Simple question

[bigopen]

Hello all,

I'm new to the forums so please excuse if I should have checked elsewhere or have posted in the wrong place etc.

I wanted to ask a simple question, there seems to be a lot of knowledge on here about Shaolin's history.

If you were to round up what we know now, what amount would that be in relation to what was destroyed or lost over time? One fifth? etc etc

This includes Ch'an writings, medicine, and martial arts.

Thanks

[David Jamieson]

I would say that anyone who can answer this would be suspect. lol

How can we answer what was lost? If we don't know, we don't know.

Having said that, there is a lot of information on the History of Shaolin, the big problem comes in when people make stuff up and tell others that it is the real when it is in fact just a bunch of crap they made up that contains a seed of truth here and there and is used to give legitimacy to themselves or their own practice by making a history that connects them to Shaolin.

Sadly, this is common practice and has been for a while. Let's hope that the Internet and the ability to gather facts will dissuade this in the future.

The 70's and 80's and early 90's saw a great deal of people frauding their way about making spurious claims about their imaginary teachers or schools or training history.

It is getting much easier to expose these frauds and so, we see diminishment of their schools and more truth in advertising is being forced form that.

It is getting harder to find a "Shaolin Kempo Karate" school for instance because one can look at that name and the Bullshit bell starts ringing right away because people are no longer ignorant of the mix an mish mash of moronics that is mashups of chinese and japanese phrases that are presented as real.

Also people are getting pretty clear on what represents martial arts and what represents fruitcake stuff. So, all in all it's getting better, but your question is basically impossible to answer.

[GeneChing]

You're asking how much was destroyed and lost? There's really no way of knowing. It was destroyed and lost.

[SHemmati]

the losses and destructions of Shaolin temple kung fu as referred to partly refer back to a temple in southern China that they have named it Sil Lum, which means Shaolin. though the temple has been established much later than the SongShan Shaolin temple, as dear David described it, almost everything about it is either lost or hidden behind an unsolvable historical confusion.


BUT in SongShan Shaolin Kung fu, we can mention 2 types of loss of materials:

1. losses due to the destructions of the temple: SongShan Shaolin temple has had a few destructions, and sometimes has been under govermental pressures not to practice kung fu and so on. the previous serious destruction of the temple has occurred centuries ago, while Shaolin kung fu has had many improvements and revolutions after that destruction. so it's not a sensible tragedy for us in the 20th century. besides, fortunately, just that Shaolin temple, the documents, and many resident monks have been destroyed and killed doesn't at all mean that their kung fu has had any sensible loss. let me describe this in more detail:

Shaolin temple has always had many nonresident disciples and there have been active exchanges between the temple and the people from outside. especially, the most important relation has always been between the monks and the people of the hosting village DengFeng, which have lived and practiced together. this way, the whole system of Shaolin kung fu, even many of the styles that are believed to be lost over the years, have been and still are practiced actively outside the temple. so, though the temple has been destroyed, many disciples and many masters have been living outside the temple, and later have brought beck most the materials after reconstruction. however, there always have been some secret manuals that have been lost. but in the case of the last destruction of the temple in 1928, as described by russbo.com admin--who is a Shaolin disciple himself--most the documents had previously been copied by the monks, and most those copies survived and later collected back:
http://www.russbo.com/Temple-FAQ/anc...lin-texts.html


2. natural generation to generation losses: not only kung fu, but everything else would have some losses when being transmitted from a generation to a new generation. the causes of these losses are mainly forgetting something, keeping it as secret and not teaching it to the new generation, or the new generation giving up something in favor of something else. no doubt, most the losses in SongShan Shaolin kung fu are believed to be of this type. nonetheless, though many many styles have been lost over the centuries in this way, this is a natural process and we are happy with the currently surviving styles, exercises, and methods. nobody has to think of such losses except some seriously researching people.


now one can guess that it's impossible to give any quantitative or qualitative estimation of the lost materials. of course, it is interesting that, anyway, many of the materials that are considered lost, are very actively alive in another place, and with a little searching together with some luckiness, they can be found.
________________________________

in conclusion, though again i emphasize that for a serious researcher, a special material of interest may have been lost and this may seem a tragedy for him, in general, one can say that, even if we assume that 90 percent or even more of all the Shaolin kung fu materials have been lost during so many centuries, still almost no serious loss has occurred in SongShan Shaolin kung fu! the current materials, consisting of thousands forms of different styles and application methods of many many of them, Shaolin Qin Na and Dian Xue Shu, all the secret exercises like Tong Zi gong, Qigong, the 72 secret exercises, etc., constitute a system that is much much more comprehensive than any other martial art in the world. and most interestingly, these so much material that we--who mostly live even outside China--have access to because of the modern media have never been accessible so easily for those ancient monks!

[RenDaHai]

Its an impossible question really, but Shaolin was always a place of generation and I am sure as much new has been created as old has been destroyed.

It is like evolution. The stuff today contains the culmination of the evolution of the stuff that came before.

[GoldenBrain]

DJ,

Unfortunately Shaolin Kempo Karate is still around. It arrived several years ago in my last place of residence which I'll not name since I don't want to directly bash this dudes school, but I will bash the sh!t out of a name like Shaolin Kempo Karate. We at a more traditional Sil-Lum school were completely baffled by this name. It's like Shaolin Do. Is it Shaolin (China) or anything Do (Japan)... I wish they'd make up their minds or just maybe hyphenate it like they are teaching three different styles in one system. I hear the guy also teaches BJJ from videos.(sigh!) The sad part is this school brings the kids in like no other because of the extreme Kung-Foolery marketing.

Sorry bigopen, but I don't really have anything else to add that hasn't already been said. It's definitely not a simple question. I am however thankful to those who fled the destruction and brought these fine arts to the rest of the world, first in the form of closed door study and now more in the open.

[r.(shaolin)]

Hello all,

I'm new to the forums so please excuse if I should have checked elsewhere or have posted in the wrong place etc.

I wanted to ask a simple question, there seems to be a lot of knowledge on here about Shaolin's history.

If you were to round up what we know now, what amount would that be in relation to what was destroyed or lost over time? One fifth? etc etc

This includes Ch'an writings, medicine, and martial arts.

Thanks

Actually this is not a simple question and if you are asking what the corpus of Shaolin consisted of historically, this is a question not easily answered. Shaolin curriculum currently as practiced at Shaolin today is recent, made up of a compilation of extant village styles in Henan province, styles which survived Mao's 50 year attempt to eradicate the ancient traditions there. Surviving Shaolin traditions there can only be respect, in that they are what remains because of the efforts of staunch and faith masters, lineage holders who have endured persecution and carried on.
I would think that a more interesting and more relevant questions concerns what remains of any specific lineage: its traditions, its scope and pedagogy.

[bigopen]

ok thanks for all of the replies, I guess it wasn't as simple a question as I thought but it was well answered.

I was after a ball park figure of what material we have today that we know is authentic, compared to a rough estimate of the size of Shaolin's body of knowledge in its heyday. (if there ever was one) I was under the impression that a lot has been lost.

I'll do more reading

[RenDaHai]

I was after a ball park figure of what material we have today that we know is authentic, compared to a rough estimate of the size of Shaolin's body of knowledge in its heyday. (if there ever was one) I was under the impression that a lot has been lost.

Not exactly lost. You see a huge body of form and theory has survived. But it is fractured with different pieces being maintained by different people and too few people with and overall view of Shaolin who understand something of it all put together. See what I mean? The effect of the PRC has not destroyed it but shattered it into parts which were once much stronger together.

[David Jamieson]

Not exactly lost. You see a huge body of form and theory has survived. But it is fractured with different pieces being maintained by different people and too few people with and overall view of Shaolin who understand something of it all put together. See what I mean? The effect of the PRC has not destroyed it but shattered it into parts which were once much stronger together.

Water with different dyes. the water is Shaolin, the dye is the school that practices.

We can see the 3 treasures all over. Martial arts / Zen / Medicine.

Zen being the primary treasure of Shaolin it is interesting to see what has occurred with it over the 1500 years or so. But it is Shaolin at the heart.

If we look at Shaolin (Sil Lum /Siu Lahm etc) based styles, we see what they all share and that is Shaolin methods (the horse stance, the punches and kicks and postures etc that map across styles)

TCM? Not so hard to nail down and definitely not as common, but there are many sifu who practice dit dar, acupuncture, tui nah, moxibustion, cupping and herbalism etc.

So, there's the 3 treasures, still out there in the world in various people's care. You too if you take it on.

[GoldenBrain]

I love the way some have answered this question. "Fractured," "water with different dyes," "the three treasures," are great ways to put this into perspective. I my opinion Sil-Lum or whatever language you want to use to say "young forest" in is an amalgamation of styles and techniques gathered over the centuries from all the great visiting masters as well as what was developed in the temple by the monks. It started fractured, became whole but very complicated and then fled the persecutions fractured. All things come around full circle, but one things for sure, it still survives in one form (pun intended) or another in the hands of many.

Bigopen, if you want to learn more about this area of Kung-Fu (hard work) then keep asking questions in this thread. I'm sure that will keep the thread open for a while and you may be pleasantly surprised by amount of information you gather during the discussion. Peace!!!

[bigopen]

Thanks for the replies again, people seem keen to spend a bit of time explaining things so that's good.

Actually it makes more sense now.

One other question I wanted to ask; having lived in the UK on and off over my life I have come across a number of Shaolin schools, some run by Chinese instructors and some by British. Aside from the Shaolin Temple UK in North London, which is run by Yan Lei and Yan Zi (both mainly kickboxers), the general curriculum is very similar across the board.

Quick run, stretch, ji ben gong, jumping kicks, forms, then some pressups etc and warm down.

Application is very rarely seen, and not drilled in any realistic way, also there's no real emphasis on rooting and generating power. I know first hand that many of the instructors are completely in the know yet choose not to take the students to more in depth training. I should say Sifus, sorry.

So please let me know your opinions about this. Is this a pre determined curriculum from China that keeps popping up everywhere or just the result of working out what gets people back to class every week?

Thanks

[GoldenBrain]

I doubt it's something that originated in China as a pre-determined curriculum. It sounds like Mac-Dojo or in this case Mac-Kwoon syndrome to me. Forms are just the library of techniques and a way to condition the body to develop muscle memory. I don't see how one could gain combat skill without learning the applications in a realistic way under pressure. Applications should be taught slowly at first and then pressure tested as the student progresses. This and sparring are key to developing a fighters combat skill. All of the forms that I have been taught have tons of variations or hidden applications within but you really need a good sifu to help you discover them.

[bigopen]

Hi Goldenbrain, what is mac-dojo syndrome? Apple related?

[GoldenBrain]

Hi Goldenbrain, what is mac-dojo syndrome? Apple related?

It's not Apple related but I am typing this up on a Mac.

I should have spelled it McDojo. Below is the definition from the urban dictionary which pretty well sums it up.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mcdojo

McDojos are schools that are run and owned for the purpose of making money. Typically you are able to get a black belt in less than 2-3 years, and you are usually guranteed success on the black belt test. These schools charge outrageous amounts of money, have extensive contracts, and are sometimes cult like.