(Minghui.org) After reading “Fa Teaching at the 2013 Greater New York Fa Conference,” I searched within and asked myself: “Has the project that I have been responsible for met Master's requirement? I'm not talking about it being number one in the world, but have I done my best?”
Truth-clarification production sites are major projects that practitioners in China use to expose, deter, and eliminate the evil, as well as to clarify the truth to save sentient beings amidst the persecution of Falun Gong by the communist regime. These materials really intimidate the authorities, who use every despicable means within their power to undermine them.
For over 10 years, practitioners outside of China on the Minghui Truth-clarification Materials Editorial Team have been quietly providing us with the Minghui Weekly and other types of truth-clarification pamphlets, which are rich in content and illustrations, thereby greatly helping practitioners in China to effectively save sentient beings.
However, I have the following question: “When we print those pamphlets and copies of Minghui Weekly that were carefully edited and designed by those practitioners, what attitude do we practitioners in China have?”
It's all too easy for us go online and download the materials with the click of the mouse, but do we know that these materials are the fruits of overseas practitioners' dedication, hard-work, and compassion? Do we realize that these materials were produced with their hearts of gold? So shouldn't we have the same heart when we print them? In other words, have we tried our best to make sure the materials are of the highest quality when we print them out?
When I re-examine my cultivation path, I see a lot of inadequacies and have left behind many regrets, although I was under Master's compassionate care and guidance.
I retired in 2003. I bought my first home copier and started copying materials for dissemination in March that same year. I bought a computer and a laser printer in July. Later on, I bought an inkjet printer that could print colored brochures and Weeklies.
Truth-clarification production sites were very limited at the time. Thus, the unmet demand for materials was large. In order to save time, I usually selected the “custom mode” instead of the “standard mode” for printing. Although the printouts looked okay, the “standard mode” would have produce a better quality result. Being selfish, I was only thinking about myself, not the quality of the final product. My starting point wasn't right in terms of saving the beings. As more and more material production sites were created, I produced less.
So I took up another project and made CDs.
Over the years I have made errors in producing materials. For example, at times the content of the disc didn't match the label on the front; shutting off the computer improperly sometimes caused the CD burner to break down; there were mismatched channeling codes, etc. This wasted Dafa resources.
These mistakes were all caused by a lack of earnestness in my part, and, doing the same thing day after day, year after year, I gradually began to treat the project as an ordinary job. When I dug deeper, I found the real cause of the problem, which was that my starting point--to save sentient beings--wasn't righteously positioned. After realizing this, I made a summary of the errors and mistakes that I have made and how I have corrected them, and I shared it in an article titled "A Talk about Quality and Handling of Truth-clarification Materials, " which was published on Chinese Minghui on January 10, 2011.
According to an article titled "Adjustments in Making Truth-clarification Materials" published on Chinese Minghui in the Minghui Editorials on May 30, 2013, the author said:
“On the layout specifications, all other Minghui journals were recently switched to the 'combo version,' except Understanding and Bliss from Heaven , which are temporarily being kept in the 'quad edition version.' The change was mainly due to the fact that, although the quad edition version is more convenient for practitioners to carry and hide (as it is smaller), it has created lots of technical difficulties for the editor, layout designer, and the end-readers. At the present phase of Fa-rectification, the environments in many areas have become more lax. Thus, in order to strengthen our efforts to saving more beings, we hope to focus more on improving the interest level and effectiveness for our audience. That's why we have switched to the combo version. The combo version is more comparable to regular media-like magazines, so our readers can easily accept it. The increase in layout space allows our editors and graphic designers to have more room to improve the overall quality of the design. According to the feedback we have received from our mainland readers after the revision, they think the combo version is generally more acceptable and legible.”
Currently, Minghui has published Understanding , The Truth, Beings of Heaven and Earth, Morning Light, Hope, Bliss from Heaven, Voice of Wisdom and Minghui Illustrated Weekly . These regular publications all have different journal styles. The editing and layout are very professional. They look simply beautiful! For example, in The Truth (No. 51), on the back cover in the “Do you know?” section, a “How to get started” column and an exercise illustration were added to the top of “Brief Introduction to Falun Gong.” This was done to guide and provide predestined people with the best way to quickly enter the door of cultivation. At the bottom of the page, a blue font was used to remind the readers in a friendly manner: “For more experience sharing and truth about Falun Gong, please visit MINGHUI.ORG (you can break though the Internet blocking by using the method outlined on the second page of the journal).” I was moved to tears by the sincerity and compassion of the practitioners who work on the Minghui Truth-clarification Editing Team.
To this end, what I would like to share with practitioners in China making the truth-clarification materials is: We should also righteously position our starting point to improve the interest level and effectiveness on our audience, use the combo version when printing the materials, change our previous notions such as trying to save paper and time and making it easy to carry and hide, and get rid of the attachment of fear and of it being trouble, thus saving beings more effectively.
