Fate

Well I took a nice long break from writing. Actually it took me six days to delete all the unopened emails in my box. I also went up north for a few days where I stayed close to a wood burning stove at a Hippy hostel called Jug-Handle Creek Farm. Even considering the conspiracy theorists we shared a fire with, it was pretty sweet.

I would say my fate has been good, even princely perhaps. Most people don't want to believe in fate. They figure only silly people and Asians believe in fate. What is fate?

First of all I should point out that there are Daoist Precepts against predicting the future, and if that wasn't enough to convince you, there is a precept against making a living from fortune telling.

Let's start from what everybody has, a body. The body we get at birth is fate. Yes it may make a difference if your mother ate a lot of rocky-road ice cream during her pregnancy, but there are still some basic parameters that will determine your body type. True, it matters to some degree what we eat over 20 or 30 years. But we don't actually have direct control of our appetite.

Appetite is a key concept in understanding how fate relates to martial arts. Everybody gets hungry, everybody has an appetite, just like everybody gets angry, everybody has aggression that can explode.

Part of growing up is a process of refining our appetites. It's a touchy thing we don't have direct control over, but you can make yourself sick of even the most tasty dish by eating it every night for a week. Imagine how bad tuna casserole would be after eating it six times in a row. Likewise, if you deprive yourself of chocolate for a couple of months and then accidentally bump into a friend eating a bar of Scharfenberger's.... They'll be lucky if they get to keep half.
If you have a wide range of food choices and you understand the different qi qualities of those foods and how to combine them, you can really start to play with your appetite. The qi quality of a particular food refers to the categories of foods which have a similar effect on your body and your appetite. So cabbage and kale are pretty similar while chocolate is in a category by itself (Yes, I agree that carob is good, but it is not chocolate).

The body we have is pretty much fate. But it is a kind of flexible fate. Meaning it is unlikely that I'm ever going to have long sharp teeth, but if tattoos got old and teeth sharpening became like the new hip urban craze, I could at least sharpen my teeth. We do have some control over what we want to eat, but a lot of it is fate. If you are Polish and you haven't had black bread and sausage in like a year, just me saying this is going to make you jones for it. Polynesians and pineapple, Norwegians and lutefisk.

Martial arts work the same way. You have a body that wants certain kinds of movement, it wants certain kinds of stillness too. It's like an appetite. If you have a wide range of training options and you understand how they will effect your body, you can play with that. What you do everyday will actually change what your body wants. A great deal of it is just fate, but there is also room to play around.

Where we live, the kind of gongfu we practice, the languages we speak, what we eat for breakfast--as humans we have some flexibility up to a point, and no doubt you can move to a foreign country, learn a new language and forsake you grandmothers recipe toffee, but most of us, most of the time, have a fate, a rhythm, a set of patterns that make us feel comfortable.

A Golden Thread

There is a common taijiquan metaphor that practice is like making silk brocade interwoven with golden threads.

Brocade has been found in tombs sealed airtight with clay and water dating back to the Fifth Century BCE (or there abouts) in what was then the Chu kingdom. Brocade is a type of woven fabric which can display different images depending on the angle of the light. See this Archeology PFD.

Probably the most widely practiced sinew lengthening routine is called 8 Silken Brocade. Following the metaphor, it has eight movements which reveal eight different images of what the human body can do.

The metaphor of the golden thread is absolutely key to understanding how to practice taijiquan. Each day when we practice we begin with some idea about what we are going to do. That idea may be very complex, or it may be as simple as "I'm going to make circles with my arm and try to make it look like it does when my teacher does it." But during practice, you happen upon some feeling that is new.

Perhaps on this particular day it is a feeling of connection, or a feeling of softness, it could be anything. The first time you feel it, it will feel subtle, even delicate, like a very fine golden thread. If you don't practice the next day, you will certainly have forgotten what the feeling was and how you got to it. Even if you do practice the next day, the feeling may elude you. Or you may refresh this new feeling for a few days, but then you have a wild night and the next morning you forget to look for that golden thread and by the next day it is gone. By the next week it is forgotten.
If you do manage to hang on to one of those new feelings (those subtle golden threads) for a few weeks of practice it will become less subtle and easier to reproduce.

To truly practice Taijiquan or any internal art is to look everyday for the golden thread you felt the day before and to slowly weave it day after day into the brocade that is your whole practice. Eventually these fine threads weave together into pictures that become so a part of you that they shimmer in and out of focus continuously like images on a flexible piece of brocade in changing light.

Lian Gongfu

In Chinese it's not correct to say "I am studying Taiji (or Tai Chi)." First of all Taiji is a cosmological principle, so it is like saying, "I'm studying the ocean." Yeah but what part of the ocean? The correct term is Taijiquan, which refers to the art, which is itself a type of gongfu (or kungfu). But the Chinese word for study xue, is not used when referring to types of gongfu. The correct term is liàn.

Gongfu, as I have said before, means meritorious action, or acts or merit. Liàn is often translated "practice or train," as in "I practice gongfu." The character for liàn is made up of the characters for "silk floss" and "card," implying a sorting out process. If we look at the homonyms for lian we see that it means to link together, chain, to connect, a continuous flow, ripples, to refine (and thus "lotus" because these flowers are purity that rises up from the muck), and to smelt ore.

Lian actually means is "to link together in one continuously unending process." "liàn gongfu" means to continuously link together acts of merit. The word liàn is used for all types of gongfu.

So next time someone says they are learning or studying Taijiquan, say: "You mean you are linking, sorting out, refining and smelting together acts of merit into one continuous flow?"

"Yo, that's fresh!"

Why Sit-ups Make You Fat

Many people want to know why sit-ups make them fat.

The first reason is that building up muscle on your belly will make your belly bigger.

The second reason is that when you stop doing sit-ups, the muscle will turn to fat.

Some people start doing sit-ups because they are trying to get their belly to go away. If your belly is big because of a curve in your spine you will be effectively compressing your spine in order to make your belly look smaller. This compression leads to a bigger curve so it is a self-defeating process. (Also known as "pooching syndrome.")

Another possibility is that your belly is big because you are over-eating. If you are over-eating and you do sit-ups, the extra exercise will "tonify" your appetite causing you to want to eat more! Yum, yum. (This is often conflated with edema or bloating which can have a variety of causes, none of which are helped by sit-ups.)

Another possibility is that you do sit-ups to make your back rigid so that you won't feel a chronic injury. This sort of works but the problem is that it makes you insensitive so you are more likely to injure yourself again in the future (and more likely to over-eat).

Making one's belly and back rigid is popular with some athletes because they are always getting injured from direct impact. If two balls of equal mass collide, the denser of the two will survive and the less dense body will disperse. (This is known on the school yard as the Blamo effect!) For instance, football players often disperse (detach) their retinas this way.

The Blamo effect always works! Its physics! The denser you are the better. Unfortunately there is no art in this. The quickest way to make your body dense is to fall really hard onto a surface like ice or concrete. (A couple times a day and you'll be lookin' like Schwarzenegger in record time. Warning: This may effect your brain.)

Some people like to wear their armor on the inside. Rather than picking up some leather or even chain-mail from the local Walgreens which has the benefit of being effective against sharpened steel, they have decided that they want armor 24/7. Yes, even in the shower! These fighter-exemplars are in constant fear of a surprise attack; they need not worry about over-eating because they are too scared to eat.

There is a group of martial artists who think that making the area between the ribs and the hips rigid will give them more power. The logic here, if we can call it logic, is that a rigid body moves as a single piece and is therefore able to use its whole weight for fighting. If by fighting they mean World Wrestling Federation body-slams, than they are indeed correct. However if your idea of fighting involves mobility, and the possibility of generating explosive power from all the soft tissue in your body, tight abdominal muscles will totally break your power.

Tight muscles reduce movement range and sensitivity. They cut off the flow of power from one part of the body to another and they require constant maintenance. The more alive your whole torso is, the more power and flexibility you will have.

Future Blog: Why are/were some famous Taijiquan masters fat?

More in the News

Here is one of those cutesy articles that the New York Times Magazine likes to print. It is called The Newest Mandarins. The article is optimistic about one of darkest subjects in history: Is it possible for people to think for themselves.  (I tend to be more negative on this account.)

On the word yong (courage), Lei Bo cited chapter seven of The Analects, where Confucius told a disciple that if he “were to lead the Three Armies of his state,� he “would not take anyone who would try to wrestle a tiger with his bare hands and walk across a river [because there is not a boat]. If I take anyone, it would have to be someone who is wary when faced with a task and who is good at planning and capable of successful execution.� No one ever put Confucius in charge of an army, said Lei Bo, and Confucius never thought that he would be asked, but being a professional, he could expect a career either in the military or in government. And his insight about courage in battle and in all matters of life and death pertains to a man’s interior: his judgment and awareness, his skills and integrity. This was how Lei Bo explored the word “courage�: he located it in its early life before it was set apart from ideas like wisdom, humaneness and trust. He tried to describe the whole sense of the word. The business students and their teacher were hooked. They wanted Lei Bo back every week for as long as they were reading “The Art of War.�

The one thing I have to add to the this discussion is that in my mind "courage" is related to "compassion." This is important because the word Compassion is a key concept, and a key precept, in Daoism.  The word compassion in Chinese is made up of the  characters for roughness and heart.  The Daoist idea of compassion is that it is natural courage, the courage a mother tiger uses to defend her cubs.

Surrender

The rules:

• Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog.


• Share 7 random or weird things about yourself.


• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.


• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Renli and Martial Development both tagged me with this Ponzi scheme.

I've already revealed so much about myself on this blog I'm really going to have to scrape the barrel to come up with something.

1. I keep a list of things next to my computer that I am absolutely forbidden to talk about on my blog.  If I were to reveal these things my readers would be deeply shocked!


2. My mother read to me every night until I was 8 years old, when I finally learned how to read.  We went to the library every week.  (See what I mean, bottom of the barrel.


3. I'm extremely vulnerable to getting Christmas carols stuck in my head, and I have trouble staying in key.


4. I can fall asleep easily, anywhere, anytime, and I do.


5. I am a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and horror movies in general) I even threw a Buffy party where people dressed up as their favorite characters, played the game "reveal your secret sexual Buffy feelings,"  And auctioned off a real retractable stake actually used on the set of Buffy.


6. I didn't watch any Televisions from age 13 to 28.  During that period I went on a 10 year Hollywood movie fast as well.


7. I've never lost a fight to the death.

I've got to run out right now and see a Hollywood movie, but I know I still have to "Tag" some other people.

We're in the News

The article I have copied at the bottom of this post is from the Wall Street Journal. It is about the battle between Wushu and Shaolin, which is a "fairly artificial" battle as Gene Ching of Tai Chi Kung Fu Magazine puts it. Wushu is the Communist version of the Republican Era (1906-1948) idea of Guoshu.

Wushu means "martial arts," Guoshu means "national art." The idea of a national art was that a strong country is made up of physically strong and healthy individuals. This was meant to counter the Japanese propaganda that China was "the sick man of Asia," and to do it with "non-Western" exercise. (Really I kind of Chavanism, but one which has had a positive effect on world culture.)

Before the Cultural Revolution (1967-1977) Wushu was exclusively a performing art for kids and a health practice for young adults. No sparing competitions. I would say that martial arts were illegal during the Cultural Revolution, but that would imply there was actually a legal system. During the Cultural Revolution anyone practicing or even thinking anything "traditional" was a target for public torture.

The claims made in the article about Shaolin should be taken with a grain of salt. I think the actual Buddhist lineages of Shaolin fled China around 1900. The 12 or so people who were occupying the Temple at the end of the Cultural Revolution are a question mark.

The eclectic nature of Shaolin Zen is an interesting topic I hope to learn more about some day, but Gongfu or (Kungfu if you prefer) did not come from Shaolin. Gongfu means "meritorious action," and it has been part of the religious life of China for a very long time, certainly for a thousand years, probably more than two thousand. Gongfu has always been a public demonstration of dedication to a larger body (family, village, state), it has always had a fighting implication, and it has always been practiced with wide variation and local innovation. It has alway been part of ritual procession and festivities, which by their nature include some troops and exclude others. Why should the Olympics be different?

Shaolin Temple had gongfu. Perhaps it had some very good gongfu too. What was unique about it is that you didn't have to be born in the Temple to learn it. You could shave your head take the vows, carry water and scrub floors for a couple of years and then they would teach you! Normally one had to be born (married or adopted) in a Village in order to learn a local style(s) of gongfu. But gongfu was everywhere.

Kung Fu Monks Don't Get a Kick Out of Fighting  (if you get the WSJ)


Read the whole article by clicking below: 

	Kung Fu Monks Don't Get a Kick Out of Fighting Famous Temple Spurns Beijing Games, Sparking Trash Talk From Rivals By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and JULIET YE December 14, 2007; Page A1 Kung fu master Shi Dechao can swing his 22-pound "monk's spade," an ancient Chinese shovel, like a majorette twirling a baton. His lightning punches, in a style the ancients called Iron Fist, generate a thunk! straight out of kung fu movie sound effects. A powerful grunt punctuates his routine. But Dechao, and most of the other martial monks at the 1,500-year-old Shaolin Temple in China's central Henan province, decline to join in one of the biggest kung fu battles of modern times -- a competition to be staged in tandem with next year's Olympic Games in Beijing. Clad in saffron Buddhist robes, Dechao insists that real kung fu monks don't fight. They meditate and practice kung fu to reach enlightenment. "Every fist contains my love," says the 39-year-old Dechao, also known as Big Beard. The Shaolin Temple's decision to stay out of the competition, to be held at the same time as the Olympics and passing out medals of its own, made headlines in China. And it has rekindled a disagreement familiar from the movies: Is kung fu a form of devotion, a style of fighting or both? Zen Buddhism and kung fu have long made an unlikely pair. As legend has it, Zen's founder, an Indian missionary to China named Bodhidharma, worried that too much seated meditation would make monks flabby. So he taught the monks in Shaolin a set of 18 exercises codified as "Yi Jin Jing," or "Muscle Change Instruction," many of them based on animal movements.   WSJ's Geoffrey Fowler reports that the Chinese government wants to promote kung fu as a sport in the Olympics. But, the famous monks of the Shaolin Temple refuse to fight. "Kung fu is Zen practice in motion," says Shi Yongxin, the abbot of Shaolin, sitting in his office next to a sculpture of a meditating Buddha. When he moved to the temple from a devoutly Buddhist family in 1981, Yongxin learned to add kung fu moves to his meditation. Over the centuries, the otherwise peaceful monks have occasionally used their physical prowess in battle to defend the temple and its allies. But they didn't always like it. In lore, the monks went to battle only when they were facing a life-or-death crisis and had no alternative. Now, a debate over the Olympics has transported the classic kung fu monk's fight-or-pray dilemma to the 21st century. For the Games, the Chinese have backed a committee-regulated version of kung fu split into two competitions. One, dubbed taolu, is a sort of rhythmic gymnastics in fast-forward. Individual athletes are scored on the "power, harmony, rhythm, style and musical accompaniment" of their routines, which have names such as Lotus Kick and Dragon's Dive to the Ground. A second form of kung fu competition, called sanshou, involves fighting -- and a fair amount of protective padding. Kung fu itself is also known as wushu. Justin Guariglia Today, kung fu is practiced by more than 60 million Chinese and millions more around the world. At the International Wushu Federation's Ninth World Wushu Championships in Beijing last month, fighter Zhang Yong entered the ring to chants of "Go for it, China!" He won the gold medal in the 65-kilogram (143-pound) combat competition by striking his Russian opponent with a fierce combination of kicks and punches, at one point flipping the Russian into the air. "Sometimes I get hurt during the training," says the 24-year-old Mr. Zhang, a Muslim, pointing to a scab on his right eyebrow. Yet "wushu is something that starts with fighting and ends with spirit," he says. "This spirit isn't a religious concept, but rather love to the nation." To the monk Dechao, the spirit, or qi, in Shaolin Buddhism is embodied in breathing, not force. "I can practice kung fu internally while drinking tea quietly with my friends," he says. After the abbot publicly distanced Shaolin from the Olympics in October, Chinese bloggers and athletes began to suggest the monks are just scared they wouldn't win. At the competition, athletes said their sport was simply not comparable to Shaolin meditation. "We are the best wushu competitors," says Ma Lingjuan, the 21-year-old Chinese world champion in taolu. She has been practicing spinning and jabbing a spear since she was 10. "Our goal is the medal," she says. "The monks in the temple do it as a hobby." Yongxin, the abbot, says monks practice kung fu "with an understanding of Zen Buddhism and love of the temple. On the other hand, the athletes use wushu as a way to find honor. It is easy to tell which one is more sustainable and deep." Whether with blows or rhetoric, it seems, everybody is kung fu fighting. Controlling Kung Fu The government's efforts to standardize the diverse practice of kung fu were also designed to control it. After China's 1949 revolution, the Communist Party at first promoted martial arts but eventually grew leery of kung fu as a subversive self-defense practice. Fighters at Wushu championship in Beijing in November, and monk Shi Dechao (inset) During the Cultural Revolution of the '60s and '70s, the Red Guards attacked the Shaolin Temple and other religious orders. By the early 1980s, after centuries of unbroken master-to-student lineage, only a dozen or so monks lived at Shaolin. Outside the temple, though, traditional kung fu schools, not all of them associated with Buddhism, thrived. 'Chopsocky' TV In the 1970s and 1980s, a blizzard of "chopsocky" TV shows and films, such as the 1982 Jet Li film "Shaolin Temple," helped to sear the Buddhist legends into the popular imagination, both in China and abroad. The 1970s American TV show "Kung Fu" featured David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin monk who travels through the Old West armed only with his kung fu. In flashback scenes to the temple, his master teaches him to "avoid rather than check. Check rather than hurt. Hurt rather than maim. Maim rather than kill." Today, kung fu is practiced by more than 60 million Chinese and millions more around the world -- and its purpose remains a topic of debate. "The Shaolin Temple is only a building," says Kang Gewu, the secretary general of the Chinese Wushu Association. He points out that martial arts had existed in China for centuries before the Shaolin temple began practicing kung fu. He adds: "In our mind, wushu is a sport, not a religious practice." It can be both. The town around Shaolin is home to dozens of wushu schools, some employing monks from the temple who accept as students both the spiritually and competitively inclined. Meeting Place of Paradox "Shaolin is a meeting place of paradox -- tourism, Zen, military, sports, communism, martial arts, history," says Gene Ching, the associate publisher of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine in California. He thinks the debate between the monks and the athletes over spiritual affairs is "fairly artificial." For the temple, maintaining its image as the capital of kung fu is about both expanding its reach and paying its bills. Yongxin, who has been dubbed the "CEO abbot" in the press, has installed a spectacle of his own: a one-hour stage show featuring music by "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" composer Tan Dun and the kung fu skills of hundreds of back-flipping students. Tickets cost $32. Even as he distances himself from Olympic competition, "the abbot keeps this stereotype alive that kung fu is about fighting," says Justin Guariglia, a photographer who spent several years getting to know the monks and recently published a book, "Shaolin: Temple of Zen." The "real monks," he notes, are kept far away from the tourists. The abbot, periodically checking his cellphone during an interview, said the temple doesn't actually make that much money from the tourist activities. "What we have done is spread Buddhism and its spirit of universal love," he said. Another monk at Shaolin, named Bodhidharma after the Indian missionary, dismisses suggestions that the monks don't want to play because they are afraid they would lose. "Oh, lord," laughs Bodhidharma, who lives in Malaysia and visits the temple to meditate from time to time. "Monks have a very kind and patient heart. We could win that. But we don't want to hurt anybody." --Sue Feng contributed to this article. Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com and Juliet Ye at juliet.ye@wsj.com

A Scale?

The metaphor of the scale is used in martial arts a lot, particularly in the Taijiquan Classics. Most people presume that the metaphor refers to a Chinese business scale, which is in essence a lever with a basket or a weight on either end and a movable fulcrum.

The problem is it makes a lousy metaphor. In Taijiquan our weight does not shift back and forth like a lever. Perhaps like a tube of toothpaste, or a bag of something fluid, but not like a lever. Sure we can manipulate the fulcrum of two forces to throw someone, for that it could be an apt metaphor, but the metaphor it isn't used like that.

Louis Swaim translates: "Stand like a balance scale; active, like the wheel of a cart. Sink to one side, then follow. If double weighted, then one will stagnate...." Sounds fishy to me.

We are not talking about a scale as an object, we are talking about a scale as a function. The function of a scale is to represent things exactly as they are, with no mediation. Scales are honest. Scales are always appropriate.

If you put 5 pounds on a scale, it shows you 5 pounds, not 4.9, not 5.1. It adds nothing and it takes nothing away. When I practice Taijiquan, that is what I'm trying to do. If you give me 5 pounds, I simultaneously give you 5 pounds back. If you push me I don't resist, but I don't run away either. I respond exactly to what you give me, nothing gets in the way.

Method or Theory?

Is Taijiquan a method or a theory?

On the theory side of things there are the 5 Taijiquan Classics. To understand these short texts requires some cosmological background informed by Confucian thought and Daoist classics, most notably the Huainanzi.
But the Taijiquan Classics are mostly just lists of what to do or what not to do to achieve a somewhat elusive set of goals. Sure, to understand these lists you need to flush out the various metaphors used: Landscape, purification, water, pearls, coins on a string, a scale, following a compass, etc. But still, we are in essence dealing with a list of do's and don'ts, more indicative of a method than a theory.

After all, what's the goal again? To be weak? To be the greatest fighter on this side of the Golden Gate Bridge? To make clear commitments? To feel beautiful? To be so sensitive and intimate with your opponents that you know them deeply, but they can never know you? That's some weird stuff.

Oh yeah, and long life. Sounds good, but there isn't much theory there.

Some might argue that wuwei, non-aggression, is the theory. But I would say this: Taijiquan is an information storage system. It is a whole bunch of ideas, some of which fit well together, and some of which strain the boundaries of what can even be communicated between two people. For the most part these ideas are experiments which are meant to have some discrete result (which may or may not be part of a larger idea). So? Do the experiments and see if they are true. If they don't workout, discard them or, if you are a lineage holder, put them back in storage. That is the formula pure and simple. That's the only way it works.
Taijiquan is an experiment you do, on your own time! People who just go to a Taijiquan class a few times a week never actually learn. It is not something that can be spoon fed.

Milieu

I've been reading the book Qigong Fever, it's good, but I'm not ready to review it yet. However, part of the methodology of the book is to investigate the milieu which inspired the invention, expression, and propagation of qigong as a "movement."

I like this kind of thinking. When I was in high school I was in a School of the Arts and I did a lot of ceramics. I got really interested in Sung Dynasty (900-1200 CE) Chinese ceramics. Then I went to Australia where I had a ceramics teacher who was also totally into Sung Dynasty glazes and was trying to replicate the way they made them with natural local minerals (like ash from near by forest fires) and at the same time adding some scientific analysis.

I also got way into dance, dance history, and improvisation. What these two things have in common is milieu. Modern dance, for instance, came out of a very specific cultural milieu and I think it started to stagnate when that milieu ended. Sung Dynasty ceramics had huge cooperative workshops with dragon kilns that burn once a year up the side of a mountain. Each group got the right to fire its huge kiln from the imperial court which held regular competitions for its patronage. If your kiln won the competition, you supplied the entire royal family for a year or so until they had a new competition. This created a really competitive environment where everyone was making imperial quality work, but only one "kiln" was getting to sell it to the royal family so there was literally tons of extraordinary art work floating around. This milieu created the worlds first antique markets.

So when I was in my early twenties and studying gongfu 6 hours a day it occurred to me that neither my gongfu teachers, nor their teachers had lived in a milieu that was capable of inspiring the creation gongfu as I knew it (Shaolin, Taijiquan, Xingyi, Bagua).

I held and thought about that question for many years.  I was still asking that question when I really started getting into Daoist Religion.  (Daoism isn't directly responsible for the creation of gongfu, but it is in the mix.)

My point is this: The main reason I have been writing this blog for the last six months is to both explain what I have learned over the years about the milieu which inspired Chinese Martial Arts generations ago, and to create a new milieu which will re-inspire the arts.