Hok Soebagio: A Balanced Life

Jakarta resident Hok Soebagio, 60, is married with a son. Raised a Catholic but a self-described “rebel” who disliked the rituals of religion, he now practices Falun Gong. By Nabiha Shahab

After retiring early at the age of 50, I felt my body starting to age. In the morning my arms would ache and it scared me. I thought, if I don’t do something I will live my parents’ life and spend my old age with a stroke or a heart attack.

I had to find an alternative way of living, a more spiritual life. At first, I started to learn health meditation; I even went to Bali to learn about it. I tried doing yoga and also Buddhist meditation, vipasana. In the course of doing vipasana, I met a Chinese-American assistant instructor who told me about his plan to spread his teachings in mainland China. He mentioned at the time that they had to be careful because there was currently suppression of another spiritual movement called Falun Gong. That was around 1999. A few months later, the instructor came back to Indonesia and called us, his meditation students, for a reunion.

The gathering was to take place in a bookstore. I was about an hour early and I went inside the bookstore to kill time. I don’t know whether it was fate, but I saw this book, Zhuan Falun. It sounded like the movement I had been hearing about, Falun Gong. I was curious but the book was sealed, and I couldn’t peek inside. It was a bit expensive for a spiritual book, I thought. I put it down and walked away.

But something pulled me back, I hesitated and picked up the book but then put it down again. I walked away three times before I finally decided to buy it.

I read the book in three days. It was interesting but difficult to understand. It was like a folk story, like a fairy tale about the gods’ world, out of this world. I wondered how to practice the exercises: there were no instructions in the book. So I called their office in Jakarta and they told me they would teach me how to practice and meditate.

After a while, I stopped doing yoga and concentrated on meditation, and then decided to practice Falun Gong only. I became active in the organization, although there is no hierarchy in Falun Gong. You can say I was active on the streets, because I initiated the demonstrations we did in front of the Chinese Embassy here.

When we first planned to stage a protest about two years ago by meditating in front of the embassy, I received harassing phone calls, demanding that I cancel the demonstration or I would be shot. Another caller threatened to bomb my house. My wife was very scared, and after a while she disconnected our phone so the ringing would stop. She begged me to cancel the plan. I said I would only stop if nature wanted me to.

It rained very hard the night before the demo. My wife prayed for it to keep raining the next day. But in the morning, the sky was clear. For me, it was a sign to keep going. I meditated by myself in front of the Chinese Embassy in the beginning, and then more friends joined me. There were police all over with firearms. I was not afraid. This is my choice and I had to do it for Falun Gong.

Now, the police understand what we do, that we are peaceful and nonviolent. There has been no more harassment. In Indonesia, I estimate there are a few thousand people practicing Falun Gong, mostly in Bali. Some people study a while and practice by themselves at home, so it is difficult to tell exactly how many people are actively practicing.

Falun Gong is not a religion, so there are no rituals. It’s free. It all made sense to me. The universal law of nature is analyzed in Zhuan Falun. Everything that I learned from other teachings suddenly made sense. For instance, I used to read the Bible, and by understanding nature’s principles, now I understand what the things mentioned in the Bible meant. Zhuan Falun contains everything, from the very basic philosophy up to a sophisticated level. You have to read the book many times (for a full understanding).

Another example is how in other teachings we are taught to be patient. In Christianity, if you are hit on the left cheek, then you should give your right cheek, that’s about it. Here, it is explained what really is happening when you are hit by another person, and what will happen if we strike back. In another dimension it is all balanced, like karma.

I don’t eat meat anymore. Although there is no specific prohibition from eating meat, after studying Falun Gong it is something that comes naturally. I try to avoid taking any lives, however small they are. The bigger the life you take, the bigger the karma will be.

About a year after I started practicing Falun Gong, I was cleaning the gutter in front of my house and as I was dredging the garbage to the side of the street, a lot of larvae from the water was also taken out. My chickens ate the larvae, and after that they started laying eggs like never before. However, at the same time my feet started to ache whenever I meditated, and it kept getting worse. In the beginning I didn’t think it had anything to do with me taking so many lives.

The bad or good things we do in time will manifest in this material world. If I do good today to one person, I may get a good thing some day in return from another person. This is also true for bad things. It could come back to you after three months or three years, tomorrow or next year.

Photo by Nadrah Shahab

Back to The top page