Taking the “Nine Commentaries” as Guidance to Write Opinion Articles

(Minghui.org) After the Minghui editorial board published the notice calling for submissions to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Falun Dafa’s introduction to the world, I contacted some local practitioners and invited them to join the event.

Most practitioners understand that this call for opinion articles is very important and they all wanted to participate. However, everyone, including myself, felt a little intimidated. Although I had written and submitted articles to Minghui before and some of them had been published, this will be my first opinion article.

I have heard some fellow practitioners saying that it is easy to write an opinion article, as long as you have the “claims, reasons, and evidence.” The remaining task is to organize the content well.

The claims (or key points and themes) we can make in opinion articles have been listed in detail in the submission notice; reasons and evidence to support our claims are abundant for those of us living in present-day mainland China. So, the main issue to overcome in writing an opinion article is to choose the right material and organize it well.

Over the last few days, I was contemplating on how to structure my opinion article, and the classic commentary Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party came to mind. On November 19, 2004, the Epoch Times began to publish the book, which profoundly analyzed the deceitful, violent, cultish, and rogue nature of the CCP. It covers a wide range of topics, from historical, political, economic, cultural, and spiritual perspectives exposing the endless disasters brought to the Chinese people and the world by the CCP.

The commentaries are sharp, profound and far-sighted. Now it has become the most widely circulated banned book by the CCP in recent years. I believe the book can provide us with the best reference in writing a good opinion article.

Thus, we fellow practitioners can, according to our own age, knowledge, and life experience, read the Nine Commentaries, study its writing style and draw inspiration from it to help with our own writing.

In the article “Seizing This Precious and Rare Opportunity,” the example given by the author made a deep impression on me. Two days before the end of the Falun Dafa Transmission Class in Qiqihar, Master Li (Dafa’s founder) asked each student to hand in an experience sharing to see how well they understood the teachings of Dafa. No one had ever written a cultivation experience before, and it was everyone’s first time. One student walked up to the stage and handed the written experience to Master, saying hesitantly, “It’s not good.” Master happily took it and said, “It’s good that you wrote it!”

Fellow practitioners, let us overcome our fears and earnestly seize this opportunity that Master provided for us to validate the Fa.