In Italian footsteps; Fujian revival

A little over four years ago, a book called A Fortune Teller Told Me was what convinced me to investigate meditation by going to Thailand for a 10-day retreat. The author was Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani, who died in 2004.

My original copy stayed with my then girlfriend when we split up, but I bought a second-hand copy last year, and I’m re-reading it now. I’m intrigued by something in one of the early chapters that meant very little to me before, but is rather more interesting now. Attending a meeting of the French École Française de l’Extreme Orient, he has this encounter:

One ethnologist gave a paper investigating the revival of occult Taoist practices in the Chinese province of Fukien. He told how one night, under a full moon, he had witnessed a ceremony in which a man immobilized by ropes had suddenly shot like an arrow across the rice fields, drawing after him the whole population of the village, including the local Communist Party secretary.

Since Terzani’s book was published in 1995, this event probably took place in the late 1980s. It must be about a tang-ki, whom I’ve encountered here in Singapore, and about whom I’m increasingly interested. Many of Singapore’s Chinese population have their family roots in Fujien province.

What is happening with this revival now, I wonder, twenty years after that ethnologist witnessed the ceremony he describes? Has it grown in strength, or vanished in the face of consumerism and rampant development? If anyone out there has any information, I would love to hear about it!

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Pan guan bi, lesson 2

More to learn tonight, and as a class we’re collectively showing signs of difficulty remembering the moves; some are visibly struggling. Well, it’s an intensive course, we knew that, but it’s still a lot of ground to cover. There are a lot of people there, over 30, and it can be difficult for some to see what’s being demonstrated. We’re in rows, with Mi Lao Shi on one side, and Ge Lao Shi on the other, so that as we turn there’s always one in view. They take it in turns to guide the class; I sometimes get the feeling that there’s a certain battle of wills over who gets to lead when and for how long

I make sure I get to stand in the first rank, near a teacher; since I can’t understand the spoken directions, I have to be able to see the demonstration clearly. It so happens that both lessons so far I’ve been nearest to Mi Lao Shi, who I must say is a good teacher; she speaks slowly and clearly, demonstrates the move from different angles, and is generally very clear to follow. I hadn’t met her before, and I’m impressed. Sun Lao Shi gave a talk at the end; other than that, he didn’t take an active role in tonight’s class.

Before I go on, let me just remind you all that this is a learner’s blog, not an expert’s view. As I go through classes, I try to make sense of what I’m experiencing, and to work out what it all means. Sometimes I just get it wrong, and I look back later and think “how stupid” – as I’m sure more experienced martial artists do when they read some of what I write. Well, never mind; at the end of the day, I’m just trying to get better.

So, that said, Stephan asked me what I meant in the last paragraph of my last post, so here are some thoughts I had while I was on the bus after class.

The taijiquan I practise is all Yang-based, so it’s pretty slow. I start by trying to be empty and soft; as I move, I’m alternating between full and empty, hard and soft. When I’m yielding, there’s an element of force ready to be expressed; when I’m expressing force, the ability to yield is present. The way weight, energy, etc, are used is like the taiji symbol: ying becomes yang, yang becomes yin, all part of an integrated whole.

With the bagua needle, I feel that the point of each needle seems like one end of a bar of energy. The bar’s energy changes. Each move represents a hexagram of several bars, depending on how the points and body are moving. Are the points moving in the same direction, or in opposite directions? In a straight line, or circling? Horizontally, or vertically? In parallel, or diverging? With the turn of the body, or against it? Arms, upper torso, legs, all moving the same way or in different ways… Each move thus has several “energy components” – full yang, full yin, changing yang, changing yin… Lots of small circles, and combinations of planes, all rapid and compact… Opening joints, closing them…kou bu bai bu…

In my mind’s eye, there’s a flickering effect as these different elements combine, fly apart, recombine in a different order… it’s like getting a small notebook, drawing one hexagram on each page, and then flicking rapidly through the sequence from beginning to end.

Does that make any sense? Basically, my experience of taiji and bagua are both about the interplay of yin and yang. Taiji does this with the body integrated as a whole; bagua needles does it as a combination of lots of smaller components… I’m sure I’ll be corrected by those who know better – which I welcome, and appreciate – but for the moment, this is how it’s making sense to me…

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.

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…

Meeting a monk and Hell’s messenger over a beer

Only in Singapore? What a strange experience last night…

I got back late from work last night, pretty tired, but decided to go out and practice anyway; I’m wary of letting my routine lapse. So, I did about six repetitions of the CMC-37 routine, noticing something new each time. Then two sets of the Xuan Xuan Dao form, one of bagua sword, and about five of the wuji bagua set I’m learning from Master Zhou. I finished up with two sets of the Zhang Sheng Li’s long xing bagua form from Beijing.

After that, I badly needed to sit down for a while! I went to a nearby coffeeshop where quite a few people from the local martial arts scene were hanging out. I ordered a beer, and wound up sitting on a busy table next to a Buddhist monk (who was drinking tea, not beer!). I’ve seen him around before, as he’s friendly with a lot of these guys, but never spoken to him before. We chatted for a while, and then he moved on to another table. I started talking then with people on the other side of me, and eventually discovered that I was talking to one of Hell’s messengers.

Some readers might need a bit of background here. In the Chinese tradition, Hell doesn’t mean the same thing as the Christian Hell. Both are places where spirits of the dead suffer for their sins during their life. However, there are big and important differences. In the Christian Hell, souls go there for eternity, and their tormentors are innately evil, sadistic and malevolent demons. In the Chinese hell, souls are not there for ever; the spirits inflicting punishment can be regarded as prison guards and judges, implementing (very severe) punishments laid down by law – in other words, innately moral and defenders of justice, not sadists. So bear this important distinction in mind.

In the Daoist tradition, the spirits of both Heaven and Hell are able to visit Earth to communicate with us. They do this through the possession of spirit mediums, who act as the messenger of one particular god. I’ve previously written a review of a book that studies this phenomenon in Singapore, as well as some video links of the same thing in Thailand. I think it’s gradually dying out in Singapore, unfortunately. Here’s a clip from the 1970s – you don’t see crowds like this any more:

Anyway, so I got talking to this guy who turned out to be a tang-ki, one of the mediums. His story was very interesting. He and his family had traditionally prayed to a certain spirit, a general of Hell. One day, a member of the family became very seriously ill. Unknown to the rest of the family, this man prayed to the spirit, asking for his relative to recover; in return, he would act as the spirit’s messenger.

The spirit intervened, and the family member recovered. The deal had to be honoured, and the guy I was talking to now had to act as the vehicle for the god, for a period of three years. Now, every week, the god occupies his body in order to talk to worshippers. He remembers nothing from these periods. These rituals are actually held very close to where I live; I hope I might be able to go along as an observer at some point, although I’m not sure of the etiquette here, so I feel I need to tread carefully for the moment.

Anyway, after three years, the contract with the spirit will expire, and he won’t have to do this any more. However, it seems that every officer in the ranks of Hell has an equivalent in the bureaucracy of Heaven. It’s possible that the General’s heavenly counterpart (who is also the family’s protector), will seek this guy out and require three years’ service himself, although this won’t necessarily happen.

In any case, it was a fascinating conversation. Once again, I’ve been amazed at how much ancient tradition and knowledge survives behind Singapore’s glass-and-aircon facade…

Cultivation and compassion

An interesting post from Scott Phillips showed up in my RSS feeds overnight: Pretense. Tongue firmly in cheek, he suggests that the real reason we study martial arts is simply because we want to look good. Well, hehehe, that might work for some, but my waistline is proof that taijiquan is not the way for those who want to look buff! Still, there’s something to what he says, though not perhaps in the way he intended.

For me, the study of martial arts is a part of my attempt to “cultivate my person”, in the Confucian sense:

“The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the Kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy”.

Kong Fu Zi

Through the practice of martial arts, and the internal forms in particular, we learn to govern our bodies as well as our minds. Having learned to govern ourselves, we can treat others with openness and respect since, if we truly can understand and control our own selves, we need not waste  our energy on negative emotions like fear, anger, jealousy, and so on. Having no negative elements in our behaviour towards others, we automatically  become more likeable and attractive: we are, in fact, cultivating “inner beauty”. So Scott’s got it right!

This attitude reminds me of the answer many Buddhist masters give when they are asked how, if they claim to desire to free the world from the chains of attachment, they can justify going on long meditation retreats in which they don’t interact with any other people at all! Their answer is that to help others become free, they must  have compassion for them. To have compassion for others, you must first have compassion for yourself. How can you help others to free themselves if you cannot free yourself? Therefore, being able to understand, and regulate, your own mind and feelings through meditation is the key first step to liberation for yourself and others.

This takes us back to martial arts. As my Chinese tutor explained to me, the term “wu shu“ is derived from the ancient characters meaning “no spear”, and has the sense of “the absence of conflict”. This is very interesting: why is that?

The most obvious interpretation is that if everyone  is trained in martial arts then there will be no conflict; no-one would start a fight because they would know that their opponent could defend themselves. Anyone who’s spent any amount of time in the martial arts world, of course, will know that this theory simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny! There seems to be an endless supply of meatheads who just love to fight for its own sake…

I think that the answer lies with the aim of the role of martial arts in self-cultivation. Using martial skills to beat up your opponent, to overcome them with strength and leave them crushed, is a very primitive application of martial arts learning, and really is only the beginners. Don’t get me wrong here: I know from my own learning that it’s far from easy even to master this level of skill, to be able to beat someone in a fight. I’m nowhere near even this level of achievement.

I think, though, that we need to aim higher. We need to use the self-cultivation aspects of our martial arts training to reach the  point where, through our skill, our  understanding of ourselves, and thereby our understanding  of our opponent, we can not just defeat them but also transform them – that is, to defeat them but not harm them, thus demonstrating the futility of violence and the value of self-cultivation. Thus, a world “wu shu”, of the absence of war, is one person closer.

I know that we’ve all seen this idea a thousand times in cheesy kung fu movies, and that it  risks losing its force because it becomes a cliche, but it’s a pretty good reason for studying  martial arts all the same!

As the hero of the “Eight Diagram Pole Fighter” puts it:  “Brothers! We monks should not kill – but we must also defeat evil!”.

The Dao of fried noodles

Now I understand why so many daoist sages, zen masters, and expert martial artists are cooks.

Today being Vesak Day, I spent the morning helping out in the kitchen of one of the temples here in Singapore. After worshippers come to pray, usually in family groups, the temple provides them with free food – so volunteers are needed to cook!

My role is to be part of the team preparing the fried noodles that are the core of the meal. For this, we work with iron woks about three feet across, and almost a foot deep, which are sunk into the stove worktop. These are heated by very, very large gas burners. Several ladefuls of oil, and a bowl of sauce base are put into the wok, followed by quite a lot of water. This rapidly forms a superheated napalm-like liquid, into which basketfulls of dried rice noodles are thrown, along with bean sprouts. We use a spatula and a pair of cooking chopsticks to keep the noodles turning as they cook.

At first, we have to mix them, so that the noodles are evenly coated in the sauce, and the bean sprouts don’t stay bunched up. In this first stage, the liquid provides lubrication, so it’s relatively easy to turn the noodles. However, we quickly get to a dangerous interim stage where the noodles are getting heavy, but there is still a lot of liquid sloshing around at the bottom of the wok. Letting the noodles fall heavily can send a jet of superhot and sticky liquid flying at random angles out of the wok. I got one such jet in the face, but managed to get it off before it did any damage.

Once the liquid has all been absorbed, the main flame is turned off, and smaller burners keep the wok hot as we still turn the noodles. Once steam starts rising, the remaining heat goes off, and the noodles are lifted out into a large pot brought by other team members. In this stage, the noodles will stick to the wok and burn if they’re left still for more than an instant, so the whole mass has to be kept in constant motion.

This is all very hard work. As soon as the noodles start to absorb liquid, they become a very heavy dead weight, and it’s really tough to lift and turn them. Some people do it with the cooking chopsticks, using muscular power. I simply don’t have the strength to do this. Instead, I find I’m using the principles of the internal arts: sink the weight, turn the body from the waist to generate power, and transmit this through the arms and into the spatula in a circular motion. This gets the noodles turning easily, without needing powerful arms.

For anyone cooking with an industrial wok, the heat is intense. You feel it rising into your face from the wok; the gas fire sends it to your abdomen and thighs. You can’t escape it or ignore it; you can only detach from it so that it doesn’t distract you. Sweat will be constantly running into your eyes, down your back, down your legs… dehydration comes quickly. Generally we find that we can endure the heat for three wokfuls, and then have to take a rest to cool down, drink water, and recover our strength.

Cooking noodles isn’t an intellectual task; it’s not complicated. On the other hand, it has to be done right. You can’t send out noodles that are too soggy; nor can you let them burn. You have to pay attention, and do the job properly, without frills or distractions.

I’m learning a great deal from the way of the noodle.

On Monday and Tuesday, I attended dharma talks organised by the Kwan Yin Chan Lin Korean Zen Centre. The talks were given by Zen Master Dae Kwang. I attended one of his talks last year, and was glad of the opportunity to hear him again. Their next Zen meditation class begins in September; I must try to organise my time so that I can participate in this one.

Religion in China

• A visitor to the Shaolin temple is horrified by what appears to be exploitation of visitors by the temple administration, led by “Abbot Shi Yongxin [who] has good business skills. If he had not entered into religion, he would have become an entrepreneur or perhaps a high-level Communist Party leader … “
• However, Buddhism is China is thriving, and is no longer the religion of just old women and peasants. According to a study by Renmin University, Buddhism now has 100 million followers in the Middle Kingdom.
• I just found this by chance: the BBC has a radio program available online about Buddhism and Daoism in China. The reporter visits the Daoist White Cloud Temple in Beijing, and tries to visit the Shaolin Temple, but runs into obstacles. Some discussion of whether Shaolin is still authentic or a commercial venture. The file is available here in Realplayer format; the program appears to be part of a series, so I’m not sure how long that link will remain valid…

Understanding how things work

Wow….

I don’t want to get preachy. Watch this presentation about superstrings and the 10-dimensional universe now. From a Buddhist/meditation/qigong/Daoist viewpoint this also makes so much sense…  Bear in mind this isn’t any kind of fringe or New Age theory; this is hard-core, heavy-duty, very-well-funded and solid physics and mathematics… but this presentation makes it very digestible.