(Clearwisdom.net)
Greetings, Master!
Greetings, fellow practitioners!
Before I began practicing Falun Gong, I was already established in society and had had diverse experiences. I had studied and worked outside the US and also lived in several different states in the US. I had held positions in education, the federal government, a big bank, a wholesale-retail company, and a publishing company. I developed a specialty in the computer networking field and started my own small consulting business in 1995, which enabled me to earn a decent living and still have free time. I bought a house for myself in my favorite city. One thing I could not fulfill was my desire to form a relationship leading to marriage and family. That was always beyond me.
Shortly after I began practicing in early 1999, I went through a brief period when I thought I would completely give up my ordinary life and do nothing but cultivate, but as I continued to study, I quickly realized that this was not our cultivation way. We cultivate precisely in ordinary society.
In my business, I continued providing good quality service to my clients, but I realized that I did not want to continue to do that kind of computer work forever.
Meanwhile, I was traveling frequently to clarify the truth all over the US and to places like Geneva, Iceland, Thailand, and South Africa. My friends and family could see that Dafa had done good things for my health and my disposition, but probably they had some doubts about how I was handling my finances and my career. They did not say much directly, but it's not considered normal for a middle-aged man to earn no money for several years while traveling and volunteering.
I began working on The Epoch Times part-time in early 2004, and then in August 2004, at the same time that we were getting the first English newspaper started, the project to clarify the truth in New York city began. So I arranged for people to rent my house in Minneapolis and moved to New York to spend seven days a week working on The Epoch Times.
I discovered, as time passed, that the conditions were not ready for The Epoch Times to quickly become a successful start-up business, and, gradually, I became frustrated at the slow progress. One practitioner even said I was "bitter."
Also, Master talked about the need for more practitioners in "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York:"
"But if these media outlets [we are involved in] are going to achieve a good effect, they need to resolve the challenges of human and material resources, which means that they need to increase their staff. So from this perspective, the number of Western students who are currently involved is indeed not meeting the need."
I was then, and still am, confident that The Epoch Times is the best mechanism that practitioners have today for clarifying the truth broadly to a wide audience in mainstream English-speaking society. "Why won't more practitioners put their effort into this company with such a bright future?" I asked myself many times, again in frustration.
Even as I questioned why more practitioners did not give more to The Epoch Times, I was aware that some elements of my thoughts were not righteous. I wanted the media to succeed and fulfill its mission in Fa-rectification. I was working hard, but also I was looking externally. I was also aware that I, myself, particularly since I am in a management position in The Epoch Times, might be one factor that has blocked or slowed practitioners down from contributing more to the newspaper.
During this time when I was involved 100 percent with The Epoch Times--no time to make friends in New York, no time to explore the vibrant culture in New York, no time to make even one cent--something very unexpected happened. Over the time of my practicing, I gradually developed the thought that it must be my path to be single during this lifetime, that all my time was to be spent doing The Three Things that Dafa disciples should do during the Fa-rectification, especially clarifying the truth.
I met a lady practitioner at about the same time that my ideas about marriage were changing. Relatively quickly, the lady practitioner and I decided to get married. Many of my family members and old friends met her and greeted the news of my getting married with joy and hearty congratulations. It may have seemed to have happened suddenly, but we were both in our 40s, not young kids, and they knew that I didn't make rash decisions and they could see that she was a good person, so everyone was happy for me. Of course they knew that both of us practice Falun Gong. Among the benefits of getting married was the enhancement of a positive image of Falun Gong among my family and friends. In their view, they could see that I am becoming more a part of normal society--not less--as a result of practicing Falun Gong.
In important decisions in my life, I'm aware that non-practitioners are watching everything that we practitioners do and forming a judgment about Dafa from our words and actions.
We were married in 2006, and I now had a wife and a son. After some back and forth, we decided that my wife and son would move from California to New York. We also decided that I should look for an ordinary job to support the family financially, so I began looking for jobs in my old field of computer networking.
I took the time to invest again in that field by studying for and passing a certification exam. After a few interviews that seemed promising but ultimately did not get me a job offer, my wife shared something with me that she had learned from another practitioner. When we are interviewing for a job, we absolutely need to clarify the truth. Whether we get the job or not, that may be the only chance that the interviewer has to meet a practitioner in person, so we need to find an appropriate way to tell them the facts--everyone is waiting for this.
So a good opportunity came up, conveniently located near The Epoch Times office. I had three interviews there, and each time I took in copies of the newspaper. I told them I had moved to New York to help start this newspaper, but that it did not pay enough to support my new family, so I was looking for work in my field again. What I said about the newspaper and Falun Gong were received positively, and I was offered the job in April 2007, and I began to earn a living for the first time in two and a half years of life in New York.
At first I treated my time at the job carefully, as if I were a consultant and I had to provide good value to my client. But, gradually, as the job unfolded and I was not given much responsibility, I became a little too relaxed. Along the way, I had the chance to clarify the truth a little to some colleagues, and even one day at lunch I took four of them to see the "Truth-Compassion-Tolerance" art exhibit put on by practitioners. But I had the feeling that I was not doing well enough with this opportunity to clarify the truth to a few hundred sentient beings who now had a relationship with me, a practitioner.
I understand that our work is a cultivation site. These people in this company, and others I meet in the course of doing business, are depending on me to tell them what they have been waiting thousands of years to know about.
Unexpectedly and suddenly, my boss was fired in September. A new manager was brought in. A couple times I showed him the first and second exercises during lunchtime, but we did not follow up afterwards. My wife and I took him and his wife to see Holiday Wonders, but my email messages, putting up posters, and other efforts to persuade other people in the company to attend brought no results. Obviously, my righteous thoughts and actions were not strong enough.
In January, when Chinese New Year Splendor was approaching, I was reprimanded for sending out one e-mail message to everyone in the company inviting them to attend. When my wife tried to give free show tickets to the company president, my boss's boss called her and said angry words to her. It seemed like something was blocking our efforts to save sentient beings at that place.
In another negative hint, I had to move from a spacious office with a window and a door to a cubicle in a noisy, busy, interior area of the floor.
In February, my boss had a discussion with me about how much pressure he was under to get many things done. I started doing more, and after that I thought things were fine. But one Friday in early March, I was called in to a meeting with my boss and his boss. I did not know what it was about, but it soon became apparent that they were there to criticize my job performance. Both were angry at me and did not let me say much. They said I would be required to finish some projects in a certain amount of time. My boss's boss said, "I will document this conversation," which is a code phrase for, "This is the beginning of the process to fire you."
I was stunned. I always thought I was a good person and that I was doing what I was asked to do at this job.
Some practitioners helped me understand the situation better. One practitioner shared how she learned, after going through a process of discussing performance with her boss at her day job, that she really must put her heart into her ordinary job, and not only was that being responsible to ordinary society, but also it helped her do well in her job with The Epoch Times. Working hard at one means you can also work hard at the other,--there is a carry-over effect. We don't need to save our energy at our day jobs so we can work hard on our truth-clarifying work.
My wife and I shared a lot about this. She helped me see that maybe I was not really putting my heart into the job and that my boss really needed my help but I was not truly supporting him, from the inside, with my heart. I can now see clearly that I was not putting others first in this situation. Sometimes it takes a small crisis for us to remember the basic points of cultivation. While at this job, I actually often had a thought like, "OK, I am putting my time in here to get a paycheck, but I can't wait to get out of here to do the really important things, like my job at The Epoch Times." My wife pointed out to me that I was telling people that I had a job for pay in computers, but my "real job" was at The Epoch Times. Unconsciously, I was saying to everyone that my day job was not also a "real job," and apparently I was showing that in that office, too.
I was shaken a little, but I made some decisions: I would work very hard--even put in extra time--to do everything I could to support my boss during these several months of high pressure. I would keep in mind that people may say I am bad, but I may not really be bad; people may say I am good, but I may not really be good. I would send strong righteous thoughts while working. Most important, I would not look externally or try to argue with them about what they said or what I did before. I would just look inside, try to correct my mistakes, and do better from now on.
The next Monday, my boss gave me a detailed list of projects to do, and they all had to be finished in four weeks. I listened as he had more angry words for me, but after we went over the list, I just quietly said, "OK, I'd better get to work." Also, that week my boss handed me a formal evaluation for my performance in 2007. It was strongly negative. After looking it over, I put it back on his desk without a word. He said, "You have to sign that today," more than once. So I took the paper with me.
I had a quick lunch that day with a practitioner who is in the same field. He generously agreed to help me figure out how to accomplish the big projects I had to do in so little time. After returning from lunch, I wrote my response to the negative evaluation. I e-mailed it to this practitioner, and he said, "It sounds good, why don't you add something about Zhen-Shan-Ren, that will surely have a good effect." So I added this paragraph at the end of my explanation:
"As a person endeavoring to follow the principle of Zhen-Shan-Ren (Chinese for "Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance") every day, I also endeavor to work hard and do a good job to meet or exceed my boss's expectations. I will do so here with renewed determination."
When my boss read this response, he said, "I accept this in the spirit it is offered," and that he was glad that I was not arguing about the evaluation. He said he was impressed with the way I was handling things.
As I worked diligently the next few weeks, tried to look inside and send righteous thoughts and support my boss in any way possible, things quickly got better. Before the four weeks was finished, he made it clear that he was happy with my performance, that I now seemed involved and not detached, and that we could put behind us the issue of my performance. He also said that he felt he was mistaken about some things he thought about me previously, and that we would sit down some time and talk about things in more depth. Now I know what I need to do when we sit down, and I will be ready to tell him more deeply about Falun Gong.
Although I accomplished some things during that four-week period, I did not finish those projects, which shows even more that it was not about the content of the job performance, but about heart--my heart. At a deeper level, I know now the real reason for my boss and his boss being so angry and irrational with me. They are waiting for me to clarify the truth to them, and they were angry that I wasn't doing that. So, although they are happy on the surface with my work now, they are still waiting for me to do the real job that I was sent there to do.
During this process, I realized very clearly that, of course it would not be good to lose the job from the perspective of losing an income, but that this was not the most prominent impact of potential job loss. The real impact would be in a big loss of opportunity to clarify the truth. I could have explained the job loss to family, friends, and potential employers by saying how the man who hired me was fired by his new boss, and then I was not acceptable to my new boss--they would probably accept that. But the loss from which I could never recover would be the loss of the chance to clarify the truth to my boss and his boss and everyone in that company. If everyone thought I, a Falun Gong practitioner, was not a good employee, they would never listen to anything I had to say to clarify the truth, and perhaps they would never get a chance to talk to a practitioner again, and they would tragically and permanently lose the chance to hear the truth they had waited ages to hear. Sentient beings would be lost. This was my deepest, most urgent motivation to accelerate my effort at the day job, which again became a "real job."
It's a basic point of cultivation we have heard many times: be a good person in whatever you do, wherever you are in society. If I am not a good person at my day job, I am fundamentally failing to be responsible to society and also will fail to be able to clarify the truth. It was a lesson I learned very vividly, and a lesson I intend to keep paying attention to. I am thankful I received that wakeup call.
I am learning many lessons at that job, lessons I am taking back to The Epoch Times. Of course I am observing how managers do things there, the bad things and good things they do, which will help me be a better manager at the paper. But the most important things I'm learning are basic lessons about cultivation which I should never have forgotten: Looking internally, not externally; considering others first in all that I do; being compassionate to people around me.
Do you remember what Master said in the 2007 Australia lecture about practitioners who have businesses and hire other practitioners to do the work? Sometimes in those situations, when work must be done, the employees tell the boss, "I'm not here to work, I'm here to cultivate."
For myself, during my past difficult moments at The Epoch Times, I must admit that I acted as if I had a different thought sometimes, which is just as bad: "I'm here to work, I'm not here to cultivate." Now I see a whole different picture and will handle things differently.
Balancing everything is hard. It's hard to do well with family, work, and truth-clarifying activities. After these experiences of the last few years, I understand more clearly now that I have to work hard in everything and yet also not forget to cultivate, not forget to embody Fa principles, at every single moment. Countless sentient beings are depending on us.
Thank you, Master, for all these opportunities to do better the things Dafa disciples must do!
