[TraineeHuman]

There’s a slightly different slant on how Falun Gong fits with Chinese culture, which I’ve heard from Reg Little. Reg is retired but used to be Australian Ambassador to various countries, and I believe was at one time the First Deputy Ambassador to China. His wife is also Chinese.

Of course, persecution and brutality are always deplorable. And Falun Gong does teach a nice form of meditation, and for free. But Reg points out that China has had four thousand years of continuous civilization with the strict rule that no spiritual or religious group was allowed to have any political involvement whatsoever. In other words, a full separation between politics and spirituality. Reg also points out that if we take a “big picture” view of the last several thousand years of Western history, religion has generally been dominated by politics so much that spirituality has usually, overall, been a secondary concern. And what has been the result in Western culture? Things like over a thousand years of the recent Dark Ages, throughout most of which the popes actively sought to ensure that life expectancy stayed under thirty, or thirty-five at most, and so on and on.

I’ve read several sources (not Reg) which claim that Falun Gong was started by a retired CIA agent of Chinese descent living in America, and that from the beginning that man unfortunately allowed Falun Gong to have a political profile to at least some degree. As Reg points out, China has always dealt very harshly for the last 4,000 years to disband any religious organisation that sought to have any political connection. And it has done so in the interests of preserving the purity of spiritual practice.