Coordination and cooperation for our World Falun Dafa Day event
Hello Master! Hello fellow practitioners!
I’d like to share about some learnings in my cultivation about coordination and cooperation for our World Falun Dafa Day VIP dinner in May.
Two months before World Falun Dafa Day, a few practitioners suggested at Fa study that perhaps we could organise a dinner for VIP guests, instead of doing the usual truth clarification events we do in public. A VIP dinner would be something completely different.
At first I didn’t have very positive thoughts during this discussion. I didn’t think we’d be able to get 100 people together and when practitioners started suggesting all the different entertainment they could do, I wasn’t at all enthusiastic. It didn’t sound like it would be a high quality event and I was doubtful that it would have a good outcome. I reluctantly suggested we have a sonant meeting later in the week to work out what we wanted to achieve with this event and whether we could make it work – because I still didn’t think we could. My thinking really wasn’t at all righteous! When we had the sonant meeting, I was surprised by all the good ideas and all the practitioners who really believed it could be a successful event – particularly western practitioners, who were very enthusiastic. I felt guilty for having negative thoughts about it when it was first discussed.
At the next Fa study, our main association coordinator suddenly said in front of everyone that he hoped I would coordinate the VIP dinner. That was a surprise to me – and at first I thought he should have asked me privately first, rather than asking me in front of everyone. But then I stopped thinking too much and just agreed to do it. I thought to myself – now I can no longer feel negative about it not being successful, because I’ll only have myself to blame as the coordinator!
After Fa study, I thought about Master’s teaching from “Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia” when he taught us how to cooperate together, and he explained how Great Enlightened Beings work together. Master said,
“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. “
Master goes on to say:
“When another God proposes an idea, they aren’t eager to reject it, and they aren’t eager to express their own ideas and they don’t believe that their own ideas are good. Instead, they look at what the end result of the other God’s proposed approach will be. The paths are different–everyone’s path is different–and the truths that beings validate and enlighten to in the Fa are different, too, but the results might very well be the same. That’s why they look at the results, and if the result of a God’s idea can achieve the goal, if it can truly achieve it, then all of them will go along with it. That’s how Gods think. Also, if there’s something lacking in it they’ll unconditionally and quietly supplement it to make things more complete and perfect. That’s how they handle things.”
I wondered if it would be possible for us to work together like that.
I thought a lot about who to ask to help plan the event, and I decided to contact some of the people who had given good ideas on the original sonant, and who I knew would be willing to get involved and would cooperate well together.
I thought it would be a good idea to meet in person, rather than on Sonant, so that we could have good sharing and discussion. So we met at one of the practitioner’s home, ordered pizza, and had some great sharing and discussion and laughter, and then we did some planning.
We all agreed that we wanted the evening to be really special and show the beauty of Dafa and clarify the truth deeply, but in an appropriate way.
My idea had been to have a broad discussion about what we thought would be possible, but as soon as we started discussing things, the ideas came so fast that after a couple of hours we had pretty much planned the whole VIP dinner from start to finish. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a meeting (either at work or with practitioners) where we worked together so well and progressed so quickly. We were bouncing ideas and suggestions off each other for about 2 hours non-stop, refining, reordering, harmonising, suggesting improvements. It was truly special to be part of it. Someone would suggest an idea and others would improve on it to make it better; other times, someone would say why they disagreed with the idea – but even when we were disagreeing with ideas, it was still completely harmonious because we were all there to work out the best way forward, not to validate our own ideas.
We had two more meetings like this – each one in person, at someone’s house, with shared food. Not only were we very productive in our planning, but we also enjoyed each other’s company, which brought us closer together. Even though I was the main coordinator, I valued so much the opinions and experience of every single person in the team. I could see from our meetings that an average idea could be made into a really good idea with input from many people. Even when the ideas were opposite to each other, we were able to harmonise them.
I really think the key thing was the mutual respect for each other, which was the basis for cooperating. Everyone showed initiative and was willing to take on tasks and complete them with minimal direction – which made my job of coordinator much easier. Anyone who’s been a coordinator knows how much harder it is if you have to keep following people up to see if they’ve done their tasks. With all the practitioners on the team, I was confident that if someone took on a task, they would be true to their word and follow through with it. Everyone in the planning team was also very flexible, which was important because there were so many last minute changes…but no one complained, we just kept encouraging each other.
There was also friendship, which meant we were supporting each other and were not offended or defensive if our ideas were challenged or changed. I didn’t see the friendship as ‘qing’, but as ‘cherishing each other’.
Master said in “Fa Teaching Given at the 2011 New York Fa Conference”:
“I hope that you all cherish yourselves, cherish others, and cherish this environment that you have. Cherishing the path that you travel is cherishing yourselves.”
In the past I wasn’t really sure what that meant, but during the planning and preparation for our World Falun Dafa Day dinner, I deeply cherished each practitioner working on the team.
There were many more practitioners involved in making our VIP dinner a successful event from start to finish, and so many people really put their heart into it, from the beautiful invitations, to the entertainment, art exhibition, presentations, and the gifts for our guests, which were hand painted framed calligraphy of the Chinese characters Zhen Shan Ren.
The dinner was on a Friday night and it went very well and our guests were very touched and fully able to see the beauty of Falun Dafa and we received many positive comments. The cooperation among everyone in the team had been so inspiring that I was on a bit of a high for the next few days. It had been so wonderful to plan and execute an event where no one held onto their opinions, there was no hierarchy of ideas and everyone listened carefully to each other. I was still feeling the glow of a good event on the Monday when I went back to work. But that day at work I suddenly had several tests.
During a meeting in the morning, someone refused to listen to my point of view and I felt myself getting frustrated and holding on to my own opinions (even though two days before I was thinking about how well our Dafa Day event had gone when no one held onto their opinions). Then someone in another team assigned me some work and I felt indignant because he was at a lower level than me and shouldn’t be assigning me work (even though two days before I realised that one of the reasons we cooperated so well was that there was no hierarchy and everyone just did what needed to be done). Then in a meeting in the afternoon someone was going on and on about really irrelevant points and I had no patience to listen and just wanted to walk out (even though two days before I’d been thinking about the importance of really listening to everyone’s viewpoint).
The good mood that I’d started with that day was gone. I was reflecting on this on my way home from work, and I realised that even though I’d started the day still feeling inspired by the success that came from cooperating with practitioners without hierarchy and all listening to different opinions respectfully…the very next day Master showed me that I still had a long way to go with these attachments when it came to the way I worked with everyday people! It brought me down to earth and helped me check myself again.
Then later that night, I received an email from a practitioner who wasn’t involved much in the coordination of the VIP dinner, but had emailed a long list of feedback covering all the things that weren’t done well and all the mistakes we’d made. I read her email and my first thought was: Wow – such a long email and she didn’t have a single positive thing to say about the event – even though so many of our guests were very positive about it. Then I had a second thought – maybe that’s what I’m like with family and people at work who report to me. It’s so much easier for me to see all the negative things and ignore the positive. So even thought it was a very negative email, I could see that it was still Master showing me something else I needed to work on.
I thought this practitioner had been negative about many things we’d decided to do, because she just didn’t understand the thinking behind our decisions. As I looked inward a bit more, I remembered that I had done something very similar during the planning for our event, several weeks earlier. I’d almost forgotten about it.
This incident happened while we were creating the gifts for our guests, which was a framed calligraphy of the Chinese characters for Zhen Shan Ren. One of our Chinese practitioners had volunteered to do all the calligraphy by hand and another practitioner who is very creative agreed to help and she sent me her ideas for a picture frame and the background for the characters. But I already had a clear idea in my mind of what I thought this gift should look like, and what she had designed was nothing like I’d imagined. I wanted a simple white background in a rectangular frame, which I thought would make the characters stand out more, and be more appropriate as a gift, but she had designed a gold pattern background, and the characters were inside a circle, and the frame was square. To me it looked all wrong.
I decided to go and talk to her in person so I could explain what I had in mind. When I got to her house, I explained to her what I thought would work and she listened quietly and was very willing to work with me to try to produce the design I wanted. She didn’t once argue or push her viewpoint and I felt happy with how well we were cooperating, and thought how much easier things go when practitioners listen to the coordinator instead of arguing.
We spent a long time trying to make my design work, but in the end, I realised it just wouldn’t work. That’s also when I realised I wasn’t acting like a Great Enlightened Being – I was trying to force my ideas onto her, instead of looking at what the results of her ideas would be, which is what Master taught us. Remember Master’s words that I read at the start of this sharing: “When another God proposes an idea, they aren’t eager to reject it, and they aren’t eager to express their own ideas and they don’t believe that their own ideas are good. Instead, they look at what the end result of the other God’s proposed approach will be.” Well, I certainly had not been doing that!
I looked at this practitioner, who was trying so hard to make my idea work and I realised my approach was all wrong. I stopped and said. “Please tell me about your original idea” (the one I had been so eager to reject). She quietly explained that the gold background was a traditional Chinese design for something high quality, and the characters for Zhen Shen Ren sat in a circle, which represented heaven, and the frame was square, which represented earth. I was stunned. Her idea was so perfect and complete and had so much inner meaning, and I hadn’t even bothered to ask her to explain it. I felt ashamed of myself, and also felt moved by how this practitioner was so willing to cooperate with me, even though her idea was so much better. I immediately agreed that we should do exactly as she had originally suggested, and apologised for wasting so much time. But actually, it wasn’t a waste of time at all, it was a good cultivation experience and showed me how I needed to improve, as the coordinator, in how I worked with other practitioners.
In “Further Understanding” from Essentials for Further Advancement, Master says:
“Do you realize that as long as you’re a cultivator, in any environment or under any circumstances, I will use any troubles or unpleasant things you come across—even if they involve work for Dafa, or no matter how good or sacred you think they are—to eliminate your attachments and expose your demon-nature so that it can be eliminated, for your improvement is what’s most important.”
I feel I have made some breakthroughs in my cultivation this year when it comes to coordination and cooperation, and even after we’ve had successful projects, Master continues to show me my demon nature so that I can eliminate it, and have a purer heart to save sentient beings.
Thank you Master and thank you all fellow practitioners.