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Martial
Arts - Now and Zen
Empty Forever does not look like Jean-Claude
Van Damme. He appears frail and reticent, almost androgynous. That is, until he
crouches into the eagle posture for an all-points defense.
The 36-year-old is transformed instantly into a
kung fu warrior. The lightning speed of his movements makes one wonder if Mr.
Van Damme, for all his brawn and flashy kicks, would stand a chance.
His parents named him Shi Yongchuan. Empty Forever
was the name he took as a Buddhist monk. He is one of about 80 monks at the
Shaolin temple, about 40 miles south of the ancient Chinese capital, Luoyang, in
Henan province.
Empty Forever lives in a small room just outside
the temple compound, where some workers are busy laying pipes for hot water. It
was here, among the cypresses on Songshan mountain, that the two seemingly
incompatible disciplines of Zen Buddhism and kung fu were born some 1,500 years
ago.
Through the centuries, the two often have taken
separate paths, but for a true Shaolin monk, Zen and kung fu remain one.
Empty Forever came to the temple as a boy in the
early years of Mao Tse-tung's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He
remembers the dilapidated, deserted temple buildings engulfed by high grass. At
that time, only three monks lived at Shaolin.
Now some 30 years later, the temple complex is
thriving and bustling. Shaolin kung fu movies, with stars like Jet Li and Zhao
Wen Zhuo, have made the temple famous all over the world.
After a morning of meditation, kung fu exercises
and reading the sacred Buddhist texts, Empty Forever and his fellow monks
reluctantly but dutifully take turns as tourist props — manning the souvenir
shop and collecting admission tickets from the thousands of visitors each day.
The Chinese authorities keep a close eye on
religious activities, but are more than happy with the money the temple complex
generates as a place of pilgrimage for tourists and budding Bruce Lees. Every
year, thousands of boys from all over China are sent by their fathers to Shaolin
to learn kung fu at one of the 20 schools that have sprung up around the temple.
The discipline is military: four training sessions
a day, six days a week. The pupils sleep in large dormitories and do their
laundry by hand in the courtyard. Food is served outdoors all year, even when
the temperature is below freezing.
A movie, often a kung fu flick, is shown once a
week on a large, open-air screen. Between training sessions, the boys attend
some classes in Mandarin Chinese and mathematics, but nothing to distract them
from the main subject: kung fu.
One of the foreigners who has traveled to Shaolin
is Gert-Jan von Kanel, 21, a Swiss Thai-boxing champion with professional fights
in Thailand on his resume. Now he wants to learn kung fu at the place of its
invention.
The training would focus on the basic Shaolin kung
fu styles, which according to legend were devised at Shaolin by the Indian monk
Bodhidharma. Each style mimics the movements and strategy used by a certain
animal — the tiger, eagle, snake, bear and dragon — to attack and to defend
itself.
"Defend yourself like a virgin, attack like a
tiger," is a well-known kung fu proverb from Shaolin.
According to tradition, Bodhidharma came to China
from India early in the sixth century A.D. to spread Buddhism. At Shaolin, he
founded the Zen sect, with its emphasis on introspection and solitary
meditation. What distinguishes Zen from other forms of Buddhism is the belief
that enlightenment can be instantaneous and unexpected.
For nine years, it is said, Bodhidharma sat in
meditation, in a cave on the mountain above the Shaolin temple. His shadow, the
story goes, has made a permanent imprint on the rock wall, and today that piece
of rock is on display on the temple grounds.
When Emperor Wen Di of the Sui dynasty (581-618),
a fervent Buddhist, donated a large tract of land to Shaolin, the temple's
wealth began to grow. A guard of monks trained in the arts of Shaolin kung fu
was formed, and soon became famous for its fighting skills.
In the subsequent centuries, Zen Buddhism and
Shaolin kung fu both spread to Japan and other parts of Asia. At the zenith of
the Shaolin temple's fame during the Yuan dynasty (1280-1369), when Genghis Khan
and his Mongols ruled China, more than 20,000 monks meditated and trained at
Shaolin.
The temple's fortunes later began to wane, and
declined gently through the Ming and Qing dynasties. In 1928, Shaolin was looted
and burned down. After the revolution in 1949, the few remaining buildings
continued to decay, as the new communist regime suppressed Christianity,
Buddhism and Confucianism.
Today, all the important temple buildings have
been rebuilt and the monks are allowed to practice their religion in relative
peace.
Each morning, the grounds surrounding the temple
are a humming sea of boys kicking heavy sandbags, training in kung fu with
swords and other weapons, and hardening their bodies with all manner of
exercise.
The little street leading down to the temple is
lined with small shops selling kung fu equipment. In the alleys between the
dormitories of the kung fu schools, long lines of brightly colored clothes and
newly washed sneakers hang in the sun to dry.
Mr. von Kanel's dream is to train with one of the
monks inside the temple compound. For the time being, he is training at the Ta
Gou Wushu school, the largest in Shaolin. He plans to stay one year.
Getting a chance to learn directly from a monk is
not easy, however. Most are withdrawn, well aware of the myths spread by movies
about the Shaolin monks' incredible strength and fighting skills.
To train with a monk, you first must befriend him
and earn his trust, something only a handful of outsiders have ever managed to
do.
If and when Mr. von Kanel is accepted as a
disciple, he will have to awaken every day at 4 a.m., which is when the monks
rise to meditate and practice kung fu.
The purpose of Zen meditation is to pacify one's
soul in order to be able to help other people carry the burdens of life, and
eventually to be liberated from this world, explained Empty Forever. He has been
to Tibet and would like to travel to other temples and Buddhist holy places in
China, but lack of money makes it difficult.
Buddhist countries like Thailand and Laos have a
tradition among people to take good care of monks on pilgrimages, but that
custom is a thing of the past in China.
Empty Forever is not complaining. After all, this
winter he slept in a radiator-heated room for the first time in his life. - By Erling Hoh
Washington Times
, National Post
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