Falun Gong

[Mithrea]

I was introduced to this group in my Chinese History class and they came up again in my class on New Religious Movements. I thought I'd provide everyone with some links because all of their information is free and I'm about to start doing their exercises. I understand they are very similar to quigong (or chi gong if you want to look it up, some people spell it that way), but updated. The quigong is mostly an exercise program, but the Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) also focuses on the moral character of the followers.

They are led by Li Hongzhi and they have been highly persecuted in China, mostly because their numbers are so large and organized. The people are tortured and killed. Okay, so this thread could go in Healthy Pagan, Political Pagan or Theology and Philosophy. I'm posting it here because I'm interested in discussing their philosophies with anyone who knows about them or would like to learn.

Here are some links to get you started :)

http://www.falundafa.org

http://faluninfo.net/

http://www.religioustolerance.org/falungong.htm

[Mithrea]

Here are some more links. I don't think I mentioned before that they are actually outlawed in China:

http://asia.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2002/falungong/
http://www.cesnur.org/testi/falun_updates.htm
http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/falungong.html

[Djiril]

I heard something on a documentry about the Chinese government putting a virus on their websight.:( Do you know anything about that (such as which websight it is and is it still up)?

[Mithrea]

I think the group and the Chinese government regularly hack each other.

A group of Falun Gong members hacked a Chinese television satellite: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/07/03/1253243.shtml?tid=172
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55350,00.html

But the Chinese government apparently does make a habit of hacking them as well:
http://www.clearharmony.net/articles/200207/5685.html

[st0rm]

going to check out thoose links...

[Mithrea]

Here is the direct link to their downloadable literature :)

http://www.falundafa.org/eng/books.htm