That temple in Henan

Sorry, seems like it’s Shaolin week here on Jianghu! Here’s a few links that it seemed appropriate to throw in, since fate obviously wanted to draw them to my attention…

I was looking for something else entirely, but came across this YouTube clip. It’s a Nokia advert, featuring Justin Guariglia – the photographer who’s published the book on the Shaolin Temple, which I wrote about just a couple of days ago. What are the odds on that happpening?

Also in a strange coincidence, I came across a very interesting article from Kung Fu magazine, the edition on the shelves right now (at the time of writing) it turns out. The article is about Hai Deng, a ‘controversial’ Shaolin monk who was one of the first to visit the US. His life story is pretty interesting, as is the tale of his interaction with the Western-born American monks – one of whom was Rev. Heng Sure, whose blog I only just discovered this week!

How much authentic Shaolin martial arts are left? Controversial question, I know. I know that many so-called “Shaolin” styles really have nothing to do with the temple.I do know that there are still people teaching, and training, in the ‘old’ Shaolin styles that haven’t been reformed into “official” performance styles. What I wonder is how much is left of the context and culture of the old Shaolin, where the martial arts were a part of ordinary temple life – when there wasn’t the current division between ‘martial arts monks’ and ‘meditation monks’. Or was there always this distinction?

Anyway, it made me wonder whether the ‘old ways’ might have been preserved outside China, so I was checking up on Korean Sunmudo…

Knowing when to stop

Up until mid-afternoon it was quite a nice day, but then the monsoon clouds hit us hard and the rest of the day was spent with deafening* thunderclaps and pouring rain.

By the time I got home, the last drizzle was petering out, and I decided to chance going out for solo practice. However, the spot that I use in the park is quite low-lying, and there was still a lot of water standing around. The concrete volleyball court that’s my patch was still a bit slick, but seemed to be drying off, so I tried a couple of sets of taiji. I quickly realised, though, that all of the rain evaporating out of the sodden earth into the evening was making the air thick with humidity, cold** and clammy – almost feverish. So I called it quits and came home again.

As I passed through the housing estate next to my apartment block, a big yellow tent was up for a Buddhist wake. The flaps were pulled tighter than is usual – because of the rain, no doubt – so I couldn’t see the coffin. There were lots of plastic tables and chairs around, with a small group of the mourners manning this shift sitting around in a desultory way. At the centre table were three monks: two older, one quite young. One of the two older monks was tapping away on a gourd (is that the name for the thing that goes tok-tok-tok? I’m not sure…) as the other two chanted. Well, one did… The younger monk chanted in a loud, determined and totally flat voice; the older monk kept trying to join in, in more musical way, but stopped each time as if thrown by the sheer tone-deafness of the other…

*Not really. Very, very loud, though.

** By Singapore standards – maybe 23, 24 Celsius? How’s November going for you, anyway?

Only 20 in all of China

I’ve just discovered the blog of the Rev. Heng Sure, a Buddhist monk based in Berkeley, California, and have been surprised and saddened by this post. He and some monastic colleagues went on a trip to Manchuria to visit monks there. What he found is that:

The Cultural Revolution nearly wiped out two generations of Chinese monks. Currently across China there are approximately twenty surviving monks who are 80+ years old; everybody else in the Sangha is under 40 years of age, and ten years in robes, at the most.

Wow. I mean, obviously, I knew that the monastic system and heritage was badly damaged – but only 20 remaining ‘elder’ monks? In the whole of China? That’s truly sad.

Just FYI, I found the blog after hearing the URL in a podcast interview from Kusala Bhikshu’s Urban Dharma site. Check it out…

Life at Shaolin

Photo: Justin Guariglia

Photo: Justin Guariglia

Pern Yiau of the Nam Wah Taijigong Association gave me a call the other day; he’d read something in the Chinese-language paper about an exhibition of pictures about the life of the monks in the Shaolin Temple, and – correctly – thought I might be interested. The exhibition was apparently at the Page One bookshop in one of the malls near where I live, and was only on for a few days. So, the gf and I headed on down to take a look.

It turned out that it wasn’t really an exhibition as such; it was a display to promote a new coffee-table book, Shaolin: Temple of Zen. The display pictures were prints of the promotional pictures you can see on the book’s page on Amazon; I’ve ripped two of them above. The book itself is very nicely done, and the photographs are beautiful. At S$63, it’s perhaps for the Shaolin completist, but it does convey the skill, dedication, and tranquility that is the monks’ ideal.

The book is very nice indeed, taken simply on its own terms. It’s more interesting when taken as a part of the Temple’s campaign to take control once more of its own image, in order to re-establish Shaolin as a true seat of Buddhist thought and meditation – rather than as a place where funny chaps in orange robes shout at each other loudly and hit harder.

I referred to this once before, when I had just noticed Matthew Polly’s book American Shaolin. I subsequently bought that book and really enjoyed it; I also learned what I hadn’t known when I wrote that post, that Polly is actually a formal disciple of the Shaolin Abbot, Shi Yong Xin. I’m not sure if this significant: the Abbot writes an introduction to Shaolin: Temple of Zen, while Polly writes an accompanying essay. I’m not sure if this is the result of their relationship, or whether the publisher simply decided that Polly was the natural choice to write some content.

In any case, it’s a very good-looking book, with some beautiful photographs. I still prefer the small book I bought in Beijing, Monks in Shaolin by Chinese photographer Hei Ming. That book shows only individual monks against a white background, removing them from their environment to focus on their characters, which I like. This new book keeps them in their context, which may suit other people’s taste better.

62. The noble pursue the path

The noble pursue the path, the average pursue their duties, and the misguided pursue fame and fortune.

Master Sheng Yen

The Yin and Yang of a wushu student

A few more musings on last night’s lesson that I want to jot down…

It was a very warm and humid evening; a few of the Chin Woo instructors a little further down the park commented on it as I passed them later on, but I didn’t need to be told: I was drenched in sweat after my lesson. Master Zhou was wearing a silk wushu outfit, so he didn’t suffer too much, but I was in cotton. T-shirt and trousers alike were soaked, with just the loose part of my trousers around my ankles still undarkened…

This led to one doh! moment… We were practicing an upward-rising punch to the ribs; Master Zhou was using one of his hand to shield the impact as I hit him. Unfortunately, both his hand and my arm were slick with humidity-induced sweat… so my fist slid off his hand and continued upwards… my forearm, frictionless, followed… and suddenly I realized I’d just socked my teacher with a heavy uppercut to the jaw! To his credit, Master Zhou was OK about it. He wasn’t hurt, and just laughed – and possibly ruminated that there’s no-one so dangerous as a beginner who doesn’t know what he’s doing…

He was glad to hear that I’m romantically involved again. He thinks it’s a good thing for a wushu student to be attached, as it balances things out – “for the student, the sifu is the yang, the woman the yin – you shouldn’t be like a monk”. Heh. As I’ve said before, he’s pretty old-school!

After the class, I went for solo practice. I was worn out, so only managed an hour rather than my usual 90 minutes, but got some good work done, I think. The moon was close to full, and the rabbit stood out clearly. (I have never, ever, been able to see a man in the moon). Light clouds came and went. The feral cats stretched, slept, explored and prowled around me as I worked on my taiji and bagua. I love these tropical nights when the moon is full and golden.

Battle without honour or humanity

It’s Saturday morning, and my knuckles hurt. My wrist is very tender when moved or touched, and is beginning to develop blotchy bruises. My legs hurt, my neck is stiff, and I have a faint headache. Yes, I went training with Master Zhou again last night! (I don’t think the headache is his fault, that’s down to recent insomnia).

We attracted quite a crowd. He was showing me another set of applications – including some that would most definitely bring tears to your eyes if used in anger. Oh yes, lots of tears. Usually, he’ll demonstrate on me (not full force, of course), and then I have a go; with one of these techniques in particular, it took me a while before I could bring myself to try it, it’s so nasty. And no, I’m not going to tell you what it was; I wouldn’t want to be blamed for an outbreak of wide-eyed victims who are suddenly walking a bit funny. So anyway, yes, we acquired a fair number of sarong-clad Indian foreign workers who hung around to watch. I hope they don’t try any of what they saw on the building site..

I wrote once before about William Fairbairn, who was once the Assistant Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police, in the legendary inter-war period. As I wrote then, he learned from the experiences he had on the street, and used them to develop a system of unarmed combat for his officers – a system that prompted someone to say of him “he had an honest dislike for anything that smacked of decency in fighting“. Hehehe, Master Zhou trained in Shanghai, and the technique I was working on last night give me a better insight into the sort of thing that so shocked Fairbairn’s prim and proper contemporaries. Perhaps he’d encountered some of Master Zhou’s forebears!

Speaking of which, we got to talking about taijiquan, which he also knows. I mentioned that the first style I learned, back in the UK, was the Cheng Man Ching style. It turns out that Master Zhou’s own master in Yang Style taijiquan was Fu Zhong Wen – who was a student of Yang Chengfu at the same time as Cheng, and of roughly equal seniority. I think he was also trying to tell me something else, but my Mandarin wasn’t up to it, and I couldn’t follow. In any case, I’m increasingly fascinated by how many famous lineages are represented here in Singapore.

This is Fu Zhong Wen:

Things change, and we move on

Life has got in the way of blogging lately, as it’s wont to do! I think this is a moment of big shifts – things from now on are not going to be the way they have for the last year  or so. Here’s a quick roundup:

• Events, lectures, meetings and wotnot have prevented me from meeting Master Zhou for the last three weeks. It’s a big pity, but unavoidable. On the other hand, I’ve been practicing his form on my own, and it’s taking root – I think, and at last! I’m looking forward to class next week…
• I’ve been attending the qigong classes  at the Nam Wah Association regularly, and feeling more and more benefits every time. My posture is noticeably improving (to me, at any rate).
• Big changes with my Saturday night bagua: we are now moving into a purely revision mode. I’ve already mentioned that I’m re-doing the sword form for revision. The empty palm class is now stopping new work, though. Any class will naturally suffer attrition, and there are very few of us left from the group that started together in August last year. Some have joined from other classes, and that’s kept our numbers up. However, a few are coming less and less regularly, and with me due to leave next year, I think Madam Ge has decided that the class numbers have dropped below critical mass. So, we’re moving to a revision program until February, by which time a class that started after us will have caught up to where we’ve reached, and the two groups can merge and move on together. I, of course, won’t be here then.
• I may not do much more even of the revision schedule, though. I’ve just noticed that the Korean Zen school down at Lavender, which I’ve visited a few times, will be running a new course on Zen Meditation (link to PDF file) from early January. These don’t happen all that often; I’ve wanted to take part before, but always decided to stick with the bagua classes instead. I’d like to take this one though – I don’t know when I’ll get another chance!
• My Drunken Broadsword teacher is still not well, so classes haven’t resumed. I’ve never been very good at this, and i suspect that once he’s better I would be starting from scratch again. I think that I may not start again – at least until after I get back from Beijing next year… Partly it’s that I have so much to do in preparation and partly…
• … I’m getting more and more keen on a certain lady, and weekends are pretty much the only time we get to meet…

So, much is about to change. Where it goes from here, I’ll have to wait and see…

61. A positive life

A positive life pivots on modesty; the bigger the ego, the greater the animosity.

Master Sheng Yen

Mind and body

I’ve been thinking more about my ankles. I’m finding in my taiji practice that it’s very difficult to really relax them, and thus sink my weight properly. That has a lot of knock-on consequences, as the weight is then taken by my knees and lower back – which of course, aren’t meant to be load-bearing. I’ve been doing this for a long time without realizing it! This has led my thoughts along a very interesting route.

Now, the question is, why are my ankles so stiff, and reluctant to take my weight? I’ve come up with three answers to this.

The first, which only came to me this week, is that this is the consequence of hiking. I’ve really only taken up the internal martial arts as my main non-work activity in the last few years, since I moved to Asia. All the way through my twenties and early thirties, my main hobby was hill-walking in north and west Wales. That meant for most of every weekend day during those years, my feet were strapped tightly into boots that were specifically designed to limit ankle movement. I suspect that must have had an effect…

The second is one that I mentioned before – the fall I had on Orchard Road just over two years ago that trashed my left Achilles Tendon, and injured most of the foot’s soft connecting tissue. It’s all gradually healed up, particularly thanks to some therapeutic massage in Beijing (material there for another post). Practising the IMA has actually been of huge benefit in this process. Still, it’s only this year, in the last few months really, that I’ve found I don’t wake up in pain from the tendon on a daily basis – and that it now actually feels pretty normal, except for the odd twinge. Perhaps that ongoing pain changed the way I carry my weight…

The third derives from the second, and is what I’m finding the most interesting. As I’ve been working on this issue over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been paying very close attention to what happens as I sink my weight down. I’ve found that as my weight approaches my ankles, there’s a very clear mental hesitation, and even resistance. This is not a conscious response; my active will is directing the weight down, but it meets a deeply, deeply ingrained and powerful barrier. This all happens very subtly, and I’ve had to think about it and repeat it a lot, but it’s become clear that my intent is meeting a very strong, remembered fear of pain, that’s intimately bound up with a physical location in my tendon. In other words, even though the tendon is now healed and perfectly capable of load-bearing, the memory of the extreme pain from the time when it was injured is subconsciously still there, tied very specifically to that tissue, and still have an identifiable impact on my actions. That action is very clear – changing the whole way I carry myself – but the cause is very subtle, and I’ve only found it after a lot of work. And even then, there were a lot of clear signposts…

Many of you will see where I’m going with this… For me, this is a clear vindication of what many Buddhist and Daoist teachers tell us, that memory is intimately tied up with, and stored in, the body – in the organs, muscles, and fascia. Intense experiences, moments of strong emotion, and the like, are stored in the body and have a strong but subtle effect on our subsequent behaviour. With meditation and/or inward study of the body through qigong and the IMA, we can gradually identify where these powerful emotions are stored, soften the body, and rid ourselves of their influence.

As I’ve written before, I’d already had powerful experiences of this before – once through intense practice of taijiquan, once through Vipassana meditation. This week’s experience, though, is the first time that I’ve actually found myself identifying the physical location where a strong fear is stored. Very, very interesting… Now I have to work hard to root it out and escape its influence. I wonder whether something like this, long, long ago, was the root from which someone wise conceived of Vipassana..? In any case, it shows clearly how mind, memory, and behaviour are inextricably bound up with the state of the body…