Understanding Chinese Culture #2

Cyrille Javary has some interesting things to say about the concept of yin-yang:

Since the idea of duality is so familiar to us, we are often presented with lists of the opposite qualities of yin and yang, such as:

yin yang
dark light
cold hot
low high
night day
interior exterior
rest action

This kind of list may be helpful, but it has one serious disadvantage, and that is the implied existence of the verb "to be" connecting the headings with each of their attributes. This kind of copulative verb, which binds a subject and an object, does not exist in Chinese. A Chinese cannot say that yin is dark, cold, or low. He or she cannot therefore think that dark, cold and so forth, are characteristics of yin but only that they are the results that manifest because of its action. Yin is not dark, it is a movement of darkness; it is not cold but a tendency toward getting cold; it is neither interior nor at rest but rather turning inwards and slowing down. The best way to express this particularity might be to use the verb "to become" in place of "to be." Therefore, yang would not be light but becoming light; it is not hot, exterior, or action but is becoming hot, becoming external, or becoming action.

Yin and yang are the concerted movements of life and exist only within the dynamics that unite them. (Javary 1997, p.7-8)

Roger Ames adds something to this thought and returns us to the concept yet not-concept of Dao:

In fact, categories used to define a Chinese world are fluid, and must be seen as often crossing the borders of time, space, and matter in an unfamiliar way. Dao so understood offends against the most basic of Western cultural distinctions, mixing together subject and object, as well as things, actions attributes, and modalities. Dao is at once"what is" (things and their attributes) and "how things are" (actions and their modalities), it is "who knows" as well as "what is known." (Ames 1998, 27-28)

Referring back to the previous post, ....The way in which conduct resolves and rectifies qi implies at least a two directional quality of time. Such action does not require intentionality (yi), rather it is our true nature (de), it is wuwei. Our completely resolved ancestors are like a supportive background to our actions. Resolved ancestors express themselves through us effortlessly as appropriate conduct --gongfu.

Understanding Chinese Culture

The perfect expression of a Daoist practice is simultaneously resolving and inspiring. Inappropriate conduct leaves things (qi) unresolved. Appropriate conduct resolves things (zhengqi). Unresolved ancestors manifest through the actions of those still living -- their descendants. Thus, we can see religious merit or gongfu, as the practice of resolving our ancestors inappropriate conduct through our own appropriate conduct. (Taoism and the Arts of China)(Schipper p.49)
The primary purpose of a Daoist funeral is to bring resolution to the recently dead.  It's as if they were not quite dead yet.

We in the West find these propositions difficult to grasp because we see the universe in terms of independent creation, causation and agency. The notion of qi presupposes that all events/things are mutually self-recreating.

Roger Ames makes some salient points about the nature of Chinese thinking. We says that are always participants in the unraveling of traditional Chinese subjects, never 'objective observers.'

From the Chinese perspective, agents cannot be decontextualized and superordinated in any final sense; to identify and isolate an agent [re: divine creator] is an abstraction which removes it from the concrete reality of flux, exaggerating its continuity at the expense of its change. Since change is interior to all situations, human beings do not act upon a world that is independent of them. Rather, they are interdependent in the world in which they reside, simultaneously shaping it and being shaped by it. Order is always reflexive, subject and object, are not contraries, but interchangeable aspects of a single category in which any distinction between the agent and the action, between subject and object, between what does and what is done, is simply a matter of perspective. (Ames 1998, p.20-21)

Martial Arts approaches to Training

"Be uncontentious and no one can compete with you"  (Dao de Jing)

In recent years a lot of qigong that is popularly taught has been categorized as martial arts qigong.  (I think it is mistake to use this category in the first place, but if we do use it we will have to divide it up further.)  This would be qigong created by and for people who were put in the position of needing to fight.

Traditionally in China the army was filled by both volunteers and draftees.  Resisting the draft often carried the penalty of killing the resister's entire family, so Chinese armies often represented diverse segments of the population.  This fact and the cultural diversity of China naturally led to a wide diversification of approaches to the warriors' life.  People expected to have to go to war, some trained for it from an early age and some did not.  Again, differing views created different  approaches to qi gong, or in this case military training

For convenience, I've broke the topic up into three main traditions.
The first tradition is trance induced fighting and is very old.   The idea here is that winning is more important than living.  Winning is so good and loosing is so bad that it would be worse to come back a looser than to die giving it your all.   The best example of this is trance possession, war dances.  A milder form is the haranguing that happens at sporting events.

The second military tradition would be training to build stamina and resist pain.  If you imagine yourself suddenly drafted into the military at age 14, the sooner you could freely thrust a long heavy spear, the better for your survival.  Training with weights and qi gong practices like Iron-t-shirt and forearm conditioning are all good examples.

The third martial tradition is the so called neijia (inner arts) which includes taijiquan, xing yi and bagua.  This type has the flavor and reluctance characteristic of those who cultivate weakness.  In this tradition the battle field is viewed as an expression of qi.  The battle field substitutes for the body in which the smooth flowing of qi is a priority, not avoiding war, but being uncontentious.  Looking for resolution is different than trying to win, although winning may be necessary for your survival.  This is not a passive tradition, in fact attacking first can easily be the quickest cleanest resolution with the least loss of life on both sides. How this tradition came about is an interesting question I plan to continue exploring. Perhaps people who had been cultivating weakness, were drafted and this was a natural expression of their circumstance.  This third traditions takes the longest to develop usable skills, and seems like a privileged position with in a military world.

Chinese generals sometimes called themselves Daoists.   Perhaps they were trying to show affinity to certain chapters from the Dao De jing like the one at the top of this post.  There is no connection between generals who called themselves Daoists, and religious Daoist.  They had a completely different job description.

In reality, many training methods fall somewhere in between the three traditions I outlined above.  Shaolin quan is somewhere between the second and the third tradition, depending on how it is practiced.  Taiji quan can be practiced with flaring nostrils and ferocious growls.  It follows, of course, that in peoples attempts to preserve methods from generation to generation that these different traditions have often been combined or entangled, creating many hybrids and combinations of methods and views.

Rough and Tumble

The first four American Colonies, starting in the 1600's, had some pretty serious barehanded fighting that still influences how we think about fights today.

The first type of fighting was called a "Fair Fight" or sometimes "Queens Rules." It later became known as Kid-glove Boxing because of the soft goat skin gloves they wore.

The second was Wrestling, but it was pronounced "Wrasslin or "Russlin." Actually there were two types of wrestling practiced in early America. I quote from one of my favorite books Albian's Seed, Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer:

One was carefully regulated and elaborately staged in annual tournaments. The burly contestants commonly dressed in sleeveless vests, long tights tucked into stockings, and velvet trunks incongruously embroidered with delicate flowers.

It was a throwing game. If any part of your body besides your feet touched the ground you lost the bout.

Then there was another type of 'wrestling' which would begin with "bragging and boasting" and usually a bit of heavy drinking beforehand:

The...sport of bragging and fighting was also introduced to the American backcountry, where it came to be called "rough and tumble." ....it was a savage combat between two or more males (occasionally females), which sometimes left the contestants permanently blinded or maimed. A graphic description of "rough and tumble" came from the Irish traveler Thomas Ashe, who described a fight between a West Virginian and a Kentuckian. A crowd gathered and arranged itself into an impromptu ring. The contestants were asked if they wished to "fight fair" or "rough and tumble." When the chose "rough and tumble," a roar of approval rose from the multitude. the two men entered the ring, and a few ordinary blows were exchanged in a tentative manner. Then suddenly the Virginian "contracted his whole form, drew his arms to his face," and "pitched himself into the bosom of his opponent," sinking his sharpened fingernails into the Kentuckian's head. "The Virinian," we are told, "never lost his hold...fixing his claws in his hair and his thumbs on his eyes, [he] have them a start from the sockets. The sufferer roared aloud, but uttered no complaint." Even after the eyes were gouged out, the struggle continued. The Virginian fastened his teeth on the Kentuckian's nose and bit it in two pieces. Then he tore off the Kentuckian's ears. At last, the "Kentuckian, deprived or eyes, ears, and nose, gave in." The victor, himself maimed and bleeding, was "chaired round the grounds," to the cheers of the crowd.(p. 737)

Mixed Martial Arts..."is humanity itself compared with the Virginian mode of fighting," with its "biting, gouging and...you get the idea.

Walking #3 (Story)

In the religious Daoist tradition stories are considered qi transmissions. To study personally with a great bagua or qigong teacher is of immeasurable value but we can receive qi transmissions in many different ways.

Once during the Qing dynasty in China the Emperor and his courtiers decided to make a sport out of all the outrageous claims martial artist were making. They had many martial artists brought one by one to the palace and asked them to perform many feats, after which they were usually put to death.

The Emperor heard about a bagua master who people claimed could move any stone. So the Emperor had a huge stone brought into the courtyard using long levers and pulleys. He then had the famed martial artist brought to the palace. Upon seeing the challenge he asked to be given 24 hours and some torches to see by. Amused, the Emperor granted the request. The martial artist began crawling all over the of the stone, looking and feeling everywhere. 24 hours later the Emperor and his courtiers returned and demanded to see the stone moved. The martial artist then put one finger on one particular spot and using just that finger succeeded in pushing the huge stone all around the courtyard. The Emperor and his courtiers were so impressed that they granted him his life.

It seems that even stones have acupuncture meridians.

It is said that a bagua practitioner who has reached the height of mastery can step on a solid cobble stone and turn it to dust. I imagine that such steps are extremely light.
The adepts experience of the world is recreated in each step or gesture we make. Qi gong practitioners don't just re-learn how to walk, we are continuously re-learning how to walk. We are demonstrating true openness to the possibilities. The fruit of practice is that walking itself becomes unconditioned.

The Chinese Calendar/Almanac

Some guy named Jerome Weng in Singapore responded to my Youtube video African Bagua #1 with the following comment:

Bagua is a sequence of pairs to form 64 possible comination. That is related to I -Ching. SO what is it that all these matters swayed to African dance or Chinese Music. Please read and find out more of Ganzhi system found in Bagua. Basically the Ganzhi system, composing of the Ten Celestial Stems and Twelve Terrestrial Branches. The truth is the China has a strong link to Middle East, not Africa.

Ganzhi is part of the Chinese Calendar-Almanac which is the oldest continuously published book on earth. I have followed it closely for about 10 years. A closer look at the Tongshu (another of the many names for the whole calendar) will strongly support my case. One way to understand it is as a composite/synchronization of all the calendars used by all the different ethnic and regional religous cults of China and it's neighbors. It is a collection of all religions perceptions of time, (really!). So baguazhang is in a sense like the Calendar, a collection of all the different physiologies of trance practiced in China.
Within the Tongshu there are two time cycles that follow the Yijing (I-Ching). One takes a different hexagram each six days and goes through each line in sequence with the moon. Because the moon “math� doesn’t quite add up, some of the hexagrams are only five lines/days instead of six- the top line gets dropped.
The second cycle is not actually a 64 day cycle, it is a 72 day cycle which is tied to the sun and thus reverses the counting sequence on the solstices. It is a 72 day cycle because every eighth day is a divination day, 64+8=72.
For years I used my baguazhang practice to embody the hexagram for that day. If you know eight palm changes which correspond to the eight trigrams, you can practice each hexagram too. Think of each hexagram as a transition between two trigrams and practice that transition. (So for example, hexagram 63 is li [fire] transitioning into kan [water].) On divination days, improvise!

And I wasn't going to point to a direct African or Middle-Eastern connection but Julie Lee Wei will! Correspondences Between the Chinese Calendar Signs and the Phoenecian Alphabet.

Traditional Chinese Subjects

All Traditional Chinese subjects have three types of teaching:
A.  Outer: can be memorized, learned by watching, holds to a standard
B.  Inner: must be taught, transmitted-- requires sufficient qi (time) and jing (distillation) in order to learn.
C.  Secret: That which reveals view, inspiration, and manifests fruition.

For instance, the study of Poetry:
A.  Committed to memory (jing)
B.  Explored, investigated, animated (qi)
C.  Found, through experience or intimacy: Embodied (shen)

In lineage and classical traditions (think classical music or dance), curriculum is understood as the "outer" standard which is committed to memory.  From there with the expertise of a mentor and plenty of time that curriculum becomes animated and skillful, but it does not yet an artist make.  To be an artist means to truly be at play with inspiration, manifestation, and vision.

Martial Arts Training Manuals

Someone else who believes that gongfu is entirely about fighting are Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo, authors of Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals, A Historical Survey. I read the whole book, it's got lots of great pictures and historical information. It's easy to summarize their view: Martial Arts is a job. Whatever, it's still a great idea for a book. They summarize about 30 different historic training manuals. One of my favorite facts from the book is that it was illegal to publish martial arts books for most of the Ching Dynasty (1650 to 1900~).

Quan (Ch'uan)

What does quan mean? As in the terms taijiquan, xingyiquan, shaolin quan. The standard answer is that it literally means fist, but in context means boxing or art. Thus taijiquan means 'the taiji style of boxing' or 'the fighting art of taiji.' (For a definition of taiji see my previous entry.)

This is a bit misleading. One should ask the question why other languages don't have an equivalent term? Korea and Japan mainly use the term dao (do in japanese as in 'way of' that we also discussed in an earlier post); hapkido,karatedo, Aikido, judo. (Taikwando uses both: kwan is the same word as quan). In English we just say boxing, or fencing. We have different terms but not a category like quan.

As I've said elsewhere gongfu has many historic roots. The most important for explaining the meaning of quan is it's roots in village level trans-medium religion. There were cults to local deities, heroes, and ancestors. Each cult had a central shrine and an incense burner and as the cult grew, ashes from the original incense burner would be distributed to satellite shrines in other villages. Processional celebrations for each cult would travel between villages according to a ritual calender. This is one of the ways that villages renewed their ties of social order, commercial vigor, and mutual defense. Along a procession, depending on the nature of the particular cult, a village would sponsor a festival. These festivals were sometimes very complex and could last weeks. This created a kind of "unseen" or "celestial" extra-government or social order.

One common aspect of these festivals was performance. A standard thing to perform was a demonstration of your village's martial prowess. People were usually invited and paid to perform in other villages but when you performed in your own village you did it for free. What you performed was your village quan. So quan really means a traditional routine that demonstrates your village's prowess. Prowess was, of course, understood in terms of gongfu or accumulated merit.

It is still common in 2007 for a Chinese person in San Francisco to ask another Chinese person, "What is your home village?"

These festivals also had what we would call magic shows, circus arts, and theatrical performances that told religiously significant stories. Thus, gongfu and Chinese Opera are really different components of the a single tradition.

Shuijiao Chinese Wrestling

Everyone interested in Chinese Martial Arts should have a copy of The Method of Chinese Wrestling by Tong Zhongyi, Translated by Tim Cartmell.

The first reason is that it is beautiful. It is a complete translation of a book on Shuijiao from the 1930's with grainy black and white photos that are easy to see and very detailed. (No editing necessary! Thanks North Atlantic Books.)
The second reason is that it is material that helps to put internal arts in context. Shuijiao is a kind of gentrified form of Mongolian wrestling, stand up throws, with similarities to Judo take downs and Sumo too.

Shuijiao isn't however all that gentrified, (push-hands should get the gentrified wrestling award). Shuijiao throws are elegant, they make great police training for dealing with drunks, which historically is the biggest part of a policeman's job.

Practitioners of internal arts will quickly see how shuijiao techniques are a part of every taijiquan and baguazhang movement. It is kind of a mini-subject within a subject.

Go get it!