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Thread: Shaolin History - Fact or Myth?

  1. #91
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    Quote Originally Posted by pazman View Post
    Buddhism and "yogic practice" go hand-in-hand. The yogic practices became formalized during the formation of Jainism and Buddhism, from which Hinduism borrowed. This was long before there was "Chinese Buddhism".
    This may or may not be true; I am somewhat impartial as to who owns the IP here. However, you cannot say for certain. The source for "yogic practice", as I mean it here, is a Hindu text which scholars believe came to be written somewhere between the second and fifth centuries B.C.

    If the latter is true, then the source predates Buddhism, period. Also, keep in mind that the writing of a notion is not necessarily its origin. The fact is that nobody really knows how old some of these things are.

    My point, from the start, is that what began at Shaolin was the product of specifically Hindu Yoga practice taught by an Indian Buddhist to Chinese Buddhists through a lens they would understand. I also feel that to some extent, Buddhism and Chinese culture have attempted to cover up this history.

  2. #92
    Quote Originally Posted by DoGcHoW108 View Post
    This may or may not be true; I am somewhat impartial as to who owns the IP here. However, you cannot say for certain. The source for "yogic practice", as I mean it here, is a Hindu text which scholars believe came to be written somewhere between the second and fifth centuries B.C.

    If the latter is true, then the source predates Buddhism, period. Also, keep in mind that the writing of a notion is not necessarily its origin. The fact is that nobody really knows how old some of these things are.

    My point, from the start, is that what began at Shaolin was the product of specifically Hindu Yoga practice taught by an Indian Buddhist to Chinese Buddhists through a lens they would understand. I also feel that to some extent, Buddhism and Chinese culture have attempted to cover up this history.
    This is an interesting take on it!

    I have a few questions:

    1) Buddhism's latest day is the 6th century B.C. so how do you accord Yogic practice as predating when perhaps they were contemporary?

    2) Why would Buddhism and Chinese culture want to cover up the yogic history?

    3) Taoism is also rife with yogic like practices that go back to at least the 4th century B.C. So China has its own history of this sort of thing. Why would they want to hide the Buddhist/Indian history of yogic practice?

  3. #93
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott R. Brown View Post
    This is an interesting take on it!

    I have a few questions:

    1) Buddhism's latest day is the 6th century B.C. so how do you accord Yogic practice as predating when perhaps they were contemporary?

    2) Why would Buddhism and Chinese culture want to cover up the yogic history?

    3) Taoism is also rife with yogic like practices that go back to at least the 4th century B.C. So China has its own history of this sort of thing. Why would they want to hide the Buddhist/Indian history of yogic practice?
    Just a slight correction on #1:
    Common dating on the Buddha put his date later than the 6th century BCE.
    To borrow a quote from wiki:
    Quote Originally Posted by Paul Dundas, The Jains, 2nd Edition, Routlege 2001
    [...], as is now almost universally accepted by informed Indological scholarship, a re-examination of early Buddhist historical material, [...], necessitates a redating of the Buddha's death to between 411 and 400 BCE, [...]
    —Paul Dundas, The Jains, 2nd edition, (Routledge, 2001).
    Other dates proposed are around 486-483 BCE.

    But you're right in that he pre-dates Patanjali's Yoga Sutras from roughly 150 BCE.

    There may be some misunderstanding over the term "Yoga" however. In all the cases above, it does not refer to Hatha yoga based around postures (asanas), but instead discipline of the mind, which predates the Buddha by a large margin. The Indus Valley civilization definitely had yoga before the Buddha was born:
    Ram Prasad Chanda, who supervised Indus Valley Civilisation excavations, states that, “Not only the seated deities on some of the Indus seals are in Yoga posture and bear witness to the prevalence of Yoga in the Indus Valley Civilisation in that remote age, the standing deities on the seals also show Kayotsarga (a standing or sitting posture of meditation) position. The Kayotsarga posture is peculiarly Jain. It is a posture not of sitting but of standing. In the Adi Purana Book XV III, the Kayotsarga posture is described in connection with the penance of Rsabha, also known as Vrsabha.”
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  4. #94
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    Yoga postures and meditation surely existed before Buddhism and Jainism, but they were not a part of Brahminical orthodoxy. The establishment of the six astika philosophies as orthodox Hinduism occurred well after the rise of Buddhism and Jainism. There's no need to establish "IP", just as there's no need to speculate about how "yogic practice met with Chinese Buddhism."

  5. #95
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott R. Brown View Post
    2) Why would Buddhism and Chinese culture want to cover up the yogic history?

    3) Taoism is also rife with yogic like practices that go back to at least the 4th century B.C. So China has its own history of this sort of thing. Why would they want to hide the Buddhist/Indian history of yogic practice?

    This is interesting. I taught several sections of academic writing to wushu grad students. Several students asked me what would be some good ways to describe qigong in English. I told them that if their audience were coaches or other martial artists, just using qigong might be okay. But if they weren't sure, they could describe it as a kind of Chinese yoga. Some students got very upset at this, and caused an incident with the administration. Chinese are very sensitive about accepting things that are foreign. Even Buddhism, which some claim to be only foreign concept China has accepted, must be treated with a proper amount of suspicion, and must exist only within the frame of Chinese logic.

    I don't believe qigong practices came from India, because similar practices have existed the world over, but to suggest so might be upsetting to many people.

  6. #96
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    Boy this topic really took off. On that note combined with the title of the thread, Paz, I suggest you reconsider whether there is need to speculate.

    As for my comment about what preceded Buddhism, i should clarify that this was largely based on an understanding that the Buddha lived no earlier than the 3rd of 4th century B.C. If this is not true, then i admit i am without basis here and that the subject deserves further consideration.

    i wish i could say more right now but i will have to come back and revisit. One thing i want to comment on however is that, as you experienced, i too have noticed both in present and past times that the chinese are very snobby about what they accept as theirs and not theirs. more to come, to answer some of the questions that were asked of me!

  7. #97
    Quote Originally Posted by pazman View Post
    I don't believe qigong practices came from India, because similar practices have existed the world over, but to suggest so might be upsetting to many people.
    Well we know that the first known qigong treatise (Nei Yeh) was written down in the middle of the 300's B.C., it is internal in nature and involves breathing exercises.

    Further, it is poem which means it comes from an oral tradition.

    Sometime, years ago, I read something that suggested the principles found in the Nei Yeh were probably from a shamanistic tradition and go back another 1,500 years before it was written down, but unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out where I read it and I don't remember the author!

    Shamanism utilizes breathing, dance, music, rhythm, song, chanting, herbs, figurines, pictures, imagination and hypnotism! All of these part of various yogas. Shamanism is also pan-cultural and pan-historical, so I am not sure the yogic tradition is all that unique or original as far as being the first devised method.

  8. #98
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    Ok, I finally had some time to come back. So, Scott, you asked me a couple of questions that actually really touch on the primary focus of my practice for the past year or so. I will just go ahead and post the questions you asked for reference:

    1) Buddhism's latest day is the 6th century B.C. so how do you accord Yogic practice as predating when perhaps they were contemporary?

    2) Why would Buddhism and Chinese culture want to cover up the yogic history?

    3) Taoism is also rife with yogic like practices that go back to at least the 4th century B.C. So China has its own history of this sort of thing. Why would they want to hide the Buddhist/Indian history of yogic practice?

    I think I pretty much answered the first question in my last post. I would however like to add one more point to the response. To the best of our knowledge, objects fell to the ground well before we coined the term “gravity”, The Krebs cycle existed long before we discovered chloroplasts and salt was salty long before man figured out what caused the reaction. In other words, the reality is that the principles behind yoga and qigong worked a certain way before man constructed the practices which build on them.

    At least, so we think.

    Answer to question 2:

    The above is a bit different when it comes to practices involving things such as “qi”, “prana” and the like. For one, due to the nature of esoteric practices as a whole, one observes them differently than one does matter, sound, taste, sight etc. For reasons I will not go into, these concepts tend to originate and reside in ethical, religious or otherwise spiritual traditions.

    Even if yogic practices existed in Buddhism before it did in Hinduism, tradition still holds that a convert to Buddhism- from a Brahman background- brought them to Shaolin. This matters because unlike, for example, Li Feng, there is corroborating historical documentation of Damo’s origins, destinations and chronology.

    As has been implied by previous posters, the Chinese are, well…snobby (and rightfully so) about what they accept to be theirs and Buddhism was no exception to this. Conversely, Buddhism itself already had its own biases, doctrines and axioms by the time it arrived in China and made a tremendous contribution to Chinese thought, culture, art…you name it, really.

    Going back to some of my previous commentary, this is why I think Chan is what it is today. Whether the rudiments of Chan existed before Damo or Shaolin is irrelevant. If Chan builds on something REAL, then whatever it is has probably existed since the dawn of time. In this sense, what happened here was a re-branding of the practice to make it marketable to the Chinese, who absolutely love and adore anything “authentically” Chinese.

    There is, in fact, a lot of motive for both Chinese and Buddhist minds to want to present Chan as a uniquely Chinese (and subsequently Chinese Buddhist) invention.

    Answer 3:

    To answer some of this question, see the above. But on this topic, I see the compatibility of the two as being more relevant to just how amazingly they worked to produce something truly valuable to its practitioners. If I had to pinpoint where I am in my independent research of this matter, I would say that it is here. In order to avoid confusion and veer too far off topic, I will make this simple and ask if there is interest to pursue the metaphysical parallels between yoga and qigong on a different thread.

    But to not cop-put on the question, I would say that “they” would want to hide the- I assume you meant- Hindu/Indian history specifically because Taoism is also rife with yogic practices that go back centuries and were likely seen by the Chinese as their own. They wanted to be sure that, as with all things, if it came from China that people will see it as Chinese.

    I hope that clarified my position a little more.
    Last edited by DoGcHoW108; 03-18-2013 at 01:49 PM.

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