Our Philadelphia group also consists of several students from a college in the suburbs, called Swarthmore College. The two assistants at the college have written the following to share with you what theyve learned about introducing Dafa in college or university settings.
Background
During the past year, wea student and young intern at Swarthmore Collegehave learned a tremendous amount about introducing and spreading Dafa in a college setting. The collegiate environment, weve come to realize, is an outstanding place to share the Fa with people, because members of the college community are sure to come into contact with many dozens of people; people tend to welcome reflection and thoughtful conversation; people are open and eager to learn new things, and the environment is usually very multi-cultural, and thus, tolerant. We would like to share some of the insights weve gained from our activities. We think theyre applicable not only to people in collegiate settings, but also to those who spread the Fa elsewhere.
1. Group Practice
The first big lesson we learned was not to try to accommodate everybody who shows interest in practicing, nor to try to please everyone. You have to be serious about your own practice and set a standard. If you fail to do so, the gaps in your cultivation are likely to invite interference.
The best example of this was with scheduling our group practice times. We had a great deal of trouble deciding upon a time for our group practices at first, for we wanted to make everyone happy and pick a time that fit everyones schedule. At college, everyone has a different schedule, and people tend to be rather busy. If we had practice early in the morning, we feared that no students would wake up in time to practice, as college students love to stay up late and sleep in, generally speaking. If we were to practice in the afternoon, some people would have had classes, some people had sports, and others had meetings. The evenings, too, always seemed to preclude some people, as there were evening college seminars, study sessions, and all sorts of things occupying peoples time. No matter what time we picked, some people seemed to be left out or someone wasnt happy about it. Eventually, we realized that we needed to take practice more seriously, and start looking at things from the perspective of the Fa and stop using human notions, such as trying to accommodate everyone and make everyone happy. We finally set the time for practice at 6am every day, with group reading two evenings and one afternoon a week. When we became more serious, to our surprise, so did other people. More and more people started coming to the practices and study sessions, and the general atmosphere became much more solemn and serious.
Though we thought wed learned our lesson, our understanding of how to run a practice site was still lacking in many ways. This mainly surrounded the hiding of our own attachments and shortcomings with the excuse of "accommodating and pleasing others." One experience allowed us to enlighten to this. During the winter, when things got really cold, we decided to occasionally go indoors to a nearby building for morning practice. We justified this decision on the grounds that it was too cold for beginners and we didnt want to scare them off or for them to have too much discomfort. However, it soon seemed that Teacher Li would not allow us to delude ourselves like this for very long. A few weeks after beginning to avoid the bitter cold, the heating in the house of one of us assistants broke completely. It was the coldest week of the year, and the whole furnace just quit. The houses temperature dropped steadily from 70? to 60? to 50? to 40? and then into the 30s! It was unbearable, so this assistant decided to stay in the other assistants dorm room for a few days, as it was nice and warm there. But the first day he started to stay in the other assistants dorm room, that rooms heater broke, too! There, too, the temperature started plummeting steadily. We couldnt believe it! Teacher Li has stated on several occasions that for a cultivator, theres no such thing as "coincidence." We were then able to look at the situation as Dafa cultivators and realize that this was no coincidencesomething was clearly being pointed out to us. We realized that we were attached to comfort, and were avoiding the discomfort of the bitter-cold outside by deceiving ourselves. We were practicing inside not so much as to make others feel comfortable, as to make ourselves comfortablehow ridiculous we were! From then on we practiced outside every day, no matter the weather. And sure enough, more people than before ended up coming to our site to practice.
From these two experiences we learned an important lesson in how to run a practice site. What seemed to us to be compassion and benevolence towards beginners, that is, accommodating their schedules and trying to make them comfortable by going indoors, is, when viewed from a higher perspective, using human notions to understand Shan, Benevolence. But there is no place in cultivation for ordinary human notions.
2. Dont go to Extremes or Isolate Yourself
Another important thing we learned is the value of not falling victim to the attachment of zealotry. Though we did a lot of promotions on campus to inform people about our practice group, something unexpected happened: The people who obtained the Fa or who came to our practice site were often the friends of one young student practitioner. We thought this was peculiar, because the friends of us two assistants couldnt seem to make it to group practice or study, no matter how interested they appeared. And sometimes we had been disappointed that this practitioner had missed some of our Dafa-spreading activities because he had plans with friends. But this students friends seemed to come to our site one after another, some just to practice, some just to study, and some to do both. Someone from out of state even obtained the Fa at our site when they came to visit him. We were delighted that all of these people were learning Dafa, but also thought this was a little peculiar. We wondered what we were supposed to enlighten to.
A few months later, one of us two assistants was told by a friend: "We never see you anymore. Everyone wonders where youve gone off to! They tell me that youre too busy practicing Falun Gong with your friend." This, along with a few other events, allowed us two assistants to realize that we had become over-zealous and gone to an extreme with our practice. We had neglected relationships and other matters in the society of everyday people. We had become so concentrated in our study of Dafa, work for Dafa, and own practice, that we had inadvertently gone to an extreme. We were like "out of the monastery monks," as Teacher Li says! How far we had strayed from Dafas requirements.
Enlightened by this, we came to see that simply by just being a good friend and maintaining relationships better with non-practitioners, we allow others to know that Dafa is good. By spending time with everyday people we allow them to learn the truth about Dafa, and many chances arise in conversation to clarify the truth of whats happening in China. When we go to extremes, like spending all of our time with other practitioners or always talking about Dafa, other people might not understand us and even be scared off. What a shame it is to have our own enthusiasm damage the reputation of Dafa! Meanwhile, back at our site, the student had quietly practiced and studied all along while remaining a good, social friend, and thus many of his friends and acquaintances came to learn Dafa. After working on our attachments of this sort, many, many old friends have sought us out themselves and asked us to tell them more about Dafa or to even teach it to them. One old friend who hadnt been seen in over two years suddenly came back from Mongolia to visit one of us, and wanted to learn Dafa. Even in spreading Dafa, we have learned, we must have a calm and pure heart. Our enthusiasm, excitement, and pursuit can really interfere with things, even if were trying to do good.
We bring this up also because weve seen this in some of our fellow practitioners. Its all too easy to spend all of your time with fellow cultivators and Teachers precious books. But this might make it hard to spread the Fa to others, even when you try. If you cut yourself off from almost everyone, maybe only your practitioner friends and a few people in the workplace will know youre a good person. By conforming to ordinary society just enough, we give ourselves a tremendous number of opportunities to share with people Dafa and clarify the facts.
We can give you another example of just how important this can be. When we planned an Introduction to Falun Dafa workshop at our college in last Fall, we got a strange e-mail from the Deans Office asking us to contact them. It turned out they were really concerned about our having a Dafa event on campus. Apparently, a student from China had told the Deans Office all sorts of lies about Dafa and made them rather confused and scared. So one of us made it a point to talk to the Dean, who is actually the Dean of the entire college. The Dean had not realized that this practitioner, whom he knew well, was one of the people planning the event. When he learned that this practitioner was behind the event, his attitude changed completely, and instantly. He told us, "Boy, Im relieved to know youre doing this event! I had no idea what it was all about, but now that I know youre involved, Im sure it has to be good. Im certain it will benefit our students." The Dean knew that our practitioner was an outstanding person, but he did not know that this person practiced Falun Gong. Had the student remained in closer touch with his friend the Dean, as he had before he practiced Dafa, this problem never would have arisenthe Dean would have already known the truth about Dafa.
One other experience is worth mentioning. One of us two assistants was recently invited by another practitioner to New York City, to be interviewed for a widely-broadcast TV show. The show was an hour-long interview and discussion with three practitioners and the host. This means that it was a great chance to let many people know the truth. Our assistant wondered how the New York practitioner was able to get the producer to do a whole show on Dafa. To his surprise, the New York practitioner told him that he had met the producer at a party in Manhattan. At the party, the two of them had got to talking about Dafa, and the practitioner asked the producer if hed like to do a feature on Falun Dafa. This was really amazing to hear, as how many practitioners would be seen at a party of any sort? Not many that we know. Yet arent social gatherings also a form of human society that we can utilize to spread the Dafa? That New York practitioner understood that almost any environment and almost any form of human society can be utilized by this great Fa.
4. Dont let People Mistake Your Words for the Fa
One final thing that wed like to share is extremely important, and something some people here might not have considered carefully enough. It is this: When giving a presentation, a talk, a workshop, or simply telling someone about Dafa, we must be very, very careful not to allow them to think that what we say is the content of Dafa or the Fa. People in North America very often mistaken for the actual content of Dafa what you, I, or some other practitioner says according to his current understanding. We think this is a serious problem that can easily occur when spreading the Fa.
The reasons are twofold. First, when people come to a workshop, talk, or some other event that introduces Dafa, they expect to learn what Dafa is. They figure, naturally, that if they go to the workshop or attend the talk, they will find out what Dafa is. They will then feel justified in judging Dafa and deciding whether or not this is something they want to practice. How are they to realize that those of us who present Dafa to them are speaking according to our own understanding, and speaking at an elementary level, no less? It is perfectly natural for them to assume that they will find out what Dafa isotherwise, why would they attend? Why, they might assume, would practitioners otherwise have this presentation?!
This means that we must make it very clear to people who attend or participate in our introductory events that we are not teaching Dafa, but just giving them a sense for what its about. What were really doing is allowing them to glance at the practice by way of our experiences. But we absolutely cannot define it nor tell what certain terms and aspects of the practice mean! Yet its so easy to fall into doing this in these settings, as people expect exactly this of you. We now understand that we do well to tell people certain things, like, "Although were here to talk about Falun Dafa, we, too, are only students in this profound practice, and we can only speak from our current understanding." Or, "What weve said is to give you a general sense for what its like to practice, but to truly discover its benefits, insights, and profundity, youll need to try it for yourself." When people ask us what something means, we like to begin our reply with "You can think of it as? or "At this time I understand it to be about?; this is quite different from saying "It is such and such."
Of course, weve come to see that the other possibility is to read or recite Teacher Lis actual words to people, making sure to tell people whose words these are. This way people get to actually hear and taste the Fa, which, as we know, is more mighty than anything we could possibly say.
So what this amounts to is that it is not enough to be clear in your own mind about what are Teachers words and what are your own words. You must also make sure your audience is clear about this. To not do so, we feel, is to mislead people.
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In closing, wed like to reiterate that a college or university holds amazing opportunities for introducing Dafa to others and clarifying the facts about events in China. At most institutions you can get a room for a 9-day seminar for free and theyll even provide the TV; you can organize a workshop or talk and gather all kinds of support from different faculty, administrators, and departments; you can supply your library with Dafa materials; you can set up booths at different fairs and events, and you can even put free announcements and promotional articles in your campus paper. Dont worry if your English isnt perfect or if you dont know a lot of peoplea pure heart can overcome and eliminate any obstacles.
Please contact us through the Philadelphia group if you would like to talk about anything.
Thank you.