(Clearwisdom.net) The challenge in cooperating in the Spectacular work (Divine Performing Arts Chinese Spectacular) were made even more complicated in trying to reconcile the approaches of Chinese and Western practitioners.
Western practitioners, at least myself, often have a very strong sense of responsibility to the society itself, including to its forms and mores. While this can be a very good thing, it can lead us to sometimes be restricted by the forms and conventions at the human level, rather than having a clear understanding that all things in human society came to be used by us to save sentient beings. For me, this manifested in precisely the way Master described in the "Fa Teaching at the 2007 New York Fa Conference":
"For certain things appointments have to be booked in advance, and one has to wait a long time for things to get done. But what is happening with the persecution is so urgent, and as we resist the persecution there is no time to do things in such a slow, unhurried manner. Students have realized that this won't work. Thus a lot of our Chinese students have taken their own approach, going for in-person meetings, doing things tenaciously, determined to clarify the facts to the fullest extent and get things done. Of course, some Western students find it hard to bear, being used to doing things that [other] way."
I was indeed often very uncomfortable with the Chinese practitioners' approaches, but looking at the positive side I realized that there were advantages to the way they did things, such as going directly to meet with people to get things done.
For example, another practitioner and I were working on getting a car dealer to sponsor the show. This practitioner had made many phone calls to car dealerships, but had not managed to generate any interest. We thus decided to go in person to a number of dealerships with sponsorship materials in hand. When we arrived at one dealership, we went to the front desk and asked to speak with the person in charge of advertising. The receptionist was surprised, telling us we needed to book an appointment by phone. When we explained that we wanted to book an appointment in person, the woman rolled her eyes at us and uttered under her breath, "delusional..." Her reaction, as I understand it, was targeted at my human attachments that were concerned with adhering to the forms and conventions of ordinary people. But both of us were clear in our minds to remember that we were there to save people, and that everything in the world existed for the Fa. We got an appointment and the dealership was very interested in doing a sponsorship. From that point on, that was the approach I used in dealing with almost everyone - the media, sponsors, and so on. In this way I established personal relationships with the news assignment editors at all the major media, and almost all the major newspaper and television stations carried some news about the Spectacular.
Of course, there are positives and negatives to both sides. The Chinese practitioners had to learn to be patient with the Westerners, and the Westerners also had to learn to be more tolerant of the Chinese practitioners. For the Westerners, a couple of us were sometimes tempted to focus on the negative qualities in others, and would sometimes want to make blanket complaints about the manner and behavior of some Chinese practitioners. We soon realized that when we did this we were being manipulated by our demon nature to do what the old forces wanted done - that is, to drive a wedge between practitioners and make it difficult to cooperate together.
It is inevitable in our form of cultivation that attachments, as long we have them, must emerge and come to the surface so that we can resolve them. Conflicts among ourselves and the exposure of attachments is thus unavoidable, and is even a good thing when it allows us to improve. It is crucial, then, that we can all forgive each other, and understand that a person's attachments are not their own; that attachments are like clouds floating by. I think this is also part of negating the old force's arrangements, since all our bad things, all our attachments, are products of the old cosmos, whereas only the parts of ourselves that are assimilated to Zhen, Shan, Ren are new. Master has said that he can only save people by looking at that good side of them. Similarly, I think we can only work together if we can do this.
However, after the Spectacular in 2007, I often felt that no one wanted to forgive me for anything. Instead, I seem to have alienated everyone, somehow. I heard after the show that sometimes the discussion time at group Fa studies when I wasn't there were occupied by gossiping and complaining about me. I would ask the local practitioners that I wanted to know about any problems or grievances they had with me so I could improve, but no one ever told me why they were so upset with me.
To give one example, after the show, Ticketmaster was supposed to pay us our settlement within about a week. Many practitioners were very anxious to get this money, as a lot of them were in poor financial situations and had donated their much-needed money for the show. However, the settlement from Ticketmaster was delayed. At first, I didn't think too much of it - our account had been quite complicated, and Ticketmaster had been fairly patient and generous with us, so I politely called or emailed them a couple times a week to gently remind them. As time went on and a settlement still wasn't forthcoming, I would make visits to their office, make more frequent phone calls and emails, and even consulted a lawyer and had the lawyer ready to write a letter to Ticketmaster on our behalf. Still, nothing. I then decided that I needed to look at the issue from a broader perspective, look inside, and share with all the local practitioners so that as a whole body we could come up with a way to resolve the issue. I sent an email to our local list sharing my thoughts on the situation, my attachments, and inviting others to reflect on what the possible causes were so that we could resolve the problem together. To my surprise, however, the only responses I got were angry emails pointing the blame squarely on me, my poor cultivation state, and my being a westerner who was too constrained by notions to get things done. Some people also insinuated that if it were a Chinese practitioner dealing with Ticketmaster, they could have solved the problem.
It was clear that the practitioners who had written the emails were also doing their best and were trying to consider what was best for the Fa, even if their approach may not have been ideal. And their words were right - I was dealing with the issue in too human a way, exhausting all the options at this human surface but not having strong enough righteous thoughts. Not long thereafter Ticketmaster got a check for us. In order to relieve the mental burden of the local practitioners who I felt no longer trusted me, I arranged for a Chinese practitioner to pick up the check.
During this process, I often felt extremely alone, feeling like none of the local practitioners understood me, and many of them disliked me. I had to remind myself sometimes: even if every practitioner in the world disliked and distrusted me, I would still continue doing what I'm supposed to do. Yet sometimes, after the show, and with my personal life in shambles and the local practitioners unhappy with me, I often wondered to myself what was wrong.
I had tried so hard all along to follow the Fa and follow Master in everything, and yet it seemed that every time I improved another step, a whole new wave of tests would be there to meet me. I was studying the Fa well, but I still wondered every once in a while, "Am I completely out to lunch? Am I really as bad as everyone says?" I worried that I had taken a wrong turn in cultivation and didn't even realize it. It's like driving long distances on an open highway in a never-ending night: sometimes, after driving for so long, you just start to wish you would see a road sign letting you know that you're still going in the right direction; without that, it's just like driving in the dark. I was desperate sometimes for that reassurance, and wanted to look externally for some kind of validation, someone to tell me I'd done a good job, and I wasn't completely bad. Sometimes I would look externally at other practitioners who, at least seen through my eyes, seemed to have such an easier path (of course, I can't see other practitioners' true situations). I would wonder why others don't have to go through a process this difficult without respite. But I realized, finally, that what I was doing was looking externally, which was also similar to the attachment Master described in "A Dialog With Time," (in Essentials for Further Advancement) where disciples compare themselves with their own past or with ordinary people, rather than evaluating themselves with the standards of the Fa at different levels. I decided that I would stop seeking external reassurance - just like the person who practices the sudden enlightenment form; he can never see his gong or his progress, or where he is in cultivation; instead, he just has to enlighten from the Fa and persist in going forward. The Fa, inside one's own heart, is the only road sign he needs on the long, sometimes dark road to enlightenment.
Even as I write this speech [note: I wrote the speech in while living in Washington DC in the fall], I've heard that these negative sentiments towards me in Calgary have still not faded; the night before I wrote this speech, for example, I ran into one of the other Calgary coordinators in New York. We spoke briefly, she asked about how I'm doing in Washington, and said, "I think it's better for you that you're not in Calgary; I don't know why, but a lot of the practitioners have very strong bad notions about you...I don't know why."
But I knew why. At least, I know part of it. For one, I still have sentimentality and too much concern about the state of my personal cultivation. After that practitioner told me that, just after she left, I began to weep uncontrollably, sad that the practitioners in the city that I had poured my heart into, where, so many nights, I had knelt before Master's picture in tears, begging to be able to do better in working with the local practitioners, where I had racked my brain to figure out how to create a better environment for everyone - that the practitioners in the city where I was born and raised, dislike me. I wasn't angry at them, nor even wanting to prove them wrong about me, or change their minds. I was simply, deeply saddened by how poorly I had done and the implications for saving sentient beings.
The second problem was that, just as the local practitioners hadn't forgiven me, I had not truly forgiven them, at least not up very recently.
I realized this when I was watching Master's lecture to the Australian students. When Master would explain that practitioners shouldn't, for example, raise their voices or get into heated arguments, I thought back to the Calgary practitioners and their past mistakes, and I realized that I still harbored hurt feelings and resentment, and I still hadn't forgiven some of those involved for how they treated me. In particular, I thought back to one incident that occurred just a few days before our shows.
A couple days before the tour group was to arrive, we sent out a press release informing media about the welcoming ceremony we would hold for them. Another practitioner had worked on the media release and asked me to edit and review it, which I did, replying that it was quite good but that a couple small things could be changed.
That night, I was called to a 1:00 a.m. meeting downtown of coordinators for various aspects of the show. In the meeting room, as soon as I sat down, I was surrounded by practitioners who began pointing and yelling at me in Chinese with angry looks on their faces. I couldn't follow what they were saying, and didn't understand what they were angry about. (Apparently they were mad that the sending of the media advisory was delayed by a couple hours because of my edits, even though the event wasn't for another couple days.) I was confused, because just a few days before I was being criticized by those same practitioners for sending a press release too quickly and not getting enough feedback. I tried to calm everyone down, and said we need to look at things from the Fa with calm hearts, and that righteous gods would help us with anything if we cultivate and work together well, whereas if we don't cultivate well, no matter how perfect the press release is, we would not succeed. My words fell on deaf ears, and I continued to be shouted at. I suggested that instead of being angry, we should proceed to just think about how we can go forward along the right path. Still, the angry accusations persisted. It was the one time I ever walked out on a meeting, frustrated that I couldn't reason with those who were upset. I was heartbroken at the thought that our event wouldn't be a success because we couldn't get over our interpersonal conflicts.
By the time I got home, however, I got a phone call from one of those practitioners: he said that after I left, they all looked inside and recited Lunyu, and realized their mistakes, and he apologized to me.
The practitioners there truly improved themselves in that process, our media event was a great success, and in the end, it was me who was unforgiving. Worse yet, I found myself thinking in my mind "Fine, if you don't appreciate what I'm doing, I won't be back next year - you can figure it out for yourselves." Upon having that thought, I was appalled. I realized at that time that so much of what I had been doing was to validate myself, to have my hard work acknowledged or appreciated. I asked myself: are you doing all this for the other practitioners, or are you doing it to save sentient beings?" Of course, I was doing it to save sentient beings.
Today I'd like to take the opportunity to apologize to every practitioner whose past mistakes and attachments I held onto in my mind; I'm sorry for providing the old forces with any excuse to persecute, or to create gaps among us. I'm sorry for not following Master's words and looking at your good sides. And I would ask, too, that you release me from my past wrongs; I no longer acknowledge those bad things as me, and I hope you will do the same.
