Om and the Himalayas

I was doodling yesterday and I found myself drawing the "Om" symbol without realising it. It caused me to remember last year when I was in India I stayed in a little guesthouse on the side of a mountain high in the Himalayas. The head of the family was a very nice man called Mr Prakash-ji (Ji is added at the end of Indian names to show respect). He was a very spiritual man who practices yoga and meditation. All the food served in his guesthouse is vegetarian and organically grown by his own family, and all the water used, even for washing pots, is Himalayan spring water, which flows freely from the mountain. Every morning some of us would get up early to meditate with him and he would also talk to us about the nature of our mind. The type of meditation we practiced was a type of transcendental which used chanting "Om" out loud. Om is made of the sanskrit particles A, U and M. A represents that which has form, U represents the formless, and M represents that which is neither form, nor formless.

He said that the mind is like a crazy horse that runs wild. Meditation is like tying the horse to a pole. It will cause it to run around even more at first, circling the pole and getting restless, but eventually, it will calm and will become still. This stillness allows us to perceive Sunyata, or emptiness. However, we shouldnt dwell on the idea of emptiness, for then it becomes another form and is not truly empty. We should let it arise naturally.

I find it extremely hard to let my mind still, whenever I sit in meditation there I become aware of how busy my mind is, like the horse running round and round the pole, but I figure if I can sit long enough, then the horse will tire and rest.

befriending the local Taoist monks

Yesterday, me and some other English teachers went for a day out in the local Qingdao countryside. The first place we went was Xiao Long Shan, which is a small combined Taoist/Buddhist temple, just outside our local town of Chengyang. One of the teachers, Justin, speaks much better Chinese than me and we started chatting to a taoist guy there, who then took us to meet the head monk and several other monks and drink tea with them. So we sat down in an air-conditioned room with comfy sofas and a big TV in the back of the temple and drank tea and smoked cigarettes with the monks (well, I didnt smoke).

We chatted about several things for a couple of hours, with the help of a dictionary and then they showed us around the temple and blessed us in several different shrines. The monks explained that the reason the temple has taoist and buddhist monks and shrines is that they are both paths leading to the same goal. Noah, who is another teacher, is Christian, and so didnt want to bow to the shrines, which is understandable. The monks told us that all religions are equally great as they teach us to be better people and they all come from the same origin, which is Dao, the great unchanging Way, that guides the universe and regulates the balance of Yin and Yang. In essence this is the same idea as God, it only differs in that the Christian God seems to take a personal interest in you, whereas Dao is just a force.

Outside the shrine to Buddha was doves, one black and one white, just calmly sat either side of the entrance. They didnt fly away when we got close to them and inside was a buddhist monk reading scriptures and a mouse sat sitting on the floor. The mouse was not scared of people at all and the taoist monk said the mouse was "an jing" meaning "at peace". They were definitely both auspicious signs!

We then left the temple and the monks asked us to come and visit again and then we went to visit Mashan, which is a very small mountain with a couple of temples and a mysterious cave full of buddhist statues, which was also pretty cool.

A Second Meeting with Master Kwok Wan Ping

I had to return to Hong Kong to apply for a new visa for China. So I took the opportunityto meet with master Kwok Wan Ping again. However, this time my focus was on the Taoist martial art Ba Gua Zhang, of which Kwok Sifu is a respected master.
After warming up with some Wing Chun Chi Sau with his son, I told Sifu that I have become more interested in the internal arts, particularly Ba Gua, but that I hadn't found anyone in Qingdao who taught it. Ba Gua Zhang translates as 8 trigram palms, which refers to the 8 trigrams in Taoist metaphysics. The 8 trigrams are fire, earth, lake, heaven, water, mountain, thunder and wind. Each one represents a change in the flow of the cosmos and is named after its personality. For example, mountain doesnt literally mean a mountain, rather it represents the characteristics of a mountain: immovability, stillness. Each trigram is made up of 3 lines, which can be broken or unbroken (broken representing Yin, passive, soft and unbroken representing Yang, active, hard). Im not really qualified to go into detail about taoist cosmology, so for more detailed and accurate information look Ba Gua up on Wikipedia.
So Ba Gua Zhang is a system of internal martial arts based on these 8 changes in the universal flux. Sifu taught me the foundation of Ba Gua which is circle walking. You have a central object and you walk in a circle around it, always keeping your guard facing this centre. In application you would use just 1 or 2 of these circular steps to avoid an attack and at the same time move closer to your opponent. He also taught me a basic Jiben Gong excercise where you stand in Ma Bu and put a ball orobject in your hand and keeping your palm facing the sky, move it around your body. This strengthens your legs and especially your back and side muscles.
From this experience I learnt that internal doesnt neccesarily mean weak or soft, as Ba Guais very dynamic and intense and gave me a very good workout. Master Kwok explained that Wing Chun is very easy to learn and that is why it is so effective. But if you can dedicate enough time to Ba Gua, it is immensly powerful and is a very deep and rich martial art. He likened it to a very advanced version of Tai Ji Quan. I feel Wing Chuns main weakness is that it is very limited in that it doesnt give you a full range of movements and is not very dynamic. It needs to be supplemented with fitness programs, whereas more classical arts give you an intense workout.

lessons in discipline and perseverance with a master of Shandong Mantis Kung Fu

After the Tai Chi master returned to Jinan I decided to go to a park where Id heard I could find people practicing kung fu. I saw a couple of middle aged guys practicing Tai Chi and they told me they practiced with a master of Mantis and that he would come tomorrow. So the next day I went to the park at 5.30am and I saw a man in his late 50s doing Qigong. The 2 guys introduced him to me as Xu Jing Yi, the head of the Taiji-Meihua lineage of mantis in Qingdao. The first thing the master Xu asked me was what Ive learnt before and I told him just a little Wing Chun, to which he asked me to show him, so I ran through Chum Kiu, which he laughed at and said it is womens kung fu and that I first need to master Jiben Gong (basic body training) before I can learn specific styles. The 2 other guys told me master Xu also teaches Shaolin Quan and Chen style Taiji Quan.

So first he taught me Ma Bu (horse stance) and Gung Bu (front stance). He told me I must first master these before I can learn the other 6 basic stances and the kicks and strikes. I had to hold each stance as long as I could and once he was confident I could do it, he would show me the next one. This went on for a few weeks, master Xu was very strict and some mornings he wouldnt show me anything new (which meant I had not made progress) and other mornings show me 2 or 3 things. This was very tiring, I had to force myself out of bed every morning and I hated going, as my whole body was aching so much. Especially sometimes when master Xu didnt show me anything new, he would just leave me practicing the same thing over and over and I never got any encouragement. When I asked him how long I need to study basics he just told me "hen duo, hen duo" (a lot, a lot).

Last week he suddenly stopped me mid practice and told me to stand next to him and follow him and he then showed me the opening movements to a basic form of Shaolin Quan, and every morning since then he has shown me 3 or 4 more movements until I finally finished it.

Yang style Taijiquan with Master Zhang Qing Bao

I was walking back from my usual kung fu class, when I happened to see a big fat man doing Pushing Hands (Tui Shou) with another man and there was a couple of women watching as well as some other students practicing. I stopped and asked the women what style of Tai Chi it was and they replied "Yang Shi", which is the most popular style seen in the west and comes from the Yang family. Then one of the students came up to me and spoke in near-perfect English. It turned out he was Malaysian and had been studying with the master for 7 years as a "closed door student". He told me the fat man was called master Zhang and came from Jinan, another city several hours away, to teach in our local park once a month. He then invited me to push hands with the master, but I said I didnt know how and so he just told me to press my arm against his and try to keep my balance. So I did and the master just casually moved his arm and whichever direction he moved it, I would go flying. Then the Malaysian guy said to try and bend the masters fingers backwards and break them, and so I tried and with his finger he moved me around as if I was weightless. He explained that the more strength I used, the more I would fly back.

The next day I went back to learn more and then they began to explain in more detail the principles. The Malaysian guy said he had studied many different hard styles of martial arts including Muay Thai and Wing Chun and he had huge forearm muscles and the muscles in his hands were like little rocks. But he had given all that up as he felt the softness of Tai Chi was superior. He explained that the reason the master was completely soft and yet still able to move me around freely lay in his understanding of using his mind (the actual word he used was Qi, but in this case it was meant as mind power). He said that he put his intention behind me and then his body just followed this intention and so I was powerless to stop it. The result was I flew back. Then the master said to try my Wing Chun on him, and he showed how the classic Wing Chun strategy of pinning and hitting simultaneously with great speed didnt work as it was like trying to grab water, his arms just moved around mine so effortlessly and then followed a gentle push, which again sent me flying. my attempt to arm lock him also ended in me going flying.

Recently I have been focusing too much on hard training and I neglected softness. This experience had put me back in touch with the softer side of martial arts. A good martial artist should be balanced, developing both hard and soft so he/she can adapt to any situation easily. I have begun to take an interest in Tai Chi, but unfortunately after the mast returned to Jinan I couldnt find his students, but I did find a teacher of Chen style, which is not as soft as Yang style, but can generate explosive power through its softness.

learning kung fu from master Ho Zhi Yuan

When I first arrived in the town of Chengyang, just outside Qingdao, I thought I wouldn't find any martial arts here. The more I asked around, the more certain I was that this 15 year old modernly built mass of concrete apartment blocks and sterile parks was completely devoid of anyone with any connection to the traditional arts.

3 months later, my Mandarin teacher Eric, sent me a text message saying he had met an old man in the university who was teaching "the most useful styles of fighting". I had absolutely no idea what to expect, so the next day I set my alarm for 5am and made my way to the universities park. I got there and there was maybe 5 or 6 young Chinese guys stretching and circling their arms. After a while this small old man in his 70s with a big coat and baseball cap walked up to one of the guys and began correcting him. Everyone crowded round and greeted him with "Aah Shifu" and a bow. When he spoke, he had a calm confidence about him, and he spoke in a very thick Shandong dialect and was matter-of-factly with the usual self importance (not arrogance though) that Chinese masters usually have.

Shifu is in his 70s and has been learning martial arts since he was 7 years old. Doing the maths would mean that he learnt it in pre-communist China and so is a living link with a world which no longer exists. He has studied many styles, but his speciality is Mizongyi, the style made famous by Huo Yuan Jia. He doesnt teach us forms or endless repetitive drills, he teaches single techniques and their applications and then he will show us variations depending on how the opponent reacts etc. Most of the stuff is pretty basic and simple, hes never style specific, he will teach what he thinks works regardless of what style it comes from. He teaches us it is vital to always use your whole body in a movement, to use your waist to generate power and to only tense at the end of the technique. This force generation in Chinese is called Fa Jing. He also says you should be alive and flexible, ready adapt or change your movement at any moment, depending on what the opponent is doing.

He was critical of many Chinese martial artists these days, who only learnt forms and didnt dedicate time to stance training and force generation, as a result they couldnt fight because they didnt understand the meaning of the movements in the forms and they didnt have stable stances or power in their movements. You must always begin with practicing basics. First train your stance, then punches and leg stretches. You shouldnt learn the next thing until you can do the first. Proper training in horse stance (Ma Bo) will strenghen your legs, waist and back. Punches should use the whole body to generate power. Forms can come later, if you can do the basics well, that is the most important thing.

The Basic Theories of Tibetan Medicine

While In Tibet I went to a lecture on Tibetan Medicine. Its is a very interesting system and is almost unheard of in the West. It was first taught by Yutok Yonten Gompo in the eighth century, who combined Chinese, Ayurvedic and Persian medicine systems with the shamanic Tibetan system. The theories are all written down on the Four Medical Tantras. It embraces the Buddhist concept that illness is caused by the 3 poisons of the mind, ignorance, attachment and aversion. The Tantras can be broken down into Thangkas, many of which are theoretical diagrams and all the basics are represented by 3 trees.
The first tree has 2 trunks. The first representing a state of sickness and the second health, this is pictured above.
The first branch of the first trunk explains the 3 energies. Whereas in Chinese medicine there is two basic energies Yin and Yang, in Tibetan theory there is 3-Loong, Tiba and Bigen.
Loong is shown as blue and represents the nervous system, Tiba is shown as yellow and represents cold and Bigen is white and represents heat.
The second branch has 7 leaves all representing the 7 bodily functions and the third shows the 3 excretions.
A Tibetan doctor will use 3 ways to observe a patient: visual, looking at tongue colour and urine. Touch, by the pulse. And talking to the patient to find out about lifestyle.
In Tibetan medicine prevention is better than cure. So the first step would be to try and prevent an illness before it happens, the second step would be through herbs and the final step would be through acupunture with golden needles or massage etc.