PureInsight | December 22, 2019
[PureInsight.org]
Greetings Revered Master! Greetings Fellow Practitioners!
I’d like to share with fellow practitioners my 11 years of cultivation experiences while doing Shen Yun reporting.
I started practicing Dafa in February 2007, the first year that Shen Yun came to Taiwan. Other practitioners were excited, “Shen Yun is coming!” But I had no idea what Shen Yun was and how important it is, nor was I keen about theatrical performances. However, I still invited friends and family to watch Shen Yun.
I was shocked after watching Shen Yun for the first time. I realized that a good performance can let people know many things: Dafa’s wonderfulness, China’s persecution, and the law of retribution. I didn’t know how to do the Three Things well. Seeing how other practitioners enthusiastically supported Shen Yun, I told myself that next year I should also do so to quickly immerse myself in Dafa’s cultivation environment.
Master published "Fa Teaching at the 2007 New York Fa Conference," (Teaching the Fa at the Conference VIII) in the same year. Master said, “To those Dafa disciples who have just obtained the Fa, I say that you are so fortunate. Do you know what kind of group you have joined? These cultivators have made it to today after going through the harshest of tests. Of course, this persecution hasn't ended yet, but the evil is no longer so abundant or rampant, and the pressure is no longer so great. However, it won't be that just because you have entered [Dafa] only recently the standard of cultivation will be lowered for you. So in cultivation you must try hard to do the three things that Dafa disciples should do well, and at the same time save sentient beings and fulfill the roles that Dafa disciples should. In order to do these things well, you must study the Fa well. Make great efforts at studying the Fa, and you will be able to keep up with the progress of Fa-rectification, and you will in an impressive manner become a Dafa disciple who befits that name and is of the Fa-rectification period.”
Master’s words gave me great encouragement. Though I started practicing late, I knew that Master looked after me all the time. He knows my thoughts and worries. As long as I followed Master’s Fa, I could walk well on the cultivation path.
Forming Shen Yun Report Transcription Team
Some practitioners recommended that I transcribe Shen Yun interviews the next year. I was young and good at typing, so I could help reporters quickly get the interview audio into text. Sometimes I transcribed 30 to 40 interviews in one night. It was common that I worked with reporters all night without sleep. I also rode my motorcycle or took buses to go to other cities to support Shen Yun reporting.
As I kept working on Shen Yun reporting, I gradually came up with an effective process for transcription. Some practitioners saw that I could endure hardship and collaborated well with others, so they asked me to form a transcription team and be the coordinator of the team. I didn’t know how to be a good Dafa project coordinator. But I had taken several leadership roles in student activities and community work, so leading a team was not a big challenge. During the work, I also realized that in a Dafa project, the coordinator herself is not just a leader, but more importantly, a cooperator for the needs of the overall team.
As a part of Shen Yun’s reporting process, our transcribers must follow Shen Yun reporting requirements and principles, and our speed and quality must be satisfactory.
Master said in Teaching the Fa at the Discussion on Creating Fine Art, “Everything that human beings draw or paint includes elements of the artist himself. In an artist's work, everything about that individual and about the person being portrayed is attached to that painting.”
I realized that we must get rid of any negative thoughts about practitioner reporters and improper thoughts about sentient beings. Though we only do transcription, every thought of ours will form certain materials and stay in the report. We must have a pure heart, do well what we need to do, and be responsible for the Fa and sentient beings.
I have worked on the Shen Yun transcription team for 11 years. Some practitioners said that since I have a Masters degree, transcription work was a waste of my talent. I wondered why the reporters couldn’t transcribe the audio recording themselves. I also thought that other transcribers might not need me too much. They had matured on the Fa. As long as they knew how to support reporters, they could take care of transcription on their own.
But the consequences were severe. I relaxed myself a few times and didn’t arrange enough resources for transcription. The reports were delayed. Reporters were waiting, but I had only myself to do the transcription. However fast I was, I only had two hands and could not complete everything on time.
Master said in Be More Diligent, “It’s critical that the overall coordinator of a project cultivates well. If he fails to cultivate well, it will impact the entire project, causing it to stagnate and for there to be many difficulties. So this is critical.”
I realized that though the transcription seemed to be a simple job, it was the cultivation path that Master arranged for me. It let me hear the joy from people after they watched Shen Yun and were saved. I could even feel their lives coming from different cosmos. I saw the deep meaning of Shen Yun, gradually increased my understanding of Shen Yun, and obtained more confidence in Dafa cultivation. I believe that no matter big or small, hard or easy, every truth-clarification project has the factors of cultivation in it.
Forming Shen Yun Report Translation Team
Following practitioners’ suggestion, I also formed a Shen Yun translation team in 2009. We gathered those practitioners in Taiwan who understood English to translate English interviews into Chinese. This was to support Shen Yun reporting in North America. We stayed online, following the American time, to wait for the interview records. When there were two shows on the same weekend day in a North American city, the reporters might be busy between the shows and pass all records to us at the end. It often took us four to eight hours, or even longer, to wait and translate. I kept thinking that it was hard for me. I had to stay at home for the whole weekend. Even going shopping was an extravagant idea. My initial sacred feeling of joining the translation team was replaced by human thoughts and I even thought about giving up the translation coordinator work.
Whenever I thought of quitting, I reminded myself that the work environment in North America is not as comfortable as in Taiwan. There is a long commute between theater and hotel and the cold weather also makes things harder. On the other hand, I was just doing translation in front of a computer and I could always grab something to eat when I was hungry. I told myself, “There is nothing to complain about. I should study the Fa and do the exercises while waiting for the audios. I should be pure not resentful.”
One year I tried hard to look for my own gaps in coordination work. I realized that a coordinator is not just doing work herself, nor was it to use her human skills to get things done. A Coordinator is like a rope to connect fellow practitioners, who are like pearls, together. A Coordinator should manage time, resources, and the process flow well. She should also maintain the environment for fellow practitioners to establish their mighty virtue. Thus we can form as a whole and get the job done beautifully. I said in my heart to Master, “I must do better.”
Then, miraculously, our translation work was much more efficient that year. Team members were always on time and some of them could even contribute more hours. My everyday people’s job that used to demand my time all of sudden slowed down. I could handle both my everyday job and the translation tasks. I will never forget this experience. I know that Master helped and encouraged me.
Master said in Fa Teaching Given at the Epoch Times Meeting, “If you can manage to be tenacious about doing a good job with what you need to do, things will gradually be resolved on every front. That’s because new students, whatever the case, are constantly entering and they will mature bit by bit. And once they have matured, they can get involved. Your journey is one where if you can take correct, right steps, the doors before you that were once shut will open and the road will become wide. The journey is the same, whatever project it may be. When things don’t go well it stems from poor cooperation or not giving it enough priority. Human attachments are what block your path, and thus the entire journey has been bumpy and filled with constant troubles. Because there are too many human attachments involved, people try to defend themselves when problems come up, rather than defend the Fa.”
This experience told me that no matter how capable a person is, if his thought is not on the Fa but about himself, he is for himself, and thus he cannot have the desired result. Only the wisdom developed from Dafa can lead us forward.
Supporting Shen Yun Reporting in Korea
I was invited by a practitioner from The Epoch Times to go to Korea to support their local Shen Yun reporting in 2014. I thought, “I have just done the back office support for the Shen Yun report, and I don’t speak Korean. What can I do there?”
That practitioner explained to me, that they were short of people and experiences. Since I was quick in typing Chinese, local practitioners could translate Korean interview into Chinese orally and let me type that out. I could also set up a process based on the North America translation team’s model. Further, I could interview Westerners in English and work with interpreters to interview Koreans and edit reports.
I still had doubt, but I said to myself, “When other practitioners need me and Dafa needs me, I should just do it without saying much!”
On my flight returning to Taiwan from Korea, the airline upgraded me to the business class. I felt this was Master’s encouragement. Year by year, I felt that my cultivation path was not created for nothing. Every step I took, from small-team coordination to large-scale cooperation, was to make me more mature and clearer in mind.
Though the Korean practitioner and I speak different languages, we cultivate the same Dafa and share the same will to save people.
I have been to Korea for five years. Several Taiwan practitioners and I have decided that we should go to Korea every year to work with the local practitioners on Shen Yun reporting. To us, this is no longer a support duty but part of our job, as if we’ve made the promise to each other in pre-history: In this moment in history, at this place, we will assist Master to rectify the Fa and save sentient beings. I feel unparalleled sacredness and honor to do that.
Conclusion
My everyday people’s job is project management. I am used to focusing on workflow, methodology, and efficiency. On truth-clarification projects, I find that practitioners often participate in the work with righteous thoughts and the passion of believing in Master and Dafa, but they ignore issues of time, cost, and resources. Since they don’t pay attention to those issues, there might be money and resources wasted. Sometimes I even feel that the practitioners are not as good as me, and lack professionalism and are hard to communicate with. Sometimes I wonder why I, who have many skills in everyday people’s work, was assigned the low-tech typist job in a Dafa project. When I lacked righteous thoughts, I would even doubt whether my job is necessary in Shen Yun reporting or whether it was a waste of resources.
Master said in Be More Diligent, “All of the many amazing things that you are doing in the course of validating the Fa are being recorded in this chapter of the cosmos’s history, with nothing pertaining to even a single disciple being omitted. However, if you are focused on the superficial, ordinary human things, then you are attached and are using human thinking. Don’t give weight to such things. If you can manage to quietly complete what you notice is lacking, quietly do well what you should do, and quietly do something well when you find it to have been done less than ideally, then the multitude of gods will have tremendous admiration for you and exclaim that this person is simply extraordinary. Only doing things this way counts as what a Dafa disciple should do.”
This teaching was a great wakeup call to me. Yes, we should quietly complete the missing task in the overall efforts, but not to promote our own ideas, or even show off our own self in some sneaky ways.
During the past 11 years, I found that the more projects that I participate in, the more I need to improve the quality and quantity of studying the Fa, doing exercises, and sending forth righteous thoughts. If I don’t do it well, the Dafa work becomes doing everyday people’s work, and, when there is a break, I will just become lax and fall into everyday people’s mentality.
Master said in Teaching the Fa at the 2003 Atlanta Fa Conference, ”A lot of our Dafa disciples are indeed quite tired, but on the other hand, they haven't taken Fa study and cultivation seriously. They've done lots and lots of things, but they haven't cultivated themselves, and so they'll feel fatigue, feel tired, and feel that it's hard. Actually, I've always told you that doing cultivation doesn't compromise your Dafa work, for sure. That's because doing the exercises is the most effective way to get rid of fatigue, it's the best way to quickly make your body recover.”
Looking within, the root cause is that I didn’t focus on Fa study and didn’t improve my understanding of the Fa. When I was supporting Shen Yun reporting in Korea, besides supporting the performance and writing reports, fellow practitioners and I reminded each other to study the Fa and do the exercises. Though I slept little, I was always in good spirits and energetic. I especially cherish that opportunity and experience. I also wonder maybe Master was taking care of me. I need to be more diligent and not let Master worry about me.
I hope that via the DC Fahui, I can reflect on my cultivation experiences and look for my own shortcomings. I also hope that I can find my gaps and learn from fellow practitioners, to further improve myself.
Thank you, Master!
Thank you, fellow practitioners!
Chinese version: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/245228
