(Clearwisdom.net) Master said in His lecture, "To the Chicago Fa Conference" on June 25, 2006,
"Dafa disciples' Fa conferences are Law assemblies where they improve by learning from each other, that allow them to find where they fall short, and that enable them to strengthen their righteous thoughts on their paths to Consummation. Your accomplishments reflect mighty virtue gained through sound Fa study and the solidifying of righteous thoughts, and your shortcomings tell of the things that you need to work on along your cultivation path. Whatever you experience during your cultivation--whether good or bad--is good, for it comes about only because you are cultivating. A cultivator cannot achieve Consummation when laden with human thoughts, laden with karmic debts, or laden with attachments. Gold's luster increases as it is refined over time. Through righteous thoughts and righteous acts, Dafa disciples are establishing every aspect of their divinity, and are, at the same time, building the cosmos's future."
Thus, when I saw the notice for a "Call for Papers for The Third Mainland China Falun Dafa Practitioners Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference on the Internet" on the Minghui website (Chinese version of Clearwisdom.net) on August 30, I looked forward to the success of this Fa-sharing conference. From these conferences, I can see the practitioners’ understandings they have gained during their validating the Fa and saving sentient beings. From them, I can find where I fall short and strengthen my righteous thoughts. Using the Minghui website, I want to talk about what I have gained during my writing papers for the last two Mainland China Falun Dafa Practitioners Cultivation Experience Sharing Conferences on the Internet with the intention of encouraging fellow practitioners to break through the shackles of human notions and write good papers for the Fa conference.
Two years ago, I wrote my first article. It was a paper for The First Mainland China Falun Dafa Practitioners Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference on the Internet. In the article my writing was mixed with my human notions of validating myself. Additionally, I did not share my understandings of setting up a Dafa truth clarification materials production site, as I was afraid that doing so would cause safety concerns. So I started the paper with my obtaining the "Fa" and then told about the several times I went to Beijing to validate the Fa. I wrote about being persecuted by the evil and resisting the persecution with righteous thoughts. Although I did feel that I had done a good job, my writing was intermingled with my human attachments and validating myself. So in the end, the paper was not used. After learning from fellow practitioners’ understandings in their papers, I then found my shortcomings. Writing a Fa conference paper can help us identify our shortcomings, eliminate our human notions, and strengthen our righteous thoughts. Writing Fa conference papers is also a process of cultivation. We should not get attached to one’s paper being used, as publishing the paper is not the goal. The largest gain is that during the writing, you find your shortcomings and cultivate away your attachments.
I wrote again last year. It was a paper for The Second Mainland China Falun Dafa Practitioners Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference on the Internet. This time I learned from the lessons of the previous year. I eliminated the attachments of fear and of validating myself, and I tried my best to maintain a clean and pure mind as a cultivator should do. I started the paper with an experience that I had four years ago. Each day, after I studied the Fa well, I spent one or two hours writing the paper. Looking back at the Fa-rectification cultivation path I had taken, which was filled with different kinds of tribulations, I found that Master was with me and benevolently protecting me every step I took. While writing, I often had tears in my eyes, and my gratitude to Master for His boundless compassion was beyond description. I used only plain words, with a pure and clean mind, to write about the situations, one after another, that I had personally experienced during my Fa-rectification cultivation. I spent one week finishing the Fa conference paper. It was over 6,000 words in total. I then revised and proofread it carefully and eliminated the areas that I had written with human notions. I sent it to the Minghui website one month ahead of the paper submission deadline, so as to allow more time for the practitioners who were organizing this Fa conference to evaluate and revise it.
After I saw the published paper, which had been polished by the practitioners who organized the Fa conference, I again experienced the fellow practitioners’ clear Fa understandings and their solid background in Master's writings. Especially when the paper was aired on Minghui Radio, there were several obvious modifications from which I once again saw my shortcomings and attachments. For example, one section of my original paper was mixed with an attachment of mine while I wrote it. When I was writing, I thought that I should not only write about my shortcomings, but I should also write a little about my achievements. This was somewhat like, "If I don't tell people, how will they know." ("Mature" on October 29, 2005) When the paper was aired, it was revised. The "achievements" section was kept, but two crucial sentences were revised. The "achievements" were modified as being achieved through one’s enlightenment during Dafa cultivation and the Fa principles one had understood. Written this way, there was no longer the meaning of validating oneself. Besides, with the fresh and moving voice of the practitioner who read the paper, this Fa conference article was very touching. However, I also knew that my cultivation was still not very good, which was a gain for me. From this, I also learned that we can talk about our achievements. It is not a problem if we talk about them without the attachment of validating ourselves, and instead base the discussion on validating the Fa.
Now, the Third Mainland China Falun Dafa Practitioners Cultivation Experience Sharing Conference on the Internet has started calling for papers. While it may seem to some that they have nothing good to share, in fact this thought is not a cultivator’s righteous thought. Thinking back carefully, over the 365 days of each year, each day a cultivator was cultivating him or herself in Dafa. Regardless of whether the paper is about a practitioner’s righteous actions with righteous thoughts or about the lessons a practitioner learned, or whether the paper is long or short, the paper is a testimony to the Dafa disciple’s path toward divinity and his or her validating the Fa and saving sentient beings. I truly hope that Dafa practitioners in China will pick up their pens and write about this great historic moment.
