The unexpected

It’s been an evening of unexpected meetings, news, and insights… Where to start? Well, at the beginning, of course!

I made it to Duxton Plain Park in good time for my lesson with Master Zhou. As I was doing my stretches, a Chin Woo student whose face I vaguely know came up to me to let me know that Master Zhou was running late, and would be there in about fifteen minutes. No problem at any time, but it was fortuitous tonight; just a moment later a monk walked past. I’ve seen him around on a number of occasions; he’s a tall Chinese, in the robes of the New Kadampa movement. I assumed then that the Odiyana Centre was growing, and had brought in a second monk. Up until this summer, I was attending the centre regularly to hear dharma talks delivered by Kelsang Wangchg – who is, like me, from South Wales, and is the same age as me, give or take a couple of months.

Anyhow, this evening the monk was accompanied by Kelsang Lamden, the resident nun, who said hi, so I went over to chat. The monk is Kelsang Tonglam; he’s from Hong Kong, but has lived for some time in the UK – with the accent to prove it! A very nice guy. The big shock for me was to hear that Wangchog has disrobed and returned to lay life. It’s perfectly acceptable in many (most?) Buddhist traditions for this to happen, so it’s not a bad thing, but I truly am astonished; Wangchog always seemed so happy and committed. Still, as Lamden said, people change. Apparently he’s still in Singapore; I’ll make an effort to catch up with him before I go to Beijing.

By this time Master Zhou had arrived, so I said goodbye and got on with the class. We did a lot of work with exercises to try to loosen my over-tight shoulders, and then worked on the form a bit more; mostly repetition, as I’d forgotten most of what I learned last week… Since filming Mi Lao Shi has proved so useful in remembering the bagua needles form, I asked Master Zhou if I could film him going through the set. He was OK with that, but unfortunately my batteries died halfway through. Doh! Next class, perhaps.

Following the class, I went elsewhere in the park, and practised solo. I spent most of the next hour and a half working on the bagua needles form, trying to get it into muscle memory. I still need to find the right diameter circle to walk, in order to finish where I started; sometimes I get it, other times not…. I also went through the CMC-37 a few times, plus the xuan xuan dao. I finished up with one last go at the needles set, and a walk through Zhang Sheng Li’s long xing set – the first bagua set I learned. During these last two, I vaguely noticed someone sit down on a nearby bench to watch; this happens often enough that I pay it no mind. After I’d finished, I was drinking water and getting ready to go meet friends, when I noticed the watcher coming over to talk to me. He was Chinese, a mainlander by his accent, and in his 30s or 40s. He only spoke to me in Chinese, and started correcting me a lot on my posture and stepping. Using slow, simple sentences, and lots of demonstrations, he talked a lot about the use and non-use of force in the internal arts, the use of body structure and angles, the right width of a stance, and a lot more. It was all really good, and he plainly knows his stuff. He was emphatic that I had to loosen up a lot, and was very soft in his applications – soft like a whip…. Very good feedback…. He wouldn’t tell me his name, or what he does. He says he’s a student only of taijiquan, but clearly knows quite a bit about bagua. He wouldn’t even name his taiji style; he said he doesn’t know it, he was just taught like this by a very old man back in China. Eventually, my friends started calling to see where I was. I ignored the calls, but then a search party arrived, and it was time for me to move on. My mysterious teacher then departed, saying only that we would meet again….