Fact vs. Fiction: Truths from Inside the Shaolin Temple
radiichina.com
radiichina.com
Really? The author learned Chinese, studied kung fu for years, then traveled to China to train -- only to decide that getting up early was simply too much effort?
I found this article informative (if someone erratic), but this part truly baffled me. Still, it's very interesting that a fifth century temple is still operating -- and making money! -- today.
Heck lots of celebrities get up at that time to do physical training for conditioning for movie roles.
I also want to know the material of that glass and needle...
NM, yt vid of an American magician doing it.
And the physical disciplinary punishments are brutal.
Oh and you have to keep this up for 5-10 years. Very reasonable to see why someone would not want to commit to this.
Many of the warrior monks were trained as very young children so they had not much say in the situation and just had to deal with it.
This idea of skill through practice is one of those values that I am very grateful for because it was sort of drilled into my head at an early age and has been enormous beneficial to me throughout my life. It's become more valuable now that I'm older and don't absorb new information as quickly or easily.
"From Sato," Tõzan replied.
"Where were you during the summer?"
"Well, I was at the monastery of Hõzu, south of the lake."
"When did you leave there," Unmon asked.
"On August 25" was Tõzan's reply.
"I spare you sixty blows," Unmon said.
The next day Tõzan came to Unmon and said, "Yesterday you said you spared me sixty blows.
I beg to ask you, where was I at fault?"
"Oh, you rice bag!" shouted Unmon. "What makes you wander about, now west of the river, now south of the lake?"
Tõzan thereupon came to a mighty enlightenment experience.
Zen tales tend to present a couple major challenges to the reader:
1) Going into them cold isn't exactly intended. The characters are usually named for a reason, and it's expected that the reader/hearer will already know some things about the historical persons in the story, possibly some other tales about them, from reading histories and lineages, and so on, providing more context than is apparent at first if you take the stories per se.
2) There's often at least one relatively easy-to-pick-out though rarely explicitly stated lesson in them, but also one or more metaphorical or allegorical readings, at least one of which will be a "canonical" reading, i.e. your teacher will expect you to come up with it after some consideration before moving on to the next koan/tale—they don't expect that every student, or even many, will come up with a totally new and valuable metaphorical/obscure insight to the koans they present them, as that's just not realistic and no-one would ever advance if that were the expectation.
An easy example of 2 is (from memory so this wording will suck compared to the real thing) the "what should I do now?" "have you eaten your rice" "yes" "then clean out your bowl" one from (IIRC) Gateless Gate—simple surface reading of first-things-first and the importance of routine-following, but one available deeper reading of this as a Zen "challenge" (many of the koans/tales are) where the question "have you eaten your rice?" is actually asking, as understood by both characters, "have you attained enlightenment?" or similar, and "then clean out your bowl" has to do with banishing hubris or something along those lines.
Point 2 especially fairly speculative and arrived at purely second hand—I've not practiced Zen Buddhism—though I'm confident enough in it to present it here. Take that for whatever it's worth.
[EDIT] further, the point of their contemplation is in taking the journey to the answers, in part for the value of the journey and (one supposes) in part to train in the kind of lateral thinking that's so vital to these "zen battles". So just having a list of "answers" alongside the text kind of defeats the purpose, though they're definitely not intended to be as obscure and hard to follow as they are if you go into them with no background on (basically) Buddhist historical trivia.
I'd add that a lot of the stories are challenges in the sense of asking "What kind of mind must the characters have to give these kinds of answers?" There's usually a sense in which the interaction feels most natural.
In a way they are like inside jokes. Once you get it, there's little question about the meaning, and usually there's no need for any philosophical sophistication. In my experience, a good bit of The Gateless Gate is uncouth humor.
The teacher then gets angry because the student tries too hard to understand by questioning the teacher rather than trying to work out their own answer or accepting the state of things.
The correct "answer" to the question then (so far as there is one) is to place yourself in the story and either accept it as it is, or come up with an interpretation of the story (like this).
The wrong answer is to ask what the answer is.
Then I definitely lost this one myself.
If we can trust Wikipedia:
> In its original meaning, kung fu can refer to any discipline or skill achieved through hard work and practice, not necessarily martial arts.
It makes sense to me. Going easier foreigner program was the plan the whole time. Just because you put a lot into training and commitment does not mean there is no line and you will put in infinite amount of all that. He wanted quality training, he did not wanted to become lifetime monk.
As a kid, my dream come true would have been to have been locked away doing nothing but martial arts training for years till I emerged a fighting machine who could win any fight.
As I grew up, I realize what a total waste of time and life that would have been. Far better to learn to read and write, or even dance (college I guess). Those skills make me far happier. Yet, as a kid, it felt awful to have to go to school rather than spend my time in Shao Lin.
You don't need to practice heavy, fight oriented figures to practice martial arts too.
I'm a Zen practitioner for ~4 years, and my master is also started to mix qigong into the practices. I also dance (tango), and there's awful lot in common with qigong about body control, movement and balance.
There's an old proverb: "A good dancer is a good fighter, and a good fighter is a good dancer."
If I was a physicist I'd say both are experiment teachings about time and space.
It's also striking how it teaches you complex limb chains efficiency, that's the only way to only use the minimal amount of energy per effort. It's all intertwined.
While we were chatting with our master, art and martial arts came into subject. It turns out that practitioners also practiced classic arts (music, painting, dancing, drawing, calligraphy, etc.) during their training. It's considered a catalyst and an essential part of the training, because it promotes calm, focusing and fine work. It also balances the more outward/powerful side of the energy.
As a developer, I consider coding as an art. Writing code with the same concentration and calmness both accelerates the development of the code and really settles some of the dust which practice inevitably stirs up.
Really, everything is much more connected than it seems. Please don't give up drumming.
the other art idea is interesting, because no matter the field, the sensitivity required to feel good and do good is about the same, just through different senses (finger, ear, etc).
Drumming can be as minute as painting or clockwork (and I can't give it up, I love it too much, and bear in mind, I don't even own a drumset)
I'm a self motivated coder TBH. My day job is HPC cluster administration (the team is also fun), and I'm interested in high performance algorithms personally. I've also completed my MSc. and PhD, and developed projects which needs high performance algorithms and methods. I currently work on problems and projects of my own and write research papers occasionally, so I'm a happy camper.
> the other art idea is interesting, because no matter the field, the sensitivity required to feel good and do good is about the same, just through different senses (finger, ear, etc).
Far east practices help someone to build some enormous power, however this power needs to be controlled. Otherwise, it's nearly impossible to put it to good use. Other arts help developing this control via extreme concentration and with the requirement of fine and refined results.
>Drumming can be as minute as painting or clockwork...
There's no doubt about that. We (the double basses and tubas) always relied on drummers consistency as a backup metronome in the orchestra. Funnily there's a triple redundancy in that part of the orchestra. Double basses, tubas and drums all listen to each other to regulate their tempo. And there's the conductor, who acts as the authoritative metronome.
The notion of timing in a group of people is one very magical thing. I experienced it only once (the only time I got to play with other people) and it's hard to describe in words.
Unfortunately, it's very hard to describe with words, you need to experience/feel it. For a very simple analogy, it can be compared to force in the Star Wars universe. It manifests itself as confidence to the outside world.
If it's nurtured well, and one can get rid of its ego, this force makes people humble and able. Otherwise it makes them dominant and bully-ish. Latter one is damaging to both the person and its surroundings, while the former one can be used for creation and other good deeds easily.
It boils down to facing yourself and overcoming your problems with your "self". It's really borderline impossible to describe with words. So, it brings the subject to definition of Zen. :)
Zen is something which can not be written down or told with words. If it can be precisely described with writing or words, it's not zen.
> The notion of timing in a group of people is one very magical thing.
Precisely. :)
I'm from Turkey, my tango teacher is also from Turkey, and my master is from Korea. You can reach me via http://bayindirh.io
The human body is capable of really amazing things, and schools like this have been honing their pedagogy for thousands of years. If only Westerners weren't so darn skeptical about everything, then we'd have way more of that sort of thing over here.
I think the skepticism is pretty rational. There are plenty of people who talk about a bunch of rubbish that makes them invincible. Things have really got to be tried to be prove, you gotta walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
Modern martial arts has a great history of taking things that weren't initially thought to work, such as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, Judo etc, very seriously when they are proven to work.
The Chinese have become skeptical as well .
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2119375/nobo...
I think generally, evidence points to the contrary. It's amazing how quickly specific martial arts lose their fighting ability when realistic sparring/fighting is replaced with forms, meditation, light/no contact, etc.
See: 1993-1995 UFC competitions where traditional schools were destroyed by wrestlers, judoka, and BJJ.
In a surprising turn of events, a tournament organized in large part as self-promotion by Gracie family "proven" the effectiveness of their martial art.
If you don't have good evidence to support your claims, the onus is on you to find better evidence, not on everyone else to provide evidence to the contrary.
He literally gave reasonable evidence to support his claim. The reply made a conflicting claim with no evidence, OP simply, respectfully, asked for evidence.
Yeah, the early UFCs were a commercial for the Gracie's BJJ, but there is no sign or credible claim that it was rigged. Royce Gracie won UFC 1, 2, and 4 over the course of 13 months. After that it was mainly wrestlers.
This isn't antagonistic, I would also like to see if there was a similar competition where 'traditional' martial arts fared better.
But after getting my clock cleaned in a few friendly-ish matches with local boxers and judoka - and after seeing the same results with the far-superior practitioners in the early UFC - I was forced to admit that I had been absolutely wrong about the practicality of my art. My fellow kung fu practitioner (who participated in some of these matches) sparred a boxer, got destroyed, and said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I could totally pulled off some really sweet palm strikes if he hadn't kept punching me in the face for, like, the entire match."
An art practiced in a live manner with a resisting opponent seems to _always_ be more effective in real life, even if it's somewhat handicapped by rules of sport.
Specifically, about six months into studying judo (after switching from kung fu), I got into an altercation outside of a bar. A larger man threw a punch at me, and I instinctively clinched. I was scared shitless and exactly zero of the fancy kung fu techniques of the previous three years came to mind. Instead, the judo techniques I'd trained for much less time - but under conditions of resistance and fatigue - basically activated themselves and my panicked mind just observed as my body dropped the guy onto pavement with a simple drop-knee shoulder throw. Fight over.
It remains one of the most important lessons I've learned about martial arts and the human mind in general: the unconscious mind is in control. And it's less flexible than the thinking mind, but when it's trained appropriately for the situation at hand, it will respond with a speed and certainty (especially when fueled with adrenaline) that feels preternatural.
If the ridiculously small sample size, questionable sampling technique and the fact that one of the participants was part of the school/family that organized the whole event doesn't disqualify early UFCs as "evidence" in your eyes, then it's pretty clear you are simply want to confirm your biases.
>This isn't antagonistic, I would also like to see if there was a similar competition where 'traditional' martial arts fared better.
What's stopping you? Search for "open martial arts tournament". Good luck verifying whether participants are actually proficient in the art they claim to represent, though.
Also, not "no holds barred," whatever that means, but you can call boxing a traditional martial art if not an Eastern one, and Floyd Mayweather absolutely dominated Conor McGregor in their one matchup. Naturally, Floyd would have gotten killed in an MMA match with McGregor, but that's another answer.
Every single UFC tournament has been won by wrestlers, sambo fighters, and bjj fighters, with the exception for UFC 3 where Steve Jennum (Ninjitsu) was an alternate and fought in the finals, where he won by a sloppy armbar.
The upperweights are similar. Historically dominated by wrestlers and grapplers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UFC_champions#Lightwei...
Ever heard of confirmation bias? Well, you're engaging in it right now. If winning an early UFC is "evidence" of MA effectiveness (which I don't think it is) then Steve Jennum's victory should be accepted as "evidence" that Ninjitsu is effective. But you've just offhandedly dismissed it.
This a common pattern. Often, when a practitioner of traditional martial arts wins an MMA fight of any sort, MMA fans proclaim it "doesn't count" because of one of the following:
- It supposedly didn't look like their style of fighting.
- They cross-trained in other martial arts.
- The opponent wasn't "good enough" or the match wasn't high-level enough.
On the flip side, the same fans don't seem to care at all whether BJJ people or wrestlers cross-train, whether their actual performance "looks" like their style, or which techniques they used to win. Again, confirmation bias all around.
If eye-gouging, ear-biting, headbutts, groin-tearing, etc. were allowed, most of BJJ's techniques would be rendered moot, just like allowing grappling obsoletes most of boxing's techniques.
Completely not true. In the UFC if a person sits guard the standing practitioner can force the ref to stand the guard player up. (Heavily favors a striking based martial art). If there is a temporary lull in action on the ground the ref has the discretion to stand the fighters back up (also favors strikers)
In the early days of the UFC headbutts were allowed so those didn’t really seem to get in the way (they are allowed and practiced in Sambo as well) and finally try to the gouge the eyes of a BJJ black belt (or blue belt for that matter). Bas Ruten actually answers this rebuttal hilariously in an interview I watched years ago.
I’m confident krav-maga gurus would still get mollywhopped if the UFC completely threw out their rule book.
I really don't think hardly anybody in the developed world is ever going to face a true combat situation where they can actually use their empty-hand skills. It means they couldn't run away, lost their gun, and couldn't find a improvised weapon. The actual military doesn't train it any more other than for confidence. When you train MMA, you're really training for MMA competitions, not for any kind of real-life combat situation, cuz MMA won't help you there.
We did do bare-knuckle, few-rules sparring in Merpati Putih and it was legit my favorite thing to do. We hit and got hit hard, but I didn't get near the amount of sparring time I wanted. Even so, I'd have put my MP skills against anybody else's in a typical bar fight. Not now of course, those days are long long gone. My survival strategy these days is to de-escalate, and if that doesn't work, submit, and if that doesn't work, go momma bear and hope I survive.
I disagree with this. It can certainly be true if you are in a situation where guns are common (eg. Texas). But the majority of people are in a situation where guns are not available. You should train with what you have available, and for self defense, with what you are likely to have in a normal day. Luckily for us where guns are not available, running away is the best option!
"When you train MMA, you're really training for MMA competitions, not for any kind of real-life combat situation, cuz MMA won't help you there."
Whilst I don't 100% agree (I think training mma will help a bit), you bring up a really good point. That there is a huge difference to learning to fight for a competition, and learning to fight for self defense. And like you said, de-escalation, and situational awareness, are the best course of action.
Its usually the best option even where guns _are_ available (even in Texas). Unless a shooter is an outstanding shot or very close, its hard to shoot a running person.
A good rule for some is, if the distance from an active shooter is less than 20 feet and there is nothing between then attack, otherwise run away. FWIW I always carry a knife.
See Tueller Drill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill
Spending 10000 hours palm fisiting a piece of steal in a quiet room after working on your breathing for 30 seconds has no practical application in these situations.
Spending 10000 hours properly escaping someone fully committed to strangling you while they have you mounted, or better yet preventing that situation from occurring with takedown defense / offense and effective clinching has a variety of practical applications in these situations.
(Biased BJJ practitioner)
The reason you've never been in a street fight is because you don't seek them out and know how to avoid them. This is not a skill any martial art will teach you and if that's what they are teaching you, you're getting ripped off.
I'll never forget the advice that a Russian ex-military martial arts instructor gave our group of Systema trainees in the late 90s, after a hard day of punching, kicking, bayonet-fighting, etc. Context: someone had asked him a cringey, noob question like, "What's the ultimate, most dangerous technique?"
He thought a minute and said, “To train hard makes one safer in all situations. But no technique is perfect, and of course a gun can kill anyone with just this [gestures with a bayonet]. So the best rule to stay safe is this: Don’t go to bad places with bad people.”
Dude had a big-ass knife scar on his forearm from Chechnya. He knew about bad people and places.
All this talk about staying safe is just missing the point entirely. You'll probably never face a violent situation that would require you to even run away from it. The cool factor is really all that's left. And the discipline and health and meditation. And these things are really awesome in and of themselves. They'll help you in your life way more than whatever minuscule safety tips you pick up along the way.
The only thing you ever really fight is yourself.
> You'll probably never face a violent situation that would require you to even run away from it.
. . .this simply hasn't been my experience in life. Granted, I chose to work as a bouncer for a while, but I come from a backwoods area of the Southern US with no shortage of alcohol- & poverty-fueled violence.
I'm happy that you've lived in safer places, but realize that your experience isn't universal.
And you're just making my point for me, that martial arts training increased your confidence, and that made you not a target and gave you an appreciation for how horrible real violence is. The actual contents of the training don't really matter as much as these other things.
When I'm walking in a dangerous area, or even a safe area, I always look directly at all who approach in the other direction, from afar. I intentionally look friendly, but ready for a confrontation. Anybody who looks even slightly troublesome gets a head to toe scan, not because I intend to do anything with the information but rather to signal that I'm not going to be an easy victim.
Troublemakers, muggers, beggars, prostitutes, pushers are just like you and me: they are looking for an easy job. If you act - not look but act - like you would be difficult to handle then they will look for another victim.
Oh, and I should mention that vigilant situational awareness had saved me from many more speeding electric bikes than terrorists. Nice side benefit.
I went to a very strenuous and traditional Tae Kwon Do school as a kid in a diverse semi low-income neighborhood. I had no delusions that it was teaching me how to fight well in MMA or a street fight. Situational awareness, lack of ego, and running are more important for self-defense anyway.
I got into great shape, became flexible, learned body awareness (forms are good at this), breathing, and it really helped me develop a lot as a person and forever recognize the importance of physical health and humbleness. It was a very welcoming family environment with people from all ages and ethnicity and everyone had so much respect for each other. I still visit my master when I see my parents and its such a blessing. I come back nearly 15 years later and it feels frozen in time in the best way. I'm a little sad to see MMA gyms take over, but I think this school was a rarity even when I grew up. My master spent his entire life doing Judo and TKD and had 30+ years of experience in each.
We sometimes practiced Tae Kwon Do the Sport. Its what you see in the Olympics. Its not about real fighting, its just a sport and a very small aspect of the rest of the training. The other bonus is you don't get CTE from practicing unlike MMA. (at more competitive levels knockouts do happen, but there is headgear and no head punching)
Nothing has made me sadder moving to the software industry then how I let it sever my connection to physical arts. I'm not blaming the industry, it was my own time management and habits. Now, I saved enough to take a year off doing cheap travel in the US and I plan to spend a few months going back to my home gym. I feel so grateful.
I just found having a full time job made it hard to get in consistent workouts that weren't just showing up to a gym. I had a work schedule that was shifted late for commute reasons so I found it hard to hit class times consistently. If I didn't eat enough that day I could still go to a gym and do a light workout. If I messed up my eating schedule and had to go to a intense class, that just wouldn't work out since I couldn't eat too soon before class or go when I hadn't eaten enough.
I looked at jiu jitsu gyms since that's a consistent experience I enjoy and there are lots of gyms. Its pricing is kinda steep if your not committed to going a lot. I find that more traditional martial arts gyms really vary for me depending on the culture and instructor and haven't tried to shop around for those as much.
These are the only rational reasons. You'll maybe be in one or two violent situations in your whole life (maybe a few more if you don't know how to, ya know, run away from them) and it's a hundred to one that those situations will call for empty-handed fighting.
Spending multiple hours a week training for something you have maybe one in a thousand chance of actually using productively isn't the smartest thing to do with your time. If you think you're doing anything more than staying in shape and building discipline, you're fooling yourself.
This wasn't intended to be an argument, btw. Just hammering the point home for anyone else thinking empty-handed martial arts is a viable self-defense strategy.
To dream of a day when a society of humans all have such capability!
There is a huge political controversy in the kung fu world that this article doesn't address, which is the Chinese government's perceived hostility to the idea of letting its citizens train to really fight, for pretty obvious ideological reasons.
Essentially, the claim you will hear from some Chinese masters (often part of the diaspora) is that while the Communists discovered that the veneration of martial arts was too deeply engrained in the culture to eradicate, they could transform people's idea of martial arts itself into something more like dance or a gymnastic performance. They did this through the creation and control of various wushu institutions and the transformation of the Shaolin Temple into a training ground for a performance troupe (I said it's a controversial view).
In particular, according to this view, the ancient legends associated with the Shaolin temple allowed the government to create something totally new, that people would nonetheless perceive as part of an old "kung fu tradition."
There's only one really good, trustworthy book out there (that I know of) on the Shaolin temple. It's called The Shaolin Monastery, and it's by a professor of East Asian Studies named Meir Shahar. Definitely worth a read if you're interested in learning more.
More serious training can be had at Wu Dang.
Anyone have a mirror?
Albeit they include artificial such scenarios by having a very rigid environment which is stressful and one has to learn to adapt to it.
So, practicing being calm there, I am not sure how that will translate to "the real world". Would really like to know about stories of people who practiced such things in their childhood or for a long period and how they are faring post that.