Using our European Falun Dafa Website as a Tool to Inform People About Falun Dafa and the Persecution

Martin: In 1996, whilst reading a book about meditation, my forehead suddenly became very bright and I could see some scenes that all proceeded to take place within the next few weeks. Some days later as I lay down on my bed, I started hearing a low frequency sound that seemed to come from the cosmos. What happened next was that something started moving in my lower abdomen which proceeded to continue up through my body to the point between my eyebrows and from their to the back of my head. Suddenly I left my body and found myself standing in mid-air with a body composed of a vibrating, high-energy matter. After some time I fell back into my body again.

This experience really made me reflect on life, but it wasn't until early 1998 that I could finally ease my mind. A friend called me to come and see his brother who had come all the way from Switzerland to teach something that he himself had learnt not long ago, but felt that it was just something he just had to pass on, something called Falun Gong. I didn't know what Falun Gong was, but I had heard some stories about his brother and so I decided to give it a try. I remember when his brother stepped into the room where about twenty people were waiting for him to teach us the Falun Gong exercises, I suddenly felt serene and my heart started pounding. Whilst learning the first exercise my body suddenly felt very light and comfortable and my mind felt very pure and clean.

After learning the five Falun Gong exercises, we watched Master Li's nine-day video seminar on the Falun Gong teachings. We watched one lecture each night. Master Li expounded on the truths of the universe and guided his disciples in true cultivation. In this process many of my attachments were exposed for me to see. For every attachment I gave up my body felt more and more comfortable and my true thoughts became stronger.

I started studying the Falun Gong teachings and practising the exercises as often as I could. Since I was in the process of understanding aspects of the principles taught in Falun Gong when the persecution began in July of 1999, I didn't truly understand my responsibility as a Falun Dafa practitioner, but as I started reading articles posted on the Falun Gong website, Clearwisdom.net, my understanding towards the Fa-rectification deepened, after a while I felt that self-cultivation wasn't enough.

I decided to print and copy some materials containing information on Falun Gong as a practise and also facts regarding the persecution, which I proceeded to hand out after work. Even though I must say that at first I wasn't comfortable handing out these materials to the people I met on the streets, I felt that I did the right thing and I felt relieved. Together, with other practitioners in my area, I started to come up with ways to better inform people about the truth of Falun Gong and the persecution.

Later on I had the opportunity to be one of the editors for the Swedish Clearharmony website, which is the Swedish version of the European Falun Dafa website. Although I didn't even own a computer at that time I happily accepted the responsibility. Clearharmony was to be a website to echo the righteous voice of Falun Dafa practitioners and the support from Europe, to reveal the evil nature of the persecution, to let the people in Europe know about Falun Gong and to provide them with a chance to position themselves well for their future.

Although there is a lot of work with translation and proofreading which carries on until late into the night, everyday of the week, to be able to follow European practitioners combined efforts and the process of informing the worlds people about Falun Gong and the persecution, the hardships they encounter and how they manage to overcome them makes it all worthwhile. Then again there are also nights when it's nothing like that, when you are tired and restless and your body hurts and you haven’t been able to study the Falun Gong teachings or practise the exercises for some time, and you still have to do a good job. You can't think, “Tonight I don't feel like doing this, I’ll do it tomorrow.” Being an editor for a Falun Dafa website is an honour you have to live up to anew every day.

Lee: My name is Lee Hall and I live in England. I started practising Falun Dafa in September of 2001, the same month that the Clearharmony website was launched. By the end of that year, I was part of the Clearharmony editing team and my cultivation became linked with the progress of the Clearharmony website in Fa-Rectification.

I used to wonder how many people were actually reading the website and sometimes have some doubts. I would then tell myself, “Even if one person reads the website I will still undertake this responsibility with all my heart.” At the time I felt that this was a noble thought but as Fa-Rectification progressed, my understanding changed. Falun Dafa practitioners’ thoughts are powerful – if I have the thought that I will do lots of work relating to informing people about Falun Gong and the persecution just to save one person, then this may have negative effects on the work. Our truth-clarification work must reach as many sentient beings as possible. Now my thought is that as many people as possible must read this website because they must learn the truth about Falun Dafa and be saved. When I work on articles to be posted on the website, I have the thought that many sentient beings will read them and will learn the truth about Falun Dafa and the persecution from these articles. In my understanding, the righteous thoughts in the practitioners’ mind when they write or edit will become the energy of the article and will have positive effects on those who read it.

Back when the evil was more rampant, security was such that I did not tell others about my website work. Sometimes practitioners would ask me to take part in certain events and it was hard for me to find the time to join. I would have to refuse in order to work with the website. They were worried that I was not playing my role in Fa-Rectification but I could not reveal to them that I was actually busy with the website. This kind of project is also a very lonely one and sometimes this can be quite hard. Most of the work involves sitting alone at a computer for long periods of time in silence day after day. It is important to maintain a righteous mind otherwise interference such as drowsiness can intervene. I’ve found that this can easily happen if I approach my website work as a job. But if I always remember the importance of what we are doing in this period of time then my mind is clear and I naturally know what to do when issues arise.

I have found that my cultivation and the website are closely linked: for example if I am lazy the website can have problems publishing in the morning. This has really encouraged me to keep a high standard for myself and not leave gaps for the evil to interfere.

Nina: My name is Nina. I am from Hamburg in Germany and started to cultivate in Falun Gong in 1999. I want to share with you my experiences with working on the Clearharmony website project. In 2001, as I married a fellow practitioner and moved to Berlin, I was first asked to coordinate the German Faluninfo website. Later, I saw my name in an email, which announced that the European Clearharmony.net was going to be established and a Chinese fellow practitioner and me should coordinate the German version. I was quite astonished since I didn’t know anything about this project

I felt great pressure but at the same time excited and honoured. I asked myself, would I be able to handle it well? Would I meet the standard? I was not so much afraid about the workload but rather I didn’t want to cause any losses to Dafa. Looking deep down I already knew at that time that with this project I would not be able to cover up my attachments or run away from problems.

Since 2001 I have been working daily with Clearharmony.net; there are very few days when I don’t do the work. I know that if I don’t do a good job, other practitioners have to shoulder my responsibilities and this will cause much more pressure for them and will eventually cause losses for Dafa (Great Way). Even though sometimes complaints will invade, but they will push us to find the loophole, get rid of our ego and raise our level as a whole. When travelling to other countries to take part in Falun Dafa-activities, I always take my laptop with me and need to find ways to be able to carry on with the website work. The other editors do the same. I am always very moved when I see their selfless efforts. When they travel somewhere or even fly to a different country, they do their work right before they depart and after they arrive.

It is a challenge to balance everything well: work, family-life and other Falun Dafa work. One has to learn to make one’s own decisions, rely on one’s own understanding and put Dafa first instead of personal desires. To put Dafa first was a process and whenever my heart was not so focused, practitioners came to me and were really worried about Clearharmony, asking why there are not so many articles, why there are so many mistakes and so on. I know this was Master reminding me.

Over the past three years, the more stable and rational we are as a team, the more stable the website is.

Christel: My name is Christel, I started practising Falun Gong in 1998. From that I clearly understood that Falun Dafa is something I have always been seeking. Even if occasionally a notion came out – whether or not I deserve to be called a Dafa practitioner, the notion dissolved immediately as soon as I recalled the moment how I came across and started to practise Falun Gong.

In 2001 the Washington DC Falun Dafa conference, a fellow practitioner announced the need for a person to be responsible for the French version of the Yuanming website (Yuanming is the Chinese version of the Clearharmony website). I volunteered myself without giving it too much thought. I am very clear about the positive effects produced by the articles published on Minghui.net (the Chinese version of Clearwisdom.net) to let the Chinese people and the people of the world to understand the persecution and what Falun Dafa and those who practise Falun Dafa are like. I started to work; actually it was a huge amount of translation work at the beginning, I was doing it day after day without knowing the effect. The English, German and Swedish Yuanming website had already been running for several months, but the French Yuanming website was still in the preparation stage due to some technical problems and so it couldn’t yet be published to be viewed by the public. I was discouraged during that period of time, I told the fellow practitioner, who is responsible for coordinating this work, that I did not want to carry on with the work, that it is too heavy and too difficult for me. However, the fellow practitioner, her understanding, enthusiasm, and compassion encouraged me to continue. She allowed me to understand that it is not a coincident for a Falun Dafa practitioner to be given a certain responsibility to undertake. I enlightened to the fact that this is our sacred mission.

The French Yuanming website was developed from the beginning, only one person, myself, to do all the work including choosing, translating, reviewing, editing, and publishing articles on daily basis, and afterwards there were also only two or three people to share the workload. By recalling the path we had passed through, I feel it is inconceivable. From the beginning, we published a certain articles on the web every day; afterwards we never thought we should publish fewer articles than before. I feel the richness in articles is very important for a website.

Lee: One of the most prevalent things that I have noticed for this project is that communication and cooperation are very important. One time an editor from the team had problems accessing the website maintenance system. He tried sending forth righteous thoughts, as did other team members, but the technical problem continued. It’s only when we talked together as a team and decided to send forth righteous thoughts together that the problem was instantly resolved. We realised that cooperation and communication really are important between team members working on the same Dafa project and that when we function as one body we are more powerful. We have always found that studying the Fa (universal law, the teachings in Falun Gong) and sharing together, particularly when we meet in person, have had great effects on the standard of the website work and have helped us to move forward faster in our cultivation during this period of time.

Members of the Chinese regime have always been trying to attack and destroy Dafa websites because these are places where their evil crimes and the truth about Falun Dafa are exposed to the people, media and governments of the world. After joining this project, I quickly moved from someone who knew little about computers to someone who has a sound knowledge of computer maintenance and Internet security. These skills were given to me by Master because I need them for Fa-Rectification. Many potentially damaging attacks were resolved when I found that the Fa had given me the computer skills that I needed. The only time that this was not the case was if I had attachments or loopholes that could be taken advantage of by evil beings. For example, I always did a good job of looking after the editors’ email account and when another editor shared about the subject of making sure the account does not get full I said that I already do this well and felt pleased with myself. This show-off attachment was a loophole. The next day the account was flooded with over 1,000 spam emails and the box got full. The emails would not stop coming until I recognised where I needed to cultivate myself.

I have always tried to keep a good relationship with the electronic equipment that I am using. Practitioners are kind and compassionate to all beings. The electronic pieces of equipment that we use to validate the Fa are actually powerful Fa tools that are unimaginably fortunate to take part in this magnificent event. Many times when I have had problems with electronic equipment, I have just told the equipment that although the work we are doing can be hard and demanding, we must fulfil our role in Fa-Rectification and put sentient beings first. What seemed to be technical problems are often overcome with righteous and compassionate behaviour.

Nina: Working with Yuanming helped me to see my attachments which are deeply rooted in me and which are not in accordance with Dafa. At the beginning because of my strong ego, my attachment to proving my point and the fact that I couldn’t take criticism, I also drove some practitioners away from helping with the website. Meanwhile I have learnt that even if I think I am right and a conflict seems very big, I should be able to let go of my viewpoint and self, have trust in Dafa and Master, and I have the firm thought that Dafa will harmonise everything according to what is best for the Fa. I don’t hold stubbornly onto my opinion. Sometimes, even if we encounter many tribulations such as practitioner’s computers not working and editors or translators can’t do their work for some reason, I am able to remain calm. I have learnt to fill the gaps without blaming others and not thinking too much about myself, even when the workload becomes huge. When I treat the whole thing with righteous thoughts, the problems will disappear quickly. As soon as I complain or don’t measure things with the Fa, but look outwards, the problems or tribulations worsen. I feel that the atmosphere in our team has become open and harmonious. We can talk about problems; we try to help each other more.

Christel: I also wish to share my understanding relating to the issue of how we should focus on our responsibility to certain projects relating to Falun Dafa. Speaking for myself, I often have the thoughts to participate other projects, such as singing the songs that Falun Dafa practitioners have composed, promoting the Fa somewhere outside the city, or taking part in some other media teams and so on. After carefully considering these things, I enlightened to something, Master always tells us to do even better for the things we should do. As far as the website is concerned, I only regarded it as a routine task. In order to finish it as quickly as possible, I just choose a few articles, distribute them to team members, and publish them on the web, that’s all. Then I could find more time to do something else. If we only treat what we do relating to Dafa as a routine task without using our hearts, how could we expect to improve in our Yuanming website work? However, when I truly undertake such things using my heart, I is a reflection of my endurance and benevolence, I can see this effort can be reflected on the quality of our website. This is also a new starting point of the next step in our work. Sometimes while I think of those cultivators who reached consummation by undertaking only one thing in their life, I can understand profound connotation in it. We should focus on the things we are doing and try our best to do the things well before considering doing something else.

I never attempt to discover how many people have read our website, I am pretty sure the attraction of our website completely depends on ourselves. The purer we are, the better we have done the work, the stronger the energy field we created, then their will be more readers of our website. Certainly, this is not merely related to the practitioners directly involved in the Yuanming website, but to all Dafa practitioners, both inside and outside of China. Actually, from some points of view, it seems we are lonely when we sit in front of the computer for several hours per day, but I never felt lonely. During the Fa-rectification period, we, as Falun Dafa practitioners are all connected as one body. One day a practitioner commented that the Falun Dafa websites can be seen as an analog of a Falun to save people, I a have deeper and deeper feeling about this. I don’t have much time to communicate with other editors, but I don’t think we have separated with each other, rather that we are one body. Whenever I open the different language version of the Clearharmony website, my eyes brim over with warm excited tears.

Recently, many associations' news bulletin directly quoted from our European Yuanming articles to compose articles about Falun Gong and the persecution of Falun Gong. We also frequently receive feedback and letters from government departments, human rights organisations, and people who care about the persecution taking place against so many Falun Gong practitioners across the world and want to learn the Falun Gong exercises. A reporter even phoned me to comment on the fact that Clearharmony provides so much information and that it is really great… the website readers are now live media!

Today, we are able to practise Falun Dafa, this is the choice made in the highest level of the universe. Master has arranged us to cultivate during this special period of time. As long as we can diligently and firmly walk along this path, everything will be included. To be a Fa-rectification period Dafa disciple, I feel incomparable honoured to help Master during the Fa-rectification.

Martin: But no matter how well an editor does a job, there is something he or she can't do so much about.

It is an editor’s duty to translate, proofread, input pictures and publish articles on the website. Our work in turn depends on articles being submitted. Without practitioners submitting articles, we can do nothing. I am sure that each and every one of you is already aware of this, but I still want to take this precious opportunity to address these issues.

The European Clearharmony website is something that is every practitioners’ responsibility, just like us sitting here today having this experience sharing conference, it depends on our shared efforts. Our Clearharmony website is not just for clarifying some basic facts over and over again. It's an opportunity given to European practitioners to form a righteous field, learn from each other and encourage each other. If we didn't have our European Dafa website, think about it, it would be hard to even know what fellow practitioners in our own country are doing, not to mention the situation in the rest of Europe.

The ability of our events and activities to allow people to find out about Falun Gong and the persecution does not end with the event itself. An activity has not completely fulfilled its role in saving sentient beings if a Dafa website has not published at least one report on it. In order to better support our website, please take writing about your activities just as important as the activity in itself and writing down what you have enlightened to be just as important as acting it out. We need it and the people who are still waiting to hear the Good News also need it. In order to let people understand Dafa practitioners’ righteous thoughts and righteous actions, help people to learn the truth about Falun Dafa and save more sentient beings in the universe, this is one of the most effective approaches.

Thank you.