/2/129337.html
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