I was warned before joining Falun Gong (法輪功) that if I resisted the brainwashing and wrote a negative story the organization would put me on its blacklist. If I wrote a positive article, a colleague said, the Chinese government would be annoyed and put me on their blacklist. Either way it appeared to be a no-win situation.
According to the Taiwan Falun Dafa Association it has 300,000 members and a lot of clout. For instance, at its behest, 84 legislators pushed for a resolution in May last year asking the UN to investigate China's "persecution" of Falun Gong. The association claims over 100 million practitioners in over 60 countries. As for the Chinese government it was so upset about a rally Falun Gong held near the Communist Party's headquarters in 1999 it banned the organization, fearing "a serious ideological and political struggle."
Even so, on the first of this month, I made my way to a nondescript bookshop on Chongqing North Road in Taipei and asked if I could join Falun Gong. The store owner directed me up a winding staircase to a room where a group of people was sitting in a circle reading aloud. I was then sent to another location, across town, at a small house off Minquan East Road, which was where my induction to the cultivation of Li Hongzhi's (李洪志) "great law" (法輪大法) would take place.
Day One
I was late walking into the wood-paneled parlor, with its prominent, framed pictures of the Falun Gong leader. Five people were sitting on mats intently watching a large flat-screen television. A man in a yellow jump suit fringed with orange was demonstrating what appeared to be taichi exercises. He floated against the computer-generated background of a field of violets and the image shimmered slightly as lorries rumbled by. This avatar of Li was going to be my leader for the next nine evenings.
It was a mundane experience to begin with. Two women, the group leaders, could not work the TV and Li's lecture competed with announcements about trash collection on the neighborhood tannoy outside. It was uncomfortable sitting on the floor for 90 minutes with just a short break as Li introduced his system in a series of videoed lectures that he gave in Guangzhou, China, 1996.
These teachings have been collected into a nine-chapter book called Zhuan Falun: Turning the Law Wheel (轉法論), in which Li says, "Only Buddha law can completely unveil the mysteries of the universe, of space-time and of the human body." He claims qigong (氣功) or "breath/energy work" is 7,000 years old and is a system of cultivating the law, which involves being true (真), good (善) and able to endure (忍). He also says there were human civilizations over 100 million years ago. He compares himself to a great, enlightened being and equates homosexuals and drug addicts with murderers.
Like most Taiwanese and many Chinese, Li essentially believes in a mixture of Buddhism and Daoism. But he is a fundamentalist. He defines Falun Gong in opposition to the modernization and liberalization of China in the 1990s, as opposed to the 1950s and 1960s. "Mankind's moral standard is on a big downslide, the world is going to the dogs, people are just controlled by greed." He suggests the end is nigh and only his law can "save" us, while railing against false prophets.
Day Two
After meditation exercises we settled on the floor for Li's second sermon, which was about opening our third eye, "located slightly above the spot that's between your eyebrows, and … connected to the pineal gland." Li stated, "I don't do healing" for "ordinary people" but later claimed Falun Gong could make unhealthy people better or prevent them becoming sick. He also said it made a 70-year-old woman look 40.
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