Honing Technical Skills Through Constant Learning and Solid Cultivation

(Minghui.org) I began to practice Falun Dafa in May 1998, one year before the Chinese Communist Party launched the persecution of this peaceful spiritual discipline. It has been more than two decades since then. During the severe persecution, I have gradually matured to the point of leading some Dafa projects. I’ve also been able to hone my technical skills by learning from my mistakes.

Learning Technical Skills

I used to focus on doing things instead of studying Dafa teachings and cultivating myself. The old forces took advantage of my loopholes, resulting in my arrest and subsequent prison sentence. I was tortured in prison and my righteous thoughts were not strong. Under pressure, I wrote multiple statements to renounce and denounce Dafa against my will. Upon release, I stayed home every day studying Zhuan Falun. Within one month, I finished reading all the other 40 plus books Master wrote.

One day when half sleeping, I saw several deities of the old forces around me talking angrily, “How can you save a person like her?!” I could sense that they felt unfairly treated because they deemed me unqualified to study Dafa. Upon waking up, I made up my mind to cultivate diligently. I made up my mind to make up for the losses I caused to Dafa and not to let down Master.

When police arrested me, they also raided my material production site and confiscated over 2,000 yuan in cash. I felt guilty every time I thought about the Dafa resources lost because of me. Although I wanted to make up for the losses, my environment was not good and I was unable to establish another material production site. I also needed to spend more time studying the Dafa teachings to really improve myself. In the end, I decided to learn technical skills, which would allow me to make contributions by helping others.

Master soon sent help my way. Not long after I had the thought of learning technical skills, I met a tech-savvy practitioner. He first taught me how to install operating systems. I noted he was very patient while teaching others, explaining things in detail step by step and allowing learners to jot down notes. But when I tried to do the same, he asked seriously, “Are you willing to learn?”

“Of course!” I replied.

“All right, I have a request then,” he said. “You cannot write down the instructions – you can only memorize them in your head; otherwise, I won’t teach you.”

I was not happy, but I did not argue with him. To my surprise, I was able to memorize the detailed steps after he showed me once. It was as if my brain was ready for this in other dimensions, without any barriers. I quickly learned everything, to my amazement.

Working Through Challenges

I’d like to thank those practitioners who came to me for help because, without them, I would not have improved so much. Once not long after I learned basic technical skills, an elderly practitioner came with a paper slip and asked me five questions. I was a little upset: “Do you not know I am also a novice?” Nonetheless, I was able to answer all of the questions. This started our collaboration over the years. Whenever encountering difficulty, she would come to me for discussion. If I could not solve it, I would look it up on the technical forum run by practitioners. I found my biggest progress was made through solving her problems, even before I realized it. Later I learned how to produce a master DVD image. After uploading truth-clarification videos from Minghui, I was able to prepare such image files for material production sites to produce more DVDs.

After some time, the coordinators in my area decided to produce pamphlets exposing the local perpetrators involved in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. At that time, I only knew a little Word editing, not PDF editing. But somehow everyone said I was the right person to take on the new project. I had no choice but to say yes. I went online to learn how to make pamphlets, which appeared very complicated.

Master wrote, “I’ve said that “a Great Way is most simple and easy,” and that many things are very simple...” (“Fa Teaching Given in New York City”, Teachings at Conferences in the United States)

So, making pamphlets should not be that difficult, I said to myself. With that thought, I managed to produce a draft in a short time.

The whole process really tempered my heart as I had to handle everything all by myself, from selecting content to doing layout and drawings. After receiving the draft, the coordinators also had many comments about the layout, front size, and color matching. I made revisions accordingly but more feedback came. After numerous rounds of feedback-revision-feedback-revision, the pamphlet was completed and my xinxing was also improved.

Both layout and drawings require strong technical skills. I spent many days and nights trying to figure them out. Not knowing what to do, sometimes I burst into tears. I also knelt down in front of Master’s portrait begging for help. Seeing me sincerely willing to save people, compassionate Master would give me wisdom. The procedure of producing a pamphlet that I found online was tedious and cumbersome, so I tried to develop a simpler method that would be easy to learn, so that others could also prepare materials efficiently, instead of squeezing time from their time of studying Dafa teachings and doing the exercises.

In the end, I came up with templates of different types that allowed one to replace multiple images (drawings or pictures) at a time. Every time new amulet images were published on Minghui, our local practitioners knew how to use the templates to put in the new images with ease.

As other practitioners improved their technical skills and needed less of my help, I had more time to do other things. Occasionally, we still encountered problems and nowhere could I find solutions. But miracles happened one after another, and sometimes a new idea just came to my mind on how to solve it. I was amazed by all of this and I was thankful to Master for the wisdom.

Improving as One Body

I have met quite a few practitioners with technical skills over the years. Two of them had died as a result of the persecution and several others were detained for practicing Falun Dafa. Here I would like to share some thoughts.

Practitioners with technical skills have played an important role in our truth-clarification. Some of them are very accommodating and would meet any request with no hesitation. This seems good on the surface, but such an approach of taking it all also deprived other practitioners of opportunities to grow and become more independent in solving technical issues, which also impeded their path of cultivation.

Cultivation is very serious and the old forces are constantly watching us for loopholes. Some practitioners also admire those with technical skills, giving them food and other supplies. With such praise and special treatment, some of the tech-savvy practitioners also developed zealotry and a strong ego.

A better way is for us to improve together. Almost all practitioners have access to the internet and the technical forum run by practitioners. Upon encountering problems, we should look within and improve our xinxing, instead of pushing everything to practitioners with technical skills. This is part of our cultivation, after all.

These observations also motivated me to find ways of helping others become more independent. Since some elderly practitioners could not learn quickly, I compiled training materials, with both text and illustration, on basic skills, access to secure email, and encryption. By working with other practitioners with technical skills, we also compiled detailed instructions on computer setup. The printout of these files were provided to practitioners in our region so that everyone could learn to become familiar with them.

A Process of Cultivation

I recently came to the enlightenment that technical skills did not only come from constant learning, but also from solid cultivation. As our xinxing improves, our technical skills will also become better and better. For instance, when doing layout and drawings, the high quality product I put out never came from endless hours of me sitting in front of the computer, but from the wisdom that Master gave me after I had made significant improvement in my xinxing. Furthermore, I also picked up many other related skills along the way. All the skills I obtained over time were interconnected and I could use them at will to achieve desired results.

Doing technical work is hard – but it is also wonderful. Once I did not sleep for two days and one night as I worked non-stop, except for studying the Fa and doing the exercises, to compile a booklet that exposed the vicious persecution in my region.

When I finally completed the booklet, there were about 10 minutes left before sending forth righteous thoughts. I was so tired that I dozed off. I felt very guilty after waking up from a deep sleep: “How could I miss sending forth righteous thoughts?!” When I checked the time, however, I could not believe my eyes – I only slept for minutes even though it felt like a long, deep, sound sleep. It was as if I had slept in another dimension. Thank you, Master!

Seeing me willing to make up for the loss of Dafa resources mentioned above, Master helped me connect with other practitioners, who had unused copy paper and DVDs from various material production sites. There were about 4,000 – 5,000 DVDs in total. I produced DVDs containing information such as the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party with good DVDs and made beautiful tree pendants with unusable ones carrying truth-clarification words. The waste paper was also converted to laminated amulets, and people love them very much. I am very grateful to Master for giving me these opportunities.

Last year, I found udumbara blossoms on a newly grown gourd on my balcony. There were many of them. I was very happy and I knew it was encouragement from Master for me to do better.

The persecution is still going on and many people are still waiting to be saved. I sincerely wish all of us could cherish the sacred title of Dafa disciples. We were fortunate to follow Master and descend to this human world. Assisting Master in saving people is our mission. Let us do our best and do not leave any regrets.