ATTN: Sal Canzonieri

[mickey]

Greetings,

r., please provide more info about the book, "Transmission of Light." Is there an English translation available?

To find the I Chin Ching preserved in Taoist traditions is not as farfetched as some may think. Inner traditions suggest extensive interactions on things not limited to simply the martial, but more on the esoteric/metaphysical sciences, between the Taoists, Buddhists, Moslem(Sufi), Tibetan, Egyptian, and other schools of wisdom. The exchange was healthy and the transplantation of a "Book" of knowledge to another school ensured its future survival. Case in point: the person who was responsible for the re emergence of Hatha yoga in India had to go to Tibet to learn it. There was always more than prayer and ritual in these schools. To find actual historical stuff on Damo without trying to tap in on the inner traditions would prove daunting; yet to discount these traditions based on the lack of documentation, which in my opinion, is a Western approach that cripples and obscures a lot of ancient culture and wisdom, is downright horrific. As I have said before in another thread, tap into your ancestors. They are waiting for you with much knowledge to share.

mickey

[r.(shaolin)]

The Transmission of the Lamp : Early Masters / compiled by Tao yuan, a Ch'an Monk of the Sung dynasty ; translated by Sohaku Ogata Published: Durango, Colo. : Longwood Academic, 1991

Ching-tech'uan teng-lu "Record of the Transmission of the Lamp" is the oldest and historically most influential of the "transmission of the lamp" texts (there are others). It was compiled by Tao-yuan (885-958). It was presented to Emperor Chen-tsung of the Northern Sung in 1004. The text includes the lives and teachings of the significant figures associated with Ch'an Buddhism. Included here are the twenty-eight Indian Patriarchs which end with Bodhidharma and the six Chinese patriarchs, beginning with Bodhidharma up to Hui-neng .
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Mickey wrote:
As I have said before in another thread, tap into your ancestors. They are waiting for you with much knowledge to share.
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Mickey I very much agree with you, but would add that unfortunately, much of the martial arts tradition of China’s Imperial past has already disappeared . . . . much of the information concerning these traditions and expertise resides with a dwindling number of very old masters. A Unesco website features a quotation that underlines a similar situation in other parts of the world. “Africa loses a library when an old man dies.” I would add it wasn't just the vicious suppression of the social/culture engineers of the PRC over the past 50+ years, many of these traditions were also the victims in the clash of Imperial China and Western revolutionary modernism during the turn of the 20th century . . . in the name of modernization.

r.

[mickey]

Thank you r.,

The word "Lamp" does change things a bit. By the way, tapping into your ancestors is not limited to the living. The spiritual realm is quite real.

mickey

[GeneChing]

There are several translations of Transmissions of the Lamp in English. I have three or four in my personal library. Sometimes it is translated as "light" but "lamp" is more accurate in my mind.

As for ngokfei's question about how we know the forwards are forged, it's a preponderance of evidence. For Li Jing, there are a lot of dating problems. He puts the wrong emperor to the time period, which would be a bit like you writing a forward this year and saying "under the presidency of Jimmy Carter". There are other problems, probably the most glaring being that he says he recieved transmission from Quiran ke, who was a fictional character in a Tang short story of the same name. As for Niu Gao's preface, there are more temporal problems. He mentions Qinzhong temple which wasn't erected until 20 years after the date of the forward. He claims Niu Gao was illiterate, which seems weird not only because of the obvious problem of how an illiterate person could write this forward, but also the more serious problem that a general of his magnitude certainly wasn't illiterate. It was the novelization of Yue Fei's story that portrayed Niu Gao as less educated. The novel Yue Fei by Qian Cai was clearly derivative of the Outlaws of the Marsh so Niu Gao was modelled after Li Kui (of Li Kwei's axes. There are more points, but you get the idea.

[ngokfei]

Gene

I get your drift as most martial artists of the past were considered lower than tradesmen and would be illiterate at most.

As for dates I've seen even modern books considered strongly researched containing the same discrepancies you mention, dates, references to individuals.

Even the actual date of the founding of shaolin has not been determined without question.

As for the general being illiterate, who knows, battle field promotions are common just look at the legends of Mulan, can almost say without a double that she must of been illiterate.

Why couldn't Niu Gao have simply dictated the foreward to someone who wrote it down.

Yeah I'm picking here and there but there is not absolute truths, too long ago.

Can't even remember who I took to the Prom, or did I actually attend??

PS can't wait for the release of the zhenzhou tournament tape, also that claw thing looks pretty intimidating!!!

[GeneChing]

She was quite a hottie - a junior - and having her as my date elevated my status in High School. Worthy of note, I went to school with Teri Hatcher. That's right, Lois/Bond girl/Desparate Housewife. And at the time, I would have to say that my date was hotter than her.

There are plenty of more points that invalidate both forwards. I don't know of any scholar that accepts them. Sure, history has it's problems because it can never truly be proven, but historians do what they do best. Beleive what you want to believe. Don't let me shake you of that. I have a lot of respect for the faithful. But I hate blind faith. Today, faith should be tempered by reason, so you should examine the evidence a bit more carefully. For example, I don't believe that Tamo was the historical founder of Shaolin Kung Fu at all, but I still have faith in him.

[ngokfei]

Actually don't really believe thelegend too much now.

But man when I 1st got into KF he was the bomb.

Still will use him as its good for advertising and PR of my school



Now that's a high compliment for your prom date... Don't let the wife read this

PS: enjoyed the wing chun mag. man that claw thing is scary. Can't wait for the shaolin 2005 issue. So liondancing stuff huh

[GeneChing]

Tamo, Li Jing, Niu Gao - they're all still the bomb. I still have many Tamo images prominently displayed in my home and office. I still burn incense at his altars. It's not so much about the historical facts of his existence. It's about what he represents. And that is the bomb. The A bomb. The most bombastic. Any legend is pregnant with meaning, with morality and life lessons. That's what it's really about.

Teri didn't really develop until after she left our high school. She was captain of our cheerleading squad and had done some modelling for Sears catalog I think. Sadly, I didn't really know her at all, so I have little to say about her. I mean really, I was this weird kid into swords and she was the head cheerleader. She did show up to our 10 year, but not our 20 year. My wife comments when she hears Teri stories now. I lost track of my prom date after she got married - that was well over a decade ago. The last thing she took me to was the Monkees reunionn tour. The last thing I took her to was the Grateful Dead. Now there's a trade, eh?

Glad you liked the Mar Apr 2005. As for the claw, we just changed the featured weapons section as fallout from our Jan Feb 2005 Sword special. Now it features shots of antique weapons. Hope you like it. And as for lion dancing gear, we imported 150 lion heads, 3 dragons, a mess of drums, cymbals, etc. just before Chinese New Years. It was my job to catalog them all. That's always a pain because Chinese cataloging doesn't always make a lot of sense, so we must convert. Plus you know how big they are - I couldn't just sit at my desk and do it. I had to crawl through the warehouse (which is freezing) for a week. whine, whine, whine...