1st Shaolin Summit & SANA

[LFJ]

nice tie and blue manbag.

[wenshu]

Shaolin Secular Disciples of the Rapidly Diminishing Hairline Sect.

[wenshu]

It was quite the spectacle. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I have since come to the realization that I am one of my school's token laowai! Even so, it was an honor to make a few nervous remarks at the Abbot's banquet.

Gene, it was great meeting Gigi and you! I hope my manners were not to anxiously perfunctory.

I'll put up some photos after some post processing; the white balance settings on my camera were all messed up so I have to adjust each one.

[wenshu]

A short video of Saturdays event.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJYDRFSpXiY

[GeneChing]

We'll be bald monks soon, wenshu. Maybe even our next lifetime!

Nice find on the vid. Did he say 'idealistical'?

It was a real pleasure meeting you and your girlfriend. I must say that it is very refreshing to meet a forum member who is very active and enthusiastic in the arts and approaches it intelligently, as opposed to the flame-flinging we get around here so often. No worries about being the token laowai. You can actually get ****her on that than I could. No Chinese school needs a token ABC.

[GeneChing]

For our e-zine summit report, we're going to showcase the videos of Greg Lynch Jr., our L.A. reporter and the mastermind behind Bad Ass Bunny Productions. Here's a taste.

KungFuMagazine.com Presents the 1st Shaolin Summit 2011

[taai gihk yahn]

wow Gene; one can only IMAGINE the content of this conversation, lol!!!

btw, a little late in the game, I was at my parents house Monday, helping my dad sort through / send some e-mail (don't get me started - it's a never-ending saga of sorrow), and lo and behold, I see an e-mail in his in-box from his long-time buddy Dr. Tom Rosandich, PhD, who is writing to him that he will be in NYC w the Abbott of the Shaolin Temple that past weekend, and alluding to some "stuff" about the whole visit that he states was just too complicated to get into (the actual point of the email was in regards to some Hungarian artist who does sports sculpture that he wanted my dad to give him some input on, seeing as my dad's Hungarian and all...); I wonder what was up w that! So anyway, don't know if you ever would care to do a piece related to the USSA's connection to ST, but if you did, you'd have express lane access to Rosandich, if you wanted it...

[wenshu]

Actually, USSA featured prominently at the conclusion of the summit.

Something about accredited "Shaolin" course work.

[enoajnin]

The USSA has an online course. They presented a complete printout of the lessons in book form to the Abbot

[wenshu]

That was the giant leather bound "Shaolin Secrets. . ."

Admittedly, I wasn't paying much attention at that point.

http://www.ussa.edu/publications/new...n-los-angeles/

[wenshu]

http://ussa.edu/publications/news/20...-kung-fu-book/

Shaolin Temple Abbot Shi Yongxin Accepts Academy’s New Shaolin Kung Fu Book
25 May 2011
Abbot Shi Yongxin (right) of the Shaolin Temple in China received a new book, “Shaolin Kung Fu Secrets,” which the United States Sports Academy translated from an ancient Chinese manuscript. Grandmaster Steve Demasco (left), an Academy national faculty member, presented the book at the Shaolin Summit on May 21 in Los Angeles.
His Holiness Abbot Shi Yongxin, the spiritual leader of 200 million Chan Buddhists, accepted a new book on Shaolin philosophy that the United States Sports Academy has developed into an online course that will make the ancient Chinese text available worldwide.

Grandmaster Steve Demasco, a member of the Academy’s national faculty, provided the Abbot with an English translation of the book, “Shaolin Kung Fu Secrets,” during an official presentation at the first annual Shaolin Summit on Saturday, May 21 in Los Angeles. Demasco has played a major role in helping the Academy with the translation of the manuscript and development of the course called “The Philosophy of Shaolin Kung Fu.”

During his visit to the Academy’s Daphne, Ala., campus in November 2006 to receive his honorary doctorate, His Holiness gave to Academy President and CEO Dr. Thomas P. Rosandich a 1,500-year-old manuscript that described Shaolin philosophy as it relates to Kung Fu. The past three years, the Academy worked to translate its more than 800 pages from Ancient Chinese to Chinese and finally to English. The book given to the Abbot is bound in a black leather cover with gold lettering.

By using the ancient Shaolin teachings found in the book, the Academy also has created an online course that includes an introduction to the key tenets of the Shaolin philosophy, the rich political and religious history of the Shaolin Temple, and the importance of balance between the mental, physical, and spiritual in a healthy mind and body. The new online course is being done in collaboration with the Shaolin Temple and with the Abbot’s blessing. It will be offered soon to people across the globe.

The Shaolin Summit drew more than 2,000 participants to the daylong event that features, Shaolin Kung Fu demonstrations and lessons from key masters, an interview with the Abbot, a panel discussion on the influence of Shaolin on traditional and popular culture, and an announcement of the formation of the Shaolin Association of Americas, a non-profit organization created to provide better outreach to the West.

[taai gihk yahn]

lol, well, that's all about par for the course w Dr. Rosandich, he has always been on the "cutting edge" of sports-related business development - which would explain why he was paying for my dad to travel to Bahrain, Kuwait and Dubai to teach European Team Handball 35 yrs. ago, as there was a LOT of $ looking to be spent back then by those countries on sports development, and Dr. Rosandich has always been very good at sniffing out where the $ is...;

in fact, he actually single-handedly figured out how to bail out the US Team Handball Federation some years back when it was about 3/4 of a mil in debt due to 30 yrs of mismanagement (translation: gratuitous embezzlement) by the former president;

the bit w DaMasco being involved is, well,...interesting (then again, as I said, Dr. Rosandich is, first and foremost, a businessman, sooo...)

[bawang]

gene ching looks like a klingon

[GeneChing]

See our U.s. Sports Academy To Honor Buddhist Abbot With Honorary Doctorate thread.

gene ching looks like a klingon

Funny story, bawang - several years ago, when I sported a Fu-Manchu mustache as well, I was on tour working for Phish and wound up at the Star Trek experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. A Klingon came up to me and exclaimed "You have the looks of a warrrior!" which of course sent the other road crew members I was with to the floor with laughter. I still have yet to live that down. Anyways, we've discussed Klingons already too.

[GeneChing]

Epoch Times is generally anti-PRC. I saw the reporters there and was tempted to engage them, but didn't. I regret that now.

‘CEO Monk’ Makes Money From Ancient Culture
Supported by China’s Communist Party, abbot extends reach
By Stephen Gregory & Derek Padula
Epoch Times Staff Created: May 25, 2011 Last Updated: May 25, 2011

LOS ANGELES—The head abbot of the Shaolin Temple came to Los Angeles last weekend to strengthen his order’s brand and improve its profitability by opening up new markets.

Shi Yongxin, known as the “CEO monk,” heads the Shaolin Temple in China and was the guest of honor at the recent Shaolin Summit held in the Los Angeles Convention Center on May 21.

The Shaolin Temple was known for 1,500 years as a sacred and mysterious center of Chan (Zen) Buddhism that trained extraordinary fighting monks in a mountain enclave in Henan Province, China. Shaolin Gong Fu—popularly known as Kung Fu in the United States—is the traditional martial art of China from which the majority of other East Asian martial arts are said to derive.

Today, the Shaolin Temple is notorious for its turn to commercialism. While the summit offered a varied program, it also had at its core an important business matter.

Peter Shiao, the CEO of Orb Media Group and executive producer and host of the event, announced the founding of the North American Shaolin Association. The association’s mission is to consolidate all of the different Shaolin Gong Fu martial arts schools under one banner, in collaboration with the main Shaolin Temple in Songshan, China.

Inside China, the Shaolin Temple is a big money maker. According to the website China Uncensored, the temple has 1.6 million visitors a year who pay 100 yuan (US$15) to pass through its turnstiles and watch a 30-minute show. Photographs taken with performers are sold. Shaolin paraphernalia is available in gift shops, and Shaolin pharmacies and an online store have sprung up. Incense, traditionally used by Buddhists in acts of devotion and usually provided for a minimal donation at Buddhist temples, is sold in huge, expensive sticks. One visitor reported being asked to pay US$770 for an incense stick, while the most expensive stick sold has been for 100,000 yuan (US$15,390). Troupes of monks tour the world performing for profit, and after the shows often sell Shaolin trinkets to audience members outside.

The Shanghai Daily reported last year that Shi Yongxin was looking overseas to increase the temple’s profitability. The paper reported that he “will continue to concentrate on the overseas market even after the world famous temple has opened more than 40 centers around the world to teach foreigners Kung Fu and Zen Buddhism.”

The new association appears to be part of this strategy. In announcing the association, Shiao mentioned that Shi Yongxin can now more easily oversee the development of Shaolin-related projects, and disparate groups that are not currently underneath the association’s umbrella will be less able to profit from the Shaolin name. According to Shiao, this has the potential for greater protection, control, and financial return for the temple.

The association will also funnel visitors to the temple back in China. Among those attending the summit were hundreds of students from the United Studios of Self Defense, a sponsor of the event and the largest American chain of martial arts studios (with over 180 schools). They are directly affiliated with the Shaolin Temple, and have a plaque and monument inside temple walls. The students make a semi-annual trip to the Shaolin Temple and the head instructors have been personally promoted by Shi Yongxin as grandmasters. The founders were in attendance.

Over 1,300 guests attended the summit, which featured performances by Shaolin monks and two panel discussions. The participants’ interest appeared to be absorbed in martial arts matters, and many were unconcerned or unaware of the commercial ventures and political connections of the star monk.

But martial artists and Buddhists around the world have claimed that Shi Yongxin is selling out and “prostituting” the Shaolin culture. Shi’s work stands in contrast to traditional monastic disciplines, which are deliberately free of material trappings or monetary pursuits (such as the Dabei monks still active in China).

Chinese have also responded unfavorably. In an online survey taken in China in 2008, 95 percent of 70,000 respondents objected to the Shaolin Temple’s commercialism.

Shi Yongxin claims to be completely unattached to worldly matters and is proud of the commercialization of the temple. In a Kungfu Magazine article from 2000, he said, “This is what Buddhism pursues.” He defends the money making as necessary for the promulgation of Zen Buddhist teachings and the Shaolin culture. In 2008 he told People’s Daily, the state mouthpiece, that commercialization “is a path leading up to the truth of Zen.”

Shi Yongxin first came to the temple in 1981 and in 1987 became its head, though not officially its abbot. The doctrinally atheist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has enjoyed close relations with the Shaolin Temple during his headship, and in 1989 took the unusual measure of restoring the temple (it had been vandalized during the Cultural Revolution and fallen into disrepair).

It was one of the few instances in which the CCP has taken care of a Buddhist temple, and a beginning sign of the now two decades long warm relationship between Shi Yongxin and the Party establishment.

Shi Yongxin was inducted into the National People's Congress, the CCP’s rubber stamp legislature, in 1998. The following year he was ordained abbot of the temple, and Wu Jieping, vice chairman of the People's Congress, was in attendance. Members of the National People's Congress are chosen by the CCP and monks traditionally have not been allowed to play any political role.

In the following years he worked together with Communist Party officials to clear out and shut down the multitude of other Kung Fu schools in the vicinity of Shaolin, allowing only the one official version to remain. Party officials constructed a new temple alongside the old one, calling it the “Chinese Government Shaolin Temple Training School,” which Shi Yongxin now oversees.

Shi Yongxin is regularly visited by a variety of Party officials. Mostly recently Du Qinglin, head of the United Front Work Department, dropped in. The United Front is an old-style communist body that seeks to advance the interests of the Party through organizations that are not formally part of the Party.

Shi Yongxin is also publicly supportive of important Communist Party policies. In a 2007 interview, Shi Yongxin said that Party leader Hu Jintao’s doctrine of the “harmonious society” is “also what we are striving to pursue in the religious field.” The “harmonious society” concept has come to be associated with China’s vast apparatus of censorship, coercion, and surveillance, where people with views opposing the regime are effectively silenced.

The Epoch Times attempted to raise these issues in a five-minute audience it was granted with the abbot at the summit.

With Peter Shiao as translator, The Epoch Times asked the abbot his view on why other religious practices in China, such as Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity, and Falun Gong, had been suppressed by the CCP, while the Shaolin Temple had been supported.

Shiao became flustered, refused to translate the question, and promptly ended the interview. Later, he said that the question was disrespectful, and with a colleague, attempted to revoke The Epoch Times’s press pass; the reporter then left the press area and participated as a regular attendee for the day. After the conference, Shiao said he did not mean to be disrespectful, and was simply caught off guard.

Asked his purpose in organizing the summit, Shiao said he wanted “to bring people together.” Answering questions about religious persecution and political favoritism in China was not on either Shiao or Shi Yongxin's agenda.