Just FYI, I was called yesterday by the Lavender Zen Centre. Way back in the summer, when I went to a dharma talk there, I expressed an interest in their courses, and they were letting me know that a new course in Zen meditation will be starting in the New Year.
I would really like to attend; unfortunately, it’s on a Saturday night and so clashes with my bagua class. However, perhaps someone reading this will be interested to hear about it. If so, and you go, let me know how it goes!
A solid step forwards speaks louder than a hundred empty, fair words.
Master Sheng Yen
Last night was the last bagua lesson of 2006. For whatever reason, there were a lot of people missing, especially at the start of the class, so Madam Ge took the opportunity to give us more individual feedback. This was both good and bad for me: good because it’s useful (naturally); bad, because I really have a lot of faults in the way I do bagua 
Madam Ge was constantly correcting me, far more than anybody else…
I know where this comes from: a persistent and deep-rooted problem in my lower back. The muscles tend to knot up, and it really throws out my posture. It developed over many years of working in I.T., sitting in a bad posture at my desk. I tried to correct it back in 2003, with some success, by using qigong techniques that I learned from Nam Wah Pai. Since then, and especially during my MBA, I stopped working on it, and the problem has re-established itself. So, one resolution for 2007 is to get back into the habit of regularly practising qigong. Another is to make sure that I practise circle walking on a far more regular basis!
Madam Ge is going to Beijing today for a couple of weeks’ holiday; among other things, she says that she’s going to meet her Chen Taijiquan teacher. Sigh, I miss Beijing; Madam Ge studied at the Wushu school next to the Houhai lakes, and she says she used to live in the hutong near the Drum and Bell Towers. Which makes me nostalgic: a year ago I saw in the New Year at Huxley’s in Yandai Xijie, just around the corner from the Drum Tower. Just before midnight, I went to the towers to hear the drums and gongs beat in the new year. Unforgettable…
Last night’s class was interesting for another reason, as well: it confirmed what I was already suspecting, that the martial arts world in South-east Asia is very interconnected. You might think that that would be obvious, but it wasn’t to me. When I went to Beijing to study at Tsinghua University, I picked up my studies at the Milun school as well, and I really expected to find a network of martial arts students in Beijing – people who studied different styles and different schools but still knew one another and shared their enthusiasm. It just didn’t seem to be there, though.
Somewhat to my surprise, I’ve found it instead here in Singapore. In discussions after bagua class, I’ve discovered that not only did three of us attend the bagua workshop with Alex Kozma back in September, but a new arrival to the class has known Alex for twenty years and used to spar with him in London. Given that I’ve recently discovered, and been talking about, the Piper System, it came as a surprise that another of my bagua classmates knows a Piper Guardian up in Malaysia.
Furthermore, I recently became aware of the Singaporean martial arts forum sgwutan – thanks to a link from mushin that led a lot of visitors here. Another aim for 2007 is to participate there; it seems to be a very informed and supportive community.
Looking back at 2006, my interest in martial arts is one area where I’ve made a lot of progress during the year. I’ve met some really good teachers, and made some good friends amongst my fellow-students and fellow-enthusiasts. I hope 2007 will be even better – not just for me, but for all of us. Happy New Year.
I once saw an empty doorframe, standing upright on a beach.
A few years ago, in what for me were the bad old days, I was walking along a beach just before dawn. It was a pebble beach, not sand, and kind of near town but still a bit out of the way. It was on my way home, though, and that’s where I was going. I’d spent the night out with friends: drinking, partying, talking about all kinds of stuff, and – this being a cold autumn – occasionally hiding out in public shelters to avoid the rain showers, and singing hymns because the signs on the wall said HYMN SINGING ON SUNDAYS.
So anyway, I got tired and decided to go home and, as I said, I had to walk along this beach to get home. There was nobody else anywhere nearby, this being 4 or 5 in the morning and all, and there was that eerie, otherworldy feeling you get when there’s no sound at all except the breakers and the hissing of the water pulling back through the rocks and your head’s full of silence and hymns. And, behold, there was this doorframe, standing upright and empty, in the middle of the beach and facing the waves and the great wide horizon.
If I had stepped through it, would I have been in the same place? If I was in the same place, would I have been the same person? I don’t know. I didn’t step through it. These are questions worth asking, though. They’re worth asking, because a doorway in the midst of wilderness taps deeply into our sense of myth, and draws upon our millenia as a species of asking questions about what on earth is really going on here. It doesn’t belong – but why not, and why is it there? If it’s here, maybe it’s for a reason. Maybe it hasn’t just been washed up by the sea and put upright by who knows who. Because our reality is artificial and constricted. William Gibson described cyberspace as “a consensual hallucination” but the description is just as apt for “the real world”… whatever that is. It’s a liminal experience.
A solitary doorway on the tideline challenges the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and about the world we live in. We act according to unconscious streams of thought, and sometimes we encounter something that resonates, and we feel compelled to act without really knowing why.
That’s why I feel that I need to take, ahem, acting classes. I’ve known for a long time that very little is real – or, at least, as real as we like to think it is. Like all of us, I have several narrative versions of who I am; some are mutually incompatible, but they are all true, none the less. (I put it down to reading Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius quartet at a young age).
Where do these stories come from, and what lies underneath? Studying baguazhang and taijiquan has helped, and is helping, to discipline and understand my body and, through the body, my mind. Studying Buddhism and meditation helps me to understand the mind and, through the mind, my body. What’s lacking is a way of systematically examining the ways in which I interpret myself to the world, and the ways and means I employ to sway and motivate other people. Seeing an advert for acting classes has triggered a response: I think this could be a really useful experience in terms of personal development and give me insight tools that I’m lacking(and, to be clear, my less-spiritual MBA self also sees advantages). What do you think? Details are here.
An ordinary mind is a mind of utmost freedom and unsurpassed joy.
Master Sheng Yen
I thought I’d give a plug for the guy who taught me Chen style taijiquan in Beijing – Liu Xiaoyan, who went to one of the martial arts schools at the Shaolin temple at the age of 5 or so, and studied martial arts for twenty years – “at least 9-10 hours a day, 6 days a week, on the 7th day I was doing shows“.
Now living in Beijing with his French wife, Xiaoyan has started his own martial arts school, the Jinghua Wushu Association. I studied with him when he was just getting started; he would come up to Haidian, and we would train by the tennis courts in Hua Qing Jia Yuan, where I was living at the time. This was during my time at Tsinghua university; the winter semester, and eventually we had to stop training there, because it was just too exposed to the icy winds! We moved our training to Ritan Park (which was also where I first started learning bagua the year before, with the Milun school).
Anyway, if anyone is in China, or thinking of going there, and is looking for a martial arts school, I can personally recommend Xiaoyan. He knows a lot of different styles very well, and he’s always seeking to learn more and expand his knowledge. He speaks English, and he’s a really, really nice guy. He has a lot of personal contacts in the Shaolin temple, and in Chen village, which are useful for his students too!
To criticize less and praise more is a good way to avoid creating negative karma of speech.
Master Sheng Yen
Just FYI, Madam Ge Chun Yan will be starting new Chen style taiji classes in the new year:
Madam Ge’s website is at http://www.gechunyan.com/
I’m tempted – I studied Chen style for a short while in Beijing, and it’s really different to the Yang style derivatives I’m more familiar with. I have a feeling that its fluidity, and alternation of soft and explosive power, may make it easier to study alongside bagua. Or maybe I should stop getting distracted (ooh! shiny!) and just keep focused…
I had to smile wryly when I read Lloyd’s latest post on the Piper System blog. He’s annoyed about Americans trying to co-opt African names and traditions, and using them out of context. Why do I smile? Two reasons:
So I can understand where Lloyd’s coming from. A lot of nonsense gets written and sold by people who have no real connection with, or understanding of, what they’re making money off. Well, people will pick and choose things they like from each other’s cultures. I prefer to look at the silver lining; people get attracted by the superficial stuff, and most will go no further – but there will be some who do, and that will create a market that makes it viable for people who really are qualifed and knowledgable to devote more time to publishing and training.
It’s only humanto be curious about, and borrow from, other cultures, and we can either embrace it or reject it. Rejecting it leads down a nasty, exclusivist road, which is no good for anyone. Embracing it can get weird, but it’s better. I realised how strange it can get once in Borders, here in Singapore. I, a Welshman, was sitting down reading a book on the I Ching; next to me, a young Chinese couple were reading a book on ‘Celtic Witchcraft’. Go figure. Of course, when someone starts claiming to be an ‘authentic’ Welsh person, or an ‘authentic’ African on the basis of reading some books and maybe a short holiday, well… they have a misperception.
As to why the zulu, out of all the African peoples, get so much attention? Good marketing, I guess. Above all: the film. No, seriously. Don’t the zulus come out of that looking good? They may lose the battle, but they fight well, are disciplined, honourable, and retreat in good order. It’s a pretty positive depiction (and I’m Welsh, so you know which side I’m cheering for). I really can’t think of a stronger and more positive depiction of African culture in the mass media. Also, of course, Isandlwana is one of the few well-known examples of Africans giving the British empire a right stuffing. For people of unknown African descent, searching for cultural roots to be proud of, I can see the attractions. And the zulus have kept up their strong ‘brand identity’ (sorry for slipping into MBA-speak). During the 80s, the Xhosa and the Sotho, for example, tended to work under the multi-ethnic banner of the ANC, with no particular tribal, cultural or other identification (plus, associated with the Communists, so rather dodgy for mainstream Americans). But the Zulus? Nope, they did their own thing. In all the media reports in the West, it was the Zulus who were mentioned by name. So I’m not surprised that they’ve got the best recognition in the West. Of course, renaming yourself “Shaka Zulu” is eye-rollingly corny, but that’s people for you.
The politics of identity, though: always has stirred up strong feelings, always will.
As for African martial arts: that’s an interesting field that deserves more attention. I think that what the Piper guys are doing is really interesting, and I hope more people will publish material about more traditional African ways of working. Martial arts, of course, are products of their environment; the Chinese and Japanese arts come out of a particular social, urban, economic and philosophical context. African fighting systems won’t be the same. Sub-saharan Africa wasn’t centralised, and was pretty resource-poor, so we can’t expect the same kind of coherence and standardisation. West Africa was more organised politically, had more resources, and was heavily influenced (directly or not) by Egyptian, Roman, and Islamic culture; there must be a lot of material there which is still to surface. The DeBordes Foundation that Lloyd mentions seem to be working on that. Interesting.
OK, so I don’t actually have a point to get to; this is just a stream of consciousness post inspired by Lloyd!
When good things happen, we should rejoice in, praise, encourage, and then learn from them in modesty.
Master Sheng Yen
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