(Minghui.org)
Greetings, Master! Greetings, fellow Minghui practitioners!
Shortly after I obtained the Fa, my mom introduced me to join the Minghui project. In the beginning I only translated articles, but soon I was asked to do polishing and editing.
It has already become a part of my life to do Minghui work. Every day, I read, translate, and polish Minghui articles. I feel I’m connected to Dafa disciples all around the world. For me, I feel that working for the Minghui website is like having my fingers on the pulse of the entire body of Dafa disciples and as if I’m in the center of a nuclear reactor.
Over the past 16 years, it has been the Minghui website that has helped me walk through the most difficult period of time, because it connects me to my most fundamental being.
My mother passed away and I was grief-stricken. A year later, I read a sharing paper by a young Chinese practitioner. He grew up in China with his mother, who also practices Dafa. But after he went to Canada, he became lax in his cultivation and spent a lot of time hanging out with his friends. After he graduated from college, he read one of Master Li's lectures. He was very touched and asked himself, “What am I doing? I have to choose my position. Am I a cultivator or just the son of a cultivator?” His sharing also touched me: “Was I a cultivator or just the daughter of a cultivator?” The answer was obvious. There was no room for grief to continue in my world. I felt a gentle but powerful support, as if I'd found the way back home.
When I first joined the Minghui team, I was asked to translate the English articles word by word into French. I was reluctant to do the translation work. I didn’t agree with the way things were done and was very resistant. I even had strong resistance when I read the Minghui articles. “This isn’t French. I have no idea what they are trying to say.” I had many such negative thoughts in my mind, but I didn’t want to leave this project.
When I first began to cultivate, I felt the translation of French Zhuan Falun wasn’t done very well. Some sentences didn’t have verbs. Some were very hard to understand. No matter what, in my opinion, this wasn’t good French. When a new translation version came out, I was very excited. I was finally able to read a high quality translation.
One day, I don’t know why, I opened the older version on my computer. To my surprise, I didn’t think the translation was bad at all. I enlightened that it was the profound deeper meaning that Dafa is showing to people, so every translation version is good. So the key isn’t about translation—what matters is whether we are in line with the Fa.
Through this experience I understood that I should let go of my attachment to a beautiful translation. I don’t have to emphasize how important I am to the job: “See how good I am.” Through this, I had a deeper understanding about how to let go the attachment to myself.
Gradually, I changed my attitude from doing things for myself to doing things for the Minghui website.
In the process of word by word translation, my attachment to self was exposed. It helped me pass the test, and I was able to let go of deeply rooted attachments, such as the heart to validate myself, to be acknowledged, for others to see what I’ve done, so that others know how important I am, etc. Now when I receive positive feedback about the good work I do polishing or translating, I feel a kind of calm delight. It’s no longer about whether my self-worth was realized through my good work, it’s about making our website more perfect through my translating or polishing, and to enable the Minghui website to have a stronger role in truth-clarification.
My jealousy was exposed at each step along the way. It seemed that I had jealousy to remove at each and every level. After I removed it each time, I didn’t want to think about it anymore—until it appeared again. Sometimes I just didn’t feel comfortable in my heart, but I didn’t know what was wrong. Later, I would realize that it was my jealousy at work. This was the first test I had in my cultivation. Then it was exposed like a strong tide, coming at me wave after wave in the process of my improvement.
It wasn’t easy for me to identify my jealousy, because it manifested itself in different guises. The competitive mentality was one of them.
While I was writing this sharing paper, I looked up the definition of “competitive mentality.” Part of the explanation read: “when several members from the same team have hostile and competitive attitudes toward each other in order to reach the same goal.” Why would members of the same team be hostile to each other or become competitors?
My competitive mentality manifested itself while I was working for the team in that I wanted to edit more articles than the other team members. When I saw other team members edit so many articles, I didn’t think about whether we had enough articles to publish, I just wanted to see whether I did more work than they did. Now when I see how much work other people are doing, I can maintain a peaceful heart and just do what I should do.
I feel I have removed my competitive mentality in most other circumstances. While I was sending forth righteous thoughts one day, I remembered our coordinator at that time, and I also remembered Jiang Ziya. I asked myself why I would think of Jiang Ziya. I knew Master mentioned Jiang Ziya when he talked about jealousy. But what did that have to do with my coordinator? After I finished sending righteous thoughts, I opened Zhuan Falun and read the part where Master talked about Jiang Ziya.
Master said:
“Let me tell a story. In the book Investiture of the Gods, Shen Gongbao found Jiang Ziya to be both old and incompetent. But the Primitive God of Heaven asked Jiang Ziya to confer titles on immortals.” (Zhuan Falun, Lecture Seven)
I suddenly understood that, no matter how incorrect I thought the coordinator was in what he did or how wrong I thought he handled things, I was the one who was actually wrong, because I looked at things from the wrong perspective.
All of the complaints in my heart were dissolved and disappeared. Through this paragraph of Fa, Master was revealing to me that the coordinator had tried his best to do his job. He has his limitations, but he also has his divine side. My role wasn’t to generate negative thoughts about him but to assist him.
Everything became easy again. I stopped fighting with him. We are not competitors. We complement each other. Both of us have our own roles.
Thank you, Master, for helping me enlighten to this in the Fa.
Translating greeting cards is a very special time for our team. After we overcome all the technical difficulties (such as layout, format, and procedures to process the pictures), my heart is always filled with huge joy. Four times every year we receive greetings to Master from Dafa practitioners all over the world to express their gratitude. The greetings are very touching and exciting, and they represent the highest regards from Dafa practitioners.
Sometimes I worked late into the night, and I had to stay very focused. My heart is filled with joy and gratitude to have the opportunity to do this job. While I was translating the latest batch of greetings, I felt the words were at my fingertips. I didn’t even have to think about how to translate before I was done. The gratitude from different practitioners, their strong faith and deep respect for Master and the Fa just flew out from my fingertips. It was a very special and magical feeling. I observed the phenomena quietly and continued doing what I should do.
I want to end my sharing by thanking everyone here. I really appreciate the path we’ve walked together, whether it it's been long or short. Thank you, my dear fellow practitioners. We have a special cultivation environment: we are thousands of miles from each other, but the distance between us is where our powers come from. There are Dafa disciples around the world working for Minghui and fulfilling our missions together.
Thank, you, Master, for giving us the Minghui website and protecting us along the way.
Heshi
(Presented at Minghui’s 20th Anniversary Fa Conference-selected and edited)