Originally Posted by
RenDaHai
A tradition like Shaolin is a living organism.
Imagine a great tree, though it continues to grow and change the way it grows is constrained by what has come before and its immediate environment so even 1000 years later one may still be able to recognise it is the same tree. Nothing will be the same and yet its organisation will be familiar.
If however I take a cutting from this tree and plant it elsewhere it will grow into a much more radically different form, though maintain the characteristics of the that species of tree.
This is the same as Shaolin. It has never been an isolated place, rather Shaolin was and is a community of many temples and mountain villages. They all act to constrain each other so that although Kung Fu changes with each hand and each generation the collective forces of its environment keep is Shaolin-like. Where as styles that were once shaolin but moved to another part of China quickly become radically different because they do not have the support structure and communication of this environment.
So shaolin is this living organism, this community of connected clans that practice shaolin and are attached to this place. Although this generation it has suffered immense change these changes are seasonal, like losing leaves in winter, and will not persist. The modern changes have no guiding principle behind them and so there is no glue to maintain them, they will vanish within a generation or two but the ancient forms will maintain. Even now a reversion to more traditional forms is underway here.
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There is no original form, if I take 1000 cups (drinking vessels) you will find no one part that is common to all, rather all are connected by something that is lacking rather than something that is present, that is the space that can contain liquid. So it is in the higher order of organisation of the parts rather than the parts themselves that we come closer to the 'original' cup. The same is true of Shaolin, though there is no original form anyone from Shaolin can recognise the style, even in a form never seen before, becuase of rules of organisation that are best intuitively experienced rather than explained.
Historically there is no original either, even if there were at some remote time an original Shaolin form, the forms of this generation would all be ancestors of it, none would be it. Just like we as humans share a common ancestor with chimps neither us or chimps can be said to be the original form though both come from it.
The classic substyles in this area are Hong Quan, Pao Quan, Tong bei, Jin gang, Luo han, Xin Yi. Each with many, many forms.
Shaolin has always had a profusion of forms. Form is the language of the body, if you go to the trouble of spending a lifetime learning a language then only read one book, wouldn't that be a waste? Forms can be 'read' as well as learned, they needn't all be remembered.
Actually the Shaolin did indeed, for at least the last 400 years, have professional wushu monks who only practiced Kung fu, all day every day. It is written about, they used to pracice 1000 monks all at the same time in coordination according to the Shaolin Staff manual. Shaolin temple acted as a military school for Chinas elite (much like today). It has always been a communiy with the surrounding villages and not an exclusive hard to get to place, rather at a crossroads at the very center of ancient China in the most densely populated place in China.
All that being said Xiao Hong Quan Yi Lu (first path) is the most represented form by far. My master was in his 90's when he taught me the Kung fu he practiced as a boy in Dengfeng in the 1930's. There was rather a lot more content then than there is now.
As far as Wudang I am pretty certain from my time there that Sanfeng and Xuanwu are both modern sects, rather it is the SongXi pai that is the elder.