* Central Leading Group for Preventing and Handling the Problem of Heretical Organizations ( related to Falun Gong );

Falun Gong differs from Buddhism in its definition of the term " karma ," Ownby says, in that it is taken not as a process of award and punishment, but as an exclusively negative term.

Falun Gong teaches that the spirit is locked in the cycle of rebirth, also known as samsara due to the accumulation of karma.

Falun Gong states that karma is the reason for suffering, and what ultimately blocks people from the truth of the universe and attaining enlightenment.

Ownby regards the concept of karma as a cornerstone to individual moral behaviour in Falun Gong, and also readily traceable to the Christian doctrine of " one reaps what one sows ".

Ownby says Falun Gong is differentiated by a " system of transmigration " though, " in which each organism is the reincarnation of a previous life form, its current form having been determined by karmic calculation of the moral qualities of the previous lives lived.

* 1992 – Li Hongzhi gives the first public lecture on Falun Gong in Changchun, People's Republic of China.

Stephen A. Kent analyzes and summarizes the use of the brainwashing meme by non-sociologists in the period 2000-2007, finding the term useful not only in the context of " New Religions / Cults ", but equally under the headings of " Teen Behavior Modification Programs ; Terrorist Groups ; Dysfunctional Corporate Culture ; Interpersonal Violence ; and Alleged Chinese Governmental Human Rights Violations Against Falun Gong ".

In spite of this, dissent continued to be suppressed, and President Jiang Zemin launched a brutal crackdown against the Falun Gong religious sect in 1999.

* May 13 – Falun Gong is introduced by Li Hongzhi in China.

The use of the swastika by the Bön faith of Tibet, as well as later syncretic religions, such as Cao Dai of Vietnam and Falun Gong of China, can also be traced to Buddhist influence.

Falun Gong or Falun Dafa ( literally means " Dharma Wheel Practice ") is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 through public lectures by its founder, Li Hongzhi.

Falun Gong emphasises morality and the cultivation of virtue in its central tenets of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance (), and identifies as a qigong practice of the Buddhist school, though its teachings also incorporate elements drawn from Taoist traditions.

Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to better health and, ultimately, spiritual enlightenment.

Falun Gong emerged at the end of China's " qigong boom ", a period which saw the proliferation of similar practices of meditation, slow-moving exercises and regulated breathing.

Western academics have described Falun Gong as a qigong discipline, a " spiritual movement " based on the teachings of its founder, a " cultivation system " in the tradition of Chinese antiquity, and sometimes a religion or new religious movement.

Although the practice initially enjoyed considerable support from Chinese officialdom, by the mid-to late-1990s, the Communist Party and public security organs increasingly viewed Falun Gong as a potential threat due to its size, independence from the state, and spiritual teachings.

By 1999, some estimates placed the number of Falun Gong adherents in the tens of millions.

In October 1999 it declared Falun Gong a " heretical organization " and began banning Internet access to websites that mention Falun Gong.

Human rights groups report that Falun Gong practitioners in China are subject to a wide range of human rights abuses ; hundreds of thousands are believed to have been imprisoned extrajudicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities.

In the years since the suppression campaign began, Falun Gong adherents have emerged as a prominent voice in the Chinese dissident community, advocating for greater human rights and an end to Communist Party rule.

Five Falun Gong representatives met with Premier Zhu Rongji and other senior officials to negotiate a resolution.

The Falun Gong representatives were assured that the regime supported physical exercises for health improvements and did not consider the Falun Gong to be anti-government.

Li and then-Premier Zhu Rongzhi had met with Falun Gong representatives shortly after a large crowd demonstrated outside of Party headquarters in April 1999, and both were believed to have favored a conciliatory approach.

Premier Zhu Rongji met with several Falun Gong representatives, coming to a compromise, agreeing to a few, but not all demands.

A group of five Falun Gong representatives presented their demands to then-Premier Zhu Rongji and, apparently satisfied with his response, the group dispersed peacefully.

Foreign observers have attempted to explain the Party's rationale for banning Falun Gong as stemming from a variety of factors.

Ethan Gutmann, a journalist reporting on China since the early 1990s, has attempted to explain the apparent dearth of public sympathy for Falun Gong as stemming, in part, from the group's shortcomings in public relations.

In May 2001, the government decided not to approve the Falun Gong Preparatory Committee ’ s application to register as a legal organization.

In 1869, the School of Mining in Falun was moved to Stockholm and merged with the institute, and in 1871 the institute took over the civil engineering course previously arranged by the Higher Artillery College in Marieberg.

In Sweden such instruments date to at least the 10th century, according to the date determined for a 22 cm ox-horn with four holes, now in the Dalarnas Museum, Falun ( no. 7279 ).

Falun Gong is most frequently identified with the qigong movement in China.

Falun Gong exercises can be practiced individually or in group settings, and can be performed for varying lengths of time in accordance with the needs and abilities of the individual practitioner.

According to Hu Ping, " Falun Gong deals only with purifying the individual through exercise, and does not touch on social or national concerns.

This, coupled with the literal translation style of the texts, which imitate the tone and cadences of Li's colloquial Chinese speech, can make Falun Gong scriptures difficult to approach for Westerners.

In the West, Falun Gong is frequently classified as a religion on the basis of its theological and moral teachings, its concerns with spiritual cultivation and transformation, and its extensive body of scripture.

Cheris Shun-ching considers cults to be new religious movements that focus on the individual experience of the encounter with the sacred rather than collective worship, and to that end describes Falun Gong as an " NRM with cult-like characteristics " ( Chan defines a " cult " differently than as the term is usually understood.

Falun Gong is centralized in that spiritual authority is vested in the corpus of teachings of the founder, Li Hongzhi, but organizationally it is decentralized with local branches and assistants afforded no special privileges, authority, or titles.

Practitioners of Falun Gong have little to no contact with Li, except through the study of his teachings.

In 1997, the Falun Dafa Research Society was formally dissolved, along with the regional " main stations.

Falun Gong is practiced by tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands outside China, with the largest communities found in Taiwan and North American cities with large Chinese populations, such as New York and Toronto.

According to Richard Madsen, Chinese scientists with doctorates from prestigious American universities who practice Falun Gong claim that modern physics ( for example, superstring theory ) and biology ( specifically the pineal gland's function ) provide a scientific basis for their beliefs.

" The article cited Zhuan Falun as an example of the rising number of publications riddled with " feudal superstition " ( fengjian mixin ) and " pseudoscience " ( wei kexue ).

The article set off a wave of criticism in the official press, with twenty major newspapers also issuing criticisms of Falun Gong.

Falun Gong practitioners responded with peaceful protests, which was considered audacious under the circumstances, and lobbying of the station.

Based on interviews with over 12, 000 Falun Gong adherents in Guangdong province, they stated that they were " convinced the exercises and effects of Falun Gong are excellent.

Wu Shaozu, an official from China's National Sports Commission, was at this time quoted in an interview with U. S. News & World Report that as many as 100 million may have taken up Falun Gong and other forms of qigong.

Other Falun Gong practitioners were told that if they wished to appeal further, they needed to take the issue up with the Ministry of Public Security and go to Beijing to appeal

He also intimated that Falun Gong's moral philosophy was at odds with the atheist values of Marxist-Leninism, and therefore constituted a form of ideological competition.