Taiwan Fahui | Look Within When Facing Sudden Conflicts

(Minghui.org) A series of tragedies happened to my parents-in-law and their daughter after I got married in 1995 at 27. My mother-in-law was diagnosed with diabetes and had to have dialysis three days a week. Once, the nurse had to spend two hours finding a spot on her vein for IV injection. She was a kind person, treating me as her own daughter. I felt sad watching her suffer. 

Not long after that, my sister-in-law fell off her motorcycle and was in critical condition. When she had just started to recover, my father-in-law had a stroke. The medical expenses and care effort were very stressful for the family. Then my first child was born. He began to throw up after one month old, and became very thin. 

I was deeply frustrated at what happened to my loved ones and wondered what was the purpose of my life.

I read many books during my mother-in-law’s hospitalization, and learned about the benefits of qigong on health improvement. I had a wish to practice qigong. After my mother-in-law passed away, I had some free time and started to search for a spiritual path and explore the meaning of life.

One day, a colleague gave me a flier about a seminar at a high school in Taoyuan for an experience-sharing on Falun Dafa practice. I attended the seminar with my husband. 

One high-school teacher’s sharing touched me. She said that when her students made mistakes, she did not correct them immediately. Later she looked inward and discovered that she had some attachment to her reputation. She worried that her students might turn away from her for correcting them. She wanted to get rid of her attachment and be responsible to her students. 

I sensed that this practice must be of high-level because the teacher even caught such a thought. I also liked the fact that the teaching of Falun Dafa is free and it does not involve money or gifts. I believed that this must be what I was looking for, and I took up Dafa cultivation.

The Conflict of Meeting Room Booking

I was a regional manager of an insurance brokerage company at that time. It happened three times in a row that the conference room I booked was occupied by another team. I felt embarrassed and was afraid that my colleagues would consider me incapable of handling such a trivial matter.

I became furious and wanted to talk to my boss about setting up clear rules for the conference room booking. Luckily my mind was rational and remembered that I needed to look inward, even though it looked on the surface to be my colleagues’ mistakes. 

As soon as I thought of looking inward, some memory flashed in my mind. About a year ago, I once booked all the available time slots for the meeting room, even though I knew the other team mentioned above usually used a specific time slot for their routine meetings. I didn’t feel bad because they forgot to book the conference room. They ended up having to use a different place for their meeting. Recalling what happened, I was ashamed of myself and gave up the thought to complain to my boss about the other team.

I later talked to my boss about my thought process and she said, “This Falun Dafa you are practicing must be a good practice.” Interestingly enough, I no longer had trouble with my meeting room booking since then.

After My Two Boys Fight During Exercises

About six years into my Dafa practice, one day I took my two boys, who were in elementary school at the time, to our group practice. When we were doing the second exercise, my boys fought on the floor because of some disagreement. My cheeks were burning with embarrassment and I didn’t know whether I should stop doing the exercises to break up the fight. I ended up ignoring it and finished the exercises.

The group coordinator came up to me and wanted to share her thoughts with me. I immediately imagined that she would question me about my boys’ behavior. I had mixed feelings about what to say.

To my surprise, she said, “When I watched the two boys fighting, I was thinking that Master wanted me to see this scene on purpose and I must look within.” 

I thought to myself, “My sons were fighting. Why did you need to look within?” 

“I was pondering why they fought. They seemed to be fighting over something trivial. So I keep thinking if I have fought over something trivial lately. Then I remembered that when a colleague recently asked for my help to do something, I immediately rejected him and told him that I was too busy. I believe that I over-calculated on this trial matter and cared too much about myself.”

While my mind was still trying to find excuses for myself, her words immediately melted my heart. I was also shocked at how she looked at things. She demonstrated how to unconditionally look within.

Joining NTDTV

I have always understood the importance of TV media on truth clarification. New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) broadcasts free satellite TV programs to all Chinese people, which is an excellent way to clarify the truth. However, my 20-year career in the insurance industry was not something easy for me to leave behind.

I visited Hong Kong about ten years ago and participated in some truth clarification activities there. I observed that some Chinese people dared not take the truth materials in front of others but would only take things from us when they were alone. I realized that TV programs would be a good way to let more people know the truth and I made up my mind to join NTDTV. I wrote a long letter to all my insurance clients, telling them how much I had benefited physically and mentally from practicing Dafa, the truth about the persecution in China, and my wish to have their support.

I was worried that my clients would complain about my decision to quit my job. But to my surprise, they all supported me. They complimented me on my competency and were glad for my “promotion” to a position in a TV station. 

I have been working as a manager in the production department of NTDTV during recent years. We are responsible for producing TV programs and a variety of customer service videos, such as commercials, image films and microfilms, etc. Sometimes we wondered if we were really doing work related to truth clarification.

The feedback from a practitioner in China boosted our confidence. He told us that he used one of our programs, which introduced Taiwan’s good food and fun places, to clarify the truth. He first introduced this fun program to his friends and relatives. After receiving good feedback after a while, he introduced other programs, like news and commentaries from NTDTV, to them. Because people have different preferences, some may be indirectly exposed to the truth.

We were impressed with the dedication and truth-clarification efforts of practitioners in China and gained more confidence in our programs.

Improve in Group Cultivation Environment

Once a practitioner colleague said to me that I liked to use my position to pressure others and I did badly on this and that. The criticism came so abruptly that I did not know how to respond. Nonetheless I had the thought in my mind that I was not that kind of person. But I asked myself if I needed to look inward or not, and if I was 100% sure that I was not like that, or maybe I was 10% or 5% like that. 

Master wants us to cultivate away all of our attachments, which means we cannot keep even 5%. Did my colleague alert me to that attachment? I should thank her instead of rejecting what she said. My heart opened up suddenly and I felt fresh and relaxed.

However, not every test was easy to pass. I had thoughts of leaving NTDTV several times after receiving sharp criticism from practitioner colleagues. When I calmed down, I realized that I would be walking on a path arranged by the old forces if I quit. They utilized the conflicts between practitioners to sow discord among us and break up our team. They would be happy if all of us would leave and the project would not be able to continue. Why did I get swayed and want to leave when I encountered challenges? I said to the old forces: I am not going to fall for your trap and I just won’t leave. I won’t cooperate with you! 

But after passing this test, more tests came. I communicated with a practitioner colleague about a task via a messaging platform. However, he bombarded me with criticism one after another. I was discouraged and pondered what happened. After about ten minutes, I realized that I should not fall into this conflict, but should think about why he was so upset.

Thanks to Master’s guidance, I realized that I did not make things clear during our meeting in the morning. So I decided to find another opportunity to explain. Right after my thought turned around, he deleted all of his messages and told me that he was willing to give the task a try.

I finally realized that I was so obsessed with superficial appearances and cared so much about my being hurt or wronged that I couldn’t calmly judge or clarify what his concern was. I discovered that when I thought too much about how others should behave, I fell to the realm of ordinary people and could not look within.

Fortunately, we have the Fa to guide us. I read this passage during my study:

“A practitioner should not only exercise self-control when he is in a conflict and is insulted to his face, but should also have a generous attitude and even be grateful to the other party. How could you improve your character if you didn’t have that incident with the other person? How could the black matter be transformed into the white matter? How could you develop your gong?” (Chapter III Cultivation of Character, Falun Gong)

Concluding Remarks

Whenever I had difficulties passing tests, reading the Fa always helped me realize that I have fallen back to the state of an ordinary person. When I reset my thinking to be in line with the Fa, the problems would be quickly resolved. I really have to thank my practitioner colleagues for helping me improve and I need to make good use of such opportunities.

Whenever I understood some Fa principles and improved my xinxing, my wisdom in dealing with things or creative thinking came to me naturally. Fortunately, it is not too late to realize all this. The more powerful the Fa is, the more and harder tests there will be. Let’s pay more attention to Fa study and cultivation so that we can walk well the path Master has arranged for us.

Thank you, Master, and thank you all! Please point out any shortcomings.