By a practitioner from Colorado

Hello Respected Master, hello fellow practitioners.

With the progress of Fa-rectification occurring so rapidly, the requirement of cooperation among Dafa practitioners is getting higher and higher. In order to save more sentient beings, we not only need to put down our human attachments but to also study the Fa well and cultivate well.

Recently, I have found that complaints among practitioners are a big barrier that is preventing us from validating the Fa and saving more beings.

When we complain, we are only looking at other people and not ourselves. We see only the shortcomings in other people but not their merits; and we are not considering others. What accompanies the complaints is often anger, imbalance, worry, and other selfish feelings. It's a way of looking for excuses for ourselves and disparaging others. We show no tolerance when we complain.

Here is an example. When we were selling tickets to the New Year Splendor at Costco in New York, I was assigned to a site uptown, with practitioners from five different areas of two countries. The New York practitioner who was in charge of the site was very well organized and the site was kept very clean and tidy.

We were late on the first day because we were not familiar with how to find the location. They were supposed to turn the site over to us on the second day, but unfortunately, we were late again. The local New York practitioner was not happy and complained to the main office. In our group everyone had his/her opinion, which was often different from the opinions of the New York practitioner's. One of the practitioners in the group took off the queen costume without consulting the others, and she refused to put it back on because she said the costume was not clean. The New York practitioner could not stand it and called the main office to complain. I was not involved in the conflict. But Master told us even when we see others in conflict we should look inwards. I felt we did not cooperate well with the local practitioners, and I very much agreed with the New York practitioner and liked her method of being organized and following the rules and plan.

One time, when a customer came to pick up tickets that had been paid for, I couldn't find them. I immediately became upset and nervous, and blurted out: "Who took the tickets?" One person nearby said, "Must have been you." Meanwhile someone else said, "Don't panic. Take another look." I calmed myself down and searched carefully and found the tickets. After the customer left I really regretted my behavior. I hadn't maintained my xinxing. We all came from thousands of miles away and had the same purpose. Some people could only stay for a few days. How could we not cooperate well? How could we complain about each other?

Before I had chance to sort out my thoughts, I was reassigned to a ticket site in New Jersey. When I went to the site I felt that it was not well organized and the people were not following any procedure. I realized that if I insisted on doing things in the same way as they were done at the previous ticket site, then I would find that almost everything at this site was wrong: from the boxes that held the tickets to the desk, including the black tablecloth which would slip off the table a dozen times a day. So, I decided to adjust my thinking and do my best.

Although I decided to do my best, negative thoughts kept coming to me, such as, practitioners at this site are not working as well as the ones at the previous site, and I wondered if this was the reason for the low ticket sales at this site. Because this thought was in my mind, the New York practitioner called me several times. She asked me to come back to New York, and complained about a Canadian practitioner who was again late arriving.

That evening, a practitioner from New Jersey joined our group. She rushed to the site after work, and as soon as she arrived she engaged herself totally in selling tickets. She stayed for two hours until we closed. During those two hours I could feel the energy from her. It was pure and clean. She was not thinking of anything but selling tickets. I felt ashamed of myself and how I had been thinking some negative thoughts about my fellow practitioners. It was my attachments and bad thoughts that had caused those complaints to arise in my head. I did not trust others and did not have enough compassion. Master said in Zhuan Falun:

"The person measures Buddha's xinxing with an ordinary person's criteria. How can that comparison be made? How can it work if a person views high-level things with the standard of everyday people?"

If we look at things with a non-practitioner's viewpoint, we won't be able to see the true nature of the matter. A task can be completed in different ways. The result can be the same, even when the process and methods are different. When we work as one body, we should not insist on our own methods and habits. Instead, we should have compassion and tolerance towards others.

I would like to conclude with one of Master's poems from Hong Yin.

"Compassion can harmonize Heaven and Earth, ushering in spring

Righteous thoughts can save the people in this world" ("The Fa Rectifies the Cosmos")

Thank you Master,

Thank you all practitioners.

Posting date: 3/24/2008
Original article date: 3/24/2008
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Chinese version available at http://minghui.org/mh/articles/2008/3/15/174353.html

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