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Besides the martial art you practice, what makes you in particular a bonafide shaolin practitioner?
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Besides the martial art you practice, what makes you in particular a bonafide shaolin practitioner?
Kung Fu is good for you.
proper cultivation of spirit is a requirement.
shaolin is first and foremost a buddhist monastery, not a martial arts school.
fair enough.
Kung Fu is good for you.
That is a good question. There a thousands of schools out there that claim they are teaching Shaolin Kung Fu. If you say bonafide then that to me would mean the ability to trace your school or styles lineage back to Shaolin Temple. But then again, all of these schools that claim they are teaching Shaolin Kung Fu usually do this. Since record keeping is more of a modern thing this presents some difficulty. Also with the number of times the Shaolin Temple and its Satelites were destroyed and burnt to the ground it presents opportunities for any yahoo out there to make up their own lineage making it very hard to disprove their claims. Shaolin Kung Fu does have its own flavor and if you see similarities between what a school is teaching and the traditional forms that have survived and are being practiced at Shaolin today then that may be an indication that what you are practicing is truly a Shaolin art.
Zazen meditation?
Simon McNeil
___________________________________________
Be on the lookout for the Black Trillium, a post-apocalyptic wuxia novel released by Brain Lag Publishing available in all major online booksellers now.
Visit me at Simon McNeil - the Blog for thoughts on books and stuff.
iron crotch?
For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.
What about tinfoil swords?
A unique snowflake
Simon McNeil
___________________________________________
Be on the lookout for the Black Trillium, a post-apocalyptic wuxia novel released by Brain Lag Publishing available in all major online booksellers now.
Visit me at Simon McNeil - the Blog for thoughts on books and stuff.
so, uh... I had hoped this thread would take a different tack, but, oh well.
Kung Fu is good for you.
for me, personally, in regards to Shaolin martial arts;
I simply refer, say, write, view, etc. myself to be a practitioner of Shaolin arts. Not a Shaolin practitioner.
Im of the opinion that to be a Shaolin practitioner, you must be at Shaolin....well, practicing.
Otherwise you may practice Shaolin arts, maybe even be Buddhist, but that would be like saying you are a cowboy because you ride a horse and wear the hat.
But we all know most real cowboys are dead, and the few left alive could teach anyone a thing or two about what it means to be a cowboy.
Even if you are the best rider and rodeo guy around, wont make you a cowboy, just means your the best at riding a horse.
btw, i dont have a thing for cowboys, it was just the first thing that popped into my head.
For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.
there are some monks out there that have branched out and have schools in other places. a couple in america.
assuming the monks are continuing with all of their practices, and were actually trained at shaolin, i would consider them Shaolin practitioners. But I would consider their students practitioners of Shaolin arts. Unless they are adopting everything that comes with being trained AT Shaolin
For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.