Shaolin Kung Fu and Zen

Cultivating Heart, Nourishing Nature

The master who introduced me to my lifelong love of the Shaolin arts was my first Kung Fu teacher, Uncle Righteousness, a highly respected Shaolin master. Uncle Kighteousness was the honourable nickname by which Kung Fu circles in particular and the public in general addressed my mas- ter; his real name was Lai ChinWah. One of the best lessons I learned from him was that the highest Kung Fu is what is known in Chinese as xiu xin yang xing, which literally means 'cultivate heart, nourish nature'.
I was too young at that time, to appreciate fully the real meaning of 'cultivate heart, nourish nature'. It was much later that I had the rare opportunity to practise it with another Shaolin master, Sifu Ho Fatt Nam, who was directly descended from the Southern Shaolin Monastery. From Sifu Ho, I learned another very important lesson. He told me:
If you want to soar to the heights and reach the depths ofKung Fu, you must practise Chi Kung; ifyou want to soar to the heights and reach the depths of Chi Kung, you must practise meditation. Shaolin meditation is Zen, which involves 'cultivating heart, nourishing nature~.
To most people, this means developing a noble character and amiable disposition. But this is only the first step in Shaolin Kung Fu, not its high- est achievement. In Chinese, 'heart' usually refers to what the West would call 'mind', and 'nature' here means 'Buddha nature'. Hence, 'cultivate heart, nourish nature' actually means cultivate your mind, which is the same as the Universal Mind, and nourish your nature which is the same as Buddha nature. This was exactly what the great Bodhidharma, the first Patriarch of the Shaolin arts, wanted his disciples to achieve when he taught at Shaolin Monastery in the early 6th century.
In Buddhist terms this is seeking enlightenment, ie cultivating our mind so that we realize our mind is the Universal Mind, and nourishing our nature so that we realize our nature is actually the Buddha nature.
But what is meant by Universal Mind and Buddha nature? These are Zen terms referring to the Ultimate Truth or the Supreme Reality. In other religious terms, it is the same as returning to God, union with Brahman or merging with the Cosmos.
Zen, here, is a shortened form of Zen Buddhism, which is a major school of Mahayana Buddhism. Buddhism is the teachings of the Buddhas, or Enlightened Ones. There have been, and will be, countless Buddhas, not only in our world but also in countless other worlds and galaxies. While orthodox scientists still believe that life exists only in our puny world, an infinitesimal speck in the known universe, Buddhists believe that life is everywhere, and in more forms than ordinary minds can conceive. The Buddha of our world in our aeon is Sakyamuni Buddha (also called Gautama Buddha), who is normally referred to as the Buddha. The Buddha of our previous aeon was Kasyapa Buddha, and of our coming aeon will be Maitreya Buddha. There are at present also Buddhas in other worlds in other stars, such as Amitabha Buddha in a distant galaxy in the west, and Askhobhya Buddha in the east.
Buddhism is not a religion in the sense in which most Westerners use the word. Indeed terms like 'Buddhism' and 'Buddhists' are labels given by the West for the purpose of identification and differentiation. In Eastern societies people since ancient times have been practising the teachings of the Enlightened Ones without being aware that they were Buddhists. That is why the Chinese, as well as other peoples, can be Buddhist,Taoist and Confucianist all at the same time. That was also why people of dif- ferent religions practised the Shaolin arts, including Zen Buddhism, in Shaolin Monastery.

Discipline and Wisdom

There are two main traditions in Buddhism, Theravada and Mahayana. Theravada Buddhism, which flourishes in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Cambodia, is often referred to as Buddhism of the Elders because the Council of Senior Monks played a significant role in its development. Mahayana Buddhism, which is widespread in China,Japan, Korea,Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, is often referred to as Buddhism of the Great Vehicle because of its emphasis on universal enlightenment and not just personal salvation. Vajrayana Buddhism, called Buddhism of the DiamondVehicle because of its many facets, which is popular inTibet, Mongolia and Nepal, developed from Mahayana Buddhism, but is now often referred to as the third Buddhist tradition.
The differences between the three Buddhist traditions are mainly developmental and cultural; they all have the same basic teaching and the same ultimate aim. The basic teaching can be best summed up in the Buddha's own words:
Avoid all evil,
Do good,
Purify the mind.
The ultimate aim of Buddhism is to attain enlightenment. In the Buddhist context, enlightenment means something vastly different from the Western concept, as in the Age of Enlightenment, which implies an intellectual understanding of processes or events. In Buddhism, the most important aspect in any attainment is direct experience, not intellectual understanding. In other words, it is not enough merely to understand what enlightenment is, although that is helpful; it must be experienced if it is to constitute any attainment. We will discuss enlightenment in detail later, but meanwhile let us briefly study the three features of the Buddha's basic teaching.
A very useful guide, to help anyone of any religion to avoid evil is to follow the five basic precepts of Buddhism, the teachings of the Enlightened Ones:
~ no killing ~ no stealing ~ no lying ~ no sexual misconduct ~ no intoxication (because it dulls the mind)

Some readers who are used to the concept of positive thinking may think the five precepts negative because they stress not doing evil rather than doing good. Three points are relevant here. First, Buddhists do also stress doing good. Secondly; not doing evil is not the same as doing good. Thirdly, one should cultivate the more basic tenet of not doing evil before focusing on doing good. Hence, a rich man may contribute handsomely to charity, but if he has earned his wealth through dishonest means, his 'doing good' would lose its significance.
Doing good includes doing good to others as well as to oneself. The following six paramitas, which constitute a fundamental training pro- gramme in Mahayana Buddhism, provide guidance to those who wish to do good: ~ charity ~ moraliW ~ tolerance ~ perseverance ~ meditation ~ wisdom.
The first three concern doing good to others, whereas the last three con- cern doing good to oneself. This is typical of Mahayana philosophy, ie helping others is as important as helping ourselves.
It is a misconception to think that one needs a lot of money to be charitable. According to the Buddha's teaching, there are three levels of charity. The lowest is the giving of money and material goods, the second is the giving of service and the highest is the giving of teaching, especial- ly religious or spiritual teaching. Hence, if you take the trouble to stop your car to help a blind man cross a road, you are probably being more charitable than a rich man giving money to a blind charity.
The purpose of purifying the mind, the third aspect of the basic teaching in the Buddha's own words, is to attain enlightenment, which is achieved through the triple training process of discipline, meditation and wisdom. In the six paramitas, discipline comprises the first four and meditation and wisdom the last two. In the Eightfold Path, a fundamental training process in Theravada Buddhism, discipline comprises right thought, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood and right effort; meditation comprises right concentration and right mindfulness; and wis- dom comprises right understanding. While cultivating discipline is a continuous process, it is also the prerequisite for mind purification, which is attained through meditation. Meditation will lead to wisdom, especially the wisdom regarding the realization of ultimate reality.
The wisdom found in Buddhist teaching is aweinspiring. Buddhist wisdom, originally acquired through meditation where different aspects of reality are directly perceived, is recorded in the huge body of Buddhist scriptures collectively known as the Tripitaka, which is the largest collection of religious works in the world, consisting of over 7000 vol- umes. It comprises three sections: sutras, which are the teachings of the Buddha in his own words; vinaya, which is a collection of monastic rules and related stories; and sastras, which are treaties and commentaries writ- ten by Buddhist masters.
If you imagine that these extensive volumes of Buddhist scriptures involve persuasion and moralization, teaching people to be pious or reli- gious, you are mistaken. The scriptures explain, ifyou can understand its classical language and profound concepts, ideas that physicists, cosmolo- gists, psychologists and other scientists and philosophers are currently investigating, such as time and space, matter and energy, subatomic activities, the multi-dimensional universe, shadow matter, and different levels of consciousness. This is not surprising if we remember that Buddhism, like science and philosophy, investigates what reality is. It is beyond the scope of this book to describe in detail the Buddhist wisdom regarding these aspects of reality, but we shall address ourselves to the question of what ultimate reality is, and its related question of why the so-called external objective world is an illusion, as such an understanding is relevant to the highest attainment of Shaolln Kung Fu.

What is Ultimate Reality?

The following theme line from the well-known but little understood Heart Sutra, one of the most important and beautiful works in Buddhism, serves as a good introduction to cosmic reality:
Form is emptiness; and emptiness is form.
Many people will find this line puzzling. They are equally bewildered by basic Buddhist teachings such as that the phenomenal world is an illusion, and ultimate reality is tranquil and undifferentiated. Interestingly, modern science provides a clear explanation for this Buddhist teaching.
In our ordinary consciousness, an opponent is real. Ifhe or she attacks you and ifyou fail to defend yourself there is no illusion about your being hit. But suppose we look at the same situation from the very high level of consciousness of an enlightened being like a Buddha or a Bodhisattva who sees reality as it ultimately is and not as it is grossly modified by a set of conditions. You may not have reached the level of a Bodhisattva, but here is where modern science can help us. Suppose you were able to look through a gigantic, super-powerful electron microscope. What would you see?Your opponent would have disappeared! What you thought was the form of a person would turn out to be almost emptiness; you would see patterns of subatomic particles as far apart as specks of stars in outer space. Ifyou looked at yourself you would be equally astonished; your body too would have disappeared!
If the microscope were more powerful, like the wisdom-eye of a BodhisatWa, you would realize that the so-called subatomic particles are actually not particles; they are concentrations of energy without any def- inite boundary. You may be reminded of Nell Bohr's Principle of Complementarity – that an electron can be a wave or a particle.
But more importantly, you would suddenly be awakened to the great cosmic truth that as there is no boundary separating one subatomic par- ticle from another, there is also no boundary separating you from your opponent or anything else. In other words, the whole universe is actually a continuous spread of energy or consciousness, without any differentia- tion. You would be awakened to the greatest truth of all – the discovery that great masters of all religions and mystical disciplines have made – that the physical body in which, owing to your ignorance, you have impris- oned yourself, is an illusion, and that your personal mind is actually the Universal Mind. This feeling of liberation gives us tremendous calm and blessedness. The ecstatic exclamations of great masters such as 'I dissolve myself in the infinite grace of God', 'There is no difference between the Cosmos and me', and 'My own nature is the Buddha nature' become meaningful.
This is Zen, which in this context means a glimpse of cosmic reality in its transcendental aspect, and which is called wu in Chinese and kensho or satori in Japanese, and is best translated as 'awakening' in English: An awakening is not enlightenment; it is nevertheless a confirmation that you are on the way to enlightenment if you persist in your cultivation. Awakening is a cosmic glimpse, whereas enlightenment is a total, direct becoming of the Cosmos, where all dualism disappears, where there is no difference between the knower and the known. When you attain enlight- enment, you are not extinguished, as is sometimes misconceived; you become – are – the Cosmos. What endeavour can be grander, more noble than cultivating this attainment? Enlightenment is called by various names in Buddhism, such as nirvana, bodhi, Buddhahood and Zen.
Zen, therefore, has a few related meanings. It can mean both a cosmic glimpse and the total cosmic realization. It can also refer to meditation, the essential way to both the cosmic glimpse and the cosmic realization. It is also a shortened form for Zen Buddhism, the school of Buddhism especially devoted to the attainment of Zen in all its three meanings.
After you have come out of Zen, you may ask whether your opponent, you or anything else is real. The Zen answer is yes and no, either yes or no, neither yes nor no. If you think this is crazy, be assured that sensible, serious scientists today would give similar answers if you ask them whether a virtual particle, or a “real”particle like a photon or an electron, or even a tangible object like a cat, or huge heavenly body like the moon, really exists. After the scientific revolution brought about by such great scientists as Einstein, Max Planck, Neil Bohr and Werner Heisengberg, modern scientists have accepted, many centuries after the Buddha, that our so-called objective external world is actually a creation of the mind. The Amercian physicist, Proessor David Mermim, has seriously declared that “we now know the moon is demonstrably not there when nobody looks.
When Buddhist masters say that the external world is an illusion, they do not mean that it is imaginary, but that it is only relatively, not absolutely, real, A bacterium inside your opponent, or a sentient, being from another realm of existence, will see that person very differently from the way you do, because you, the bacterium and the extraterrestrial being experience him or her under different conditions, Even if you slightly change your conditions, such as wearing a pair of galsses with strange lenses, the same opponent will appear differently. But if you, the bacterium and the extraterrestrial being were enlightened, or at least awakened, you would all see things the same way, for all would have perceived ultimate reality, ie cosmic reality without any conditions.
What is ultimate reality like? Masters of all religions and mystical disciplines have insisted that it is inexplicable. This doesn not mean that they did not want to tell people, or that they themselves did not know. But if you want to know what it is, you have to experience it yourself, just as in Shaolin Kung Fu, if you want to know what internal force is you have to acquire it to find out. In a simpler, more prosaic example, if you want to know the taste of a mango, you have to taste it; no amount of description can exactly convey its taste to you. Yet, to help people, to give them some, albeit imperfect idea of ultimate reality, Buddhist masters have described it as tranquil, undifferentiated and void.

The word ‘void’ may be misleading. Void or emptiness, known as sunyata in Sanskrit and Kong in Chinese., Which is the hallmark of Mahayana teaching, does not mean absolute nothingness; it means devoid or emptied of phenomena or appearances. Hence, phenomena like houses, cars, trees. the sky, the moon and stars are appearances; they are not ultimately real. Their appearances depend on a set of conditions, such as the ranges of light the observer is able to see, and the way each person's consciousness as well as the collective consciousness of the group are accustomed to operate. If conditions change, the appearances change. For example, instead of viewing the sky in our ordinary light, a Harvard astronomer viewed it using ukra-violet rays; he found not one but three suns, and the moon almost disappeared.

Bodhidharma and Taoism in Zen

Investigating the nature of reality is an important feature of mind devel- opment in the highest Shaolin Kung Fu, which is Zen cultivation. Zen was transmitted from India to China by Bodhidharma, who like the Buddha before him renounced his luxurious life as a prince to seek and attain enlightenment. Some scholars who have probably never practised Zen, but may have spent a few years reading about it, often from sec- ondary sources, claim that Bodhidharma was a myth, and Zen Buddhism was a Chinese invention based on Taoism. But Zen masters of all nationalities, including all the great Chinese masters, gratefully honour Bodhidharma as the first Patriarch for initiating Zen in China, where it blossomed and spread to Japan, Korea,Viemam and other countries.
The evidence for Bodhidharma's residence in China is overwhelming. Imperial records mention his arrival at Canton, southern China around 520 cE, his interview with Emperor Liang Wu DJ, when he told the emperor that the first principle in Buddhism is emptiness not holiness, and his teaching at Shaolin Monastery about 527. The pavilion named after Bodhidharma is in the main building of Shaolin Monastery, the First Patriarch Temple built in his honour still stands in the extensive monastery complex some distance from the main building, and the cave behind the building where he meditated for nine years is still called Bodhidharma Cave. All established Zen masters traced their genealogical lines, which are surprisingly well kept despite their long history, back to Bodhidharma.
Those who claim that Zen Buddhism originated from Taoism are mainly either Chinese Confucian scholars of literature who have practised neither Zen nor Taoism deeply, or Western scholars who base their opin- ion on superficial Chinese sources. A deeper study of Taoism and Zen will show that their approaches to the realization of ultimate reality are basi- cally different, and an investigation of the history of Zen development in China will show little Taoist influence. As my master, Sffu Ho Fatt Nam, was an accomplishedTaoist master before his devotion to Zen, I have had the opportunity of being trained in both disciplines, and am therefore in a position to make an informed comparison.
Of the six patriarchs of Zen Buddhism, who were responsible for the foundation of Zen teaching, the first three stayed and taught in Shaohn Monastery; they were Bodhidharma, Hui Ke and Seng Can, and the First Patriarch Temple, Second Patriarch Temple and Third Patriarch Temple built in their honour are found in the extensive Shaohn Monastery com- plex today. A patriarch is the successor named by the previous patriarch to transmit Zen. There was no significant Taoist influence in Shaolin Monastery, which was regarded as 'the foremost temple beneath heaven' dedicated to Buddhism.
The fourth and fifth patriarchs, Dao Xin and HongJen, taught Zen at Dongshan Temple; and the sixth, Hui Neng, taught in Baolin Temple. All of them acknowledged Shaolin Monastery as the mother monastery, and they often returned there to pay their respects. Dongshan and Baolin are typical Buddhist temples where Taoist influence was unknown, and there was no record of Zen in China before the arrival of Bodhidharma.
There was no seventh patriarch because the sixth Patriarch did not appoint a single successor; there were instead many successors, because he asked his disciples to spread his teaching.
A Zen monk is very different from a Taoist priest. He is a strict vege- tarian, is celibate and shaves his head as a symbol of having left the mun- dane life for spiritual cultivation. A Taoist priest is permitted to eat meat and drink wine, marry and keep his hair in a typical Taoist bun, although some Taoists do voluntarily lead a vegetarian and celibate life. Some monks, rightly or wrongly, say that Taoist priests are not ready to give up everything, not even their hair, for the sake of spiritual fulfilment. However, you do not need to become a monk to practise Zen; as in the Shaolin arts of Kung Fu and Chi Kung, if you train conscientiously and diligently, you can become a master without becoming a monk.
While the supreme aim of Zen andTaoism is the same – attaining ulti- mate reality – their fundamental meditation techniques are different. Taoist mediation makes extensive use of visualization, whereas Zen med- itation avoids it and focuses on the void. According to the Zen teaching on meditation, which will be explained in more detail later, although visualization can lead to very high spiritual levels, it does not lead direct- ly to the highest, ultimate reality. But since many Taoists aim not at the realization of ultimate reality or, in Taoist terms, unity with the Cosmos, but at becoming immortals or even just at longevity in this life, meditation using visualization serves their purposes very well.
Probably the most important reason why Zen Buddhism is Buddhism, and not Taoism in Buddhist dress, as some scholars want us to believe, is that all the fundamental teachings of Zen Buddhism, right from the time it first developed in China, are found in the form of Buddhism taught by the Buddha himself. Basic Zen concepts, such as reality being manifested in transcendental or phenomenal dimensions, the rise of thoughts as the cause of delusion, the transmigration of beings in the six realms of phe- nomenal existence, the role of Bodhisattvas in universal salvation and meditation as the essential way to enlightenment, are basic Mahayana teachings. They are also found in sacred Theravada scriptures today, although most Theravadins may not emphasize them. Zen simply differs from other Buddhist schools in its approach: it seeks to attain enlighten- ment directly through meditation.
The aim of Zen, the highest of the Shaolin arts, is to experience cos- mic reality beyond the phenomena or appearances perceived in ordinary consciousness. This chapter has provided the philosophical understanding necessary for achieving better results more quickly. The practical methods of meditation to achieve the aims of Zen are explained in the next. These methods, which represent the apex of Shaolin Kung Fu training, are the legacy of the greatest of the masters.