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Cultivating Ourselves by Writing Articles

August 29, 2005 |   By a practitioner from China

(Clearwisdom.net) I believe that regardless of our age, educational background, or profession, we can write good articles to help Teacher in the Fa rectification and save sentient beings, as long as we are willing to pick up a pen and break through everyday people's notions. Here is my personal understanding on this topic. Please correct me if my words are inappropriate.

When I wrote articles in the past, my heart wasn't always pure and righteous. I didn't realize it in the beginning, but I came to see my attachments when more and more of my articles were published. Every time I submitted an article, I would pay attention to when the article was published. I even started to track how often my articles were published on the Minghui/Clearwisdom website. I knew my heart wasn't pure. I couldn't find the root cause, however, and I didn't know how to correct it. I had a feeling that these articles might stain our website and other practitioners. I felt that if this were the case, then I'd rather not write articles any more. Meanwhile, some practitioners criticized my articles and felt I was trying to validate myself with them. My response was, "I will definitely correct myself," but I knew in my heart that I hadn't accepted their suggestions. I started to avoid writing assigned articles and asked other practitioners to do them. I hadn't really gotten rid of my attachment. I caused some delays in reporting.

Later, a practitioner made me truly think about my attachment. He is a farmer that didn't get much of an education. I read a few poems that he'd written. In order to encourage him, I offered to submit his poems to the website. He declined, however, saying, "These poems were written during my personal cultivation phase. They won't benefit the current process of validating the Fa. We'd better not submit them." What he said made me see my attachment. I was attached to fame and jealousy, which made me feel superior to others. I wrote articles when I wanted, without considering whether there was a need for such an article. The root of the problem was that I wanted to validate myself. It's a totally different basis. When we are focused on the Fa, whatever we do will be based on the Fa. In fact, I'd had a vague understanding of this a year earlier, but my attachments blocked me and I wasn't able to see past them.

I don't believe our educational background limits our ability to write articles. What we learned in school are simply everyday people's knowledge and skills. It shouldn't interfere with our writing articles to validate the Fa. In fact, I found the results were not good at all when I tried to teach fellow practitioners how to follow a certain format to write articles, since they were constrained by those everyday people's methods. They were not able to clearly express themselves since they had to pay attention to those writing conventions. Of course, they need to break through the notion that they are illiterate and are therefore unable to write good articles. Dafa practitioners are quite capable. As long as we don't set barriers for ourselves, the Fa will give us every skill that we need to validate the Fa. When our thoughts are pure, our articles and what we say are very clear and logical. The Fa can bring forth our wisdom.

The practitioner from the countryside that I mentioned only went to elementary school, but he could fluently recite Teacher's poems. Later, he naturally composed a few elegant poems that met the rigid requirements of traditional Chinese poetry, although he had no knowledge of those requirements.

Another thing I noticed is that some practitioners who are highly educated tend to follow everyday people's forms when they write Dafa articles. I am one of them. Unfortunately, the unrighteous Communist Party culture had poisoned me for too long, so my articles were sometimes unintentionally focused on positive aspects and strong points, while avoiding tough issues and problems. Meanwhile, trying to conform to the degenerated modern grammar made my articles and logic complicated and unclear. This resulted in some of my articles being dry and dull. I believe we can write pure Dafa articles of high quality if we purify our own dimensions and remove our everyday people's notions.