Practicing the Exercises in the Morning in San Francisco's Chinatown

By a practitioner in San Francisco

(Clearwisdom.net) Ever since I began cultivation, I have liked to practice the exercises. I have felt the peace and beauty of the exercises very much.

After Master gave his lecture in San Francisco in 2005, I started to go to Chinatown in San Francisco to practice the exercises in the morning. At that time it was winter and very cold. It was also noisy with the homeless, street cleaners, and various unsavory elements. In the beginning, many practitioners went there to do the exercises. Gradually the number of practitioners decreased and finally I stopped going, too. At one point, only one practitioner went.

My excuse was that I needed to get to work in the morning. My time is tight and it is better to practice at home. In order to comfort myself, however, I went to the Garden Corner in Chinatown to send forth righteous thoughts for a few minutes every morning on my way to work.
Several practitioners later moved to Chinatown to live. From the beginning they persisted in practicing the exercises in the Garden Corner. One day another practitioner said to me, "You should come out to practice the exercises." I replied that I had to go to work and that time was short. She said we could start practicing at 6 a.m. I was very ashamed because this practitioner had started cultivation much later than I did.

I started to practice the exercises at the Garden Corner again. I saw that the other practitioners were very familiar with the street cleaner. Every time before they started to practice meditation, they asked him where he was going to clean and spray water.

One day passed, two days passed. With the passing of time, in the music of "slow, smooth and round," in the Teacher's direction, in the noise of Garden Corner, my heart gradually became peaceful. Every morning when I arrived I said, "Good morning" to people in Garden Corner. Although their faces were cold, I was not affected.

That was a typical morning in the sunlight. One time when I finished the meditation and did Heshi (palms held together in front of the chest as a gesture of respect), I opened my eyes and saw the smiling face of a kind senior. That was the first smiling face that I saw in the Garden Corner. At that moment, I understood the significance of practicing the exercises in Chinatown.

That morning, on the walk home, I felt my body was very light, just like stepping on a cloud. I felt my body become very large and my heart also became very large. The noise and messy crowd became very, very small.

In the noise of Chinatown, my heart is completely clear and peaceful.

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