(Clearwisdom.net) Our county covers a large area and it is not easy to get around. Because of this, practitioners find it difficult to "clarify the truth" about Falun Dafa to people. After we studied "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference" and "Let Go of Human Attachments and Save the World's People," we felt that time was short. With a sense of urgency and great responsibility, we knew we had much to do. To meet Teacher's requirements of "not omitting a single area where there are people," in order to let everybody know the truth and be saved, we engaged in the following activities. We would like to share a summary of our experiences with all practitioners in Mainland China.
1. We created an environment for group Fa study in order to improve and elevate ourselves as one body.
In the days after July 20, 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began, all practice sites in our county were shut down. When Teacher's article, "Let Go of Human Attachments and Save the World's People" was published, many practice sites remained closed. Fear and other attachments hindered many practitioners. To change this situation, we had many discussions among ourselves. We began to realize that only by maintaining practice sites, practicing the exercises and studying the Fa, could we maintain the cultivation way left for us by Teacher. This was also the best way to validate Dafa under such harsh and evil conditions. If we could melt into this pure environment, we could change from the inside, awaken to our historic mission as Dafa disciples and accept our responsibilities as particles of Dafa.
We could do the three things we were supposed to do consciously and voluntarily. We realized that this environment was indestructible, rock-solid and diamond-like, and could make all evil factors dissolve. Practitioners also realized that as Dafa assistants our own improvement was only part of the picture. Teacher teaches us,
"Your most important task is to create for our students a stable cultivation environment that's free of disturbances. This is your greatest responsibility." (Teaching the Fa at the Assistants' Fa Conference in Changchun, provisional translation subject to improvement.)
Teacher also teaches us,
"When you Dafa disciples develop even stronger righteous thoughts among you, that will be what's most magnificent. Starting from each person, let's truly make our environment a very righteous one, and then all the unrighteous factors will dissolve, and all the students who haven't conducted themselves well will see where they fall short, and it will make them do better." ("Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference")
One of the important missions of practitioners in charge of coordination is to create a stable and righteous environment in which practitioners can cultivate well, and to give everyone a chance to establish their own mighty virtue.
After we studied "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference," some of us traveled to outlying villages in our county to clarify the truth. We studied the Fa with practitioners who lived there and helped them restore their practice sites. After more than six months of hard effort, practitioners restored most of the villages' practice sites. In one village, more than 140 people studied Dafa before July 20, 1999. After July 1999, we found only a third still practicing Dafa. So volunteer assistants [those who voluntarily coordinated practice sites] took Teacher's articles, "Touring North America to Teach the Fa," "Teaching the Fa at the 2004 Chicago Conference," and "Let Go of Human Attachments and Save the World's People," along with them to visit each village. They went door to door, searching for practitioners who had obtained the Fa before 1999 and had given it up after July 1999.
They made contact with many practitioners who were studying the Fa at home and were too frightened to clarify the truth. The assistants would go to work at their usual jobs or on their farms during the day, and in the evenings they would bike or walk dozens of kilometers to study the Fa with practitioners and help them to improve their cultivation environment.
Many whom they visited were greatly moved by Teacher's great benevolence and practitioners' benevolent selflessness, and resumed practicing. In a village of almost one hundred people, there were more than 30 practitioners before July 20, 1999. After the persecution began, only six or seven had continued practicing. The volunteer assistant in that village helped them one by one and encouraged them to resume their practice. In addition, at least 10 new practitioners joined in.
In one village, a Dafa assistant talked with a woman who had started practicing before July 20, 1999, but stopped practicing when the persecution began. In their conversations, the assistant mentioned that in Touring North America to Teach the Fa, Teacher teaches us that as for today's Dafa practitioners,
"...they are representatives of the extremely massive groups of beings in distant cosmic bodies and colossal firmaments; they came here to establish a karmic relationship with Master so as to ensure that in Fa-rectification they wouldn't be left out amidst the reconstruction of the entire cosmos; their goal was to allow the sentient beings there to be saved. Massive, countless groups of beings are over there."
"If people like this have come to listen to the Fa, then think about it, doesn't every Dafa disciple represent a different gigantic cosmic body? If that's the case, doesn't whether a Dafa disciple cultivate well or poorly determine whether those gigantic cosmic bodies' beings get saved or not? I can tell you, this is definitely the case."
After hearing this, the practitioner who had stopped practicing understood immediately and decided to resume her practice. Afterward, her husband was afraid of being persecuted by the government and wouldn't allow her to practice at home. So, in the middle of the night she would practice in an unheated thatched cottage. Once when sending forth righteous thoughts in the cottage, her husband saw her and beat her. Even then she didn't lose heart. When her husband went away to work, she stayed home and farmed 18 mu (1 mu = 0.45 acre) and cared for livestock to pay for her two children's schooling. She was even reluctant to buy new clothes for herself; her undergarments were patched and heavily mended. Her life was hard. Starting as a young girl, she had saved 6,000-7,000 yuan (US$725-845). She contributed all this money to practitioners for flyers and other truth-clarifying materials. She has studied the Fa for less than one year, and she never misses an opportunity to clarify the truth to everybody she meets. It was heard that she went back to her parents' home to clarify the truth. How excellent she is as a practitioner! As I write this, my eyes are brimming with tears and I am ashamed with I compare myself with her.
One by one, practitioners who had stopped practicing Falun Gong have begun anew. Those who did not go out to clarify the truth now come out. The number of new practitioners is gradually increasing, and the number of practitioners who are writing solemn declarations [declarations that they are still practicing Falun Gong] is also increasing. One practitioner sighed with emotion: "Master has the Buddha's boundless grace and will not leave a single disciple behind. As practitioners we cannot let down our Master's boundless benevolence."
2. We set up various mechanisms and coordinated as one body to fulfill our responsibility to clarify the truth.
One volunteer assistant from a village shared this experience: A practitioner from another area introduced a method of allocating assignments to each practitioner in clarifying the truth and saving sentient beings. Inspired by what they heard, the assistant and other practitioners in the village held a small Fa-conference. At the Fa-conference they introduced the method they had heard from other practitioners. They analyzed the situation in their own village, where there were shortcomings and where they could improve in clarifying the truth. They formed small groups and each group selected an area where they would clarify the truth. In so doing, they worked as one body in an orderly way, to reach every family in every village, so they could spread the truth everywhere that people live. From person to person, practitioners reached all the people in their own village. Practitioners from other villages would visit villages where no practitioners lived. With those who had difficulty accepting the truth, practitioners would not push, and instead would allow the Dafa assistant to talk with them. During the Fa-conference, practitioners also determined not to ignore Fa study, to continue to send forth righteous thoughts, to always use wisdom and intelligence, to be mindful of personal safety and to avoid being exploited by evil forces.
The day after the Fa-conference, the practitioners returned to their villages. Two weeks later they held a second Fa-conference and shared experiences. They summarized their experiences and discussed their shortcomings in clarifying the truth over the preceding two weeks. The results were very beneficial. One family after another heard the truth in each village. Very few refused to listen.
Two people started to practice Falun Gong immediately after they heard the truth. Three days after starting, they were determined to accompany veteran practitioners to clarify the truth. By coordinating with each other in an orderly fashion, practitioners were able to cover large areas. They continually improved in doing the three things that disciples should do and gained more confidence in the process.
The Dafa assistants shared these methods and their own experiences with other assistants. After this experience, they decided to make full use of the Chinese New Year, a time when the local people in the rural areas have some spare time before spring fieldwork begins. They decided to implement the activities of clarifying the truth in rural areas even more thoroughly, completely and meticulously so that they could definitely put into effects the requirements stipulated by Teacher in his article, "Let Go of Human Attachments and Save the World's People." Practitioners who lived in the county seat clarified the truth by visiting their relatives and friends in the rural areas or by going out together with the practitioners in villages. Based on our experiences of clarifying the truth in the past, we should strive to be more thorough, complete and meticulous.
