The Shaolin Monastery. History, Religion and the Chinese Martial Arts

168 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation (fl. 705) was not yet born at the time he supposedly rendered the manual into Chinese. Mo ...

Gymnastics 169 I recall that several years ago, acting on the junior guardian’s command, I went on the offensive, and then heade ...

170 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation brick wall on Mt. Song [where the Shaolin Monastery is located], allowing a person destin ...

Gymnastics 171 are attributed to characters whose martial prowess—or in Bodhidharma’s case sainthood—had been celebrated in cont ...

172 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation that their fighting techniques had been credited to Bodhidharma, whom he knew to be the s ...

Gymnastics 173 tradition. Even though they still credit Vajrapâÿi with their staff method, in the imagination of most Shaolin mo ...

174 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation experienced tolerance and mutual borrowings between Confucianism, Bud- dhism, and Daoism. ...

Gymnastics 175 tice the gymnastic exercises of the “Purple Coagulation Man of the Way.”^115 Syncretism permitted self-styled Dao ...

176 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation However, its techniques are chiefly offensive, which creates opportunities for an opponen ...

Gymnastics 177 Mt. Wudang in Hubei. However, it is clear from the early records that he had nothing to do with the martial arts. ...

178 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation up his post and retired to his home,” wrote Huang Zongxi. “Those who ad- mired his skill ...

Gymnastics 179 Huangs’ intention, the Zhang Sanfeng genealogy matched the Bodhidharma ancestry in a perfectly harmonious structu ...

180 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation would be lost, and it is clear that by the eighteenth century the Internal School no long ...

Gymnastics 181 Daoist encyclopedias and medical literature to the classics of Chinese philosophy that articulated the culture’s ...

182 Chapter 7 Suspect Rebels In the spring of 1679, Gu Yanwu (1613–1682) traveled to the Shaolin Temple. The renowned historian ...

Suspect Rebels 183 and the sounds of clanking weaponry had been silenced. Where hundreds of Ming soldiers had once trained, only ...

184 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation of the Heaven and Earth Society (Tiandihui) (“Triads” in Western literature) to the Shaol ...

Suspect Rebels 185 warriors nationwide. We have seen in previous chapters that a Shaolin con- nection became a prerequisite in t ...

186 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation the monastery itself was never involved in a rebellion, some of its alumni might have bee ...

Suspect Rebels 187 monastery is falling apart. As I was visiting one or two of its dilapidated monks’ rooms, I ordered the novic ...