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Hey Guys,
After training on Saturday, I asked the question of us all…
‘Why was it that the most talented of Kung Fu Masters came from either the Buddhist Shaolin Temple or the Taoist retreat of “Wudang Mountain”?
This connection has for hundreds of years been pounced upon by the Right Wing, New-Age Charlatans claiming that Martial Arts leads us to the light.
That meditation and spirituality, not effort and conditioning, deserve to be regarded as the true secret to effective Kung Fu, and why it is so suited to the higher man as opposed to the thug.
That it is not about violence.
This has always been the selling point, even back in the time of ip Man.
Initially, it was an attempt to clean up the image of Kung Fu in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion.
But soon, as it sadly is today, it became a con to deceive unfit, physically challenged, lazy people into thinking that progress comes from good thoughts and relaxation, not, as is the actual way, through commitment and toil.
One thing that greatly aided the Monks and the Hermits to become highly capable was an abundance of time in which to train, and the inescapable fact that in their society if you could not effectively defend yourself you were soon eaten up by those lower men who coveted everything you owned, and cared not how they got their hands on it.
The Bandits ran amok through the Pearl River Delta.
Need does what needs must, even for Holy Men.
If we could put ourselves in the shoes of the Shaolin Monks, or, especially with regards to Wing Chun, the Wudang Mountain Ascetics, there was obviously something besides just time to train that helped them excel.
Every action in their lives was an action that only dealt with the immediacy of the moment they were in.
In Wudang Taoism in particular, the essence of everything they did was mental focus and deliberation on the ‘WAY’.
This was reflected equally in everything they did and was not somehow specific to their Kung Fu as some would infer.
This adherence to the “WAY” is usually described as Taoist Alchemy.
But what we in this modern time think of as Alchemy, which has been so vilified by the world’s religions that it is considered to be a type of ‘Black Magic’ was not anything like what the Taoist Ascetics thought of themselves.
They were simply seekers of knowledge, seekers after the truth of what they saw around themselves, Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Which of course included their Kung Fu.
It was not so much that they were trying to learn Kung Fu fighting, but rather trying to understand this thing they did on the deepest possible level, as just another method to follow ‘the Way’ even in the most chaotic moments and situations.
In many ways the physical aspect of Kung Fu fighting was not part of the process at all, it was just a way to engage with the subject of the study.
And this is very much mirrored in Wing Chun.
Wing Chun is about how to think about fighting, which has the happy result of us becoming extremely proficient at it.
Because there was never the pursuit of the fighting skill there is not a finishing point as such, there is never a moment where we can say.
I am a Master.
There is always more.
Or at least the potential for more.
Those now referred to as Alchemists would have thought of themselves as Philosophers involved in understanding the Natural World, which all men are part of.
Natural Philosopher was the term in use before the coining of the term Scientist.
Plato was an Alchemist, and Pythagoras was an Alchemist.
The Church of Rome claimed that Leonardo De Vinci was an Alchemist and condemned him to death for his thinking.
Alchemical thinking is not anti-religion but it is accused of this by every religion.
We all harbor personal biases, that were planted into us at a very young age, which may make it tricky to engage with this IDEA, the IDEA of understanding the thinking of Alchemists as a way to understand Wing Chun, but it was this thinking that created it.
The thinking of the Alchemists was just that, thinking, it was never intended or envisioned as a replacement belief system
Anything we do intending to improve ourselves is the core of what we call Hermetic Alchemy.
Once we know the moves of Wing Chun this is the only way forward.
THE KYBALION.
“The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.”
Wing Chun Sydney, Australia 