Zen is Chan. Kung Fu is Chan.
Hi Guys, I truly believe that the wider our field of research, and as a result, the wider our net of influence, the more likely we are to find our own way.
But where do we look?
Sometimes, having a grasp of the general historical record is more useful than a specific history, especially one just associated with Wing Chun.
Here is some general info that I hope can give you some idea of what to look for but also what to be wary of.
Kung Fu began in the Shaolin Monastery, which was also the birthplace of Chan Buddhism.
According to legend, what became Kung Fu was specifically created to improve the physical conditioning of the Shaolin Monks to enable meditation, it should surprise no one that there is an interconnection between both.
During the Kamakura (1185-1333) and the Muromachi (1336-1573) shogunates., Japanese monks from the Five ‘Mountain Temples’ would travel to the Shaolin Monastery to study Chan Buddhism, which in Japan became known as Zen Buddhism.
The Temple guards that accompanied the monks to China would train with the Shaolin Temple guards and take Shaolin Kung Fu back to Japan, where it became known as Shorinji Kempo..
The variation of Shaolin Kung Fu known as White Crane also migrated to Japan, to
Okinawa, where it was known as Karate-Do.
After the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in the Chinese Civil War, the nation’s leader, Mao Zedong, outlawed Kung Fu and destroyed most of the written history and recorded wisdom. To this day, there is a blanket ban on what Kung Fu was in its heyday, and as a result, today’s Shaolin Monastery is little more than a Martial Arts Theme Park, and any history has been heavily appropriated to fit the C.C.P.’s agenda.
In 1937, 12 years before the Chinese Communist Party came to power, Japan invaded China, and there has been no cultural influence or exchange since then, which ironically means that the blanket ban on all things Kung Fu by Mao Zedong did not have any influence on Japanese Martial Arts, which have become, to a certain extent, custodians of the original, fundamental precepts of Shaolin thought, simply because we can still gain access to Manuals and methodologies from groups and people that trained at the Shaolin monastery with the Abbots and Sifu’s that were active before the purge.
There are some very clear physical differences between the Japanese approach to Martial Arts and most styles of Kung Fu, but the non-physical things are still strongly aligned, and what is often referred to as a Zen Mindset would be very close to what a Chan Mindset would be if not for the Civil War.
Zen is Chan.
Kung Fu is Chan.
Taiwan was also insulated from the Mao Zedong blanket ban on Kung Fu, and as such, information from Taiwanese Kung Fu schools is as close to the original Shaolin Kung Fu that we can get.
It may sound quite insane, but Chinese history was rewritten from 1949 till today, and when we are talking about anything regarding Kung Fu, anything written after 1949 is pretty much B/S.
But there are a lot of good Kung Fu schools in Taiwan, and there is a shit-tonne of Westernised Zen writing.
Wing Chun Sydney, Australia 