Clearharmony and Europe as one body

[For the reference of western practitioners, YuanMing is the title of one of Master's Poems. Yuan can mean harmony, perfection, complete. Ming can mean clear, bright.]

I have been helping with the English Clearharmony Website for some time now. I wanted to write something to help other practitioners to realise its significance, to help them understand how they can contribute to this European Dafa Website, and to encourage them to contribute to this important project.

Clearharmony.net is actually the English version of YuanmingEurope, which is the European Dafa site. It exists in Chinese (Yuanming.net) Swedish, German, French, Hungarian, and in future will also exist in other European languages. When an article is submitted to Clearharmony.net, it will get translated into all these languages, so the audience is very large and widespread. The website really reaches a lot of people and can play an enormous role in clarifying the truth. The websites in different languages are not websites with articles about that particular country in Europe - they contain the same articles about Dafa across Europe. There are a few differences, such as the number of articles they can publish, (Chinese is the strongest with 20-30 articles each day) but they are essentially just different faces of the same website.

For a Dafa website, there are three groups of reader - everyday people, practitioners, and the evil people. The main focus of Yuanmingeurope is on everyday people.

One of the main characteristics of Clearharmony/Yuanming is the focus on Europe. It is obviously very important that we get lots of news of activities and support for Dafa in Europe. So it is very important that there is plenty of news; then when people read the site, they see each day there is so much support and activities for Dafa in Europe, and that Dafa is strong in Europe. It also sends a strong message to the evil. This is particularly so for the Chinese site. If the European characteristic of the site is strong from day to day, the site will have a strong identity, and people will read it more and more and at the same time learn about the persecution. So for the website to maintain and strengthen its identity, and to get a good readership, and achieve the effect of clarifying the truth, it is vital that we have lots of news from Europe.

Although we may feel that a piece of news is not big and not worth writing an article about, I think we should look at in terms of how we can help achieve an overall effect. For a daily website, we need news every day. Each contribution is truly valuable, no matter how small, and will contribute to making the site strong that day. Even though an activity or letter is not major on its own, if you write an article about it, then when it appears alongside another 7 or 8 articles that day from different places in Europe, then the effect is really great, and the readers will really feel - Falun Dafa is so wide-spread and accepted across Europe - look what is happening every day!. (Even more so for the Chinese site, when you consider the respect Chinese people have for Westerners views and the lies which have been spread about Dafa) So, we really should consider the importance of writing articles as part of a larger picture, rather than worrying that something isn' such strong news on its own. We don't want literary masterpieces - just letters, reports, news, thoughts, experiences and stories! Even a couple of photographs is a story. No single article makes the site powerful, and no single practitioner makes the site powerful - only when all practitioners try their best to contribute articles, do they combine to really make the site strong so that it can really achieve the effect of clarifying the truth and saving people. On the other hand, if we all do not act as particles, and do not submit articles, then the website will be severely weakened and we have lost the opportunity to save large numbers of people. So Yuanmingeurope is something we can all work on together!

We all know that saving the precious Chinese people is so important, and submitting articles to Clearharmony.net is part of this responsibility. For western practitioners in particular we need to make a jump here and realise that articles which are submitted to Clearharmony.net are translated into Chinese to go onto Yuanming.net, and are often of even greater significance once they are on the Chinese site because it can directly save the Chinese people and has an even larger readership You can even think of writing articles which are specifically for the Chinese site or the Chinese people.

I know that right now, perhaps there is less focus on activities (though perhaps this will change with the summer), and more on using various means to clarify the truth to the Chinese people, but it is still possible to write articles and to contribute articles. For example, if you write a letter or email to an MP, MEP, Councillor, Foreign Minister, Prime Minister, to a labour camp etc, then just send a copy to the editors. If you call China, or have experiences of clarify the truth to overseas Chinese, then write down a few experiences - this will help encourage other practitioners across Europe, and also the content of the article will help clarify the facts in the everyday readers minds.

As well as sharing about how we benefited from Dafa, articles in which practitioners share their views and thoughts on various issues are very suitable for Clearharmony, particularly those which are open to be understood by both everyday people and practitioners. For example, you could write down your thoughts about the Jiang trial, about SARS, about Article 23 etc. These don't need to be some literary masterpiece - they just need to have the righteous thoughts and compassion from a Dafa practitioners heart. Not all people value or understand complex ways of thinking, complex language or high level stuff anyway. The simplicity of your contribution may help it to reach the readers.

One thing which perhaps stops us contributing articles is that we think "other people have already written an article about this issue so it isn’t worth me writing one" But we need news on a regular basis for the website - if we want to cover a certain important topic and emphasise it, we can't go republishing the same articles, no matter how good they are - so we need people to continually submit contributions about important issues, even if they are sometimes similar in content to other previously published articles. Yesterday another practitioner took the responsibility - but today, it is your turn to clarify the truth about that issue and share your thoughts. The same goes for Hong Fa activities [activities where practitioners introduce Falun Gong to people]; different people have quite different experiences at the same activity and talk to different people, and have different ways of thinking about it - it is great if more than one practitioner can write an article about their experiences at each Hong Fa activity. Again, we can't republish articles, but a few days later, we can publish another practitioner's experiences at the same Hong Fa activity and the effect would be very good.

We also need more experience sharing articles and articles sharing understandings between practitioners for the website at the moment. Although the focus is more on everyday people, Yuanming.net also has a significant role in helping practitioners in Europe to act as one body, and is thus a very good forum for practitioners to share thoughts and experiences.

I just wanted to share some thoughts to encourage people to contribute to and support the site. The true significance of YuanmingEurope in the Fa-rectification is obviously far beyond what I can understand, and Master has already written an article, "To The Clearharmony Website of Europe" specifically for the website so everyone can read that and have their own understanding