PureInsight | August 29, 2011
[PureInsight.org] In order to encourage my students to study English, I translated the story “The Fisherman and the Goldfish” into English. The children were divided into two groups for a performance competition. I said, “Work hard. Your performance will be judged by your younger schoolmates who will also be your audience.”
The stage was set up in the classroom. There was another room connected to the classroom that was used as the backstage area. Performers went onstage from backstage. The distance between the stage curtain and the audience was about two meters.
After a week of intense rehearsals, we held a staged rehearsal with the audience present. During this rehearsal, I discovered an important issue. There were many things we needed to do during the scene changes. For example, when the fisher woman became the Queen, she needed to put on a crown, robe and cloak. We also needed to place a sofa, table and food on stage. Another group of children played the roles of ministers and guards. It required cooperation between the two groups. However, during this process, the children never thought about offering help to others but only focused on winning the competition. It led to a mess backstage, where a lot of noise could be heard such as running, slamming doors, someone giving out orders, tables being moved noisily and even endless arguing over small things. This caused a long delay and the curtain couldn’t be opened for some time. The child who was responsible for opening the curtain was very annoyed and urged the performers, “Hurry up, are you ready yet?” It was very funny and disorganized. The audience was so amused they began laughing. The situation became noisy and disorderly.
After the rehearsal performance was complete, the children still could not relax. They could tell that although the delivery of the lines and the acting was excellent, they failed to give a successful performance. Not only did they not succeed but they also made many errors. The children began to blame each other.
I did not criticize them or hurry to work out a solution. I know that a cultivators’ wisdom and capability comes from Dafa. All things would lead to the best result as long as I reached the standard of Dafa in cultivation.
In class the next day, a student raised a topic related to cultivation. We extended the topic from Buddha Sakyamuni to today’s worldwide spread of Falun Dafa to more than 100 countries. I talked about the miracles of Dafa and the many miraculous things which had happened in our class. A male student said, “Cultivation is very good. I want to practice Falun Dafa.” Some students said: “We want to reach Godhood, but how do we achieve it?” More miraculous things occurred. Some children had their hands conjoined in the position of jieyin, while one of them had a palm held upright in the exact gesture used when Dafa disciples’s send forth righteous thoughts. I was touched and knew what I should do next.
Later that afternoon, I found some Dafa books and called some former students, who had been studying the Fa with me and understood Dafa well, to have a meeting with the children. I placed Dafa books in front of them and said, “An opportunity may be here for you today. This book of Zhuan Falun is not an ordinary book in this human world. It is a ladder to heaven and the path to Godhood.” The children were very quiet. I said, “Let’s look at Master’s photo.” The children said, “Teacher, Master is very compassionate and is smiling looking upon us.” I said, “Remember Master’s appearance. You’ll know in the future how compassionate our great Master is!”
I asked them to open Zhuan Falun and take turns reading “Lunyu” one by one. We read it through many times. Unbelievably, the children were reading very seriously and fluently without missing or wrongly pronouncing a word. It was as if they had read the book for a very long time. At that moment, I had a strong feeling that they came here for Dafa and that they had been waiting a long time through many numerous past lives for this moment.
The following afternoon, we held the official performance. The audience made up of other students arrived. I had also invited two of my former students to watch the performance. All the audience seats were fully occupied. I called my students backstage and I could feel a harmonious atmosphere surrounding us. I smiled and said: “I just want to tell you one thing. Let’s replace our mind with a Gods’ mind. Gods are selfless and consider others. Let’s try. I have trust in you.”
The performance was wonderful. The stage curtain opened and closed silently without any unnecessary noise. In actual fact, we did not hear any loud noise at all. Even the students’ footsteps were very light as though they were stepping on a cloud. It took them less than 10 seconds to change costume, position props on stage and so on. Our audience was deeply touched.
When the performance concluded, the children walked to the front of the stage, hand in hand. They smiled and bowed to the audience. Everyone stood up and applauded in appreciation of their performance. The children were very moved, especially my two former students whose eyes were full of tears. One of them said, “Teacher, my tears were about to drop during the performance. I really didn’t know why but I was just tearful.” She used to study Dafa with me but later spent more time playing electronic games and eventually gave up Fa study. After the performance, she straightaway asked me, “Teacher, I wish to attend this school. May I?” I held her hands and said, “I would be very glad.” Another male student said, “Teacher, I’m very shocked that these students who are in year three of junior high school can speak English so fluently. They are two years younger than I am. Their cooperation on the stage was simply perfect. How did they accomplish that? I wish I could interview them.” He then invited every single performer to talk about their experience.
One student said, “I played the role of Golden Fish in Group Two. I tried my best. I also helped the other boys to arrange their costumes; I did not think of myself at all.”
Another said, “We are one body. We can cooperate smoothly without needing to negotiate beforehand.”
Another student said, “While one scene was being performed on stage, we had already prepared everything needed for the following scene. I totally forgot about the competition for first place.”
Another student said, “We forgot about ourselves. We only considered other people and we improved rapidly.”
The other performers each agreed, “Me too.”
After the interview, the male student said: “Teacher, I’ve completed the interview. I know the answer. This is a miracle which is beyond a human being’s ability.”
Let’s be selfless and always consider other people. Then we can improve rapidly. The children gave me a lesson through their performance today. I can’t help but relate this to the Shen Yun Performance, which has been performed throughout the world, has touched many people and impressed many internationally renowned professional artists and masters. I still remember the miraculous performance of “Dragon Fountain Encouragement.” When nearing the end of the piece, the dancing was so fast that the team of performers changed their movements in a flash to form at least ten different shapes within six seconds. It is beyond imagination how those performers, who must have reached a realm of complete selflessness and purity of mind, could make that happen.
Shen Yun started out with about a dozen shows per year, and now has progressed to several hundred in only a few short years. Audience numbers have also increased dramatically from approximately several thousand at the beginning to several hundred thousand within a few short years. Shen Yun tours throughout the world and is praised as a masterpiece of wonders. What kind of force does it have that it can elevate so quickly? I believe that through the Shen Yun performances, Master has demonstrated to us the principle of how to cooperate with each other.
I also believe that Dafa disciples are making the most of this time to save as many people as possible. If we give up all selfishness, complement each other and harmonize with each other, we will be able to save more sentient beings at a rapid speed.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2011/5/7/74230.html
