Li Hongzhi, a former trumpet-player from north-east China, is
known as "Living Buddha" to his devotees.
The authorities in Beijing also have a few names for Mr Li. They
have branded him the leader of an "evil cult" and a dangerous
charlatan and have ordered his arrest.
China says practitioners have been brainwashed
Mr Li's crime, as far as Beijing in concerned, is to have founded
the Falun Gong spritual sect, which has presented the Communist
Party with its most brazen challenge in a decade.
Falun Gong combines slow meditative exercises with Mr Li's homespun
philosophy and teachings loosely drawn from Buddhism and
Taoism.
It claims to have attracted about 60 million followers in China
since emerging eight years ago.
But its phenomenal growth and ability to organise protests has
alarmed the Communist Party and prompted a draconian
crackdown.
Aliens
Some of Mr Li's pronouncements are certainly unconventional, some
would say just plain strange.
He believes aliens walk the Earth and he has reportedly said he can
walk through walls and make himself invisible.
Mr Li says that he is a being from from a higher level who has come
to help humankind from the destruction it could face as the result
of rampant evil.
But while his ideas may be bizarre, his followers claim to uphold
high moral standards. Falun Gong's three guiding pronciples are
Truthfulness, Benevolence and Forbearance.
Western cult investigators appear uncertain as to whether Mr Li is
the benign leader of a quasi-religious martial art or the
figurehead of a far more sinister organisation.
But the Chinese authorities, who outlawed the movement in July 1999
have no such doubts.
They have blamed him for the deaths of thousands of followers,
saying he has stopped people seeking medical help. Mr Li says he
has never done this.
He has also been accused of embezzling donations, an allegation he
hotly denies, and stirring up social unrest.
But despite the crackdown on his followers, it is unlikely Mr Li
himself will ever be arrested.
Three years ago, Mr Li moved to the United States and he now lives
in New York with his wife and daughter.
Beginnings
Mr Li, a tallish, thickset man, was born in Jilin province,
north-east China, but his date of birth is somewhat
controversial.
The authorities have accused him of backdating it from 7 July 1952
to 13 May 1951 so he could share the birthday of Buddhism's
founder, Sakyamuni.
Mr Li says the date was misrecorded in the first place and points
out that millions of other people must share the same birthday as
Sakyamuni.
"I have never said I am Sakyamuni," he said in one interview. "I am
just a very ordinary man."
But in another interview with Time magazine he implied he was
anything but ordinary.
Asked if he was a human being from earth, he replied: "I don't wish
to talk about myself at a higher level. People wouldn't understand
it."
Childhood
The self-styled spiritual leader says he started learning a special
form of the Chinese martial art, qigong, at age four from a
Buddhist master, and completed his training at eight.
Qigong is a martial art which combines meditation and breathing
exercises and is believed to tap the practitioner's inner
strength.
At 12, Mr Li says he was discovered by a Taoist immortal who taught
him Taoist practices.
However, the Chinese media says his childhood was a good deal more
mundane.
Teachers and classmates reportedly remember him as an unexceptional
student whose only talent was for playing the trumpet.
At 17, the young Li went to work on a People's Liberation Army stud
farm, according to state media reports.
Subsequent jobs included a trumpeter in a police band, a guesthouse
attendant and a grain store clerk.
Danger
The authorities say he only started studying qigong in 1988 and
founded Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, four years
later.
But classes and exercise areas rapidly sprang up across the
country, and his first book, Zhuan Falun, the Falun Gong bible,
became a bestseller when it was published in 1996.
By the following year Beijing considered the movement a significant
enough danger to remove it from the official martial arts list. And
in 1998, Mr Li left for the US.
But the organisation appears to have continued to grow, thanks in
part to a comprehensive network of websites disseminating lectures,
videos and handbooks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1223317.stm
