(Minghui.org) Falun Dafa practitioners participated in the 21st Chitra Santhe, the city’s annual art fair, and displayed paintings from the Art of Zhen Shan Ren (Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance) International Exhibition on January 7, 2024. These paintings were created by practitioner artists from around the world, and reflect the tranquility of Falun Dafa, along with the strength and resilience of practitioners in the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution.

The festival, which has been held since 2002, took place outdoors at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath cultural complex on Kumarakrupa Road, and drew more than 500,000 attendees. Over 1,500 artists from 22 different states of India exhibited their creations.

The paintings drew a steady stream of people to the practitioners’ booth, as did the practitioners’ demonstration of the Falun Dafa exercises. When they understood more about the artists’ spiritual journeys, many people expressed their approval for the values of Falun Dafa and a desire to learn more about the practice.

Two practitioners demonstrate the fifth exercise of Falun Dafa.

A practitioner introduces the artworks and hands out flyers about Falun Dafa to passersby.

“Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance are an absolute necessity”

Umakanth Rao said he stopped because the paintings caught his eye. After a practitioner explained the content and the background of the artwork to him, he said he had been looking for a practice that emphasized “not going after worldly pleasures, but seeking inner happiness.”

Umakanth said that Falun Dafa appealed to him very much, and the practice’s principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance stood out to him. “They are an absolute necessity,” he said. Umakanth went on to take a note of the names of the books he could download from the FalunDafa.org website to understand the principles of the practice.

Sharni was also interested in the spiritual practice of the artists behind the paintings. She said that she was looking for “a practice that can help relieve stress and gain some energy.”

From the warm colors and the spiritual scenes in the practitioner-artists’ paintings, Sharni saw a path she wanted to try. She said that the principles of Falun Dafa could help a person examine themselves and handle a situation rationally. “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance is necessary to manage every situation in life. To deal with any situation, we have to understand the situation and ourselves,” she said. She wrote down information about the practice sites where she could learn about Falun Dafa in greater detail.

People Eager to Learn About Falun Dafa

India, like China, has a long history of spiritual practices involving meditation. When many attendees heard that Falun Dafa practitioners were also seeking to achieve inner peace through meditation, they said they agreed with the practitioners’ approach and sympathized with practitioners in China who persisted in their belief despite the persecution.

Dinesh Madagaonkar is a creative writer at Azim Premji University, and said the spiritual themes of the paintings and the artists’ practice of spirituality resonated with him. “Spirituality helps us calm down our thoughts and lifestyle,” he said.

Dinesh said he meditates, but he was searching for better ways to meditate. He said the Falun Dafa exercises spoke to him, and he wanted to explore the practice.

Manjunatha is a teacher of biology at Vyasa International School, and also teaches the Happiness Program—a program that helps students focus on their physical and mental health as they find positivity in their lives. He agreed very much with the tenets of Falun Dafa.

Manjunatha, a biology teacher and spiritual practitioner, purchased Zhuan Falun.

“I was a workaholic and very career oriented, and I used to focus a lot on work,” he said. “The spiritual journey thus far has helped me introspect, retrospect, and reflect more on my inner self.” He said he believes it’s the same for Falun Dafa practitioners around the world.

He was curious about how Falun Dafa practitioners were able to find peace through their meditation, and purchased the book Zhuan Falun, the main book of Falun Dafa’ s teachings, to learn more.