Letter from a Practitioner to Peter Rivera, Director of Human Rights International

January 17, 2003

Dear Peter,

I believe that I have written already to you regarding Falun Gong, but perhaps it never arrived in your hands. Thank you so much for your kind willingness to speak up for this peaceful, benevolent spiritual cultivation path which leads one to become a truthful, compassionate and tolerant person as one returns to one's original nature in assimilating to the nature of the universe.

Brought to the public in 1992 by Master Li Hongzhi in China, Falun Gong consists of five sets of gentle qigong exercises, two of which are peaceful standing and sitting meditations, and a set of principles which lead one to forgo one's selfish interests in order to compassionately look to the interest of others. One lets go of attachments such as jealousy, competitiveness, vanity, negativity, criticism, disrespect, greed, gluttony, etc. Cooperation, listening with one's heart and developing one's heart/mind nature is the result as one travels the path both back and forward to the original self of Zhen (understanding the truth, being truthful, performing good and honest deeds), Shan (developing great compassion and benevolence, and Ren (tolerance, forbearance, the ability to withstand severe hardships, trials and tribulations).

As a practitioner since April 2002, I can gratefully attest to the changes it has made in my life, bringing me increased health benefits, a continually expanding compassion on many levels, and an ever-expanding awareness of the truths of existence. It has made me a kinder, gentler, more focused better person; and if I lived in China, I would risk being tortured to death as others are being before I would deny it.

What I have described to you and what I have experienced in practicing Falun Gong is exactly the reverse of the propaganda being fed to the Chinese people in mainland China and to the international community. My compassion goes out to people who are not able to see that the torturous genocide they are perpetrating against Falun Gong practitioners is wrong and is leading to their own self destruction as well as the disintegration of their own society. More so, my heart carries constant aching compassion for the suffering endured by those of all ages, including babies, tortured by horrible means to death, those who have been placed in detention centers to endure tactics designed to reform them away from being "good," those who are sentenced to labor camps and suffer the atrocious treatments therein, those whose families are deliberately broken apart, and the suffering endured by those who do not know where their loved ones are or even if they are alive ... it goes on and on. The nobility displayed by these Falun Gong practitioners in enduring unimaginable persecution rather than betray their very essence is magnificently nothing short of divine. They are those with whom a society should be based.

Please do whatever you can to help release those imprisoned in the camps and detention centers, and clarify the truth about the goodness of Falun Gong to those imprisoned in their minds. To eliminate the illegal "610 Office" and the illegal outlawing of Falun Gong would bring about the renewal of the spirit of China which lies trapped dormant within the hearts and minds of its people, sadly without many of them realizing it, their own freedoms of belief and expression having been exterminated.

Again, my sincere gratitude for your courage, perseverance and noble efforts on the part of this beautiful spiritual cultivation path and the beautiful human beings whose footsteps tread upon it.

With respect and sincerity