A
Thousand Ways to Practice Shaolin
3 September 06
On
September 1, 2006, three dozen kung fu
masters entered Shaolin
Monastery to begin their nine-day
intensive meditation at Closing
Gate. It is part of
the preparation for a top level martial
arts contest that has ever taken place in
history - or it is so claimed.
In
his early film "Shaolin
Temple", Jet Li practiced Shaolin
kung fu for good twenty years before
facing his moment: to pass the matrix of
18 Iron
Man - only after
that he would be allowed to leave the
monastery and see the world. This
scenario is not fictional but an
authentic Shaolin tradition. Now when the
Gate is reopened on September 9, the kung
fu guys will once again face the Matrix,
and the world will have a chance to see a
live show of Iron Man battle.
Face the Matrix
By
the time martial artists fight tooth and
nail at Shaolin for their place in the
kung fu world, civil artists will come to
Shaolin to hold a joint seminar on Zen's
place in our livies. Their mission is to
find a linkage between Zen and comedy,
Zen and music, Zen and kung fu, and Zen
and just everything under the sun.
And
these are just a couple of introduction
chapters. If you want to skip to main
content, wait until middle of October
when Shaolin is to open a grand theatre
for Zen
music concert.
Located
in the Valley of Waiting Immortal, the
open theatre will be so epic that is
capable of accommodating 700 performers
and 3000 audience at once. In this
unspoiled corner, the music can perfectly
blend into the natural elements - the
sound of running water that reverberates
in hush, and of the pine trees audibly
vibrating in night gusts. And the
surrounding hills, in the flicking lights
of 1000 colourful lanterns hidden among
the trees, return echoes from all
directions.
As
audience sit on cushions meditating in
this panoramic setting, the melody flows
unruffled and refined. In such a united
effort of contemplating the void and
understanding the indefinable, time
stops, dimensions are lost, and the rest
of the world could just fade away ... ...
While
in a short distance the temple stands
quietly, illustrating the power of
silence.
Out of the
Enchance
All
these happenings are breathtaking. Yet
not everything is rosy. In recent months,
Shaolin Monastery has attracted great
deal of criticism from the general
public, being accused of becoming less a
Buddhist hub but more a business entity.
When the abbot expressed his delight over
the award of a luxury car for his work on
promoting the local business overseas, he
was especially reproached for looking
like a businessman, talking like a
businessman and acting like a
businessman.
Probably
he is the one. But who says a businessman
can't practice Buddhism? After all, there
are a thousand ways to enlightenment,
aren't there?
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