Mode: Basic first person conceit
Reason: Reflection of this prakriti’s so-called experience
Genre: Nonfiction
My predisposed path in Chinese gung-based exercises began when I was putting on the “borrowed robes” of a junior. The hall was a bit of rented space in a aged, decaying skeleton of what used to be a factory or a warehouse.
The teacher was battered, fried, and set to dry by a splinter group of Hong Kong’s Tibetan White Crane faction. The truth was, although I did not know it at the time, there was nothing “Tibetan” about the gung set passed down. There was no “jumping over the skull,” zero “togal,” and no “sudden recognition of rigpa.” Yes, we did gung sets to clear the rushing thoughts in our head, and find a liminal focus space, the practice was strictly dualistic. Here’s the target, your mate, good? Now take your fist and give them a concussion, or kick them in the balls.
Yes, the gung sets were plentiful, but not as plentiful as Choy Li Fut’s sets, nor as varied as the sets and cults of Tai Chi. The basic frames of the six gungs, which can be found in CLF, Hung Ga, White Ape and more, are the skeletal postures of weapon wielding. The Hun had these postures, the Chinese, and etc. Furthermore, the term “Tibetan” is like the plumage of a bird, or the chest-beatings of an ape. Southern China employs poetic conceit when it comes to the naming of gungs, gangs, cults, groups. These names are to incite pride in the practitioner. They result in treating the teacher as your father, placing tatts on your skin, and the putting on of airs. This is what Zen Master Seung Sahn denotes of “Small I.” See my lost post for more details.
Our teacher would wash us through tournaments where people would pretend to hit each other. This is yet another “Small I” practice since it involves only the Darwinian need to survive. I once had a pet anoles, and I was fascinated by its reaction to a mirror. Show it the mirror and it puffed up its beard to ward off the “other” lizard. My teacher was a master of showing us the Darwinian mirror in order to puff up our egos. Relying on the reptilian center was his greatest flaw. Every Zen archer knows that it is silence that places the arrow.
My teacher and I would wallow in Zen awhile under the teachings of Zen Master Bob Moore. I would take on the practice of chanting and koans for a couple decades more until I was introduced to the shredding silence of prakriti’s dance with purusha. The skeleton arises at dawn, unyoked from samsara, and watches the variations of the play day by day. Just the observer, no Self. But I do wander. But to the shore. My teacher would famously depart from our Zen teacher, and the silence I learned from that gulf was insightful.
A good while ago, I trotted over to a Facebook group devised to bring Lama, Hop Gar, and White Crane together in one loving embrace. It was anything but. I would learn that the varied great teachers were all imprisoned. They walked from “Small-I” to “Karma-I” and back again. So much for these “tantric” and much-ballyhooed “Tibetan” practitioners. Questions? You have piercing questions that make people say “don’t know”? Well, we shall place you on ignore. Yes, these are the watchers of the shadows on the wall, shackled to their seats by myths, legends, traditions.
Later, I would find that the Sigung of my teacher’s splinter group was a grand healer, but ironically he was slain by brain cancer. His eternal follower would drop as well. You see, Samsara gives jewels freely, but the interest on those gems is a killer. And I suppose I forgot to say that this splinter was devised, fathered, and cast forth by a famous gangster who died of lead poisoning.
This “I” would never go back.
I was free, but they were not.
So many beards puffing in the Great Mirror.
Author’s Note: If you like this type of critical reflection on “martial” traditions, read my book Kung fu is Dead. Caution: Don’t read it if you have a thin skin.
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