PureInsight | February 16, 2004
Chapter 6: Joel and Zenon
[PureInsight.org] Joel and I had been very careful. We made spontaneous "U" turns and looking over our shoulders, we were fairly confident that neither of us had been followed. We decided to take my car back to downtown Beijing together and go to Joel's hotel.
That night we had dinner in Joel's room, watched the footage we shot at the Great Wall and talked about how funny it was that it took us so long to finally meet each other.
Zenon: "Can you believe that for over two years we worked right down the hall from each other and never spoke a word to each other?"
Joel: "Yeah, I know. Now here we are in China. Hey, weren't you a crook back then?"
Zenon: "Hey, weren't you obsessed with cars and yourself back then?"
We laughed together as we teased each other. We had gotten to know each other pretty well over the past two and a half years. As Joel would say, we were closer than five to eleven. We know a lot about each other's past and how we began practicing Falun Dafa. We both worked in the Sussex Center in Mississauga, Ontario. He still works there. His family owns a real-estate business, Chipkar Real-Estate, and they have their office there. In the mid 1990's I worked at the movie theatre down the hall from there. Joel's reference to me being a crook was no joke. In fact I stole from the theatre for years. It became an addiction. I couldn't finish a shift without leaving with at least an extra 10 then 20 then 40 dollars in my pocket. Often times it was much more than that. Most of that money was going for drugs and alcohol so my memory of those times is obviously a little foggy. After about two years and who knows how much money, they finally caught me using a hidden camera, fired me and arrested me.
Some may be a little confused at how someone who cared only for himself and who sacrificed others for his own personal interest would be interested in refining himself. The answer is simple. In the beginning of my practice I didn't think that I would become good but rather that I would become better or more capable. That is, better than others. It was part of my being selfish. Yet through continuously reading the teachings centered around the principles of Truth-Compassion-Forbearance and the upgrade of xinxing (the characteristic or nature of one's heart and mind, moral quality) one naturally realizes that becoming better and more capable is inseparable from becoming a genuinely virtuous, morally dignified, good person. I genuinely didn't correlate becoming more capable with the upgrade of my morality.
I remember studying the teachings in the beginning and being surprised that "sowing discord" (page 70 in Essentials for further Advances 1) was demon nature. I always secretly enjoyed seeing destruction. When I was fifteen I remember jumping up and down with excitement when I heard bombs dropping on Iraq over CNN. Not because I agreed with the war but rather for the excitement of destruction. It was a very warped kind of thinking that I developed from watching action movies from a very early age. But once I started practicing Falun Dafa all of the bad nature or habits that I ever had became easier and easier to see, and through my cultivation I was determined to eliminate it all and embrace compassion.
Joel came from a hot-blooded Italian upbringing and had quite the temper before he started practicing. He and I expressed regret on several occasions over the people we had hurt in our pasts.
We met at the 1999 New York Falun Dafa Experience Exchanging Conference. We sat together. He wasn't a practitioner yet but said that after that conference he became one. When I met Joel years later, he told me about his past and how narrow his heart was. He was a selfish angry person that only cared about material possessions and his own selfish interest. Just as it changed me, Joel attributes all the good changes in his life to his practice of Falun Dafa.
Back in his hotel room we both sat laughing at ourselves as we nodded our heads left and right. We could laugh now that we had changed. We had had this conversation other times in the past and it ended this time in a very similar way.
Joel: "We're really lucky to obtain Dafa (to practice Falun Dafa), eh?"
When I looked over at him from my bed he was just staring at the wall in front of us, looking kind of serious. I yawned.
Zenon: "You got that right, my friend."
Joel: "It's like night and day when I look at the past and see myself now."
I lightly nodded my head and lifted my eyebrows.
Zenon: "Lets be thankful it's daytime."
Joel: "You know it doesn't feel like I am in China."
Zenon: "What do you mean?"
Joel: "I don't know? It just doesn't feel like I am in China. It feels like I haven't left Canada. There's no culture shock. None of it fazes me. This isn't so hard for me. The hard stuff for me is my life back home. Where all my responsibilities are and where my family and friends are. Maintaining Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance there is hard for me. That's where all the everyday things can get to me and show me my shortcomings."
Zenon: "Well that's good. That's cultivation."
Joel: "I know. I am just saying…"
Zenon: "Don't worry, I get it. I haven't really thought about home much except once or twice wondering how my mom is holding up, considering she knows that I am here and what I plan to do. But aside from that I haven't really thought about home. I can barely think period. I have been using most of my mind to overcome fear and stay clear about what it is I am doing here."
Joel: "This is going to get done."
Zenon: "For sure my good man, for sure!"
I don't know how we knew. It had nothing to do with his clarity and certainly nothing to with my lack there of. We just knew. It was as if it was already done.
Zenon: "I told you before and I will say it again. If things go sour in the Square, I will fill the Square with my voice. I will run at you with my banner so you can get a good shot, and I will fill the Square with my voice. The whole square will hear me tell them that the whole world knows Falun Dafa is Good."
He was expressing the sentiment of "okay hero boy". So regardless of how it sounded, I told him again to make him understand that I was serious.
Zenon: "I will fill the Square with my voice. The whole square will hear me tell them that the whole world knows Falun Dafa is Good."
Joel: "Okay, okay, okay lets read."
Zenon: "I'm serious." In a more serious tone.
Joel: "Lets read."
Zenon: "Okay."
The next morning Joel got up early. He was going to find a courier to send the film and videotapes from the Great Wall back to Canada. Before he left I asked him to take some pictures of me making the banner that I was planning to take with me to Tiananmen Square. This time we put maps under the last pillowcase so as not to make a mess. This time was even more important because it was the last yellow pillowcase so I made sure to be extra careful. Joel decided to leave.
Joel: "So, do you want to come with me?"
Zenon: "Well, I don't think that it's such a good idea that we are seen together too much. I think I am just going to read."
But that was just another excuse to stay in because I was starting to feel afraid again.
Joel: "Yeah, you'er right. Okay, I'll see you later."
Joel left and I looked down at the touch screen of my palm pilot. I couldn't decide which lectures I should read so I closed my eyes and just tapped the screen blindly. To my surprise, when I opened my eyes, there was a lecture about how to assist people who first encounter Falun Dafa and want to learn it. My first thought was, why should I read this, I am the one who needs assistance right now. I realized then how selfish my thinking had become in light of my fear. I calmed my mind and began to read.
Since my mind was calm and I wasn't trying to pursue any kind of deeper understanding or find the magic answer to destroy my fear, the principles began to flow into me, filling my heart and mind. I began to see the shortcomings in the way that I introduced Falun Dafa to people. In the past I always wanted people to understand things the way I did and agree with me. If they didn't I would get frustrated and blame them for not being able to understand something. If they couldn't stop interrupting me when I was explaining something, I would accuse them of not exercising tolerance or patience. As I read, I was being reminded that when a conflict arises I should be looking for the problem within myself and to fail to do this is as good as not cultivating. The requirement was to change into a person who is always thinking of others before myself.
In the past, when I have been able to meet this requirement in cultivation, I always found that when I chose to face my problem and remove it, I naturally felt calmer and compassionate - problems just melted away. Without that obstruction in my head and heart, compassion was effortless. This was the best way to offer assistance to people and it was becoming clearer to me. In fact it seemed so familiar because I had read this before and put it into practice before in my cultivation, yet I still seem to forget. Well, not when I'm reading I don't.
That few hours of calm and intention free reading filled my heart with the pure principles of Falun Dafa. My responsibility to truth, my concern to help others from real compassion, not self-recognition, and the tolerance and patience in the face of the trials I am to face was being imprinted deeper and deeper into my mind. Sure enough in came my first little test not a few seconds later.
Joel came walking into the room and looked at me with this "I am not joking" face.
Joel: "I have had enough of this. You watch too many movies!!"
My face was saying nothing. I was waiting for him to give me some idea of what he was talking about. He was angry about something because he was not talking softly or casually but I had no idea what it could be.
Joel: "This is not some spy movie; you really have to get over your fear."
Ironically, at this point, my heart was calm and peaceful and I truly didn't have any fear after my reading.
Joel: "I have been calling and calling and calling. I forgot the address that I was sending the package to. It's written on a piece of paper on the table right there. But no, instead I have to come all the way back and pay for another cab. Why didn't you just answer the phone?"
I replied quite simply.
Zenon: "Because it didn't ring."
Joel: "What do mean it didn't ring. I was calling!!"
He wasn't happy yet.
Zenon: "I believe you but the phone didn't ring."
Joel: "What do mean? I was calling room number 467."
He held up the room key.
Joel: "See this is...oh…this is room 476. Oh."
He quieted down.
Joel: "Okay. I'll see you in a little while."
He left. I sat there, looking inside myself, measuring myself against the principles of cultivation. Indeed I didn't fight back and I did stay calm but as a practitioner I should always be demanding more of myself. So I did ask myself - "What did I do wrong?"
Then there the answer was, as plain as day. My egotistical heart. When Joel was losing his cool I had sat there thinking, "Wow, is he ever wrong to be treating me this way. I am so calm, he can't move my heart." Then once he realized he was indeed out of line I was very satisfied with that. My "see, I told you so" mentality surfaced. This disgusted me. This egotism was so far away from the principles that I had just been reading. I did my best to see the dirt in my heart and mind and disassociate myself from it as much as possible. I did this by genuinely embracing the principals of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I heard this angry little screaming voice in my head, "But you didn't do anything. He's the one that went crazy." I didn't pay much attention to it as it angrily dissolved into nothing.
The principals of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance were permeating all of the answers in so many different ways. I could see it everywhere. I was no longer a frightened young man in a Beijing hotel but instead I was part of something much larger. It was neither the earth nor the human race that I felt connected with. I was this particle, a part of this immense and boundless existence. Yet I didn't feel small. Instead I felt its might and magnificence permeating and encompassing the totality of my being. My body was tingling with fast empowering energy; my heart became light and my mind vast. With my eyes half filled with tears I smiled lightly and just kept reading. What followed during my reading is impossible to describe with words so this is all I will say regarding that.
