Cultivating as a Minghui Correspondent

(Minghui.org) After over 20 years of following the principles of Falun Dafa to improve my character, I have changed from an ordinary person with a strong competitive mentality to a good person who thinks about others first. Master Li (the founder of Falun Dafa) has given me so much during this process.

I worked as a teacher of Chinese studies before I retired. In the very early days of following Falun Dafa, I was involved in writing and editing experience sharing articles and passing them to the Minghui correspondent for the local Minghui edition. Eventually, the Minghui correspondent had to stop doing the job. By then, I had retired and I felt that it was important for us to maintain this platform to expose the evil persecution. I wanted to give it a try and so I learned typing and typesetting from different practitioners near me. After a while, I made my first attempt and sent a local weekly page to the Minghui website. It was published, and the local practitioners printed it out and distributed it to people, all of which gave me a lot of encouragement. From then on, I began doing the local edition of Minghui Weekly for my area.

I discovered that the most difficult part of the job was finding relevant content every week. Sometimes there was no local news for the Minghui website, and I would then need to collect, organize and write some content myself. It wasn’t difficult to do this for a couple of weeks, but over time, it soon became very difficult to spend so much time finding sufficient materials. 

Moreover, the stories I wrote about would inevitably involve local practitioners, and sometimes this caused conflicts, trouble, and even tribulations among practitioners for various reasons.

For example, I found an article on the Minghui website written by a local practitioner about his experience of being imprisoned for several years. I thought that since he wrote it and posted it on Minghui, he must not mind having his identity exposed. Under the circumstances of severe persecution in China, it was not easy to directly seek his opinion, so I excerpted his article for the local weekly edition without consulting him first.

Then the problem arose. One day, a local coordinator came to my home and asked me to go to his place. When I arrived, there were two other practitioners there. The coordinator introduced us to each other and told me the purpose of the visit. One person was the aforementioned practitioner whose persecution story was published on the local weekly edition, and he was not happy about it. When I heard him say that, I immediately became angry. I tried my best to suppress my anger and I apologized to the practitioner.

After the other two people left, I immediately asked the coordinator, “Why did you handle it like this? You should have tried to downplay the matter, and then later on told me to be more careful about using a fellow practitioners’ story and to always consult them first. But by handling it like you did, didn’t you expose me?” 

Because I thought I was right about this matter, I was not compassionate toward him at all. Just then, his wife and children came into the room. They were also Falun Dafa practitioners. At first, I thought his wife would handle the conflict from a rational standpoint. But on the contrary, she was totally on her husband’s side and pointed the finger at me. My competitiveness and resentful thinking from the Communist Party culture all came out. We argued a lot and then parted, feeling unhappy. When I got home, I was still unable to weigh what had happened using the Fa. I continued to feel aggrieved, and my way of handling it was to stop preparing the local weekly edition for Minghui. Thus, our local edition was discontinued.

After a while, one day I asked myself: “Why did I want to do the weekly edition in the first place? It was to assist Master Li in saving sentient beings. Then why did I stop doing it? Was I doing this for the coordinating practitioner?” I realized I was wrong and had been looking at the conflict with a human mindset. Master told us to look inside when we encounter problems. We can then improve ourselves through conflicts. How could I use human thinking as soon as I encountered a disagreement? Wasn’t encountering opposition there to help me cultivate? I should be thankful to the people who gave me the opportunity to improve. Besides, the discord was my fault in the first place. Why didn’t I look inside? Why didn’t I look at the issue using the principles of the Fa?

It was a pity that I had lost an opportunity to improve, and I was wrong to quarrel with fellow practitioners because of it. No one was preparing the local weekly edition. So I thought, maybe doing that job was part of my mission, and I must fulfill my prehistoric vow to assist Master Li in Fa rectification no matter how difficult it was. 

I told myself that I needed to cultivate myself while doing this project, and I must look at things from the basis of the Fa principles when encountering issues. 

I committed to studying the Fa well. Master told us, 

“You must study the Fa well, for that is the fundamental guarantee that you return to your position.” (“Dafa Disciples Must Study the Fa - Fa Teaching Given at the 2011 Washington DC Metro Area Fa Conference”)

I realized that the reason I couldn’t improve during the conflict was that I did not study the Fa well. So, I told myself that I must not conflate doing Dafa projects with Fa study. At the same time, I told myself I would do well as a Minghui correspondent. 

After that, I reported the persecution information about the local Dafa practitioners in a timely manner, and I wrote the persecution articles myself when there were none available. I also collected information from the police, Procuratorate, courts, and administrative departments and wrote articles when the evil people received retribution for persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners. In addition, I helped local practitioners write letters for legal purposes and for those suing Jiang Zemin, in addition to sending reports to Minghui about the local persecution cases.

When I was doing these things, I had to approach fellow practitioners to learn the details about the persecution, and I had to do a lot of research to get the relevant information. It was very time-consuming. Sometimes just to prepare a document that would be used for suing Jiang, I had to verify details with practitioners several times to make sure the information was accurate. Master said, 

“Dafa disciples’ duty is to save sentient beings.” (“Dafa Disciples Must Study the Fa - Fa Teaching Given at the 2011 Washington DC Metro Area Fa Conference”)

Indeed, everything I did was for saving sentient beings. Thus, no matter how hard the job was, I had to do it and do it well. Just like this, every day, I was happily facing everything I encountered in cultivation. 

In order to do this project well, I was sometimes too busy to eat, and sometimes I had to work until midnight. At that time, I did everything from selecting materials, writing reports, editing and typesetting, to proofreading. In order to make the content of the local edition richer and more attractive, I learned to take photos, and then gradually learned to edit them and insert them in the articles. In recent years, our weekly edition was ready almost every week, and practitioners were able to print them out and distribute them to people. The local edition has played an effective role in deterring the evil forces and exposing the Communist Party’s evil crimes.

Once, I went to a nearby town to collect information from a fellow practitioner who often wrote articles exposing the persecution. She told me she had collected so much data that she had not found time to sort through it and write articles. I encouraged her to eliminate any distractions and put the information in writing. She said that she had attempted to do so several times but was not successful. She showed me what she had collected, and it was a foot-high pile of A4 paper. I offered to take the papers home to organize them and she happily agreed to let me. Since then, whenever I have time, I read the information on the cases and organize them into categories. I then write a local persecution record based on these materials which stretched over a decade of time. It was indeed a struggle to write so many articles. I sent the articles to Minghui and they were published. I felt that I did not do as good a job as she would have, because she had collected the information, and there were often things that I didn’t fully understand. But in any case, I did not let the precious materials get lost. Later, I heard that this practitioner was persecuted to death, and I felt very sad.

Master has given me such a great cultivation environment, where I have the opportunity to learn from other practitioners. I have seen wonderful qualities in each and every practitioner. Some have a very clear understanding of the Fa and strong righteous thoughts when encountering issues; some are very organized; and some are able to take good care of their families while doing the three things well. I also had opportunities to share with other cultivators about my understanding of the Fa. There are times when I noticed a fellow practitioner’s shortcomings, and I would learn lessons from their mistakes.

There were times when I couldn’t help but feel annoyed and tired. For example, recently, two fellow practitioners came to my home once a week. Whenever they came, they would talk about the tribulations they had with their husbands and how they couldn’t get through the difficulties. I shared my thoughts with them from the perspective of the Fa but I was not very effective at helping them see things that way. Then, I began to feel a bit annoyed and tired of it. 

When I realized that I shouldn’t feel this way, I remembered that Dafa practitioners are one body, and so we formed a new Fa-study group. Through reading Zhuan Falun I gradually saw my attachment and then sent righteous thoughts to eliminate it. This process took a long time, but eventually I was able to fully discover my shortcoming. 

Since then, even when other practitioners said bad things about my cultivation state, I was not moved at all. I learned that I shouldn’t be entangled with others about right and wrong. Instead, when encountering a conflict, I must look inside and correct myself and my thinking. The real right and wrong can only be measured by using the Fa; and only Master Li knows the entire story behind everything. I must not let myself get caught up in all these matters.

I have also received a lot of praise from practitioners in my area. But I understood that both praise and criticism were xinxing tests, and as a cultivator, I must improve my character and eliminate human attachments.

Once, I helped a senior practitioner write a document to be used in a lawsuit. It took me an entire morning to write it, and then I took it to her. The next day, she came to me, gave me her opinions, and asked me to help revise it. Before leaving, she said, “I’ve got to go. I’m running out of time to buy groceries.” I immediately felt angry inside. I thought to myself, “You are running out of time? Why don’t you think about how much I have to do? I still have other Dafa things that are waiting for me, and I don’t have time to look after my home. It’s not like you can’t read or write. You just don’t want to do anything yourself.” Still, I revised the document, printed it out, and took it to her. 

Two days later she came again and wanted to add that the Political and Legal Committee and the 610 Office were the source of the persecution she encountered. This time I refused to make a change. I said, “Everyone knows that. But you can change it yourself if you desire. I really don’t have time.” 

Thinking back now, I feel that I did not cultivate well in that situation. These human notions are really bad. In Milarepa’s cultivation story, he was told to take apart and rebuild a house so many times, which was infinitely more difficult than revising a document. The incident really showed how inadequate my cultivation state was in this aspect. At the same time, what I did was really harmful to fellow practitioners, too. From now on, I will definitely correct myself based on the Fa and diligently cultivate.

If anything is inappropriate in my sharing, please kindly point it out.