Letting Go of My Attachments During the Shen Yun Project

(Minghui.org)

Greetings, Master!Hello, fellow practitioners.

Shen Yun hasn’t performed in my city for four years due to the CCP Virus, but this year we were fortunate to secure a theater and Shen Yun performed five shows in my city. I mainly participated in Shen Yun promotion and reporting. Throughout the process, many of my attachments were exposed and I realized the significance of cultivating my every thought. I would like to take this opportunity to report to Master and to communicate with fellow practitioners.

Part 1: Removing My Jealousy 

I am quite a jealous person, and other practitioners have told me this many times. I know that I have to let go of jealousy, but when I encounter tests I still can’t control myself. I feel exhausted because of my jealousy.

I used to despise a local female practitioner who was about my age. She speaks English well and is an executive at a company. We have worked on other projects together. She always tended to disagree with me, so I gradually developed resentment toward her. I didn’t want to do things with her. I didn’t even want to talk to her, and I felt unhappy whenever I saw her.

After the Shen Yun performances for 2022 were confirmed in our city, because of my experience in news production for our local NTD News, the coordinator of Australia’s Epoch Times approached me. She wanted me to help with reporting on our local Shen Yun performances. I felt very happy, but also very worried. I had never done such an important task before. In previous years, practitioners from other cities had come to do the interviews, editing and uploading. The coordinator asked me to find local practitioners to work with me on the interviews.

I knew that practitioners with average English proficiency would be unsuitable for this role, because the English and other skillset requirements are relatively high. The most qualified person was the practitioner that I was very jealous of. In other words, I would have to cooperate with that practitioner to do Shen Yun reporting. I went back and forth in my mind and became quite upset. On the one hand, I knew that Shen Yun’s reporting was very serious, so I couldn’t make any mistakes due to my attachments. On the other hand, my jealousy constantly disturbed me, and reflected unrighteous thoughts into my mind.

One day, several of the main practitioners involved in the Shen Yun project had a meeting. I was there and so was this other practitioner. She said she wanted to be a reporter and interview the audience members. She also said she is a Shen Yun transcriber. My heart of jealousy and resentment came up when I heard her say those words. I have always been our local NTD News reporter, and to report on Shen Yun, media practitioners have to pass strict exams, but she had no experience as a reporter and had not taken the exam. 

I continued negatively thinking that she did not deserve this role. She couldn’t be a reporter just because she is a transcriber and proficient in English, and besides, I was chosen to be a reporter by the coordinator of The Epoch Times of Australia.

From then on, I couldn’t focus on the content of the meeting because my mind was full of these negative thoughts, and I was angry. Another practitioner explained to her at the meeting that I would be the reporter for Shen Yun, and I felt that the practitioner who explained it to her should have criticized her with harsher words. After the meeting, I still felt angry and said something negative about her to other practitioners. I felt it would be impossible to cooperate with her during this project.

A few days later, the coordinator of The Epoch Times called me again and asked me to set up a group of practitioners who would look for interviewees during the intermissions and after the performances. I thought I could ask this practitioner to join that group, and if she didn’t agree, I would have an excuse to not cooperate with her.

I sent a message asking her, but she replied by saying she wanted to do security, and had done security during Shen Yun performances before. She said she had done a good job in the past, and the security role was also very important. When I received her reply, I started to feel jealous again. The thought that came into my mind was: “Your talent and skills are nothing, and we’ll manage very well without you.” The jealousy was so pervasive that it was automatic. 

It was almost more than I could bear, and I knew I didn’t have sufficient righteous thoughts to get rid of this attachment. After sharing with some other practitioners, they advised me to calm down and study the Fa.

After I repeatedly studied the section on jealousy in Zhuan Falun, I understood that the reason I was jealous of this other practitioner was because she was more competent than me, and it made me unhappy. When she displayed her talents, I became jealous.

When I shared with other practitioners, they also took it seriously, and they emphasized that I must use this opportunity given by Master to truly rid myself of jealousy.

A few days later, the coordinator of The Epoch Times talked about forming a team to find audience members to interview. I thought that this other practitioner didn’t want to participate in Shen Yun reporting because my jealousy kept excluding her and she knew that other practitioners were capable enough to do these roles. Besides, she could no doubt feel my impure state of mind in asking her to join the team. For so many years, I was the one who spread gossip, but she had never done anything bad to me.

So I decided to persuade her to join the team anyway. I didn’t want to be jealous; I wanted to be in harmony with other practitioners. I wanted to save Master’s sentient beings.

Later, when Shen Yun was performing in Sydney, I went to Sydney to learn how the team members cooperated. During the process, I got a much better understanding of the importance of cooperation.

So I texted her again. This time I felt that my heart was pure. Instead of being obsessed with any extra feelings, I got rid of the interference of jealousy and cultivated through it based on the Fa.

This time, not surprisingly, she agreed. She and I started to actively train the team. She gave us a lot of good advice.

This practitioner is usually very proud and can come across as pompous. During Shen Yun reporting, I saw that she eliminated her attachments and took the initiative to talk to people. She was sometimes refused an interview, but she didn’t get discouraged. She smiled and continued to look for other audience members who were willing to be interviewed. After finding someone, she led them to the camera, and she smiled at me really happily. When the report was published, she thanked me very sincerely and said that I had done a good job on the report. After seeing this, I was very moved, and suddenly realized that this practitioner is actually quite lovely.

Because of the tremendous help from other practitioners during this process, I thought the interviews in our city were very successful. We had a total of four news reports, two of which were exclusive reports. We had the same amount of coverage as a much larger city. I knew that this was Master encouraging us, and it was also Master teaching me how powerful it is when our practitioners become one body.

Master said: 

“It was a shared aspiration that brought you together for this initiative, but when you each insist on your own views, and just do what pleases you, how could that amount to cooperation? If each of my five fingers here wants to be extended, a fist can’t be formed and there will be no punch to throw (laughs). It’s weak this way. So you need to work together well.” (“Fa Teaching Given at the NTD Meeting,” Collected Teachings Given Around the World Volume IX)

Master said: 

“Jealousy is definitely something you must get rid of. It is something formidable and can make you slack off in all aspects of your cultivation and ruin you. You mustn’t harbor jealousy!” (“Fa Teaching Given at the New York Fa Conference Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Dafa’s Spreading,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. XIV)

I am grateful to Master for giving me this opportunity to get rid of my attachment to this practitioner. After this, whenever I saw her again, no matter what she said or did, even if she opposed me, I was not as angry as before. I would think she was always nice. Fellow practitioners are the most precious people. We have all come together because of Dafa, and we met by fate to cultivate and save sentient beings, so why should we be competitive?

Part 2: Eliminating the Attachment of Class Consciousness 

Initially, during Shen Yun promotion, I only wanted to hand out flyers to well-dressed passersby, and I only wanted to introduce Shen Yun to those people.

When other practitioners pointed out my problem, I argued with them. I knew that my cultivation state was not right, and when I had promoted Shen Yun in the early years, this attachment was obvious. During promotion this year, it interfered with me again, affecting the quality of my promotion. 

I worked at a promotion booth once with another practitioner. I found that she would promote Shen Yun in detail to everyone, including some homeless people. I said to her, “They can’t afford to see the show. More tickets would be sold if you targeted the more promising people.”

She said, in a solemn way, “Master warned us that we should not discriminate when saving people.” 

Later on, I also began to introduce Shen Yun to people who were not well-dressed, and I no longer regarded selling tickets as the sole purpose. There were also many sharing articles on Minghui.org that mentioned that people who received Shen Yun leaflets and heard information about Shen Yun would also be blessed. I understand that this is Master’s great compassion, and it is not just saving those who can afford tickets.

I saw a man in his 50s at the promotion booth, dressed in ordinary clothes, with a sad face. At first glance, he looked like a man whose life was very miserable. After hesitating for a while, I still handed him a flyer. I thought it would be nice if he could watch the promotional video, so I started talking to him. He said he had no job, no money and couldn’t afford it. I said, “It doesn’t matter, you can take the flyer, or introduce it to your relatives and friends. You can also watch our promotional video here, it’s very beautiful. This is a show from heaven.”

He then agreed to watch the promotional video on the TV at the booth. He watched it for a long time. During that time, I was introducing Shen Yun to other passersby and left him alone. After I finished introducing Shen Yun to some people, I looked back and found that the man was still watching the video, so I asked, “Do you like it?” He said, “I like it, it’s beautiful, I’ve never seen such a beautiful show. How much is a ticket?”

I was shocked, I didn’t think he would ask for the ticket price. I said, “It’s quite expensive, Shen Yun is the world’s premier show, so it’s not cheap.” He was not happy: “I asked you how much for a ticket.” I quickly told him the cheapest price. “Where is it located?” he asked. 

I just started showing him the cheapest seat on the seating chart. He pointed to the best area and asked, “How much are these tickets?” After being told the price, he continued: “I’ll go for this one right in the middle.” I stared at him and couldn’t believe it. I said, “Okay, I’ll book it for you. You won’t regret it, this show is from heaven.”

He interrupted me, and repeated, “I know, this show is from heaven.”

After he bought the ticket and left the ticket-booth, I watched him shuffle away, and I was really moved. How could I discriminate against sentient beings? I don’t know how many sentient beings were missed because of this attachment of mine.

Conclusion

I am very grateful to Master for giving me the opportunity to take part in such a sacred project, not only to cultivate away my own attachments, but also to save sentient beings. Thank you, Master, and my fellow practitioners who have always helped me.

Above is my limited understanding of the Fa. Please kindly point out anything that’s incorrect.

Thank you, Master!Thank you, fellow practitioners!

(Presented at the 2022 Australia Fa Conference)