PureInsight | January 27, 2020
[PureInsight.org] At this conference on the 26th year anniversary of Dafa spreading in the world, I want to share my experience participating in clarifying the truth to mainland Chinese people through phone calls.
I have always been a very introverted person. Sometimes when I talk to strangers I blush. Because I really care about saving face and put emphasis on what other people think of me, when people oppose me or disagree with me I blush, become nervous, and sometimes my voice starts shaking.
I remember many years ago when it was my first time to go on the RTC Truth clarification platform, I was only listening to other practitioners calling China with my microphone off. But whenever the phone call had gone through, as a listener I was extremely nervous, I was afraid of the other side's bad attitude and if they hung up. Afterwards I thought: How can I clarify the truth like this? The more scared I am, the more it shows that this is an attachment. Sooner or later I will have to eliminate it, so it's better to eliminate it earlier.
Isn't this the best cultivation environment? Calling on the phone is the first line of truth clarification, can directly see the effect of saving people, and can eliminate attachments quickly. I must take this big step. Master said in "Clearheadedness" of Essentials for Further Advancement, "While working, your tone of voice, your kindheartedness, and your reasoning can change a person’s heart." I think truth clarification should also be like this. One must also be considerate of tone, compassion, and reasoning, only then can one truly make sentient beings change, understand the truth and be saved. In order to call and be more powerful in telling people to quit the Chinese communist party, I first put efforts into preparing a calling script.
Through reading various lectures, the nine commentaries, Minghui weekly newspaper, truth clarification materials, and the scripts provided by the truth clarification platform, I have drafted up a script that is suitable for me and save it on my phone. Sometimes when I am doing Fa study or walking on the road, a sudden thought comes into my head. I feel I can talk this way, then I quickly write it down. For the calling script we need to use words and rationale that ordinary people can understand. We also need to get their attention and feel that it's relevant to them.
After several rounds of revisions, I felt more confident about the script, but I still couldn't open my mouth. The Platform provided one-on-one training. They briefly talked to me and gave me a number to call. I had no choice but to call. I basically read my script. The recipient was a kind person. After he listened to me he agreed to quit the CCP. After hanging up, my heart was still pounding. A fellow practitioner told me that it's Master's encouragement and that I should make more calls. At that time, I didn't have a fixed time period to make phone calls or taking it as a main project.
About two years ago, I started to regularly make phone calls. I try to keep righteous thoughts and make calls every day. RTC is a very good environment for us to study the Fa and cultivate. Practitioners around the world get together to study the Fa, share experiences, do the exercises and send forth righteous thoughts. We learn from others. More importantly, I can sense their righteous thoughts. It is through this platform that I changed from being afraid of calling to wanting to call to enjoying calling. When I'm discouraged, lack righteous thoughts or am in need of new ideas, practitioners from the platform will call and share with me. I gained a lot.
Some practitioners make people feel like old friends when they talk. They respect the recipients and the recipients would like to listen. They interact with the recipients with laughter. Some talk with dignity, with compassion yet with logic. The recipients would show their respect. A good place to call people is in the public security or judiciary system. I saw the gap between practitioners and me. When I played back my own recordings I found that I lacked compassion and righteousness.
Remove Human Notions
A lot of practitioners believe that calling is like travelling on foot like monks, you can meet all types of people. There are those who have learned the truth about Dafa and became encouraging and supportive, there are those who are thankful after quitting the CCP, and those who sincerely learn to recite the nine truthful words. Some are very courteous, say they are very busy and don’t have time. There are those who take the call but don’t make a sound and listen until the end. There are those who discuss knowledge. Of course, there are those who demand money, yell profanities, become irrational after being filled with the CCPs evil cultural propaganda; there are also those who pick up the call but chat with people around them.
Sometimes my cultivation is lagging, whenever I go on the platform my heart is very unstable. Either I cannot pick up the phone, or I cannot say a thing. Or in my heart I think about how to start the conversation, what is a suitable thing to say, or I think about whether it’s too late to call them. When people hang up I think about whether I should call back, how do I continue the conversation, or how do I not bring up the listeners' evil negative influence. The considerations are numerous, the human thoughts are numerous, and there are a lot of excuses. It is just like things occur from my own mind. Whenever I am more scared, the listener will be more antagonistic, the reality is like this. The more my heart is unstable, the more people don’t want to listen.
Master said in Teaching the Fa at the Assistants’ Fa Conference in Changchun, “ I often say this: If you speak to others out of your kind heartedness, entirely without any selfishness or your own self-interest, and completely for the sake of others, your words will move others to tears. But if what you say is self-centered and every word you say is intended to please everyone, “Oh, he’d better not misunderstand me as meaning this or that,” or “I’d better watch what I say so others won’t use it to criticize me later,” and has all kinds of things, then the messages carried by the words active in your mind and emitted from your mind will be very bad. If you are truly kind hearted and without any of your own motives, what you say will be nothing but pure and kind."
Yes, a person's tone of voice transmits this information. Personal cultivation carries a person’s information and in the other dimension the karma has not been eliminated. Without the virtues at that level, the words you say will not have that much power. Whenever I feel there is difficulty in saving people, then I should look at it from the cultivation angle. A cultivator’s words have power, and is the manifestation of the cultivation at that level. It is not something that can be achieved using human methods.
So, what should I do? I can only strengthen my Fa study and send forth righteous thoughts. During Fa study, I write down parts of Master's lecture relevant to truth clarification and recite them from memory. Every day I recite them a few times before calling, at the same time sending forth righteous thoughts. I’ve discovered my heart gradually becomes calm and my mind has also become clear. Sometimes during truth clarification, I sent forth righteous thoughts to project the truth directly to the listener. Usually this person will continue to listen, and the probability of hanging up on me decreases.
When I am not attached to the number of people I helped to quit the CCP, and truly hope the listeners can discern good and evil and learn about the truth, I’ve noticed my tone of voice is more kind and peaceful, my speaking is more stable and full of caring and love. When I have no other thoughts but whole heartedly think for the good of others, others are more willing to listen and even share from their hearts.
For example, one time I called a lady. I said, “I am calling you because you are a compassionate person and hope you don’t fall into the deceits of the CCTV. In 2001 CCTV reported on the Tiananmen self-immolation, which is fake news to persecute Falun Gong. This has been exposed all over the world. I hope you understand, Falun Gong is a Buddha cultivation method that teaches people to be good, not killing lives or burning themselves. If you treat the Buddha’s Fa well you will also have good returns. But Jiang Zemin was jealous of so many people practicing Falun Gong, he used the newspaper and TV to create numerous lies so that people will hate Falun Gong. But do you know? Hating the Buddhas Fa will bring unfortunate events to you and your family. I’m calling to tell you the truth, because once you know the difference between good and evil, you can be protected by God. ”
Then I continue to talk about the truth of the Tiananmen self-immolation, Dafa spreading all over the world, and also tell the person the nine words that can keep the person safe if he/she recites with sincerity. Usually when I call mostly men listen, women usually are more self-protective and hang up more. But one woman seemed to feel my compassion, she said she remembered the nine words. Later I talked about why she should quit the CCP. Then she told me she was a CCP member and believed that the communist party is good. So, I started talking about the history of the various revolutions and June 4 Tiananmen massacre to 1999 persecuting the good people who practice truthfulness-compassion-tolerance. Every time wasn’t it this party that started the persecution towards its kind citizens? Also, this corrupt party now takes public money, bullies citizens and even does organ harvesting to make black market money. How can they not get retribution? Then she started telling me her story. She went to the government for six years to complain, but nobody cared. She talked about what the various government officials in her village were like, and she told me everything as if we were friends. In the end she understood the truth and quit the CCP.
Not being affected by ordinary people, step out of sentimentality
Sometimes a listener is very rude, uses all evil CCP propaganda to argue with me, and unconsciously my voice becomes louder too, I even started arguing with the person. Sometimes after hanging up the phone my heart was still not calm. Master said in Zhuan Falun, "If you are free from this sentimentality, nobody can affect you. An everyday person’s mind will be unable to sway you. What takes over in its place is benevolence, which is something more noble.” My heart was moved, this means I am still in sentimentality, still haven’t generated compassion.
Master said in Teaching the Fa at the Conference in New Zealand, “Human thoughts are very active and may generate all kinds of ideas. And that’s because the mess of concepts formed after your birth and all kinds of karma are exerting influence. Without those things you would find the human mind clear and pure. Upon reaching a Buddha’s realm, a person won’t have such low things; they will all be noble instead. He will know everything, including the thoughts of oxen or horses. But those things won’t affect him, and he won’t want to even think about them. He will know everything without needing to even generate a thought.”
What should I do? I still have to improve in cultivation and do the three things well. Master said in Fa Teaching at the 2016 New York Fa Conference, “In the process of doing things, what’s looked at is your hearts, not your success itself. In the process of doing things you can save people!” It is really like this, as the more times I call, I have gradually gained more experience. Where my righteous thoughts are steadily strengthening, calling every day I feel there is some improvement. The script is smoother, the content is more familiar, my heart is stable, the tone of voice is calm, the speed of my speaking has also slowed, and what I say has become more vivid. My tone is more personable, really like telling a friend everything when speaking with sentient beings.
Cherish every number
From what I understand, the number distributed for hand dialled calling, were chosen after been broadcasted to recorded automatic calling, which means these sentient beings have listened to truth clarification calls for over a minute, are likely to learn about the truth and are able to quit the CCP. Hence, I know every number cannot be easily given up. If nobody listens after calling, I will call again at a different time. If haven’t had the chance to talk about quitting the CCP or Dafa truth because they hung up, I definitely will make a record to call back, because a listener may have issues to attend to or temporarily suffer interference. I must let the person understand the purpose of my call and give them a chance to make a choice. For those who hung up after listening to part of the truth, I call back right away and speak from a different perspective. If the listener really doesn’t want to listen and hung up multiple times, then I record the number, send a text in the future to give them software to break through the Internet firewall and hope they can learn more about the truth to prepare for being saved in the future. For empty numbers or numbers that changed I have to call again multiple times to confirm before updating them.
Sometimes when I make a call, I can hear the kids are yelling, making a mess, or the environment is chaotic, or they are in a meeting, then I write down the circumstances at the time, whether it is a man or a woman and call again later. Because if I repeatedly called back under this circumstance, personally I think the effect would not be very good, because it is very difficult for the person to listen calmly, but this call is so important.
Righteously support fellow practitioners and remove negative notions
As experiences accumulated and I listened to other practitioners who called on the platform, unconsciously I started picking on practitioners in my heart: how can she repeatedly call back after they hung up, continuously say anything without making a note of the others reaction? How come they don't first break the lies but right away talk about the nine true words? If the other person is prejudiced how can they listen? How come she talked in circles for a half a day but avoided the main topic? When the person hangs up and they don’t pick up the call again, they will lose the opportunity for truth clarification. After these thoughts appeared, I discovered that my attitude was no longer calm and this triggered my vigilance. What am I doing? Aren’t projecting these negative notions creating an obstacle for sentiment beings to be saved? If all the practitioners use their own standards to judge the practitioners who clarify the truth, then how can we form a powerful righteous environment to save people?
Master said in Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, U.S.A., “So, since each Great Enlightened Being and each being in the cosmos has his own set of understandings of the cosmos like that, if they were to start arguing wouldn't that be disastrous? That kind of thing doesn't exist where they are. So, what's their state of mind? It's tolerance, an extremely immense tolerance, being able to accept other beings, and being able to truly think from other beings' perspectives.”
I think, in my cultivation I must quickly remove the thoughts that oppose other people. First of all, I should support them righteously. If there is really something inappropriate, I can share privately with compassion afterwards. In the process of saving people and clarifying the truth, I can only project righteous thoughts to destroy the evil obstacles in saving people.
Above are some of my understandings from my current position if there is something inappropriate please kindly point out.
Chinese version: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/245584
