Clarifying the Truth in the Classroom with Slides from the "Uncompromising Courage" Art Exhibition

A friend of mine is an independent scholar whose disciplines include art history and religious studies. In the beginning, she held some serious doubts and concerns about my practice of Falun Gong, and this severely tested our relationship, but as she gradually came to learn more about Falun Gong, her initial negativity softened. She even helped us by inviting me as a guest lecturer, clipping articles, and providing a very useful letter for the local police hate crimes unit explaining the importance of protecting our freedom of belief.

Recently my friend asked to see slides from the "Uncompromising Courage" Art Exhibition, so I showed her some of the images. Her comment was that they were, "very difficult work, very difficult, aesthetically difficult." So that was that.

The next morning I got a call from her: "I think I'd better look at those slides again. I woke up this morning with those images in my head," she said. So I invited her over for dinner and a slide show and she selected slides of several paintings that she wanted me to present to her religious studies class at the university.

She introduced the artworks and Falun Gong to her students from a scholarly point of view, which gave me a good starting point. I was then able to present my understanding of the purpose and meaning of art, based on my understanding of Master Li's teachings in "Teaching the Fa at the Discussion on Fine Art." Then I showed them how my art had changed as a result of this understanding. Because each slide from the "Uncompromising Courage" paintings contains a story, by the time I had finished I had given them a lot of information about the history of the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of Falun Dafa, the nature of our practice, and our basic principles.

My friend said that she suddenly realized that she needed to expand her discussion of Falun Gong in her paper for the next Religious Studies Conference in New York City later this year.

After class, I expressed concern about a student who seemed upset at the end of my presentation. My friend said that she was worried about that particular student, who was showing signs of deep depression, and that she intended to talk to her. "Do you have a Falun Gong pamphlet?" she asked. "Falun Gong is probably the best thing that could happen to her."