(Clearwisdom.net) Not long ago, a video shop owner in Chinatown shared a story with me: The night before the Chinese New Year Gala was to be held in Washington D.C., several practitioners volunteered to go to Chinatown to sell tickets for the event. An elderly person made some defamatory remarks about Falun Gong as he walked by the ticket booth. One of the practitioners lost her composure and started to argue with him.
The shop owner witnessed the incident, so I showed him a book written by a Dafa practitioner narrating her encounters in China. He asked: "Are these accounts of the persecution true?" He expressed doubt when I told him about the facts of the persecution and said that he would only believe what he has personally witnessed.
I would like to share with fellow practitioners what I learned from talking to this shop owner.
1) Our Deeds are the Most Powerful Testimonies About Dafa
An old saying:" Good deeds might not get people's attention, but a bad deed will be heard of thousands of miles away." The chance for saving many sentient beings may have been lost by winning the argument with the man who slandered Falun Dafa. Many people are quietly watching the behavior of practitioners and basing their judgments of Falun Gong from what they observe, especially in public places such as the video shop.
2) Flyers Can't Replace Clarifying the Truth in Person
The shop owner reads the daily Dajiyuan (Epoch Times) newspaper. I assumed that he would have accepted the many positive reports about Falun Dafa there, but after my conversation with him, I found that although he reads Dajiyuan every day, he believes more of what he has heard from his neighbors, who are from Mainland China. His neighbors chat with him every day in his shop, but there isn't any practitioner chatting with him about the true situation of Falun Dafa. They only give him materials clarifying the truth.
3) Don't Overlook the People Near You
We have put truth clarification material in front of his shop for more than two years now, and he had read the Dajiyuan newspaper for the same length of time. He was also a roommate of a practitioner in New Jersey prior to the persecution of Falun Gong. Yet until very recently, he didn't know that Zhuan Falun was a Falun Gong book. On March 24, he couldn't help but to ask me this very basic question, and other questions such as: Is there a hierarchy within Falun Gong? Is the persecution still going on? And so on. Many practitioners assume he should have known these facts and didn't clarify the truth to him.
I'd like to add a few more points:
1. Although he has read our truth clarifying newspaper for over two years and occasionally received other materials such as VCD's , seeing a practitioner involved in an argument left a deep impression on him.
2. When customers come to the store, they usually chat with the owner so the shop actually becomes a place for small talk and chitchat. After hearing negative rumors about Falun Gong, he might tell others about the incident.
3. The owner started to show his interest in Falun Gong and he asked many questions (although he didn't totally accept what he was told). The personal encounter of being persecuted described in the book has had some positive impact.
I hope the above story will be a reminder for fellow practitioners to cultivate their speech more diligently and also to let go of their attachment to competitiveness.
