The Age (Australia): Nothing to be scared of in a life of goodness

March 17 2002

Peace: Jarrod and Emma Hall say Falun Gong has helped them.

It was last Saturday, a week ago, and they were meeting in the Flagstaff Gardens, with a small group, as was their habit, to do their meditational exercises and talk about the life of cultivating "seeds of goodness" in themselves, about the life of practising Falun Gong.

Jarrod and Emma Hall, both 23, had recently graduated from college; he mastered in drawing, she did performance. They lived across the street from Jeff Kennett's place in Surrey Hills. Sometimes they'd dropped their pamphlets into the former premier's mailbox, in a bid to turn him and all their neighbours on to the life of goodness.

Says Emma: "We just want people to know that Falun Dafa (the system of belief: the "Gong" refers to the exercises) is good."

Last weekend, while in the gardens, Emma and Jarrod decided to share this news with the Chinese people [...]

The Halls decided to fly to Beijing that same day. "It felt wrong not to go. With the persecution going on, and with people dying. I just thought 'I'll never forgive myself if I don't do this for those people.' Emma and I been talking about it. We had our visas. And we said, 'Let's go now'," Jarrod says.

Some of the others in the group had already been to China, had their war stories. More than two years ago, sales assistant Caterina Vereshaka and her husband flew to Beijing with a letter of appeal for the President. They were arrested, deported.

Chris Comini, commercial property consultant, had just come back the previous week with a broken finger, black with bruising, courtesy of the Beijing police. "Suddenly, Emma and Jarrod just said: 'We're going. We're going today'." In the end, Comini lent them the money for the trip, because their savings weren't immediately accessible.

That night, the Halls flew to Beijing. "We went straight from the airport to Tiananmen Square and unrolled our banner that said 'Falun Dafa is good'," says Emma. "We didn't know what to expect."

They were arrested, taken to a room where they counted 30 police officers watching over them.

"We started singing 'Falun Dafa is good' in Chinese. We just kept singing it," Emma says.

"None of them would look at you in the eye," Jarrod says.

Soon after, the couple were deported. A few days on, they were back in Flagstaff Gardens, with the group, doing their elegant exercises, radiating calm, speaking softly, amazed that anyone could find fault in a personal improvement system based on "Truth, Compassion and Forbearance".

"This is what we ask ourselves: 'What are they scared of?"' says Chris Comini. "The thing is, adhering to the principles of Falun Dafa makes you a much easier person to get along with. I'm from a traditional Greek family - but they don't mind it because they've seen how it's changed me. They see how everything rolls off me now. I'm more relaxed. I don't get all worked up about anything."

Perhaps this is what bothers the Chinese [party name omitted] Party: people in charge of their emotions, means people less prone to fear and, by association, less easy to control.

Yet, systems of personal cultivation, meditation and exercise have been a fixture of the Chinese cultural landscape for centuries; some learnt by large numbers of people, others kept within families or small schools.

For "thousands of years", the story goes, Falun Dafa was handed down from master to student in a lifelong exchange of knowledge from one man to another that played out over and over again. Says Jarrod Hall: "So, at any time, there were only two people in the world engaged in Falun Dafa. It was a full-time undertaking. They didn't have jobs or other commitments. They lived for Falun Dafa."

Ten years ago, a Mr Li Hongzhi brought a modified version of Falun Dafa to the wider world. "So you can work and have your life," Jarrod says.

Instead of being master of one student, Li Hongzhi became master of millions - the Chinese Government has said 40 million, the Falun Dafa literature claims up to 100 million people in 40 countries.

What about in Melbourne? The Flagstaff Gardens group don't really know. There's talk of 400 or so people. "But there could be a few thousand who are quietly doing the work in their own homes. No one can say, for sure."

Their own small scene seems to have developed as a series of one-on-one inspirational conversions over the past four years. Caterina Vereshaka, after trying yoga, tried Falun Gong - and found a new energy, a calm strength. This in turn inspired Chris Comini.

Jarrod Hall started reading the books and trying the exercises because Emma's friends kept talking about how much energy she seemed to have, and what a calm person she had become.

Four years ago, Emma was sitting with her mother, watching a group of Chinese devotees do their exercises. "It looked lovely."

Invited by the group to try the moves, Emma says "I walked away feeling as if I was floating. Everybody else walking around looked like zombies."

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/03/16/1015909912324.html