Falun Gong Parade 2024 in Washington DC

“An ancient practice, for a modern age.”

A spectacular display from the Falun Gong Association of New York and many sections from around the country took place here in Washington, DC recently.

On Thursday July 11, 2024, a hot summer day, the 32nd year celebration of Falun Gong Buddhist movement commenced at 1pm starting from Pennsylvania Avenue near the National Art Gallery. They filled the street for several miles worth of music, heavenly marching, and colorful banners all the way to Freedom Plaza.

It is especially meaningful this year in light of the 25th anniversary since the beginning of persecutions against the Falun Dafa spiritual practice begun by the CCP in July 1999. Practitioners also held banners thanking the U.S. Congress for their support for the Falun Dafa refugees.

“According to investigations by Chinese human rights lawyers, Amnesty International and the United Nations, once in custody, Falun Gong practitioners face severe forms of torture, including electric baton shocks, psychiatric abuse, and sexual violence. Thousands have died as a result.” —organharvestinginvestigation.net

The marching band led at the start and played the Falun Dafa victory anthem. For the hundreds of millions of adherents of Buddhism around the world, and particularly for those practicing Falun Gong, the yearly events are inspiring. Due to the extremely hot weather, and the fact that the NATO 75th Anniversary Conference was taking place further down Pennsylvania Avenue, this year there were no floats or extravagant displays (dancing, exercises, or Shen Yun acrobats) as in previous years.

In fact, there were solemn moments when for instance, the group of relatives commemorated the incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners in China, holding their photos.

Qigong meditative practices emerged in China over 4000 years ago, but despite the Communist Party, they have survived and re-emerged into popular consciousness. Thanks to Master Li Hongzhi and his research society, which popularized Falun Gong in China in the early 1990s, they helped give rise to its spread across Asia and to the West.

After it went international in the late 1990s, the Chinese government, particularly under Chairman Jiang Zemin, began a tyrannical persecution of the religious sect labeling it as heterodox. Falun Gong practitioners were detained, arrested, and imprisoned for years until they renounced their faith. There have also been reports of organ-harvesting (live operations to retrieve organs) which often kills the prisoners. Minghui.org provides documentation on the ongoing persecutions that have taken place since July 1999.

“True health comes from cultivating both mind and body.”

In the United States, people come to discover Falun Gong from discovering it in the news, a pamphlet handed out at an event, or exploring on their own. Master Li Hongzhi’s miraculous accomplishment is how he has used the internet and multi-media to reach out to new generations of Western practitioners through FalunDafa.org and Shen Yun Performing Arts.

Many times, people who have health issues feel a connection, a tug in the heartstrings, when they are told that this practice offers “health in mind and body.”

Yet Falun Gong is more than just “Chinese Yoga” as people sometimes refer when they see small groups or an elderly person doing their practice exercises.

In fact, it is much more than that. When I first discovered it in late 2010, I listened to all the lectures by Master Li Hongzhi in a week, and began trying to do the exercises. My motivation clearly was due to health, but also due to searching for a deeper religious connection, and also a latent interest in eastern Buddhism. Within a few days, I could detect a strange sensation of the Law Wheel in my naval region, despite the fact that I do not have a whole functioning intestine.

My journey since 2011 has had its anticlines and synclines. To read, reread, contemplate, compare, and try to reach a perspective that correlates with one centered in “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance” requires humility and confronting one’s latent karma. Based on my past lives, I had accumulated a lot of karma, and also this explains why my situation was often trying.

“Sometimes when a calamity befalls us it seems just huge—it’s so overwhelming there seems to be no way out. And perhaps it stays around for quite a few days. But then a path suddenly appears, and things start to take a big turn. In fact, that is because we improved our character and the problem naturally disappeared.” —Falun Gong, Chapter 3 “Karma”

Nevertheless, through persistence and suffering, through reaching out, and trying to adapt, one can triumph over obstacles, and feel that certain milestones are reached. By ridding ourselves of karma and attachments, it is like, as Master describes it, a weight is being lifted off, or the water is becoming cleared of filth.

This is not a practice that guarantees that one will reach healthiness, or become successful in one’s career, or become full of fortune, but it can help with developing clarity of mind, peace inside the heart, and over time, improvement in health and social conditions.

Another benefit is what happened over the years. One is able to understand Chinese/Eastern culture better, and relate better with Buddhist humanistic organizations. The Pureland Chan tradition from Tzu Chi Foundation (Master Cheng Yen), and Fo Guang Shan Monastery (Master Hsing Yun) are compatible. It also helped that in comparative literature studies also I was able embrace readings from Confucian masters.

However, as Master Li Hongzhi emphasizes, it is good to keep things simple, and sticking with one way, the Falun Dafa practice, is progress enough, and adapted for anyone who wants to learn. Generally, “the movements of this exercise are quite simple because a Great Way is, as a rule, simple and easy to learn.”

“Falun Gong is a special Buddhist cultivation practice. It has unique parts that distinguish it from other regular Buddhist cultivation methods. Falun Gong is an advanced system of cultivation. In the past it was a rigorous cultivation method that demanded that its practitioners have extremely high character or great spiritual aptitude. For this reason the system of cultivation was hard to share with the public. But in order for more people to come to know this cultivation system, to raise their levels, and to meet the needs of numerous, devoted cultivators, I compiled a set of cultivation exercises suitable for the public. In spite of these modifications, these exercises still far exceed those of average cultivation systems in terms of their offerings and the levels at which they are practiced.” —Master Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong, Chapter IV, “The Falun Gong Practice System”