Practising Spirituality by Laura Beres

Author:Laura Beres [Beres, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work
ISBN: 9781350312869
Google: -_tGEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-03-07T02:38:49+00:00

SECTION III

Eastern Influences in Spiritual Practices

7 A Cultivation Journey with the Falun Gong

Maria Cheung

I emigrated from Hong Kong to Canada in 1992. I submitted my application to the Canadian embassy the day after the 4 June 1989 massacre in Beijing which crushed the student democratic movement. Tanks moved into Beijing, rolling towards Tiananmen Square, where students had peacefully gathered for seven weeks, merely to ask for a more open and non-corrupt government. My family and I decided to give up a comfortable middle-class life in Hong Kong and ventured into an immigrant life in Canada. As resonated by many immigrants, there is much to learn but also to give up by moving to a new country. In my search to reconnect to my Chinese cultural roots in the Diaspora, I learned about Falun Dafa (commonly known as Falun Gong) at a time when the persecution against this meditative practice had just been launched in 1999.

Falun Gong is a body-mind-spiritual practice which upholds the principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance (in Chinese, zhēn 真, shàn 善 and rěn 忍). Falun Gong (translated as ‘Practice of the Law Wheel’) is also known as Falun Dafa (translated as ‘Great Way of the Law Wheel’). The practice can be traced back to the Buddhist and Daoist philosophies in the Chinese tradition (see Falun Dafa Information Center: www.faluninfo.net/). Falun Gong practitioners practise a self-cultivation based on the moral teachings of zhēn, shàn and rěn to search their paths in order to ‘return to their original, true selves’ as ‘human beings are actually lost in a maze’ (Li, 2000, p. 5). Through a process of giving up human attachments such as greed, self-interest, jealousy, hatred, anger and so on, Falun Gong practitioners acquire a state of insight and spiritual transcendence to a purer realm (Li, 2000). The cultivation process also involves the cultivation of the body, which includes five sets of gentle exercises that consist of four standing exercises and a sitting meditation. By engaging in a mindful meditative practice, the body experiences transformation in parallel with the cultivation of the mind and heart in acquiring virtues or moral behaviours.

In this chapter, I reflect on my personal spiritual journey, drawing upon my life path with Falun Gong and research experiences with Falun Gong practitioners in Canada. I explore how my personal experiences have broadened my understanding about life, and I draw on the resilience of Falun Gong practitioners that inspired my personal and professional life. I conclude with a critical reflection on the connection of Falun Gong experience to social work professional practice.

My spiritual journey with the Falun Gong: an integration of mind, body, emotion and spirit

I started with a rational mind in deciphering the diverse and nearly paradoxical discourses during the early days of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. For myself, as for many Western scholars, Falun Gong was unheard of before the launch of the persecution by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999. Living in the West, I am required to grapple with

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