(Minghui.org) Recently I watched the 2021 Shen Yun performance and was very touched [note: Shen Yun is inaccessible in China, so New Tang Dynasty Television broadcast the performance around the Chinese New Year exclusively to audiences in mainland China]. This high-level performance has shaken the art world around the globe.
On the stage, each artist is beautiful and elegant like a pure lotus flower; when dancing together, they show various choreography designs with fluidity, beauty, and magnificence. Through such exquisite programs one after another, the audience would fully appreciate the compassion, aesthetics, and energy in the classic Chinese dance.
It is also an extraordinary gallery of traditional Chinese culture. From Tibetan and Yi ethnic girls to fairies and beautiful women under the moon, from handsome young men and hunters of Jurchen to scholars and meditators in the mountains, all the characters fully display the grand divine culture in ancient China. This includes the masculinity of the male, femininity of the female, modesty of the plain, and glamour of the lofty. Every pose and movement of the dancers’ head, neck, shoulder, and back carries a message. Almost anything could swirl in motion, including water sleeves, a skirt, fan, handkerchief, mop, bow and arrow, cooking knife and cooking pot. Every character is a highly skilled dancer, and most importantly, they all join together seamlessly and create beautiful scenes on the stage one after another.
These make me think how these artists coordinate so well. First of all, they must follow the arrangement of the Artistic Director unconditionally. This is because there are so many people with various movements plus synchronization with music. The slightest mistake could lead to a disaster.
Besides good collaboration, each individual artist is also very dedicated. Everyone did his or her best at all times. I remember a photographer once praised that any moment of the Shen Yun performance could be documented as a great picture. This is not possible with any other show. That is, everyone is at his or her best state at all times; in combination, they produce an unparalleled show.
From this I also thought about the collective sending forth righteous thoughts by practitioners four times a day. At least for myself, very often I do poorly–sometimes I fall asleep or am busy with writing or other things at midnight, thus missing that time for sending forth righteous thoughts. One hidden thought I had was: there are so many practitioners, so what difference would it make if I don’t do well? But the reality is, if many practitioners are like me and fail to send forth righteous thoughts at the four set times for this or that reason, the overall result would be poor.
Master said,
“As you know, the persecution that Dafa disciples in Mainland China suffer is quite severe, so each student has to truly, clearly realize what his responsibility is, and when he sends forth righteous thoughts he has to be able to truly calm his mind and truly produce the effect of righteous thoughts. So this is something extremely critical, extremely important. Then if every student is able to do that, I can tell you, with five minutes of sending forth righteous thoughts together, the evil in the Three Realms will never exist again--that's how important this is.” (“Fa-Lecture at the Conference in Florida, U.S.A.” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. II)
Five minutes is a short time. But we practitioners have not yet achieved what Master expects of us. Today, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) still harasses, arrests, and sentences practitioners in China in its new zero-out Campaign [a coordinated effort aimed to force every practitioner on the government's blacklists to renounce their faith]. Even lawyers who defend practitioners and everyday people who support practitioners have been targeted in the campaign.
Similar things are also happening outside of China. The person chosen by the divine was attacked, defamed, and pushed to the side. We cannot just brush it off by identifying a few attachments of ours or making casual remarks that bad things can be turned into opportunities for truth-clarification. Otherwise, how can we Dafa disciples fulfill our mission?
At least for myself, from now on, I will cherish every moment when we send forth righteous. I know that whenever I do poorly, the one body would be negatively affected. Just imagine, were one dancer to make mistakes on the stage, wouldn’t the entire show be ruined?! This is how critical each of us is.
