Shaolin Temple

This will be my last post on the Shaolin Temple. Which if you havn't picked up was the part of my trip that I have the fondest memories of, as well as what I think was the coolest thing in the world. Being able to train Kung Fu at the Shaolin Temple itself.

The trip was a combination of people from my school here Potomac Kempo, and Shaolin Studios. Overlall there was just over twenty of us. At the temple we were taught a Chinese Straight Sword form called Bohdi Dharma's Sword. It's very long, and very traditional. The monk who taught us, and who can be seen in the middle of the group photo was named Shi Tan Ti, a warrior monk.

So an interesting fact. At the Shaolin Temple, there are two types of monks, the normal monks, and then warrior monks. You do not need to be Buddhist in order to be a warrior monk. So you can actually have quite a few students who are just warrior monks without them taking the vows of the normal monks. Also, while generally speaking, Buddhist monks are vegetarian, Warrior monks are actually allowed to eat a single egg a day. Presumably because, you know, they work out for a living.

The temple itself was quite nice. And, there are lots of tourists. Generaly speaking they charge at the gate for people to be able to look around the temple.

One of the more famous areas is the pagoda forest.

Each of the pagoda's is like a grave marker. After a famous monk, or perhaps abbot dies, they put one up. Generally speaking the larger the pagoda, the more well liked that particular monk was. There were some that didn't even come up to your knees, a real jerk I'm sure. The funny, or, perhaps sad, thing about the pagoda forest is that it is considered a national area now, meaning that no new monks can be buried there.

As they have whole sections open to tourists, there were kung fu demonstrations that you could attend, as well as vendors selling various items, including Chinese herbs and lotions.

One of the sad things about modern Chinese history was that Chairman Mao had this thing that he called the "cultural revolution". Which basicaly meant out with the old, and in with the new. During this "cultural revolution" a lot of historical and religious places and items were destroyed. This included the Shaolin temple itself being burned down at one point, and monks being persecuted. That is why if you look through the pictures, all the buildings look relatively new, and not a thousand years old. The buildings were rebuilt, but who knows how much knowledge of kung fu was lost when these warrior monks were killed or sent into hiding?

Anyways as I said above, the monk we trained with was named Shi Tan Ti, which is his monk name, and represents his "generation" of descent from Bohdi Dharma. He is a warrior monk.

Also as I mentioned earlier, Warrior monks do not need to take the Buddhist vows, and what not. So what you end up with is a lot of these warrior monks, who go there to the temple to train. Then a lot of the best of these students, rather than stick around and become a monk in truth, and train other generations, they instead use it as a stepping stone to become a movie star. The next Jet Li if you will. I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest.

Anyways, below are some more pictures of the Shaolin Temple. I suggest you look through them, as it truly was a very beautiful place.