(Clearwisdom.net)
What "Cooperation" Really Means
Before Shen Yun Performing Arts came to Toronto, in order for more Chinese nationals in Toronto to learn about the beauty of the Shen Yun performances and to not miss this opportunity, several local practitioners promoted Shen Yun and shared feedback from a previous audience on the local Chinese BBS forum.
At the time, we found that as compared to a single person logged onto the forum, multiple practitioners can get on the forum and can together form a relatively more positive field. By doing so, our postings can stay on the forum longer and they are also more varied in their interest and characteristics. In the face of some malicious attacks, we were stronger in resisting them, because if one practitioner cannot provide an answer, others will be able to answer it; if one practitioner does not have sufficient time and energy to clarify the truth, others will come to help by searching for the related materials in support of the truth clarification. When our contending mentality looms, we remind each other to maintain a cultivator's mentality when conducting on-line truth clarification to people. One time a very mean posting appeared on the forum that attacked Dafa and this posting assumed the format of edited images. We informed each other of this situation and sent forth righteous thoughts as a whole. In the meantime, we reported this to the forum moderator, indicating that this was a serious personal insult. As a result, the negative posting was soon deleted.
After the Shen Yun performances in Toronto, we continued to post various related news and commentaries on the Chinese BBS forum. At the beginning I was not quite used to it, because the truth clarification topics our fellow practitioners posted were oftentimes something unfamiliar to me or something I was not keen on. I did not quite understand its meaning even after reading them, so I was a bit lost as for how to continue to cooperate with other practitioners. In the end, I chose not to cooperate. As time went by, I found that everybody did not seem to help anymore, and the group became loosely connected. The truth clarification postings from each of us seemed to attract fewer readers.
I knew that such a state was not quite right. Once, the topic a practitioner posted was about the anti-Japanese war in China. I lost interest in the topic again because I never did like the topic of battles. Nevertheless, this time I persisted in reading the entire article. After reading, I found that this article revealed the true facts about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) not fighting the Japanese. This motivated me to conduct an on-line search for related articles, and as a result, my knowledge on this topic became more consolidated. I realized that I cannot do things based only on my prior interests. I also realized that putting me in touch with the topics that I was not fond of is in fact helping me overcome my weakness.
Through this incident, I discovered my own problem. That is, in the past I loved to come up with my own topics so that other people would use my topic for discussion because this would make me feel "cool." However, I realized that if everybody thinks this way, there will be a lack of a positive mechanism and incentive for cooperation. In reality, there were fewer people coming to discuss things with me. I then changed the way I did things. Besides that, I also posted truth-clarification topics that I was interested in and also tried my best to study the topics fellow practitioners had posted. Afterwards I tried my best to think about how to cooperate with fellow practitioners in truth clarification and I found that my feeling about the truth-clarification topics of fellow practitioners' being difficult for me to cooperate with, was in fact rooted in my own laziness. I realized that when a fellow practitioner developed a topic, it is just like this practitioner giving out a problem to solve and I would solve it or continue to expand upon it. I realized that any topic could in fact be turned into a lead for my own writing so that more and more truth-clarification materials can be produced. Understanding this, I began to treasure various opportunities for truth clarification.
How to Develop a Stable Mindset
At one time, after we told the story of a Chinese lawyer being persecuted, some Internet spies of the CCP made indifferent remarks to this case. This reminded me of an article in the Chinese Epoch Times, which mentioned that people had completely lost hope in the CCP after they came to understand how the CCP persecutes Falun Gong. I thought that if we persisted in posting the persecution stories of this lawyer and his family and let on-line readers learn about the facts, as well as the reactions from those Internet spies, these on-line readers would then be completely disappointed by the CCP. The CCP's suppression of Falun Gong has had the inverse effect of helping Falun Gong to become more popular, which should also be the case on the BBS forum. No matter how the CCP acts, it will push itself to its own doom. Therefore, as long as we do things according to the requirements of the Fa and develop a stable xinxing standard, we will be able to find related truth-clarification materials for the readers on the BBS forum. It will suffice as long as we cherish a mentality of serving the readers and providing them with information.
With such a mindset, we will be able to maintain patience, sensitivity and quality in clarifying the truth, while not being stirred by the remarks from those Internet spies. This way, our mindset is not that of ordinary people but will instead be able to effectively clarify the truth based on the principles of Dafa.
Clarifying the Truth Diligently
Gradually, I began to feel that clarifying the truth on the Chinese forum, if we are to do it very diligently, would not be as easy as chatting with others. Rather, it would be as in-depth as doing some academic research. When others begin to swear at you, you are not in front of a person who made you angry, but rather you are facing a research subject. This subject was created under the CCP culture. You should not get angry with them, but instead, during your discussion, clarify the truth to as many people in the forum as possible. Make them realize what the cause of these kinds of deviated thoughts are. You have to try to make people understand this thoroughly. The more thorough and in-depth you explain things to your audience, the more they will gain. In addition, you have to try your best to conform to ordinary people's logic so that they can accept it more easily.
Another time, the evil posted a very evil defamation of Dafa. Even though I understand that I should not open some evil stuff like this, the title was rather vicious and seriously defamed and attacked practitioners. So I clarified the truth to them about how great our practitioners are. Later, I thought that we should not let content of this nature exist on this website. I then requested that the administrator delete that posting.
However, the BBS administrator did not do it. After discussing with other practitioners, I decided to disclose the base and defamatory means of the evil people. In clarifying the truth to them, I said that the first evil strategy that Jiang adopted in persecuting Falun Gong was "defaming practitioners." I also posted the words, "Please take a look at the means that the CCP has been adopting." In addition, I extracted a paragraph from the "Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Party", and also posted the website link of the entire book.
Soon enough, this evil posting was removed. I came to realize that the words that attacked people's reputation seemed hard to deal with, when in reality it was not that hard. Since when people see something they will automatically think about it, then let them think about the Nine Commentaries and think about the true face of the CCP. In fact, this is probably what the CCP fears most. It is not afraid of victims being outrageous, or defending themselves. What it's truly afraid of is that people see through its nature, as being an evil specter. Therefore, when I began to talk about the content in the Nine Commentaries and the website for quitting the CCP, I let go of my fear that people would see this evil posting and then the evil posting was deleted as a result.
Cultivating While Clarifying the Truth on the Forum
I also enlightened to the fact that when clarifying the truth, I should not have attachments to pursuit or zealotry. Therefore, I should not slack off in my day-to-day cultivation and I should fulfill my duties in society well.
Of course in terms of studying the Fa and doing the exercises I should not slack off either, otherwise my cultivation state will not be optimal and the methods I use will not work well. I will lack ideas, or my computer will have problems, etc. Sometimes my computer would freeze up and I also needed to send forth righteous thoughts to help me with posting messages to the websites.
I have also realized that when I kept up with Fa-study and doing the exercises, it happens that an automatic mechanism reminds me to do things. Sometimes, I even surprised myself with things that I would say. So I came to the understanding that it all comes down to the fact that I need to continue to cultivate myself. Then when others talk to me, I continuously recognize that their words sound like Party culture, and even notice if my own thoughts are like that. In order to distinguish this, my heart must be stronger and then I can clean up people's minds and will be more motivated to distinguish the Party culture's way of doing things.
When I was clarifying the truth on the forums, I often read two books, the Nine Commentaries and Disintegrating the CCP Culture. It felt as if they were for open book tests, so I read them very often. I often find that as long as I am sincere enough, I can easily find the relevant content and can refer to what's said in the book, think about it and come up with proper ways and words to answer people's questions. Sometimes only having theories is not good enough, I also need to search the Internet and look for relevant materials in order to prove what I've said. Even though there is a lot of effort involved, I truly feel that as long as I am able to clarify a little bit more on the theories or correct others' ways of thinking a little bit more, then my efforts are not in vain.
Sometimes I find that I do not only have to correct the Party culture's way of thinking in other people's postings, but also have to correct it in myself so that I have the correct answers. Therefore I thought that it's not good enough for me to just sit there and think about how to reply to their postings, but I have to carefully read those two books. Because if I'm still polluted by the Party's culture, how can I help clean up others? I'm still in the mud! Every day, I feel that I don't have any Party culture left, and every day for the sake of clarifying the truth, I am "forced" to read these two books, and then I discover the residual Party culture in my mind. Therefore, I thought that I should not think too highly of myself and should not deem myself to be somebody special, because my feelings account for naught. I need to keep improving myself in my cultivation.
I also feel that for us to expose the CCP is just like battles between gods and demons. Because the ideology of the CCP is extremely misleading and in order to get out of it, as well as helping to lead ordinary people out of it, one should not have any human thoughts, one should not have any ordinary people's sentimentality, and one should treat oneself as a practitioner at all times. One should also have superior xinxing. Only then can one have superior abilities and expose the true face of the evil specter who is then in the spotlight.
One time, while I was dealing with ordinary people's things, I was very attached to certain ways or principles of ordinary people and how they deal with things, but the outcome turned out to be not as I expected. It made me see that when I stick to those principles firmly, I fell into a dilemma. One time, while I was reading the book about disintegrating the CCP's culture, I saw that there were many great scientists who are religious people. I believed that science was also passed on to us by gods. Taking it a step further, some modern ways of dealing with things, no matter how delicate they are, requires a technique which is inspired by god and there is no way that it can replace God. Therefore, if I was still very attached to the techniques, it is as if I were to worship it and place it in the highest position, as if it were the guarantee of doing everything; then it's not going to work. Having said that, one should also do well at the ordinary people's level. I think that we shouldn't go to extremes, so that we can keep doing things well.
Everyone needs to make some time for truth clarification. For me, one of the methods for clarifying the truth is the forum. I should not stop doing it due to interference, which requires that I remain calm and rational in my day-to-day life. When I am under lots of pressure and can still find the time to clarify the truth on the forum, I feel as if the pressure has disappeared. It also helps to relieve the pressure from my daily life. I figure that it's due to truth clarification, and that the evil in other dimensions is getting cleaned up.
After a while, I felt that clarifying the truth on the forum was just an ordinary thing and it was hard to feel its significance. I also feel that this is another form of test. It's so ordinary that it feels a little bit lonely. It makes for an easy life and can help one forget about everything else. Also, because the results are not obvious, it makes one rely on one's strong judgment, which is more important, in order to see through the meaning of things and hold on to what one is doing while continuously making efforts. This is such a long-term test.
The above is only my recent understanding. If I said anything inappropriate, please kindly point it out.
