I felt sad after reading an article on the Minghui website. It was called "My Cultivation Experience at a Material Production Site in the Past Seven Years." I deeply admire and appreciate the hardship fellow practitioners go through and the effort they put into running a material production site. I also feel sorry for the barriers that still exist between practitioners. I cultivate at home and have set up a material production site there. After all the ups and downs, I understand the hardship of living and working at a material production site. The article I read talked about many unnecessary misunderstandings between practitioners. I'd like to discuss the issue of cooperation among practitioners.
After July 20, 1999, many practitioners could not get Teacher's articles or other truth-clarification materials. So, some practitioners took the responsibility of printing and distributing materials. This is how the material production sites got started. Usually, one material production site is responsible for supplying materials to a large area. Sometimes one site supplies a whole city and its surrounding areas. The workload is heavy. Practitioners who work at the material production sites are usually young and living away from home. Back then, I was responsible for part of the distribution work. A fellow practitioner would bring the material near to my workplace. Each time, it was a large bag with a few thousand copies. I distributed the materials in bulk to other practitioners who in turn distributed them in their areas. Because there were not many practitioners distributing materials then and there were a lot of materials, every practitioner involved was distributing as fast as possible. If we didn't work quickly, it would be difficult to deal with the large volume of materials that would be left over. As a result, there was little time for practitioners to study the Fa. It was common for practitioners to only do Dafa work without studying the Fa.
With the environment as such, material production sites became the primary targets for the evil to destroy, and our state of doing Dafa work without studying the Fa became a vicious cycle. We did not understand the deeper meaning of the Fa. Later, a material site was destroyed and many practitioners were implicated and arrested. From the perspective of being responsible to the Fa and other practitioners, if someone had suggested that we give materials to each individual based on his or her ability, maybe we wouldn't have had the problem of having too many materials and not enough time to study the Fa calmly. There was one practitioner who had too many materials. He could not finish distributing all of them and threw away the extra materials out of fear. Later, that practitioner had serious illness karma and passed away. Some practitioners distributed materials from morning to night in order to finish their allotment. As a result, they were followed and arrested.
In 2005, I set up a production site at my home. I experienced many miraculous events from the preparation stage to production. In fact, as long as we have righteous thoughts, Teacher will help us. "When disciples have ample righteous thoughts, Master has the power to turn back the tide". ("The Master-Disciple Bond," Hong Yin Volume II) I only have a single contact when delivering the materials. We schedule the meeting ahead of time. Fellow practitioners tell me what kind of materials they need and I tell them when I have too much work. We coordinate well with each other. But there are still areas that are not as good as I would like. For example, some practitioners only want Teacher's new articles, but not fliers or books. When I heard that I thought, "How are you doing the three things? Are you cultivating?" but I didn't dare to point it out face to face for fear of hurting others' feelings. When fellow practitioners were late or could not make it to the previously agreed on appointment, I thought, "You are not treating this seriously. What can be more important than this?" Sometimes, the more I thought about it, the more upset I got, "I went through all the trouble to make these and deliver them to you, but you make me wait and wait." Sometimes I even thought, "Is the person being followed?" I unintentionally thought about all the bad things. In fact, all these thoughts are human attachments, and I began to feel worried about them. Teacher said,
"as long as you're a cultivator, in any environment or under any circumstances, I will use any troubles or unpleasant things you come across--even if they involve work for Dafa, or no matter how good or sacred you think they are--to eliminate your attachments and expose your demon-nature so that it can be eliminated, for your improvement is what's most important." ("Further Understanding," Essentials for Further Advancement)
When I remembered that, all the unpleasant feelings evaporated.
In the article on the Minghui website, it said that it was common for practitioners from the material production site to wait two or three hours when delivering materials to fellow practitioners' homes. I am not criticizing here, but I feel that we should keep the appointments we agree to. Even non-practitioners talk about keeping appointments, not to mention how serious the matter is. Another issue is that we need to be careful when using the telephone or cell phones for safety reasons. The evil is watching our every move. Not only must we be careful with our own safety, but we also need to think of the safety of fellow practitioners.
Another issue is that when misunderstandings arise among practitioners, it is best to talk about them openly. We must be clearheaded about it. When misunderstandings arise, we must realize that it is the old forces trying to create barriers among us. So we must let go of any bad thoughts and be righteous. We need to think about others and look inward to avoid any barriers among practitioners. We need to form a harmonious body and not leave any excuses for the old forces. When we think about others, this is also being responsible to the whole body and cultivating ourselves.
Please point out anything inappropriate. Heshi.
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