Origins
Falun Gong is most frequently identified with the qigong movement in China. Qigong is a modern term that refers to a variety of practices involving slow movement, meditation, and regulated breathing. Qigong-like exercises have historically been practiced by Buddhist monks, Daoist martial artists, and Confucian scholars as a means of spiritual, moral, and physical refinement.
The modern qigong movement emerged in the early 1950s, when Communist cadres embraced the techniques as a way to improve health. The new term was constructed to avoid association with religious practices, that were prone to being labeled as "feudal superstition" and persecuted during the Maoist era. Early adopters of qigong eschewed its religious overtones, and regarded qigong principally as a branch of Chinese medicine. In the late 1970s, Chinese scientists purported to have "discovered" the material existence of the qi energy which qigong seeks to harness, thus lending a level of scientific credibility to the movement. In the spiritual vacuum of the post-Mao era, tens of millions of mostly urban and elderly Chinese citizens took up the practice of qigong, and a variety of charismatic qigong masters established practices. At one time, over 2,000 disciplines of qigong were being taught. The state-run China Qigong Science Research Society (CQRS) was established in 1985 to oversee and administer the movement.
On 13 May 1992, Li Hongzhi gave his first public seminar on Falun Gong (alternatively called Falun Dafa) in the northeastern city of Changchun. In his hagiographic spiritual biography, Li Hongzhi is said to have been taught ways of "cultivation practice" by several masters of the Buddhist and Daoist traditions, including Quan Jue, the 10th Heir to the Great Law of the Buddha School; a Taoist master from age eight to twelve; and a master of the Great Way School with the Taoist alias of True Taoist from the Changbai Mountains. Falun Dafa is said to be the result of his reorganizing and writing down the teachings that were passed to him.
Li presented Falun Gong as part of a "centuries-old tradition of cultivation", and in effect sought to revive the religious and spiritual elements of qigong practice that had been discarded in the earlier Communist era. David Palmer writes that Li "redefined his method as having entirely different objectives from qigong: the purpose of practice should neither be physical health nor the development of extraordinary powers, but to purify one's heart and attain spiritual salvation."
Falun Gong is distinct from other qigong schools in that its teachings cover a wide range of spiritual and metaphysical topics, placing emphasis on morality and virtue, and elaborating a complete cosmology. The practice identifies with the Buddhist School (Fojia), but also draws on concepts and language found in Taoism and Confucianism. This has led some scholars to label the practice as a syncretic faith.
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