(Clearwisdom.net) Greetings, revered Teacher! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
We would like to share our experiences of assisting Teacher in His Fa-rectification and saving sentient beings. We have divided our humble insights into four parts.
1. Letting Go of Selfishness to Establish Truth-Clarification Material Production Sites
A large population in China has misunderstood Falun Gong and endorsed China's persecution of Falun Gong because of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) deceitful hate propaganda. To help them learn the truth about Falun Gong for the sake of saving them, we need to produce and distribute a large number of materials containing important facts about Falun Gong and the CCP's cruel persecution of practitioners. With that in mind, establishing and running truth-clarification material production sites becomes an important part of truth-clarification work. Some practitioners have to assume the important responsibility.
The truth-clarification material production sites started small in number and scale and gradually blossomed over time. It is a daunting task to keep the operations of a large truth-clarification material production site going because it has more requirements than a small site. Combined with the old forces' frequent interference and sabotage, larger production sites in our area were repeatedly discovered and destroyed by the police. Fellow practitioners were also arrested as a result. For a period of time in the winter of 2005, truth-clarification materials were running short. I was pretty anxious about the lack of a timely supply of materials for fellow practitioners, but I didn't think of establishing a production site myself. (At the time I didn't know much about using a computer.) I didn't think of lifting some of the burden from those fellow practitioners that were running large truth-clarification material production sites. I was satisfied with donating several thousand yuan a year to help keep the sites running. In fact, I was pretty pleased with myself at the time.
Due to the ongoing shortage of truth-clarification materials, a few fellow practitioners suggested that my wife and I establish a material site at home. I didn't say yes right away. Instead, I gave a diplomatic answer and promised to think about it. The truth is that I was selfishly thinking of my own safety. But my wife and I exchanged our understandings on the Fa and we agreed to assume the responsibility. In fact, we decided that we were in an excellent position to establish a truth-clarification material production site at our home. First, every person in our household is a Falun Gong practitioner. Second, my wife and I both have good daytime jobs that are not very demanding in terms of working hours. Third, our income is sufficient to keep a truth-clarification material site running. Fourth, because my wife and I are both practitioners, we can exchange our insights and upgrade together if we run into problems.
We both realized that we had been selfish in avoiding the responsibility. As practitioners, we must eliminate the attachment of selfishness. Teacher has repeatedly taught us to create truth-clarification material production sites in China, as many as the flowers that bloom here. As practitioners, we should do our best to achieve Teacher's goals. Once we upgraded our understanding on the Fa, my wife and I put it into action right away. With fellow practitioners' help, we started a truth-clarification material production site at home.
2. Overcoming Technical Challenges by Learning from Scratch
My wife and I didn't know how to use a computer. We only knew how to turn one on and off. Once we had purchased all the necessary computer equipment, a fellow practitioner started to teach us how to use the computer and computer software step by step. My wife took meticulous notes and followed the notes step by step. At first we learned to run simple tasks, but we forgot more complicated ones as soon as the practitioner left.
At first we wasted a lot of resources because we were pretty bad at using a computer. Sometimes we wasted over 10 sheets of paper because of one mistake. I felt frustrated with myself and felt inadequate. If I had known it would be so difficult, I would not have agreed to do it. But when I thought of fellow practitioners anxiously waiting for truth-clarification materials to save sentient beings, those unrighteous thoughts were eliminated and replaced by righteous thoughts.
At first my wife and I didn't know how to get on the Internet, so we had to rely on another practitioner to bring us the data files in person on a portable disk. It was inconvenient and limited our production rate. Later we learned how to surf the Internet with a fellow practitioner's help. We started out with a dial-up connection, which really slowed us down. Sometimes we couldn't get a dial-up connection at all because of the CCP's Internet blockade. My wife and I decided to get a cable connection. Now we can download truth-clarification materials from the Internet very quickly.
Because of fellow practitioners' help and our hard work, my wife and I can now run the material production site on our own. We can download and print truth-clarification materials, install software, compile documents, burn VCDs, upload music to MP3 players, and make greetings cards to Teacher on special holidays. We can even fix simple computer problems. During the process, we have learned to take good care of our computer and equipment. After all, they are Fa tools with which we save sentient beings. Looking back on the process of learning technical skills, we feel it is also a process of cultivating our hearts and eliminating attachments.
3. From Eliminating Fear to Stably Running a Truth-Clarification Material Production Site
My wife and I established the site at home in the winter of 2005. We were not without fear at first. When a fellow practitioner told me that the police had special equipment to detect a laser printer in the neighborhood, I spent about 50 "yuan" to buy copper wire to make a shield for the printer. After I finished weaving a copper shield, I tested it and found it did not work. Next I wrapped a cardboard box with a sheet of tin to make another shield. After a while, a fellow practitioner told me that none of the shields I made would stand up to the police's detector, so I removed the shield from my laser printer.
Actually, these tests and illusions were targeting my attachment of fear. I identified my attachment of fear when I exchanged understandings with fellow practitioners. My wife and I began to study the Fa more. I even started to memorize Zhuan Falun. Now I am memorizing Zhuan Falun for the third time. Once I understood the problem from the perspective of the Fa, upgraded my xinxing level, and reinforced my righteous thoughts, I realized that human notions were dominating me when I was busy making those protective shields. In fact, none of the shields worked. It has been Teacher protecting our material production site all along, because Teacher saw that we truly wanted to produce truth clarification materials, but we still had some fear. Teacher was protecting us while waiting for us to upgrade our understanding on the Fa. Teacher even gave us hints via a fellow practitioner. This is the true reason why our truth-clarification material production site has been running safely.
As my wife and I continued to study the Fa, we tried to find the root cause of our fear. We decided that the problem originated from our lack of steadfast faith in Teacher and the Fa. We failed to do what Teacher told us to do. Whatever we decided to do, we did it on compromising terms. As we continued to dig into our attachment, we realized that we had been afraid of letting people know when we were doing things to clarify the truth. But why weren't we afraid of letting people know when we were doing other things? We must have been selfish. We were afraid that the police might discover the production site in our home. We feared this and that because we did Dafa work from the wrong foundation. Our foundation should be built on assisting Teacher in His Fa-rectification and on saving sentient beings. If we had regarded ourselves as upright and all-mighty divine beings assisting Teacher in His Fa-rectification and fulfilling the most sacred, righteous mission of saving sentient beings, would we have had any fear of the evil, wicked beings? The evil, wicked beings would not dare to come near us.
Teacher said,
"If you are a true practitioner, our Falun will safeguard you. I am rooted in the universe. If anyone can harm you, he or she would be able to harm me. Put simply, that person would be able to harm this universe." ("Characteristics of Falun Dafa" in Lecture One of Zhuan Falun)
Teacher has explained the Fa very clearly in the above passage. The key is whether we can conduct ourselves as true practitioners. I feel utterly ashamed! After all, I have been cultivating for more than a decade, but I have not been able to believe in Teacher and the Fa completely. Teacher taught us a long time ago that we are walking on the path to godhood and that we are divine beings validating the Fa in the human world, but my wife and I were holding fast to human notions and fearing this and that. It should be the evil beings that fear practitioners because we are eliminating evil beings from other dimensions with our righteous thoughts and because we are saving sentient beings. We have the ability to end the persecution and guard the universe. We are future kings and lords of the universe. Once my wife and I elevated our understanding on the Fa, we successfully eliminated our attachment of fear.
However, fear sometimes pops up in our minds from time to time because we are still cultivating in the human world. Sometimes we would be interfered with because we failed to differentiate fear from our true selves. In 2007, when a local practitioner was arrested, we were told, "The truth-clarification material production site is a sensitive place. Why don't you suspend operations for a while? Wait until the coast is clear." I didn't want to acknowledge the old forces' interference or the persecution of the fellow practitioner, but I decided to take the practitioner's advice and stopped producing truth-clarification materials for a week.
As I studied the Fa and searched inward, I realized fear was dominating again. When a fellow practitioner is persecuted, that is when a truth-clarification production site has to fulfill its function of exposing the persecution, spreading the truth, and rescuing the fellow practitioner. My wife and I resumed operations immediately. Since then, we have been running our truth-clarification material production site normally, regardless of so-called politically sensitive days or any contingencies.
My wife and I have reached the following understandings: Our heart must not waver no matter what kind of news we hear. Our first thought should be to negate the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners adamantly. Falun Gong practitioners must be released immediately and unconditionally. When an unrighteous thought pops up in our minds, we should identify it, differentiate the wicked thought from our true selves, and eliminate it right away. Then it will be eradicated instantly. If we should follow the wicked train of thought or think about how to protect ourselves, we would be acknowledging and even inviting the evil arrangements. Hence, we must be aware of our each and every thought and be vigilant against exploitation by the evil forces.
4. Melting into the Fa and Becoming a Particle of the Fa
In retrospect, over the past eight years of assisting Teacher in His Fa-rectification, my wife and I have come a long way. At first, we didn't know what to do. Then we followed suggestions from fellow practitioners. Eventually, we truly elevated our understandings on the Fa and caught up with Teacher's Fa-rectification. We have become increasingly mature as Falun Gong practitioners. Our material production site at home is responsible for supplying materials for over 200 practitioners. My wife and I are responsible for the operating expenses and the entire production. (When we are short of money, fellow practitioners will help out.) We also have to shoulder a little coordination work. My wife and I made a rule for ourselves: No matter how great an article is, we must not use it in our truth-clarification material if it is not published on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website.
Take Jia Jia's "Letter to Fellow Countrymen" as an example. A fellow practitioner told us that it was an excellent article and that we should distribute it far and wide. He could hardly contain his excitement about Jia Jia's article. But my wife and I told him calmly, "Jia Jia's article is truly very well written, but it is full of pursuit for democracy and power of an ordinary person. These are not at all what Falun Gong practitioners should pursue. This is a very solemn issue. We must be responsible to the Fa." Later on another practitioner made the same request. Many local practitioners had a discussion on this issue and reached a consensus. In the end, we didn't widely circulate the article among the public in our area.
But there were times when my wife and I reached the wrong understanding. Spreading The Cosmo's Calamity is one example. When I first read the novel on Zhengjian.org (PureInsight.org), I took instant delight in it. I thought this was a novel about cultivation practice and I was very inspired. I thought reading this novel would help us elevate our xinxing levels, so I downloaded the novel, printed many copies, and distributed them among local practitioners. I thought I had done a great deed until Teacher published "On the Novel The Cosmo's Calamity." I realized that I was driven by my attachment to have done something a practitioner should not have done. I immediately destroyed the remaining copies of The Cosmo's Calamity and told fellow practitioners to destroy the copies I had given them.
As a practitioner running a truth-clarification material production site, I am shouldering important responsibilities. If I should fail to conduct myself properly, I would be likely to mislead fellow practitioners. China is a special country where the majority of Falun Gong practitioners cannot access the Minghui/Clearwisdom website directly. Therefore, practitioners place their trust in those practitioners running truth-clarification material production sites. Hence, they tend to distribute whatever materials they receive from material production sites. With that in mind, it becomes very important for practitioners at these sites to check all the materials before distributing them to other practitioners.
While running the site, my wife and I keep learning new ways to economize. At first we made a lot of mistakes because we didn't know how to use the computer. As a result, each time we printed materials, we made a lot of bad copies because of paper jams, shortage of ink, etc. In order to prevent paper jams, one of us is responsible for watching the paper feed and the other, the paper output. This way we have stopped wasting a lot of paper and ink. Nowadays hardly any resources are wasted.
My wife and I will not think twice about spending money on validating the Fa, but we are very frugal in terms of our personal living expenses. We have been running the site for over a year. We hardly spent any money on new clothes. My wife and I have reached the following consensus: It is Teacher and the Fa that have given us everything we own today, so we must achieve Teacher's goals unconditionally. Teacher has scooped us out of Hell, deleted our names from the list of people condemned to Hell, and arranged our Fruit Statuses in heavenly paradises. It is Teacher and the Fa that gave us our lives and everything else, so we must assimilate ourselves into the Fa and become a particle of the Fa.
My wife transfered the majority of the donations from fellow practitioners to other truth-clarification material production sites. Only when we are short of money do we take the donation. Sometimes when we hear that another truth-clarification material production site is short of money to keep the operation going, my wife and I spare some money from our living expenses to make a donation to that production site. We are one body. When a truth-clarification material production site runs into difficulty, we all run into difficulty.
We still have a lot of attachments to eliminate during our journey of assisting Teacher in His Fa-rectification, but we are confident that we will eliminate all of them. Please kindly point out anything inappropriate in our understandings.
