I didn’t used to dislike christians much at all but, as an athiest who spent time living in Georgia, I quickly learned to despise them. They were pushy, extremely rude to me as an athiest, closed minded, two-faced (for example claiming to follow the “Prince of Peace” but then supporting the war in Iraq) and generally rather ignorant of the world around them. It felt good to put them in their place. Stay within the bounds of China’s system and no problems… try to exert that all too common christian arrogance of knowing what is best for the “heathens” and there are those amongst us who will smack you down. Enjoy!

Falun Gong was a practice that by its nature cannot be controlled. There is no form to it–no offices, no churches, no leaders, no hierarchy–in fact, nothing tangible at all. It’s a set of books and five exercises, which are all available on the internet. The CCP’s beef with Falun Gong resulted from ideological hysteria and the need to strike fear into the Chinese people to maintain rule. Jiang Zemin ordered the persecution, and he did not have the support of the Politburo.

Falun Gong is based on truthfulness, compassion, forbearance, there is a core book which explains these principles, and then there are five exercises, including a meditation. It is a qigong practice, of which there were many in China during the nineties. Falun Gong became a victim because of it’s immense popularity.

Actually, I thought just came to mind. I’m going to copy you a note that a practitioner wrote, which I’ve seen around the place. I’ll also copy some links and if you wish to know more about this, or gain any kind of accurate or intelligent picture, consider following them up.

Best wishes,

Matthew Robertson.

PS: just to note, I’m a university graduate from Australia, practiced Falun Gong for close to four years.

In my view, the way some of you are applying the ‘cult’ label is yet another obfuscation of the word’s meaning. Talking about subjects beyond the purview of science has no relation to whether Falun Gong is a ‘cult’ or not. You could shout “Heresy! Heterodoxy! Feudal superstition!” all over the place, just because you disagree with Li Hongzhi’s teachings. But that does not make Falun Gong a ‘cult’ or Li Hongzhi a ‘cult leader’. However, I’m aware of how such words are powerful tools in positioning Falun Gong practitioners–or anyone, for that matter–outside the borders of rationality and normalcy. Thus “cult members” is just another way of saying “inferior subjects”, whose autonomous will is not on the level of an ordinary citizen. More severe control measures then seem acceptable and justified, and the outsider’s “rational” view becomes the standard by which to judge what “they” really are all about. “Now, stay put while the doctor administers his cure!”

But whether something deserves to be called a ‘cult’ is a matter of its operational structure. Falun Gong is not operating like a cult, which has been verified by all those who have done serious research on the movement. Practitioners know that perfectly well: they know such labels have absolutely nothing to do with their experiences. Those who choose to use this word in labeling Falun Gong are merely drawing a line of demarcation between ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘purity’ and ‘danger’, ‘center’ and ‘margin’, while paying no attention to the accuracy of such concepts. Because they think Falun Gong is stupid and its practitioners are alienated from what is real, they couldn’t care less if people assume, for example, that Falun Gong is an “organization”, with a tight grip on the sheepish “cult members”, whose money is going up a pyramid structure to the hands of a callous, calculating and charismatic “cult leader”.

Falun Gong is completely open for people to come in or leave. You don’t have to pay for anything. You either take responsibility for your own cultivation or you don’t, or you start working against the persecution or not, but nobody’s ever going to order you to do something. You never join any organization; the practice itself is about as informal as when you go play pétanque with your friends in a park. True, Falun Gong can be called dissidence, at least in relation to the dominant scientific paradigm. But we must keep in mind that China’s so-called qigong boom was widely perceived as a paradigm shift–a new form of science–and therefore it’s totally understandable why so many qigong enthusiasts, including many Falun Gong practitioners, are highly educated, as proven by fieldwork. True qigong’s effects are perfectly tangible and real; the discrepancy that exists between the views of materialist science and the phenomenology of qigong is a blatant farce. And judging by its pre-1999 popularity and the number of awards it received in China, Falun Gong is the most renowned qigong practice in history. That is why it was banned; it was too genuine, intertextual and deeply-rooted for the Communist leaders, as it created a meaningful existence outside of the Party framework. Taking into account what took place in China in the 1980s and 90s, the pop culture definition of qigong as just another “breathing exercise” is a form of revisionist history, an ideologically loaded concept that aims at neutralizing and diluting its essence. China’s qigong boom came to an abrupt end because of political repression; qigong was never conclusively proven false or irreal, but the leading ideologies of the scientific establishment have swept it under the carpet, along with a myriad of other anomalous phenomena that call into question the legacy of the Western Enlightenment. This is nothing new, but its implications are sometimes forgotten.

In this way, deliberate obfuscation of the ‘cult’ label is, in itself, a tool of ideological struggle, not infrequently linked to militant secularism, scientism, or, ironically, even religious fundamentalism. It postulates a “closed” reality, a fixed set of metaphysical axioms, and seeks to crush its perceived adversaries by the way of social exclusion, even if it has to prostitute language itself: it doesn’t matter if apples become oranges or war becomes peace. Of course, many people slap labels without any profound idea of what they’re doing, but in this matter, they are, unwittingly or not, serving as lackeys of those who would rather see “heresy” weeded out to pave the way for a Brave New World. Talk about yet another Hegelian nightmare! It is heartbreaking to see how the 20th Century couldn’t teach us very much.

now I give you some links:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=14986&R=13A1C44F

highly recommended article series, an ‘inside view’, actually:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2008/08/falun-gong-dafa-rights-believe
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2008/08/falun-gong-party-chinese
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2008/08/falun-gong-practitioners-china
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2008/08/falun-gong-practitioners-china-2

If you want more third party stuff search on the net, or let me know and I can send you links to UN, amnesty reports or something. I have ticked the box to send me an email if someone replies, so just reply here and I can respond.

Have a good day.

Matt.