Pearls of Wisdom

It is a hot, cloudless morning on a hillside on the outskirts of Kathmandu and dozens of nuns arrange themselves into lines around a golden Buddhist shrine.

In unison, each slams a clenched fist into their opposite palm, breathes deeply and waits, motionless in the rising heat.

But these devotees are not here to pray or to meditate, for they have gathered to undergo a rigorous and aggressive martial arts routine as the world’s first order of kung fu nuns.

The sisters of the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery — aged from nine to 52 — come from across Nepal, India, Tibet and Bhutan to learn the ancient Chinese discipline of kung fu, which they believe will help them be better Buddhists.  Every day, they exchange their maroon robes and philosophical studies for a intense 90-minute session of hand chops, punches, shrieks and soaring high kicks.

“The main reason for practising kung fu is for fitness and for health, but it also helps with meditation and self-defence,” 14-year-old Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo, who was sent to the nunnery from Bhutan four years ago, told AFP.  ”When we practise kung fu we are doing something which gives us not only strong bodies but also strong minds.”

Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas have traditionally been seen as inferior to monks, with the women kept away from physically demanding exercise and relegated to menial tasks like cooking and cleaning.  But the 800-year-old Drukpa — or dragon — sect is changing all that by mixing meditation with martial arts as a means of empowering its women.  The nuns, in contrast to most Buddhist groups, are also taught to lead prayers and given basic business skills, as well as running a guest house and coffee shop at the abbey and driving jeeps to Kathmandu to get supplies.

Kung fu came to the nunnery only four years ago when its spiritual leader, His Holiness the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, visited Vietnam, where he saw nuns receiving combat training that was previously used by Viet Cong guerrillas.  He was so impressed that he brought four of the Vietnamese, all women in their 20s, to Nepal to add kung fu lessons to the nuns’ yoga classes and lessons in the nuances of good and bad karma.

“Our nuns… are very new to modernisation and are timid and lack self-confidence,” the Gyalwang Drukpa wrote in a recent blog post.  ”I am not saying that I am a great teacher or a great leader but the path that I have decided to take in order to promote gender equality, so as to bring about the nuns’ improvement, gives me great encouragement to work harder and live longer.”

Jigme Konchok Lhamo, 18, who came to the order from India, says kung fu has quickly made the nuns more assured and has begun to address the power balance between men and women in Buddhism.  ”His Holiness wants the nuns to be like the men, with the same rights in the world,” she said. “That is why we get the chance to do everything, not just kung fu.  ”We also have the chance here to learn many things, like tennis and skating. And we have the chance also to learn English and Tibetan, and musical instruments.

“In the past only men could do some of the dances. Now we have the chance to take part. Before nuns could not do anything and now we have the chance to do anything the monks can do.”

The nunnery is enjoying a surge in popularity since introducing the kung fu lessons and now has some 300 nuns practicing martial arts techniques.  They have given demonstrations of their skills to thousands of pilgrims in Nepal and have toured India and Britain.  The nuns say the repetitive nature of Shaolin kung fu, which comes from the Buddhist temple of Shaolin in China’s Henan province, helps them to learn control and focus.

The benefits are obvious for young women who are expected to meditate in the same position for up to six hours at a time and sometimes undertake retreats during which they must remain silent for months.

Jigme Migyur Palmo, a soft-spoken 21-year-old nun, who came to Kathmandu three years ago from her home in Ladakh, in northern India, said kung fu works in harmony with her spiritual life.  She watched Jackie Chan kung fu movies when she was younger and now wants to be as good as the Hong Kong film star.

“I came to Kathmandu to learn Buddhist philosophy and now I don’t want to go home, I want to stay here my whole life,” she said.

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New York Times
December 8, 2010
by Peimin Ni

In a 2005 news report about the Shaolin Temple, the Buddhist monastery in China well-known for its martial arts, a monk addressed a common misunderstanding: “Many people have a misconception that martial arts is about fighting and killing,” the monk was quoted as saying, “It is actually about improving your wisdom and intelligence.”

Indeed, the concept of kung fu (or gongfu) is known to many in the West only through martial arts fighting films like “Enter the Dragon,” “Drunken Master” or more recently, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”  In the cinematic realm, skilled, acrobatic fighters like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li are seen as “kung fu masters.”

But as the Shaolin monk pointed out, kung fu embodies much more than fighting. In fact any ability resulting from practice and cultivation could accurately be said to embody kung fu. There is a kung fu of dancing, painting, cooking, writing, acting, making good judgments, dealing with people, even governing. During the Song and Ming dynasties in China, the term kung fu was widely used by the neo-Confucians, the Daoists and Buddhists alike for the art of living one’s life in general, and they all unequivocally spoke of their teachings as different schools of kung fu.

This broad understanding of kung fu is a key (though by no means the only key) through which we can begin to understand traditional Chinese philosophy and the places in which it meets and departs from philosophical traditions of the West. As many scholars have pointed out, the predominant orientation of traditional Chinese philosophy is the concern about how to live one’s life, rather than finding out the truth about reality.

The well-known question posed by Zhuangzi in the 4^th century B.C. — was he Zhuangzi who had dreamt of beinga butterfly or was he a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi? — which pre-dated virtual reality and “The Matrix” by a couple of thousand years, was as much a kung fu inspiration as it was an epistemological query. Instead of leading to a search for certainty, as Descartes’s dream did, Zhuangzi came to the realization that he had perceived “the transformation of things,” indicating that one should go along with this transformation rather than trying in vain to search for what is real.

Confucius’s call for “rectification of names” — one must use words appropriately — is more a kung fu method for securing sociopolitical order than for capturing the essence of things, as “names,” or words, are placeholders for expectations of how the bearer of the names should behave and be treated. This points to a realization of what J. L. Austin calls the “performative” function of language. Similarly, the views of Mencius and his later opponent Xunzi’s views about human nature are more recommendations of how one should view oneself in order to become a better person than metaphysical assertions about whether humans are by nature good or bad. Though each man’s assertions about human nature are incompatible with each other, they may still function inside the Confucian tradition as alternative ways of cultivation.

The Buddhist doctrine of no-self surely looks metaphysical, but its real aim is to free one from suffering, since according to Buddhism suffering comes ultimately from attachment to the self. Buddhist meditations are kung fu practices to shake off one’s attachment, and not just intellectual inquiries for getting propositional truth.

Mistaking the language of Chinese philosophy for, in Richard Rorty’s phrase, a “mirror of nature” is like mistaking the menu for the food. The essence of kung fu — various arts and instructions about how to cultivate the person and conduct one’s life — is often hard to digest for those who are used to the flavor and texture of mainstream Western philosophy. It is understandable that, even after sincere willingness to try, one is often still turned away by the lack of clear definitions of key terms and the absence of linear arguments in classic Chinese texts. This, however, is not a weakness, but rather a requirement of the kung fu orientation — not unlike the way that learning how to swim requires one to focus on practice and not on conceptual understanding. Only by going beyond conceptual descriptions of reality can one open up to the intelligence that is best exemplified through arts like dancing and performing.

This sensitivity to the style, subtle tendencies and holistic vision requires an insight similar to that needed to overcome what Jacques Derrida identified as the problem of Western logocentrism. It even expands epistemology into the non-conceptual realm in which the accessibility of knowledge is dependent on the cultivation of cognitive abilities, and not simply on whatever is “publicly observable” to everyone. It also shows that cultivation of the person is not confined to “knowing how.” An exemplary person may well have the great charisma to affect others but does not necessarily know how to affect others. In the art of kung fu, there is what Herbert Fingarette calls “the magical,” but “distinctively human” dimension of our practicality, a dimension that “always involves great effects produced effortlessly, marvelously, with an irresistible power that is itself intangible, invisible, unmanifest.”

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Training for Life

Inside Kung Fu Magazine October 1989

by Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong

Everybody has run into the situation where they just don’t have enough time to practice.  Maybe there’s enough time to go to the school and do your forms, but not enough to put any serious thought and work into your martial art.

The good news is, no matter how busy you are, there is a way to creatively put serious workout time into your work.

Remember, there’s a difference between work and workout.  Work is something you must do to earn a living.  Sometimes it’s pleasant, sometimes it’s one of life’s necessities.  A martial art workout is usually pleasure.  So why not combine the two, converting your job into a pleasant productive way to improve your marital arts expertise.  It will make your job more interesting , the time at work go faster, and help your martial arts progress.

Here’s how to combine your workout with your work.  Let’s say you are a laborer, using your body to carry heavy objects.  Make it a personal challenge to pick up each object and put it in the right place with the precision and accuracy you would use doing a form.  Keep your body positioned correctly, using your waist and legs for support.  Time your breathing to make the best use of your energy while lifting and carrying those heavy objects.

When I was a teenager, I paid for my kung fu lessons by working as a busboy in a restaurant.  At a certain hour I had to move quickly, cleaning tables, loading and unloading dishes from the dishwasher, and stacking the clean plates.  Although I would rather have been practicing in the kung fu school than settting up clean tables without breaking anything.  I used my best martial arts footwork (balanced and light footed) while I did my job.  Before long my job became my kung fu practice.

For those who work in offices, be creative while you type and file.  When standing at the files, bend your knees and get some stance training.  Try to be quick and accurate with each file, with the same efficiencey and focus as a well done form.

No matter how much your workload, work efficiently, staying relaxed and calm.  Concentrate on the job, but don’t hold your breath.  These are all martial art principles that you might practice in your school while doing a form or sparring.

Typists who sit most of the time should be erect, with their bodies relaxed and legs positioned solidly on the floor.  As you type, think of each finger movement as a special martial arts finger exercise.  Be aware of each hand an finger movement when you git the keys.  Concentrate your power and energy into your fingertips with each downward stroke.

It doesn’t matter what kind of job you do.  Try to be good at it, exhibiting accuracy and efficiency.  Take the opportunity to make it part of your martial arts training.  The same principles that make you a better martial artist are all present in our job - timing, speed, accuracy, focus, balance, relaxation and a calm mind.  Practice them everyday, then if you’re ever drawn into self-defense or when you spar, you’ll find the right reflexes already present.

Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong is a columnist for Inside Kung Fu

by Grandmaster Doc Fai Wong

From time to time, students with backgrounds in the gi arts (those who wear a gi to train) ask the equivalent terms for dojo, kata and gi in Chinese. This is a recurring question.

The most popular term is dojo. “Do” in Chinese is dao, which means the Way. This “way” is the spiritual way, which is spoken of in Chinese religions. “Jo” in Chinese is chang, which means the place. Dojo is the same as daochang in Chinese character writing. It means the place to practice the “way”, “do” or dao.

Let’s take a look at the gi arts. Karate-do means the “way of empty hand.” Judo means the “way of soft art” and tae kwon do means the “way of the foot and the fist.” Aikido means the way of combining or harmonizing the qi. The term dojo is the place to practice the martial arts mentioned above and doesn’t mean school or academy.

Dojo or daochang originally came from Taoist and Buddhist terminology. It’s a place to practice or cultivate the spiritual way, “do” or dao. It can also be the place to teach the “do” or dao. Today, the term daochang in China refers to the place that performs ceremonies for the dead. While the term dojo uses the same Chinese characters as “daochang,” today it has nothing to do with martial arts. Some people use the term “guan” or Cantonese “goon” or “kwoon.”

“Kwan” means the same thing in Korean. The word “guan” is used for more than martial arts. It can be chan guan, the restaurant; lu guan, the hotel; tushu guan, the library; shu guan, the old term for the regular schools; yi guan, the clinic; cha guan, the tea shop; shuhua guan, the art gallery; yan guan, the smoke shop; and many more beside just kung fu studio or wu guan. Most Chinese in the West use the English term “studio” instead of the Chinese term guan or koon, because the word guan has too many meanings. In other words, there is no equivalent term in kung fu for the term dojo.

Kata is the next popular term students are always asking about. Kata is tao or taolu in Chinese. When speaking in the Chinese language with another Chinese person, the correct way to say hand kata is kuen too for Cantonese and guan tao in Mandarin. The weapons kata is bingqi taolu, which is a general way of using this phrase. When breaking this term down into different weapons we use these terms: long weapon kata is chang bingqi taolu and short weapon kata is duan bingqi taolu. The double weapon kata is shuang bingqi taolu. The flexible weapon kata is ruan bingqi taolu. Let’s break it down to the individual weapons. Staff kata is gun tao; spear kata is qiang tao; straight sword kata is jian tao; and broadsword is dao tao. Just keep adding the Chinese weapon term in front of “tao” for all other weapons.

The above terms are most likely used by non-Chinese instructors. I use the term non-Chinese, because the Chinese would not use taolu as the placement term for kata when speaking to their English-speaking students. Chinese instructors would use English terms such as set, pattern or form. For example, for hand kata they would say “the hand set” instead of the hand taolu or quan tao.

Gi is another word for robe. It originated from judo practitioners and is made with a heavy cotton-like canvas for grabbing and throwing. When karate masters began teaching their students, they adapted the gi from judo and made it into a lighter-weight uniform for student training.

Kung-fu schools in China don’t have a particular training outfit. You often see wushu performers wear a nice exhibition Chinese outfit when they perform. Each performer is wearing a different color as well as a different outfit. Therefore, it’s not even a uniform. To call it a uniform, everybody must wear the same outfit. In the 1970s when kung-fu was becoming more well known in the Western world, some kung-fu schools had their students wear Chinese-style clothing when training. Some people called it a kung-fu gi. However, the Chinese don’t know what a gi is, because gi doesn’t mean uniform, nor does it mean robe.

Bio: Doc-Fai Wong writes a bi-monthly column for Inside Kung Fu and is the founder of the Plumblossom International Federation.