(Clearwisdom.net) Editor's Note: Master said in “Fa Teaching at the 2009 Greater New York International Fa Conference:”
Only if one can persevere and continually forge ahead does it amount to true diligence. It's easy to talk about, but putting it into action is tremendously difficult. That is why it's said that always cultivating as if you were just starting will surely result in achieving your ultimate rank.
The following is taken from a group sharing article at the 10th anniversary of the Minghui Website in 2009. Many of the practitioners involved in Minghui/Clearwisdom website work cannot share their cultivation experiences in the same way as other practitioners outside of China. To address this issue, a group of practitioners co-authored this article for the purpose of sharing and mutual encouragement among Minghui website project team members at the Fa Conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Minghui Website’s founding. The article has been edited for publishing.
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The Minghui website completed the first ten years of its journey on June 25, 2009. It has evolved from a very simple website to a large group of websites with original content in multiple columns, issues, media forms, sub-domains and languages. How have the practitioners who have been working on the Minghui website been doing during these 10 years? This article will share with you some stories of the early days of the Minghui website.
Continued from
Part 4: http://clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/8/22/127618.html
Part 3: http://clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/8/21/127598.html
Part 2: http://clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/8/20/127582.html
Part 1: http://clearwisdom.net/html/articles/2011/8/13/127445.html
Strict Security Policy
Master has warned Dafa disciples many times, “Cultivation is a very serious matter.” (“Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Canada” 1999)
Since the Minghui website deals with a large amount of information concerning many practitioners in Mainland China, we have a very strict security policy. Minghui journalists usually have the laxest security requirements when compared to other disciples also involved in the Minghui project, yet even they must still keep a very low profile. For many of us overseas practitioners, used to living in a free world, such a strict policy has become a special test and challenge for us during the past ten years.
To maintain the smooth operation of the Minghui website, we are very mindful of our responsibilities to keep our work confidential, which sometimes leads to practitioners not involved in the project misunderstanding our work. We have found, though, as long as we focus on fulfilling our role as Dafa disciples—to assist with the Fa-rectification process and offer sentient beings salvation wholeheartedly—all the inconveniences and pressures we experience are merely fleeting; we have no time to pity ourselves or feel lonely.
The very nature of the Minghui project means that we often work in isolation, with very little interaction with practitioners involved in other projects. As we see it, such isolation has both positive and negative elements. As long as we maintain a righteous mind, the positive factors can actually make us calmer and more efficient, and help ensure a smoother operation of our project in the long run. At the same time, any negative factors associated with isolation are great tests to temper our xinxing and raise our cultivation levels.
Our unique work environment is never short of cultivation opportunities. There is always the issue of coordination and cooperation among us. We also face the test of staying engaged in our low-profile project. Every day we read article submissions concerning all kinds of problems and reflecting numerous impure human notions. How to remain unmoved by what we see, and at the same time play a positive role in the Fa-rectification progress and ensure the operation of Minghui website, thus becomes our cultivation challenge.
More importantly, we have come to realize that we were able to get to where we are today because we followed Master’s teachings on security issues. The very fact that we can cultivate and walk a righteous path by doing Minghui website work in a secure and low-key manner validates our role in assisting Master with the Fa-rectification process.
Minghui Website’s Evolution
During the past few years, the Minghui website has evolved into a comprehensive, multi-media site, including periodicals, books, radio, TV, and archives.
The very first Minghui periodical ever published, the Minghui Weekly Magazine, serves practitioners in Mainland China who do not have Internet access to the Internet to read the Minghui website online. As of June 4, 2009, 386 issues of Minghui Weekly have been published.
Minghui Weekly and Minghui Weekend are truth-clarification periodicals targeting non-practitioners. Founded in January 2001, Minghui Weekend is an easy-to-read online publication. In order to put Minghui editors’ efforts to broader and more efficient use, we started to publish a new periodical called Minghui Weekly Mainland Edition in the spring of 2005. Since this new publication is indeed a compilation of information from different Minghui periodicals, it is printed and widely distributed by practitioners in China. As such, it provides a window through which people in China learn about the truth of Falun Gong and help strengthen the influence of Minghui in China.
In April 2007 we launched the Minghui Weekly Overseas Edition to benefit people outside of China. At present, the newspaper is available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Dallas, and some cities in South Korea.
In November 2005, Minghui Radio was established and started broadcasting to people in China. We also have a column called “Media Center,” where TV documentaries and video clips made by Dafa disciples are available for downloading. Practitioners in China often rely on these materials to make truth-clarification discs to distribute.
The Minghui website also features an Archives Library and a Photo Gallery. These two sources play a significant role in helping practitioners in China find their local information and compile truth-clarification materials exposing evildoing individuals in their local areas.
In addition to the above-mentioned periodicals, Minghui has published a series of books. One editor who worked on the book entitled Life and Hope Renewed - The Healing Power of Falun Dafa said, “The process of compiling this book was also one for me to strengthen my righteous belief. Reading the stories about so many people who got rid of their serious illnesses through practicing Falun Gong and became healthy, striving to be good people, I came to a deeper appreciation of Master’s compassion and Dafa’s mighty virtue.”
During the process of resisting the persecution and clarifying the facts, Minghui has also launched multi-language versions. At present we have available versions in English, German, French, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese. These websites in different languages run smoothly thanks to practitioners who quietly do the translation work all year long, the high standards they set for themselves, and their serious understanding of their mission in participating in the Minghui project.
One Clearwisdom (the English version of Minghui) editor started out translating articles and became an editor some time later. He has a full time job, but manages to squeeze in time in the morning and night for Minghui work. He has done this for seven years.
According to this editor, “Since I read Minghui every day, I was able to correctly grasp the main focus and principles of the Fa-rectification progress. But at times I still had trouble keeping pace. Working on Minghui certainly motivated me to become even more diligent in my cultivation. Initially, not many people were involved in the project, and the workload was very heavy. I gradually learned to better utilize my time—to improve my cultivation and become more efficient with my Dafa work. Later on, as my team expanded to include practitioners of different ethnicities from different regions, I automatically expand my capacity to better cooperate with people at various xinxing levels. As an editor, there were also more and more things for me to consider from a holistic point of view.”
What this editor experienced is a miniature of what many other practitioners have likewise experienced while working on the non-Chinese versions of Minghui.
Another editor started to translate articles published on Clearwisdom into his native language as early as in 1999. In the years that followed, he and his team have never ceased doing the translation work. The Minghui website in their language has become an important forum for their local practitioners to share experiences and seek out information.
This editor told us, “At first I did everything by myself and thus felt extremely tired every day. Later on a practitioner suggested that I should trust other practitioners and to share my workload. Gradually I got more and more people involved in the translation work. There were also practitioners who directly submitted reports of local truth-clarification activities in our language. At the outset, some of the translations and submissions were of low quality. I held meetings with translators and reporters and used examples to show them how to improve their translating and writing skills. Little by little we did a much better job.
“I have never taken any days off during the past nine years. I edit and publish articles day in and day out. Despite my busy schedule, I make sure to read one lecture of Zhuan Falun every day. Fa study enables me to maintain righteous thoughts in doing Dafa work.”
He also reported, “Like other Minghui teams, whenever we get together, we always study the Fa first and then share experiences before finally delving into discussions of detailed project issues. We all cherish the environment of group study and experience sharing, because it is the guarantee for us to improve and remain diligent.”
Minghui now has a journalist team whose reports on overseas truth-clarification activities greatly encourage practitioners in China and are an important information source for Minghui publications that are used in China to offer sentient beings salvation.
Position and Mission
The establishment and continuous operation of Minghui is unlike any other media, since it does not have any funding, nor does it confer any title or material interest on its participants. The only requirement for us is to work hard and quietly and to cultivate solidly. Every day we have to devote a great amount of time and energy to the project; there are no holidays or time off. But everyone is very clear that our sacrifice is nothing compared to our potential gain from Dafa cultivation. What Master and Dafa give us is priceless and cannot be measured with money and human values.
Our cultivation and Dafa work are integrated. Conflicts are opportunities for us to improve our xinxing. One editor shared his story: “I asked a practitioner who worked with me to check his emails once day, and he said he would. But he had trouble keeping his promise. Initially I was unhappy, but after studying the Fa and looking within I realized, I should do better and offer him a kindly reminder next time around.”
Another editor was sad when other practitioners criticized her. Fa study helped her learn to look within, and she was able to identify and subsequently remove incorrect notions. She commented that she gradually learned to appreciate other people’s strengths and tolerate their shortcomings. Practitioners working on the Chinese Minghui projects can feel the tolerance and compassion we have for each other. Even when we do criticize each other, it is constructive, and out of kindness.
For many years, most of the truth-clarification materials practitioners in China download, print, compile and distribute are from Minghui publications. The workload of one editor who worked full time on Minghui publications became heavier due to increased demand for truth-clarification materials from practitioners in various provinces. Every once in a while he felt he couldn’t breathe. Many times he pondered whether he should give up the project. While this thought flashed repeatedly through his mind, he had a dream one day in which he went to attend an experience sharing conference. He was looking around for a place to sit when a practitioner pointed to a spot saying, “This is your seat.” He came to the realization that the dream was a hint, and he was clearer about his position and mission.
In the first few years of Minghui’s founding, most practitioners doing coordination work often wanted to quit and preferred to focus on other project aspects. Eventually they came to understand that their unwillingness to coordinate was a manifestation of their lack of trust in their own abilities and of submitting to human notions. Since Dafa work needed coordinators, why not take the opportunity to fully challenge ourselves by doing coordination work?
The past ten years have witnessed numerous obstacles and hardships, but Minghui website participants see clearly the power of coordination/cooperation, no matter what job they do. Our experience has proved that no individual cultivator’s wisdom or capabilities can compare to the power of Dafa disciples cooperating and coordinating as a whole, which is also Dafa’s power and Master’s mighty virtue and compassion shown through Dafa disciples in the human world.
Concluding Remarks
This article only reports tidbits of the early days of the Minghui website. Out of concern for security, we regret that we cannot offer any more details. We reflect on our past for the purpose of doing better in the future with a calmer mind and humbler attitude. It is also a reminder for us to cherish the opportunity and further improve ourselves.
A non-practitioner's perspective might make it difficult to understand why anyone would volunteer to do the same thing for ten years without any recognition. Looking at the matter from a different angle, we know that only a great belief can help overcome external difficulties and our internal limitations, and enable us to have persevered for the past decade.
On this tenth anniversary of the Minghui website, we have come to a clearer understanding that during the process of assisting Master with Fa-rectification and redeeming more sentient beings, it is far from enough to merely finish our assignments and endure hardship. We must pay more attention to raising our cultivation levels and improving the outcomes of our truth-clarification efforts. If all the Minghui websites, not only the one in Chinese, but also in other languages, can operate well with more earnest effort and greater effectiveness, we will play a more systematic, solid, and compelling role in enhancing the reputation of Falun Dafa in the world, and in clarifying the facts to different governments and mainstream societies.
We firmly believe that we don’t have to wait long before people in China can freely enjoy all that Minghui has to offer: the Minghui website, Minghui Weekly, and Minghui Radio.
Thank you, Master!
Thank you, fellow practitioners!
(The End)