Martial Prowess is Health
/In China, health was defined as martial prowess.
Read MoreInternal martial arts, theatricality, Chinese religion, and The Golden Elixir.
Books: TAI CHI, BAGUAZHANG AND THE GOLDEN ELIXIR, Internal Martial Arts Before the Boxer Uprising. By Scott Park Phillips. Paper ($30.00), Digital ($9.99)
Possible Origins, A Cultural History of Chinese Martial Arts, Theater and Religion, (2016) By Scott Park Phillips. Paper ($18.95), Digital ($9.99)
Watch Video: A Cultural History of Tai Chi
New Eastover Workshop, in Eastern Massachusetts, Italy, and France are in the works.
Daodejing Online - Learn Daoist Meditation through studying Daoism’s most sacred text Laozi’s Daodejing. You can join from anywhere in the world, $50. Email me if you are interesting in joining!
Albion's Seed
/Sgt. Rory Miller wrote a nice piece recently comparing pacifists to violence groupies, and saying they are both living in a fantasy world. As clear eyed as his take on the two groups is, it is missing a historical perspective.
My half-wife likes to point out that I’m driven by intense passions. I get hooked on something and I think about it all the time.
I can hang with one powerful idea for a few years. I was actually passionate about pacifism for at least a year as a teenager.
For about two years in my early twenties I saw every single dance performance that played in San Francisco. I didn’t have any money, but everyone knew me as the guy who would fold programs or help move equipment before the show, or help clean up after the show. So I saw all the shows for free.
For a few years I was so passionate about tea, I would bring my tea equipment with me even when I went rock climbing.
I’m always passionate about martial arts.
I’m often passionate about a thinker or a book. I’ve been known to talk about an idea over and over for years. On reflection it can seem kind of creepy, but that kind of passion changes a person.
Anyway, about 10 years ago I read Albion's Seed, Four British Folkways in America, and I became obsessed with how powerful the theory was at explaining American behavior.
In the book David Hackett Fischer describes the first four American settler groups, Southern Cavaliers, Puritans, Quakers, and Backcountry. For each group he makes a long list of what he calls folkways. For instance he mentions eating & drinking habits, reactions to strangers, housing, medicine, education, clothing, liberty, child rearing, marriage, death, and many other folkways. When you read the book you start to realize that the views of each of these ‘cultures’ have been static for four hundred years! In America today, an individual is free to pick and choose, or change, their views on any subject. So individuals are often composites, for instance one may hold a Quaker view of guns (no one should have them), but a Backcountry view of Whisky (it should be served with breakfast).
Of course there is such a thing as a new idea, but most of the time when an American opens her mouth, she is going to present an idea from one of the Four British Folkways.
Since I’m writing this in response to Sgt Rory Miller’s piece, I’ll just recite the Four Folkways as they pertain to violence.
Southern Cavaliers: Respect and deference should guide all behavior. Violence is the prerogative of some people and not others. Everyone must know their place. Servants learn their place by being beaten or put to work on a chain-gang. Others are destine to lead troops. Propriety dictates that each class of people rise to their specific responsibilities with in a given hierarchy. If an equal dares to insult my integrity or the integrity of a lady under my care, we will fight a duel-- a fair fight with ‘seconds’ to judge. The weaker sex should never fight. The purpose of violence is to expand and hold power. A man’s home is his castle. And as Thomas Jefferson put it, “There is no greater form of exercise than hunting.”
Puritan: Do the crime, serve the time. The Puritans invented police. The early Colonies elected a constable whose job it was to search or inspect everyone’s home at some regular interval like every six months. We must have uniform standards and respect for elders. Weapons are for the collective defense and to protect Liberty. Liberty here means a proud community standard. So constables have a stick to beat non-conformists and other disturbers of “the peace.” The more grievous the offence, the more severe the punishment. (In the early days Quakers were burned at the stake.)
Quakers: Everyone has pure light in their hearts. What do we need guns for?
Backcountry: Who you looking at? Yep, I’m a redneck, but if you call me that to my face you’d better be prepared to die (or be sleeping with my sister). Weapons are an integral part of my circulatory system.
----------------
Warning Politics Ahead. Skip the last paragraph if you are easily impassioned.
---------------
Now as powerful as this theory is, and it is one heck of a powerful theory, it doesn’t explain everything. There are ideas outside the 4 boxes. So as I was doing the dishes this evening I was trying to think of an idea about violence which is outside of the Four Folkways. I didn’t come up with anything, but it did occur to me that all Four Folkways approve of Missionaries. Which reminded me of Michael B. Oren’s book Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present. In it he explains that for the last 150 years, every time Americans go to the Middle East we build a school or a hospital.
Think about that. That is something all Americans seem to agree is a good idea, a nice thing to do. In the Middle East, Americans have started nearly every University, and we have built Hospitals in every region.
But think about it again. What kind of message does that send to the people of the Middle East? They are getting the message that we must believe they are ignorant and incapable of caring for themselves. How humiliating.
(Israelis offer free organ transplants for Palestinian children. They have found a way to stop suicide bombings using only collaborators, check points, and fences. Humiliating.)
AlQeda is crystal clear: Stop humiliating us! Show us some dignity and just start Killing Us! Please! Death!
How do we respond? Ideally we will capture them, take them water boarding, and build more schools and hospitals.
My half-wife likes to point out that I’m driven by intense passions. I get hooked on something and I think about it all the time.
I can hang with one powerful idea for a few years. I was actually passionate about pacifism for at least a year as a teenager.
For about two years in my early twenties I saw every single dance performance that played in San Francisco. I didn’t have any money, but everyone knew me as the guy who would fold programs or help move equipment before the show, or help clean up after the show. So I saw all the shows for free.
For a few years I was so passionate about tea, I would bring my tea equipment with me even when I went rock climbing.
I’m always passionate about martial arts.
I’m often passionate about a thinker or a book. I’ve been known to talk about an idea over and over for years. On reflection it can seem kind of creepy, but that kind of passion changes a person.
Anyway, about 10 years ago I read Albion's Seed, Four British Folkways in America, and I became obsessed with how powerful the theory was at explaining American behavior.
In the book David Hackett Fischer describes the first four American settler groups, Southern Cavaliers, Puritans, Quakers, and Backcountry. For each group he makes a long list of what he calls folkways. For instance he mentions eating & drinking habits, reactions to strangers, housing, medicine, education, clothing, liberty, child rearing, marriage, death, and many other folkways. When you read the book you start to realize that the views of each of these ‘cultures’ have been static for four hundred years! In America today, an individual is free to pick and choose, or change, their views on any subject. So individuals are often composites, for instance one may hold a Quaker view of guns (no one should have them), but a Backcountry view of Whisky (it should be served with breakfast).
Of course there is such a thing as a new idea, but most of the time when an American opens her mouth, she is going to present an idea from one of the Four British Folkways.
Since I’m writing this in response to Sgt Rory Miller’s piece, I’ll just recite the Four Folkways as they pertain to violence.
Southern Cavaliers: Respect and deference should guide all behavior. Violence is the prerogative of some people and not others. Everyone must know their place. Servants learn their place by being beaten or put to work on a chain-gang. Others are destine to lead troops. Propriety dictates that each class of people rise to their specific responsibilities with in a given hierarchy. If an equal dares to insult my integrity or the integrity of a lady under my care, we will fight a duel-- a fair fight with ‘seconds’ to judge. The weaker sex should never fight. The purpose of violence is to expand and hold power. A man’s home is his castle. And as Thomas Jefferson put it, “There is no greater form of exercise than hunting.”
Puritan: Do the crime, serve the time. The Puritans invented police. The early Colonies elected a constable whose job it was to search or inspect everyone’s home at some regular interval like every six months. We must have uniform standards and respect for elders. Weapons are for the collective defense and to protect Liberty. Liberty here means a proud community standard. So constables have a stick to beat non-conformists and other disturbers of “the peace.” The more grievous the offence, the more severe the punishment. (In the early days Quakers were burned at the stake.)
Quakers: Everyone has pure light in their hearts. What do we need guns for?
Backcountry: Who you looking at? Yep, I’m a redneck, but if you call me that to my face you’d better be prepared to die (or be sleeping with my sister). Weapons are an integral part of my circulatory system.
----------------
Warning Politics Ahead. Skip the last paragraph if you are easily impassioned.
---------------
Now as powerful as this theory is, and it is one heck of a powerful theory, it doesn’t explain everything. There are ideas outside the 4 boxes. So as I was doing the dishes this evening I was trying to think of an idea about violence which is outside of the Four Folkways. I didn’t come up with anything, but it did occur to me that all Four Folkways approve of Missionaries. Which reminded me of Michael B. Oren’s book Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present. In it he explains that for the last 150 years, every time Americans go to the Middle East we build a school or a hospital.
Think about that. That is something all Americans seem to agree is a good idea, a nice thing to do. In the Middle East, Americans have started nearly every University, and we have built Hospitals in every region.
But think about it again. What kind of message does that send to the people of the Middle East? They are getting the message that we must believe they are ignorant and incapable of caring for themselves. How humiliating.
(Israelis offer free organ transplants for Palestinian children. They have found a way to stop suicide bombings using only collaborators, check points, and fences. Humiliating.)
AlQeda is crystal clear: Stop humiliating us! Show us some dignity and just start Killing Us! Please! Death!
How do we respond? Ideally we will capture them, take them water boarding, and build more schools and hospitals.
The author teaching at the Arab Sports Center in East Jerusalem.
Our Health Care is Amazing
/One of my blogging categories is "Health," but I advise my readers to skip this blog if you are allergic to politics.
The American government has a superb health care plan. Let’s review the details.
Fresh water available everywhere for drinking and cleaning. Large numbers of people use to die from water borne illness, and small skin infections.
Fluoride for the teeth. Before fluoride and other universal dental hygiene, people had “tooth-aches” so often that it was standard to have two drinks of hard liquor with lunch everyday to kill the pain (and speed death).
Plagues use to come along every generation or so and wipe out 10 to 50 percent of the population.
Famine was once a regular occurrence.
Today, the infectious diseases spread hand to mouth like colds and flu's are a mild annoyance, they no longer kill off large numbers of people every year like measles, mumps, polio, and small pox once did. We could probably eliminate colds and flu as well if we were willing to wear masks at the first signs of illness.
If you do happen to get an infection, anti-biotics are so inexpensive and readily available that they are being over used.
The government makes sure that doctors have degrees which makes it less likely that they will kill you.
So what’s left?
Genetic diseases are still around, some of them are mitigated by medicine, some not. Some can be avoided by testing before pregnancy.
That leaves degenerative diseases which sometimes coincide with death in later years. Not getting addicted to drugs, alchohol or inhaling large amounts of smoke, all reduce the likelihood of developing a degenerative disease. It is still being debated whether or not government should make controlling these behaviors part of its health plan.
Over eating is a killer which may not have been very common in the past, but it is also entirely preventable through personal discipline. Only war and communism have been successful at stopping industrial commerce from putting food in peoples mouths. But government plays an important (if imperfect) role in making sure the food we buy doesn’t kill us.
On the subject of personal discipline, getting enough sleep and exercise, and being part of social networks, all have enormous benefits in keeping illnesses at bay.
Accidents are really a different animal--some are easily avoided, some are not. Our emergency wards are half full with people hurt by drugs and alcohol. Emergency rooms also care for people who have heart attacks and strokes, and seniors who have fallen down. Accidents are only a percentage of emergency room problems but the system of caring for people who have accidents and allowing them to pay for it over time works well, even though all the drug addicts’ expenses are averaged into their bills. As a society, we have a choice, we can take away the civil rights of people caught abusing drugs or we can use our emergency rooms to play catch and release with them, either way the cost should be a number we all know so that we can debate how to pay for it.
Pregnancy should be an entirely separate system. If as a society we believe that preemies, and severely deformed or oxygen deprived children should be kept alive and nurtured, and we do believe that, then it makes sense to create an insurance pool for them, or fund this entirely by charity the way all our hospitals used to be funded.
(I’m sure many people choose not to get married or to wait until after they have children to get married, just in case they have an expensive child-birth. With an expensive child-birth the independent mother can throw herself on the mercy of the state and the father can keep his bank account.)
The commercial drive of our society has been bringing the costs of health care down very, very fast. But constant new innovation and experimentation in medicine is enormously expensive.
I don’t really have an opinion on medical insurance except to say that it has always seemed too expensive for me by a factor of 10. I’d be willing to pay what I pay for car insurance to pre-empt the cost of an accident or a surprise degenerative or genetic disease, but not ten times that amount. I’d probably be willing to pay more if I thought it was protecting me from losing my house, if I owned a house.
The debate is very complex, and there is no reason to believe it will be resolved in my lifetime. That shouldn’t stop us from acknowledging how fantastically successful our government run health care system already is.
It may seem like I’m drifting into the realm of politics here, but I’m not. The main reason I’m writing this blog is to point out that it is really hard to understand what religion used to be. The ways of life and death that nurtured the world’s religions are often in direct competition with modernity and air conditioning. Today, the realm of what we are calling religion or faith or ritual or sacred --simply does not have to deal with the same forces it once did. It’s not that we are less religious, it’s just that the world is so different it’s challenging to even imagine what it used to be like.
Gongfu, ritual theater and possession rituals developed in a China in which people got sick and died a lot more often than we can imagine. Chinese medicine was for a thousand years the most developed form of medicine around, but it never came close to doing what we take for granted in the 21st Century.
PS. I wrote this about 3 weeks ago and didn’t publish it because I know how fast a blog can turn sour when it starts talking politics.
But, heck, now that the United States Health Bill seems near death I feel I can at least point out that as an uninsured, one-person business owner, there didn’t seem to be anything for me. In fact, since I work for several institutions part time, I was probably looking at a pay cut because these institutions were likely to be required to supply health insurance to their full time employees. And I’ve heard nothing at all about the role personal conduct plays in health care. Should we folk who take really good care of our health be paying the medical expenses of people who are sick do to laziness or self-destructive behavior?
Compassion is a natural treasure. But unlimited compassion as an ideal will slowly degenerate a society into fighting and chaos.
The American government has a superb health care plan. Let’s review the details.
Fresh water available everywhere for drinking and cleaning. Large numbers of people use to die from water borne illness, and small skin infections.
Fluoride for the teeth. Before fluoride and other universal dental hygiene, people had “tooth-aches” so often that it was standard to have two drinks of hard liquor with lunch everyday to kill the pain (and speed death).
Plagues use to come along every generation or so and wipe out 10 to 50 percent of the population.
Famine was once a regular occurrence.
Today, the infectious diseases spread hand to mouth like colds and flu's are a mild annoyance, they no longer kill off large numbers of people every year like measles, mumps, polio, and small pox once did. We could probably eliminate colds and flu as well if we were willing to wear masks at the first signs of illness.
If you do happen to get an infection, anti-biotics are so inexpensive and readily available that they are being over used.
The government makes sure that doctors have degrees which makes it less likely that they will kill you.
So what’s left?
Genetic diseases are still around, some of them are mitigated by medicine, some not. Some can be avoided by testing before pregnancy.
That leaves degenerative diseases which sometimes coincide with death in later years. Not getting addicted to drugs, alchohol or inhaling large amounts of smoke, all reduce the likelihood of developing a degenerative disease. It is still being debated whether or not government should make controlling these behaviors part of its health plan.
Over eating is a killer which may not have been very common in the past, but it is also entirely preventable through personal discipline. Only war and communism have been successful at stopping industrial commerce from putting food in peoples mouths. But government plays an important (if imperfect) role in making sure the food we buy doesn’t kill us.
On the subject of personal discipline, getting enough sleep and exercise, and being part of social networks, all have enormous benefits in keeping illnesses at bay.
Accidents are really a different animal--some are easily avoided, some are not. Our emergency wards are half full with people hurt by drugs and alcohol. Emergency rooms also care for people who have heart attacks and strokes, and seniors who have fallen down. Accidents are only a percentage of emergency room problems but the system of caring for people who have accidents and allowing them to pay for it over time works well, even though all the drug addicts’ expenses are averaged into their bills. As a society, we have a choice, we can take away the civil rights of people caught abusing drugs or we can use our emergency rooms to play catch and release with them, either way the cost should be a number we all know so that we can debate how to pay for it.
Pregnancy should be an entirely separate system. If as a society we believe that preemies, and severely deformed or oxygen deprived children should be kept alive and nurtured, and we do believe that, then it makes sense to create an insurance pool for them, or fund this entirely by charity the way all our hospitals used to be funded.
(I’m sure many people choose not to get married or to wait until after they have children to get married, just in case they have an expensive child-birth. With an expensive child-birth the independent mother can throw herself on the mercy of the state and the father can keep his bank account.)
The commercial drive of our society has been bringing the costs of health care down very, very fast. But constant new innovation and experimentation in medicine is enormously expensive.
I don’t really have an opinion on medical insurance except to say that it has always seemed too expensive for me by a factor of 10. I’d be willing to pay what I pay for car insurance to pre-empt the cost of an accident or a surprise degenerative or genetic disease, but not ten times that amount. I’d probably be willing to pay more if I thought it was protecting me from losing my house, if I owned a house.
The debate is very complex, and there is no reason to believe it will be resolved in my lifetime. That shouldn’t stop us from acknowledging how fantastically successful our government run health care system already is.
It may seem like I’m drifting into the realm of politics here, but I’m not. The main reason I’m writing this blog is to point out that it is really hard to understand what religion used to be. The ways of life and death that nurtured the world’s religions are often in direct competition with modernity and air conditioning. Today, the realm of what we are calling religion or faith or ritual or sacred --simply does not have to deal with the same forces it once did. It’s not that we are less religious, it’s just that the world is so different it’s challenging to even imagine what it used to be like.
Gongfu, ritual theater and possession rituals developed in a China in which people got sick and died a lot more often than we can imagine. Chinese medicine was for a thousand years the most developed form of medicine around, but it never came close to doing what we take for granted in the 21st Century.
PS. I wrote this about 3 weeks ago and didn’t publish it because I know how fast a blog can turn sour when it starts talking politics.
But, heck, now that the United States Health Bill seems near death I feel I can at least point out that as an uninsured, one-person business owner, there didn’t seem to be anything for me. In fact, since I work for several institutions part time, I was probably looking at a pay cut because these institutions were likely to be required to supply health insurance to their full time employees. And I’ve heard nothing at all about the role personal conduct plays in health care. Should we folk who take really good care of our health be paying the medical expenses of people who are sick do to laziness or self-destructive behavior?
Compassion is a natural treasure. But unlimited compassion as an ideal will slowly degenerate a society into fighting and chaos.
Temples
/Stating the obvious.
There are three basic types of temples in Taiwan (Excluding explicitly Buddhist Monasteries, Christian Churches, and Muslim Mosques).
The first are female quasi-Buddhist temples (because Buddhism is associated with compassion and these deities are all compassionate). The big ones are Matzu and Guanyin. Matzu it the biggest single god cult in Taiwan.
The second type are Wen temples. Wen means culture or literature, and by implication also means political office. These includes Rua (Confucian Temples) and altars to Wenzi, Wen Chang, Wen ...etc.... People make sacrifices here when they want to do well on tests, and when they want a promotion (based on merit?), and perhaps when they have to confront corruption (I made that up, but it’s logical).
The third category of temples are those dedicated to Martial Gods. These temples are by far the most numerous and probably the most diverse. These temples are absolutely covered floor to ceiling with elaborate carvings and images of fighters and battles legends and weapons.
But actually, Matzu and Guanyin always have fierce protectors with weapons around them, even if they aren’t on every wall. And Wen Chang is always flanked by military figures too.
So here is the obvious: Martial arts is the religion of Chinese people. That wasn't obvious to me before visiting Taiwan.
God of Accounting!
Back in San Francisco, most Chinese businesses have a statue of Guangong on an altar up high in the back of their stores, with offerings of incense and fruit. He wears armor and carries a halbred, he has a red face and usually his liver is somewhat protruding to show his fierceness.
In Taiwan I learned that he is the god of accounting! The story goes that general Cao Cao (a very important figure in the spread of early Daoism) imprisoned General Guangong for a time. During that time in prison, Guangong kept precise records of how much food he was given and upon his release he paid it back in full! Thus, he is watching over the shop to make sure all transactions are accounted for!
For years I've been asking what this guy stands for, so just because I finally got a good answer, should not imply that your average shop keeper is going on the same information. After all, martial gods are simply good for business.
On the floor of a business there is usually a smaller altar to Tudi, the god of the Earth, who is thought to be the first lease holder of any given business, thus some of his merit has accumulated on the spot. It's kind of like if, a long time ago, there was a famous shop where your shop is today and perhaps someone (dead?) might come looking for their favorite (noodle? trinket?) shop--you could have some commemoration of that handy for them. And hopefully still get their business.
There are three basic types of temples in Taiwan (Excluding explicitly Buddhist Monasteries, Christian Churches, and Muslim Mosques).
The first are female quasi-Buddhist temples (because Buddhism is associated with compassion and these deities are all compassionate). The big ones are Matzu and Guanyin. Matzu it the biggest single god cult in Taiwan.
The second type are Wen temples. Wen means culture or literature, and by implication also means political office. These includes Rua (Confucian Temples) and altars to Wenzi, Wen Chang, Wen ...etc.... People make sacrifices here when they want to do well on tests, and when they want a promotion (based on merit?), and perhaps when they have to confront corruption (I made that up, but it’s logical).
The third category of temples are those dedicated to Martial Gods. These temples are by far the most numerous and probably the most diverse. These temples are absolutely covered floor to ceiling with elaborate carvings and images of fighters and battles legends and weapons.
But actually, Matzu and Guanyin always have fierce protectors with weapons around them, even if they aren’t on every wall. And Wen Chang is always flanked by military figures too.
So here is the obvious: Martial arts is the religion of Chinese people. That wasn't obvious to me before visiting Taiwan.
God of Accounting!Back in San Francisco, most Chinese businesses have a statue of Guangong on an altar up high in the back of their stores, with offerings of incense and fruit. He wears armor and carries a halbred, he has a red face and usually his liver is somewhat protruding to show his fierceness.
In Taiwan I learned that he is the god of accounting! The story goes that general Cao Cao (a very important figure in the spread of early Daoism) imprisoned General Guangong for a time. During that time in prison, Guangong kept precise records of how much food he was given and upon his release he paid it back in full! Thus, he is watching over the shop to make sure all transactions are accounted for!
For years I've been asking what this guy stands for, so just because I finally got a good answer, should not imply that your average shop keeper is going on the same information. After all, martial gods are simply good for business.
On the floor of a business there is usually a smaller altar to Tudi, the god of the Earth, who is thought to be the first lease holder of any given business, thus some of his merit has accumulated on the spot. It's kind of like if, a long time ago, there was a famous shop where your shop is today and perhaps someone (dead?) might come looking for their favorite (noodle? trinket?) shop--you could have some commemoration of that handy for them. And hopefully still get their business.
Puppet Museum
/After getting way too hot climbing the steaming mountain of Yangming Shan, I spent a whole night and day just trying to get cool, I got so hot I stopped sweating. Whenever I tried to cool myself down I’d start shivering, which creates more heat. I don’t know how much of it was just time or patience, but I finally figured out that my limbs had to be covered to stop me from shivering and I needed to use a cloth dipped in ice water on my forehead while I sat underneath a fan. Once I figured that out it still took hours before I had a coherent thought.
I remembered that I wanted to buy a drum and some gongs. I had seen a great store in Tainan, but I figured carrying them around wouldn’t be necessary because Taipei would have a store too since there are lots of people using drums everywhere there is a temple, which is everywhere. But after making some inquiries I discovered that most of the instruments are made in the south and when people want ritual drums they special order them. That’s cool but it didn’t help me. Any way, people thought it was still possible but no one knew where.
So I decide to go to the Puppet museum, take a look and ask there. I had read that the museum also has a puppet making workshop. I figured-- puppet troops use drums, and crafts people are likely to know each other. When I got there, the workshop was right next to the entrance, they said they weren’t sure about buying drums, things were changing, but they drew a map for me.
Meanwhile they told me that the older puppeteer and puppet-maker, who seemed delighted by my request, was a master of a particular marionette god who does exorcisms (I forgot to write down the name of the puppet). This god is a popular character from legends, which is what puppet shows are often about, but remember, in Chinese culture legends are in fact based on actual history to some degree, and the majority of gods were actually real people with real biographies at some point.
After they drew the map for me I asked about the music playing in the background. The younger puppeteer got very animated and started telling me about his grandfather’s contribution to the art. Originally the puppets spoke mainly Taiwanese (I believe I read that they also speak something local people would hear as classical Chinese when certain characters enter the stage). The puppeteer’s grandfather was visiting Shanghai in the late 1940’s and he spent a month just listening and imitating Chinese Opera there. At the end of the month he had to flee back to Taiwan with the KMT (the Nationalists). But in that time he discovered that the fast pace of Chinese Opera vocals were better for fight scenes. Then my story teller picked up two puppets, dropped into a well trained horse stance, and made the two puppets posture and fight for me! I didn’t get that on video, but here is a little taste of the museum, barely edited in it’s youtube glory (sorry the quality could be better).
Oh, and the map worked, they sent me to a god carver who had some drums for sale and I bought two.
I remembered that I wanted to buy a drum and some gongs. I had seen a great store in Tainan, but I figured carrying them around wouldn’t be necessary because Taipei would have a store too since there are lots of people using drums everywhere there is a temple, which is everywhere. But after making some inquiries I discovered that most of the instruments are made in the south and when people want ritual drums they special order them. That’s cool but it didn’t help me. Any way, people thought it was still possible but no one knew where.
So I decide to go to the Puppet museum, take a look and ask there. I had read that the museum also has a puppet making workshop. I figured-- puppet troops use drums, and crafts people are likely to know each other. When I got there, the workshop was right next to the entrance, they said they weren’t sure about buying drums, things were changing, but they drew a map for me.
Meanwhile they told me that the older puppeteer and puppet-maker, who seemed delighted by my request, was a master of a particular marionette god who does exorcisms (I forgot to write down the name of the puppet). This god is a popular character from legends, which is what puppet shows are often about, but remember, in Chinese culture legends are in fact based on actual history to some degree, and the majority of gods were actually real people with real biographies at some point.
After they drew the map for me I asked about the music playing in the background. The younger puppeteer got very animated and started telling me about his grandfather’s contribution to the art. Originally the puppets spoke mainly Taiwanese (I believe I read that they also speak something local people would hear as classical Chinese when certain characters enter the stage). The puppeteer’s grandfather was visiting Shanghai in the late 1940’s and he spent a month just listening and imitating Chinese Opera there. At the end of the month he had to flee back to Taiwan with the KMT (the Nationalists). But in that time he discovered that the fast pace of Chinese Opera vocals were better for fight scenes. Then my story teller picked up two puppets, dropped into a well trained horse stance, and made the two puppets posture and fight for me! I didn’t get that on video, but here is a little taste of the museum, barely edited in it’s youtube glory (sorry the quality could be better).
Oh, and the map worked, they sent me to a god carver who had some drums for sale and I bought two.
Flowers
/
Lantern FlowersEvery altar has two candles, an incense burner and two vases full of flowers.
Last time I was in Japan I was talking to my Japanese friend about flowers. Consider these three contexts:
1. There is a lantern flower day in Tokyo in which on an annual basis people gather around a specific temple and party while buying, carrying and displaying orange lantern flowers. These flowers have some medicinal function and it appears that they are being displayed for or offered to the Gods of the temple.
2. At funerals and a few other solemn occasions, big colorful bouquets of mixed flowers are displayed in large vases on tables. Are these for the ancestors? For the newly dead? For the living families of the dead? (To cheer them up?) For the gods of the underworld in hope that they will be lenient with the newly dead?
3. The art of Ikebana is a profoundly aesthetic presence in Japan. It is taught more or less as a pure exploration of aesthetics of seasonal change, space, spontaneity and craft. I might even venture that it is a ‘high art’ with Modern notions of universality.
My friend insisted that these are fundamentally different categories. The only commonality being flowers. Coming from my knowledge of Daoism, which uses flowers on every altar, and sometimes uses a specific species of flowers as an offering to a specific deity (like Purple Myrtle for Ziwei); the difference between the first two contexts seemed to be simply a temple altar to a god, verses a family altar to the dead. The context of the example of Ikebana seemed like an attempt to take the experience of the reciprocity between the living and the dead,* characteristic of ritual altars, and apply it in an abstract cosmology. In other words it’s the same thing without any mention of the gods or the underworld; the cosmology is the same but abstract. (Like with Aikido, in Ikebana they think of squares, circles and triangles; as categories of information about esthetic uses of space, color, shape, texture, etc...)
Well, my Japanese friend said I was wrong, these categories have nothing to do with each other.
It seems I may be up against the same thing in Taiwan with the relationship between martial arts and the dance performances of the demon generals who escort gods on procession. (Bajiajiang I have been mentioning is just one type of escort used here.) They are thought of as distinctly different categories. However, it is obvious to someone like me who has studied marital arts all his life, that they are doing martial arts. Which presents the question, does experience trump culture? In any event, it’s not so simple, most people will admit they don’t really know what happened in the past. They have no way of knowing if martial arts and dance performances were the same thing at some time in the past.
At least I now have loads of video and images to demonstrate my various points. More posts to come.
(*Gods are the dead in Asia. I wonder if that would have exploded Nietzsche’s mind.
We are, in fact, our ancestors. Offerings to ancestors must be done by a relative, because we access our ancestors through ourselves.)
Who can do Daoism?
/I wrote earlier about a lunch I had with He Jing-Han, the Baguaquan Master. It was a lively lunch. At one point he challenged me to give a definition of jing. I probably gave him 12 definitions which he rejected before I got around to the standard medical definition: An essence which is extracted from fresh air and food which is then distilled and stored through rest, sleep and stillness. He Jing-Han believes that storing enough jing to do Daoist practices requires extraordinary discipline and solitude. Thus it is impossible to cultivate Dao in the city with a family and a job. So he says we should just focus on being good people.
Most Taiwanese have little idea where they would get knowledge about Daoism if they wanted it. He Jing-Han's sources like writer Nan Huai Jin have put a filter on access to that knowledge. In effect they appear to stop most people from further inquiry.
Daoism does not have an open door. But that doesn't mean no one ever comes in or out of the door. If He would have accepted some of my earlier definitions of Jing he might have accepted my declaration that the story of the Eight Immortals (Ba Xian) is precisely to let people know that there are as many ways to cultivate Dao as there are people. The point of the Talisman (fu) of the 60 Cloud Fates is the same, that there are many ways to become an immortal. Everyone has Jing. Every being's jing is already pure and perfect. It is reproduced by our healthy habits, and it also reproduces us. The differentiation of Jing and Qi happens in stillness, it has no special requirements, it requires no effort.
Han Wudi, was known as the Martial Emperor and he lived during the last part of the first half of the Han Dynasty (2000 years ago). He was said to have a solid gold practice room, and Xiguanmu (The Queen Mother of the West) as his private tutor. Yet he was unable to cultivate Dao because he was haunted by the ghosts of all the people he had killed in the process of expanding and then consolidating the Empire.
The point? If you deal with your ghosts you can cultivate Dao. If you don't, even a solid gold practice room and Xiguanmu as a teacher will not be enough. Conflating the process of Cultivating Dao with Purification leads to elitism, an Earthly Hierarchy--and there are no true earthly hierarchies. Hierarchy is a process of imagination--thus the only true hierarchies are of Heaven.
I know this can sound obscure, but it's not that hard to get. The most basic act of Chinese religion is to make sacrifice. The sacrifice to Heaven, as a totality, was always performed by the emperor. Everyone else sacrified to their little piece of heaven, that is, their ancestors and their local gods. Hierarchies are maintained by acts of subordination and dominance, which are made real through ritual.
Daoist Priests are forbiden by precept to subordinate. Every other choice will eventually lead to freedom, it just takes longer. Daoism is a short cut. Freedom has a physiology. That physiology is our true nature and it is revealed through the cultivation of weakness, stillness, openness, and lacking pretence.
Most Taiwanese have little idea where they would get knowledge about Daoism if they wanted it. He Jing-Han's sources like writer Nan Huai Jin have put a filter on access to that knowledge. In effect they appear to stop most people from further inquiry.
Daoism does not have an open door. But that doesn't mean no one ever comes in or out of the door. If He would have accepted some of my earlier definitions of Jing he might have accepted my declaration that the story of the Eight Immortals (Ba Xian) is precisely to let people know that there are as many ways to cultivate Dao as there are people. The point of the Talisman (fu) of the 60 Cloud Fates is the same, that there are many ways to become an immortal. Everyone has Jing. Every being's jing is already pure and perfect. It is reproduced by our healthy habits, and it also reproduces us. The differentiation of Jing and Qi happens in stillness, it has no special requirements, it requires no effort.
Han Wudi, was known as the Martial Emperor and he lived during the last part of the first half of the Han Dynasty (2000 years ago). He was said to have a solid gold practice room, and Xiguanmu (The Queen Mother of the West) as his private tutor. Yet he was unable to cultivate Dao because he was haunted by the ghosts of all the people he had killed in the process of expanding and then consolidating the Empire.
The point? If you deal with your ghosts you can cultivate Dao. If you don't, even a solid gold practice room and Xiguanmu as a teacher will not be enough. Conflating the process of Cultivating Dao with Purification leads to elitism, an Earthly Hierarchy--and there are no true earthly hierarchies. Hierarchy is a process of imagination--thus the only true hierarchies are of Heaven.
I know this can sound obscure, but it's not that hard to get. The most basic act of Chinese religion is to make sacrifice. The sacrifice to Heaven, as a totality, was always performed by the emperor. Everyone else sacrified to their little piece of heaven, that is, their ancestors and their local gods. Hierarchies are maintained by acts of subordination and dominance, which are made real through ritual.
Daoist Priests are forbiden by precept to subordinate. Every other choice will eventually lead to freedom, it just takes longer. Daoism is a short cut. Freedom has a physiology. That physiology is our true nature and it is revealed through the cultivation of weakness, stillness, openness, and lacking pretence.
A Challenge
/I recently met with professor Yeh Chuen-Rong, an Ethnologist at the Academia Sinica who is a big fan of Clifford Geertz. I was meeting with professor Chang Hsun and she suggested that I meet her colleague next door because he had a collection of video of folk rituals. But I misunderstood her, and I thought she was introducing me to the librarian of the multimedia center. (He is the curator of the museum too, so that's how the misunderstanding happened.)
So, I immediately tried to describe what I wanted to see, at his convenience of course-I was expecting to come back another day. What I didn't realize was that he had something on the order of a thousand videos of folk rituals in his personal collection. He took me into another room to show me the scale of what he had, and perhaps to make it clear I didn't have any idea how to ask for something specific.
Anyway, we got off to a bad start. While I was talking to him there was an American graduate student in Green Engineering sitting in, he was there to get some directions actually but he stayed for the first part of our talk. After about 20 minutes, Professor Yeh looked over at the other students and said he could tell I didn't know the field and he called me Carlos Castaneda. I retorted that Castaneda was insane. But Yeh said, no, he was just a practitioner--who lacked rigor and perspective--he just wanted to tell his own story.
He said there is another writer he could compare me to if I didn't like Castaneda. I wouldn't have heard of her because her book was published in Hong Kong or something...HAh, he turned out to be talking about Margret Chen! He called her work worthless to scholars like himself, shallow! a nice coffee table picture book perhaps. I read her book in the two months before coming to Taiwan. For me it was a marvelous source of information on Tangki Spirit Mediums in Singapore. But one of the reasons I didn't review it was that her comments about Daoism and the early history of Chinese religion where poorly informed.
Yeh seemed momentarily charmed by knowledge of the book and by my assertion that I also abhor shallowness. But he quickly went back on the attack. If I wanted to do this kind of research I would have to know Chinese cosmology really well. My reaction was, go ahead, test me! He started listing cosmological ideas, and then we got stuck on a translation. He was saying ganzhi (stem and branch) which is a way of calculating auspices, so when I figured out what he meant I said, of course I am familiar with the tongshu (the complete almanac of cosmological calculations, also the oldest continuously published book on earth.)
So he pulled one out, then he showed me a drawer full of tongshu from previous years. As I flipped through the tongshu, I had to admit that although I had spent 7 years following various indicators from the tongshu and observing a few dozen commemorative days each year, most of the tongshu was totally over my head and outside my ability to comprehend.
Having made his point, he gestured toward his collection of Clifford Geertz books. Did I know of him? Yes, actually, I've read a few of his books (later I revealed that my father had interviewed him on the radio). OK, he said, have you eaten? I don't think the kind of work you are proposing is of any use, but lets continue this conversation over some dumplings.
Over the next four hours we argued. At one point I fired back that perhaps his work wasn't of much use because as a non-practitioner, he lacked fundamental experience! I think he liked that. He offered many challenges. Here are some of them:
By the time I left four hours later, I had learned a lot, and he had conceded a few points too. I also got asked to help him with a letter to the Louvre (you know that museum in Paris) and he showed me a bunch of videos! I'll be back!
So, I immediately tried to describe what I wanted to see, at his convenience of course-I was expecting to come back another day. What I didn't realize was that he had something on the order of a thousand videos of folk rituals in his personal collection. He took me into another room to show me the scale of what he had, and perhaps to make it clear I didn't have any idea how to ask for something specific.
Anyway, we got off to a bad start. While I was talking to him there was an American graduate student in Green Engineering sitting in, he was there to get some directions actually but he stayed for the first part of our talk. After about 20 minutes, Professor Yeh looked over at the other students and said he could tell I didn't know the field and he called me Carlos Castaneda. I retorted that Castaneda was insane. But Yeh said, no, he was just a practitioner--who lacked rigor and perspective--he just wanted to tell his own story.
He said there is another writer he could compare me to if I didn't like Castaneda. I wouldn't have heard of her because her book was published in Hong Kong or something...HAh, he turned out to be talking about Margret Chen! He called her work worthless to scholars like himself, shallow! a nice coffee table picture book perhaps. I read her book in the two months before coming to Taiwan. For me it was a marvelous source of information on Tangki Spirit Mediums in Singapore. But one of the reasons I didn't review it was that her comments about Daoism and the early history of Chinese religion where poorly informed.
Yeh seemed momentarily charmed by knowledge of the book and by my assertion that I also abhor shallowness. But he quickly went back on the attack. If I wanted to do this kind of research I would have to know Chinese cosmology really well. My reaction was, go ahead, test me! He started listing cosmological ideas, and then we got stuck on a translation. He was saying ganzhi (stem and branch) which is a way of calculating auspices, so when I figured out what he meant I said, of course I am familiar with the tongshu (the complete almanac of cosmological calculations, also the oldest continuously published book on earth.)
So he pulled one out, then he showed me a drawer full of tongshu from previous years. As I flipped through the tongshu, I had to admit that although I had spent 7 years following various indicators from the tongshu and observing a few dozen commemorative days each year, most of the tongshu was totally over my head and outside my ability to comprehend.
Having made his point, he gestured toward his collection of Clifford Geertz books. Did I know of him? Yes, actually, I've read a few of his books (later I revealed that my father had interviewed him on the radio). OK, he said, have you eaten? I don't think the kind of work you are proposing is of any use, but lets continue this conversation over some dumplings.
Over the next four hours we argued. At one point I fired back that perhaps his work wasn't of much use because as a non-practitioner, he lacked fundamental experience! I think he liked that. He offered many challenges. Here are some of them:
- Gods do not teach people to fight.
- When people in trance possession cults fight, they are not possessed, they are just fighting.
- The Chinese literature on the subject does not use the term trance in a continuum the way I do. Generally trance means a specific deity is present.
- No one else has proposed that there are different types of trance for different types of deities (Professor Chang also said this). In other words it could be good that I'm proposing a new direction of thought but the people who belong to these cults don't make such distinctions. So I'm dangerously close to making stuff up. (My argument is that it is implicit in the different ways trance is invoked and in the different types of movement deities use. Also, in Daoist ritual all the deities are invoked through the visualization/embodiment of the eight generals.)
By the time I left four hours later, I had learned a lot, and he had conceded a few points too. I also got asked to help him with a letter to the Louvre (you know that museum in Paris) and he showed me a bunch of videos! I'll be back!
Taiwan Project
/This is the first day since I arrived in Taipei that I’ve really rested. It was raining the day I arrived but it’s been clear all week until today and I must say the rain cooled things down a bit. Air conditioning is necessary for thought, I actually feel my brain turning off and on as I walk in and out of the heat.
I went on a reading frenzy in the two months before I came and it has continued since I arrived. On Friday I met with professor Paul Katz in his office at the Academia Sinica and he gave me three papers to read and made a number of further suggestions for future reading. Two of the papers were on the organization of martial cults, dance procession groups dedicated to martial deities and exorcistic rites. The third paper was on the roll of justice and judicial thinking in Daoist ritual and its relationship to a wide range of social institutions including martial cults. He has been very helpful in introducing me to other scholars here too. Our talk was less than an hour but it gave me a lot to think about and helped me organize my ideas from the point of view of a research project which is turning out to be essential for speaking with other scholars.
The next day I met with Dave Chesser of the blog Formosa Neijia. We had a wide ranging talk about life in Taiwan, martial arts gossip, and business. As readers of his blog know, he has a real talent for encouraging friendly open debate and we talked about how he can use that skill and experience to build a school integrating kettle ball training and martial arts skills. He has read all my father’s books on business so we really got into how to translate my father’s ideas about what makes a business flourish into the Taiwanese context. As all business people know, being in business means constantly refining and adapting what you do through trial and error. And that takes time. In my opinion he has what it takes to be successful and he’s off to a good start.
Dave convinced me to take a class with He Jing-Han (his blog is: http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/hejinghan-bagua). Master He taught a three hour class in the park behind the big public library (where students on the weekend line up 2 hours before opening time, just to make sure they have an air conditioned place to study). The class was focused on a linear form of baguazhang he calls baguaquan, the form can be seen on his Youtube channel. This form is just a small part of what he teaches year round and I got the impression that his style of baguazhang is organized very differently than mine. In fact, of all the things I’ve studied it most resembled the mixed internal/external Lanshou system I originally learned from George Xu 20 years ago. I would love to come back and get a sense of the full scope of what he teaches, this guy is a living treasure.
Shirfu He is a warm and gracious guy. After class we went to lunch for two hours and had a wonderful talk about Daoism and the history of internal martial arts. When I told him about my project He suggested that martial cults were created for group fighting while martial arts are focused on individual fighting, but he conceded that it was quite possible that historically people practiced and taught both together. He also made the important point that what he teaches has changed dramatically from what his teacher, born in 1906, taught. He suggested it was nearly possible to comprehend how his teacher thought about the arts, considering he lived through such different and turbulent times. Going back 5 or 6 generations is really stretching credulity. I know he is right and yet the project seems important anyway. I think it is worth while trying to understand not only what teachings have been discarded or changed, but why.
I also had the opportunity to meet twice with Marcus Brinkman. Once for a Chinese Medical Cupping treatment (my whole back got cupped with more suction than I’ve felt before!) and once for a Baguazhang lesson on his roof. He is a fun guy with an in depth knowledge of Chinese medicine and substantial martial prowess. He gave me some really good theoretical explanations about the relationship of internal martial arts and medicine, but I’ll save them for some future blogs. (I need time to digest them!)
Yesterday I met with a Professor of Daoism named Hsieh Shi-Wei. I honestly believe he is the first person to really understand the full scope of my project and he was very encouraging! More on that later.
Other highlights--
People are warm, kind and helpful. The subway and bus system in Taipei works like a charm. I don’t even have to pull my pass out of my wallet because it has a radio chip in it, I don’t even have to slow my stride when entering and exiting the subway! Taipei is much cleaner than I imagined it would be, public bathrooms are much cleaner here than they are in America. I went drinking at an outdoor beer factory and a dinosaur bone covered bar. I’ve enjoyed asparagus juice, salt-coffee, a mug-bean smoothie, tons of interesting street food, seaweed chips, a harrowing scooter ride, and I stubbed my middle toe black and blue hiking in the mountains.
I have one more meeting here in Taipei tomorrow and then I think I’m headed for the south.
I went on a reading frenzy in the two months before I came and it has continued since I arrived. On Friday I met with professor Paul Katz in his office at the Academia Sinica and he gave me three papers to read and made a number of further suggestions for future reading. Two of the papers were on the organization of martial cults, dance procession groups dedicated to martial deities and exorcistic rites. The third paper was on the roll of justice and judicial thinking in Daoist ritual and its relationship to a wide range of social institutions including martial cults. He has been very helpful in introducing me to other scholars here too. Our talk was less than an hour but it gave me a lot to think about and helped me organize my ideas from the point of view of a research project which is turning out to be essential for speaking with other scholars.
The next day I met with Dave Chesser of the blog Formosa Neijia. We had a wide ranging talk about life in Taiwan, martial arts gossip, and business. As readers of his blog know, he has a real talent for encouraging friendly open debate and we talked about how he can use that skill and experience to build a school integrating kettle ball training and martial arts skills. He has read all my father’s books on business so we really got into how to translate my father’s ideas about what makes a business flourish into the Taiwanese context. As all business people know, being in business means constantly refining and adapting what you do through trial and error. And that takes time. In my opinion he has what it takes to be successful and he’s off to a good start.
Dave convinced me to take a class with He Jing-Han (his blog is: http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/hejinghan-bagua). Master He taught a three hour class in the park behind the big public library (where students on the weekend line up 2 hours before opening time, just to make sure they have an air conditioned place to study). The class was focused on a linear form of baguazhang he calls baguaquan, the form can be seen on his Youtube channel. This form is just a small part of what he teaches year round and I got the impression that his style of baguazhang is organized very differently than mine. In fact, of all the things I’ve studied it most resembled the mixed internal/external Lanshou system I originally learned from George Xu 20 years ago. I would love to come back and get a sense of the full scope of what he teaches, this guy is a living treasure.
Shirfu He is a warm and gracious guy. After class we went to lunch for two hours and had a wonderful talk about Daoism and the history of internal martial arts. When I told him about my project He suggested that martial cults were created for group fighting while martial arts are focused on individual fighting, but he conceded that it was quite possible that historically people practiced and taught both together. He also made the important point that what he teaches has changed dramatically from what his teacher, born in 1906, taught. He suggested it was nearly possible to comprehend how his teacher thought about the arts, considering he lived through such different and turbulent times. Going back 5 or 6 generations is really stretching credulity. I know he is right and yet the project seems important anyway. I think it is worth while trying to understand not only what teachings have been discarded or changed, but why.
I also had the opportunity to meet twice with Marcus Brinkman. Once for a Chinese Medical Cupping treatment (my whole back got cupped with more suction than I’ve felt before!) and once for a Baguazhang lesson on his roof. He is a fun guy with an in depth knowledge of Chinese medicine and substantial martial prowess. He gave me some really good theoretical explanations about the relationship of internal martial arts and medicine, but I’ll save them for some future blogs. (I need time to digest them!)
Yesterday I met with a Professor of Daoism named Hsieh Shi-Wei. I honestly believe he is the first person to really understand the full scope of my project and he was very encouraging! More on that later.
Other highlights--
People are warm, kind and helpful. The subway and bus system in Taipei works like a charm. I don’t even have to pull my pass out of my wallet because it has a radio chip in it, I don’t even have to slow my stride when entering and exiting the subway! Taipei is much cleaner than I imagined it would be, public bathrooms are much cleaner here than they are in America. I went drinking at an outdoor beer factory and a dinosaur bone covered bar. I’ve enjoyed asparagus juice, salt-coffee, a mug-bean smoothie, tons of interesting street food, seaweed chips, a harrowing scooter ride, and I stubbed my middle toe black and blue hiking in the mountains.
I have one more meeting here in Taipei tomorrow and then I think I’m headed for the south.
Real Lineages
/One of my students pointed out that in the previous post on the early 20th Century I asserted that lineages were invented to defend gongfu against attacks by Modernity, claiming that there was continuity between an older pure martial tradition and certain contemporary styles. They were all trying to avoid associations with performance, ritual, religion, or failed rebellion. Where as in the book Qigong Fever, we see that after the Cultural Revolution (1967-1977) lineages were invented to make qigong appear ancient and mysterious, pre-Modern claims of authority.
Still, in both eras movement artists desired to have the authority of some all powerful "science" on their side; a desire which seems absurd now, in a time when no one is contesting my right or my duty to practice and teach gongfu. Politics is not a rational process. Lineages are a political tool, not a rational one, and certainly not scientific.
Perhaps I accidentally implied that no lineages are real. Shaman, Wu, Tangki, magicians, even puppeteers pick disciples to whom they give the responsibility of passing on a classical art or ritual tradition. In India, Japan and China the disciple is often a family member, but if the extended family hasn't produced any suitable offspring, a disciple will be adopted.
The more illegal (remember legal/illegal is a continum in China) an art is, the more likely it is to be secretive. Also, magicians, martial arts and ritual experts usually had good reasons to keep trade secrets close to their chests. Lineages served this political purpose well. The early 20th century ridiculed secretive behavior none the less, and people at least pretended that all their secrets had been revealed. (I believe Cheng Man Ch'ing wrote a book on Tai Chi book called, "There Are No Secrets.")
I don't believe there are real historical martial arts lineages which were devoid of performance, ritual, religion, or rebellion. But lineage, by its nature, is a changing thing and could certainly purge itself of these aspects and remain a lineage. But be suspicious, a martial art that has had a lot of purging will also have a lot of inexplicable baggage. It's a lot easier to assess the value of an art when you have the whole thing intact, and NOBODY seems to have that!
I suspect there was some previous era where martial arts were shared freely. Buddhist temples had open courtyards where locals could get together and practice. Villages had clan halls where people could get together and practice. I think there was always some paranoia, but it may have been more like basketball secrets. Every village and every temple sponsored a team, and everyone wanted the quality of their competing teams to be high--so after dominating for a few seasons-- you traded coaches.
I'm optimistic that the commercial world is leading us into an era of great sharing.
If there was a "how to" martial arts literature prior to the Ching Dynasty, it seems lost to us now. Martial arts have come down to us primarily as the arts of the illiterate. I do believe at one time martial arts were "high-culture." The evidence for that is in the philosophical literature of the Waring States Era. It is entirely possible that the Tang and Song Era had these too, but perhaps they were destroyed during the years of Mongol rule.
The other group of people who have lineages are Daoist Priests, Daoshi. Daoism is a lineage tradition, everyone given the title Daoshi was included in a lineage and each individual teaching or text had its own lineage. In the event that someone set off on their own and created some new supportive practice or teaching, after a generation or so it/they would be incorporated/adopted into existing lineages. Scholars have their doubts about just how far back some of these lineages go, but no one doubts that they do go way back. But it is also true that most of these lineages are secret. The ones we know about are the ones that stopped being secret to some extent. I suspect that martial artists, beginning in the Ching Dynasty, started imitating Daoist (and Buddhist) ideas of lineages. Martial arts may not have had lineages before that.
Then again their may have been secret Daoist lineages of martial arts. As Shahar points out in his book Shaolin Temple, the popular literature of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties grew out of theater and is perpetually making fun of Daoists, Buddhist, officials, and martial heroes (xia) with their secret techniques.
I've been looking through the index to the Ming Dynasty Daoist Cannon (Daozang) which was just published last year. There are a lot of texts which describe physical practices in conjunction with ritual, purification, astrology, meditation etc... There may even be a few texts which are primarily movement oriented (requiring lineage transmission, of course), but I see nothing resembling martial arts. If such texts ever existed they are either still hidden, or they were destroyed 900 years ago a long with thousands of other texts during the Yuan Dynasty.
Still, in both eras movement artists desired to have the authority of some all powerful "science" on their side; a desire which seems absurd now, in a time when no one is contesting my right or my duty to practice and teach gongfu. Politics is not a rational process. Lineages are a political tool, not a rational one, and certainly not scientific.
Perhaps I accidentally implied that no lineages are real. Shaman, Wu, Tangki, magicians, even puppeteers pick disciples to whom they give the responsibility of passing on a classical art or ritual tradition. In India, Japan and China the disciple is often a family member, but if the extended family hasn't produced any suitable offspring, a disciple will be adopted.
The more illegal (remember legal/illegal is a continum in China) an art is, the more likely it is to be secretive. Also, magicians, martial arts and ritual experts usually had good reasons to keep trade secrets close to their chests. Lineages served this political purpose well. The early 20th century ridiculed secretive behavior none the less, and people at least pretended that all their secrets had been revealed. (I believe Cheng Man Ch'ing wrote a book on Tai Chi book called, "There Are No Secrets.")
I don't believe there are real historical martial arts lineages which were devoid of performance, ritual, religion, or rebellion. But lineage, by its nature, is a changing thing and could certainly purge itself of these aspects and remain a lineage. But be suspicious, a martial art that has had a lot of purging will also have a lot of inexplicable baggage. It's a lot easier to assess the value of an art when you have the whole thing intact, and NOBODY seems to have that!
I suspect there was some previous era where martial arts were shared freely. Buddhist temples had open courtyards where locals could get together and practice. Villages had clan halls where people could get together and practice. I think there was always some paranoia, but it may have been more like basketball secrets. Every village and every temple sponsored a team, and everyone wanted the quality of their competing teams to be high--so after dominating for a few seasons-- you traded coaches.
I'm optimistic that the commercial world is leading us into an era of great sharing.
If there was a "how to" martial arts literature prior to the Ching Dynasty, it seems lost to us now. Martial arts have come down to us primarily as the arts of the illiterate. I do believe at one time martial arts were "high-culture." The evidence for that is in the philosophical literature of the Waring States Era. It is entirely possible that the Tang and Song Era had these too, but perhaps they were destroyed during the years of Mongol rule.
The other group of people who have lineages are Daoist Priests, Daoshi. Daoism is a lineage tradition, everyone given the title Daoshi was included in a lineage and each individual teaching or text had its own lineage. In the event that someone set off on their own and created some new supportive practice or teaching, after a generation or so it/they would be incorporated/adopted into existing lineages. Scholars have their doubts about just how far back some of these lineages go, but no one doubts that they do go way back. But it is also true that most of these lineages are secret. The ones we know about are the ones that stopped being secret to some extent. I suspect that martial artists, beginning in the Ching Dynasty, started imitating Daoist (and Buddhist) ideas of lineages. Martial arts may not have had lineages before that.
Then again their may have been secret Daoist lineages of martial arts. As Shahar points out in his book Shaolin Temple, the popular literature of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties grew out of theater and is perpetually making fun of Daoists, Buddhist, officials, and martial heroes (xia) with their secret techniques.
I've been looking through the index to the Ming Dynasty Daoist Cannon (Daozang) which was just published last year. There are a lot of texts which describe physical practices in conjunction with ritual, purification, astrology, meditation etc... There may even be a few texts which are primarily movement oriented (requiring lineage transmission, of course), but I see nothing resembling martial arts. If such texts ever existed they are either still hidden, or they were destroyed 900 years ago a long with thousands of other texts during the Yuan Dynasty.
