SHAOLIN IS KNOWN TO THE WORLD FOR MARTIAL ARTS.

THE WORLD OWES ITS MARTIAL ARTS TO SHAOLIN.

This is said of the Shaolin Temple which gave an important school of traditional Chinese boxing a name and has thereby become famous ever since. It is known as the "No 1 Monastery under Heaven" on account of the great contribution it has made to the advancement of traditional Chinese martial arts. Being a monastery as such, it has gained even an atmosphere of mystery with many legendary stories, so widely popular in China and overseas, about its chivalrous and heroic monks and devotees. They are trulyfascinating stories, like the one about Boddhidharma, the first ancestor of the Zen sect of Buddhism, about Zhao Kuangyin, the first emperor of the Song Dynasty who created Taizuquan or the First Emperor's Boxing, about Jinnaluo the "Superhuman Cudgel-Player", about Huike, the second ancestor of Zen who is said to have broken his own arm to redden the snow with the blood, or Huineng, the sixth ancestor who taught his disciples in an unorthodox manner, about Yue Fei and Qi Jiguang, the patriotic generals, Lu Zhishen the "Flowery Monk" and Wu Song the tiger killer, and about Tanzong, the hero in the legend of "Thirteen Cudgel-Playing Monks saved the Emperor of Tang".

Wushu in Shaolin has a venerably long history and has exerted a far-reaching influence on the development of martial arts outside China. In Japan, for example, the acknowledgement of Shaolin as "Great Master" of the Japan Shorin Kendo Association was manifestly made in the summer of 1979 when So Doshin, founder of the Association which has a membership of 80.00 people, came all the way to revisit the Shaolin Temple and present a stone tablet to score the occasion, just a few months before he passed away.

It is said that a wushu master by the name of Chen Yuanbin, having failed to get reinforcements from Japan for anti-Manchurian activities, finally settled there and taught Shaolinquan to the Japanese, and is known today as the forefather of Japanese Karate , Aikido and Judo. There is another story that Chinese wushu was disseminated to the Ryukyu Islands known as "Tang Boxing", and later split into the two branches of present-day Karate. It also spread south to Thailand and became the notoriously violent Thai boxing ; and north to Korea, it developed into the world-shaking Taekwondo. In its long history of more than a thousand years, the Shaolin Temple had gone through really great calamities under the rein of the three "Wu emperors" and underwent three conflagrations. The three "Wu emperors" refer to the emperors Tai Wu and Zhou Wu of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and Wu Zong of the Tang Dynasty. They all discriminated Buddhism and the monks had a very hard time under their reign. The three conflagrations happened in the Sui Dynasty, the early Qing Dynasty during the reign of Emperor KangXi, and in 1928 when the warlords fought each other in a tangled war. The last fire caused the most serious damage.

Contending for territory against Chiang Kai-shek's troops, Fong Yuxiang's army set a fire on the monastery that lasted over 40 days, burning down sixteen temple halls and many valuable cultural relics.

FIVE HUNDRED MONK-SOLDIERS

FIVE HUNDRED MONK-SOLDIERS IN SHAOLIN TEMPLE AT

ITS BEST TIME .

In the Tang Dynasty some 1300 years ago, the Shaolin Temple was at the zenith of its prosperity. In those days the monastery kept a force of five hundred monk-soldiers, more than a thousand initiated monks, and owned an area of 360,000 square kilometers with over 14,000 mu (1mu = 0.0667 hectares ) of cropland and more than a thousand halls, towers, pagodas and pavilions. The establishment of the monk-soldier force was specifically granted by the emperor Taizong of the tang Dynasty. In recognition of the service the thirteen cudgel-playing monks had done in the punitive expedition against the king of Zheng, the emperor not only bestowed a large estate on the monastery and granted the establishment of five hundred monk-soldiers, but set up the new institution to allow the monks to learn the techniques of martial arts. Moreover the emperor sent meat and wine to the monastery and thus broke the Five Commandments of Zen Buddhism (namely against killing, theft, lust, pride and drinking wine) and necessitate their alterations. That is why we can find in Chinese literary works the so called "wine and meat monks" like Lu Zhishen the "Flowery Monk", Wu Song the priest, ji Gong the crazy monk, and so on. The Shaolin Temple has been destroyed and rebuilt for numerous times during the thousand more years. Since the time of Northern Wei (386-534), and the dynasties of Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing, each of the dynasties has contributed to its reconstruction and enlargement, and eventually made it a great treasury of Chinese art.

The monastery was already a grand one when it was first set up in the Northern Wei period, with a total area of about thirty thousand square meters. The distance from the front gate to the highest building, the One Thousand Buddha's Hall, covers more than eight hundred meters, and the distance is divided into seven stages of temples, each of which has a main hall and some accessory buildings to from an independent group. The buildings as we can see today are mostly reconstructions made in the Ming and Qing dynasties, but basically retaining the old style.

SHAO-LIN-SI CALIGRAPHY

EMPEROR QIANLONG'S CALLIGRAPHY AT THE MOUNTAIN GATE.

The main gate of the Shaolin Temple is called the Mountain Gate. It was first build up in the thirteenth year of Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty (1735 A.D.), the same year when Emperor Qianlong ascended the throne. Fifteen years later (1750), Qianlong satisfied his own cherished wish to visit

the Songshan Mountains and stayed in the monastery for three days. The abbot received his majesty and provided the Abbot's Residence at the fourth stage for the emperor's use. Thus the Abbot's Residence is later known as the "Dragon Court".

After a pleasant visit to the Mountains, the emperor was in such high spirits that he wrote the three characters Shao-Lin-Si (The Shaolin Temple) for the horizontal board above the lintel of the Gate. The gilt characters now on the inscribed board at the Gate are the emperor's handwriting bearing a square seal which reads "Seal of Emperor Qianlong imperial calligraphy".

THE DOOR TO SECRET TREASURE

"THE DOOR TO SECRET TREASURE" AND THE TRACES OF GYMNASIUM

In front of the Sutra-pitaka Tower,there is a "Thousand men's Cauldron", 91 cm high, 3cm thick, 1.65 metre in diameter and 1300 jin in weight. The tradition goes that the monks used to cook meals in this big cauldron. To the left of the cauldron lies a big stone mile, 1.19 metre in diameter, with a 33 cm thick upper millstone and a 25 cm thick lower one. The mill is said to have been made in the Ming Dynasty ; the three mules would be needed to keep it going, and the daily output was more than a thousand jin of grain.

Among the relics the "Shaolin Temple Inscription Tablet" is certainly of the highest cultural historic value. It is a detailed record of the history of Shaolin, written by a Tang scholar, Pei Cui, so is also called Pei Cui's Tablet.

Above it is the tablet bearing Emperor Tang Taizong's inscription to the abbot of the monastery, with the emperor'sown signature.

The One Thousand Buddhas Hall and the White Robe Hall are the most interesting places among all the temples in extant today. On the walls of the One Thousand Buddhas Hall are frescoes of five hundred arhats in various manners and postures, all vividly depicted. On the brick floor there are forty eight inch deep pits ranked in four rows, and these are said to have been shaped by the Shaolin monks during their daily footwork training in stance. The White Robe hall is also covered with frescoes portraying the daily life of the Shaolin monks. On one side is the description of the monks practising their special ways of boxing, on the other, the monks training themselves in combat patterns with all kinds of weapons. The frescoes reflect in a graphic manner the emphasis the Shaolin monks used to lay on military affairs, and they are now valuable cultural relics protected by the government as what you may call "secret boxing techniques manual".

TREASURY OF ART

TREASURY OF ART IN THE FOREST OF TABLETS AND PAGODAS.

The Shaolin temple is rich in cultural relics and historic sites. Behind the Mountain Gate there are more than fifty stone tablets of various dynasties since Tang and Song. This is the famous Forest of Tablets which preserves the autentic handwriting of the most distinguised calligraphers of Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and well deserves to be called the "Encyclopedia of Chinese Calligraphy". These stone tablets are not only valuable as works of calligraphical art, but as material evidence for the study of history. The "Shaolin Temple Inscription tablet" for instance, provides a summary of the whole history of Zen Buddhism since the founding of the monastery. And then there is the Forest of Pagodas. It is located

southwest to the moastery proper, as the cemetery of

generations of senior Shaolin monks since the Northern Wei Dynasty. Densely covered with stupas and pagodas of various dynasties, which amounts to two hundred and twenty, the place offers a truly spectacular scene.

 According to the original structure of the Shaolin Temple, there schould be two building groups on both sides along the horse path besides the three grand groupings : The Hall of the Heavenly King, the Hall of Great Power and the Sutra-pitaka Tower  (also known as the Canon Hall). The two groups in the order of arrangement schould be the Bell Tower, the Hall of Jinnaluo (who is said to have been the first monk that demonstrated his great skill in boxing), the Eastern Storehouse, the Eastern Guest House, facing respectively the Drum Tower, the Ancestor Hall, the Western Storehouse, the Western Guest House, etc. Now there are many relics of historic interest in the ruins of these buildings.

At the site of the Bell Tower, there is a huge iron bell weighing more than eleven thousand jin (1 jin=0.5 kg). It was made by the jin people in the early thirteenth century. the bell had hung for centuries on the Tower, but fell to the ground and was broken to several pieces in the last fire in 1928. It was welded together again in 1957.

THERAPY

THE SHAOLIN STANCE AS THERAPY OF CHRONIC DISEASES

I have long been curious about the "miraculous" therapeutic function I heard about the stance at the Shaolin Temple. I took the opportunity of shooting the movie The Shaolin Temple  to see for myself, and learned that many people with troubles in liver, stomach or arthritis had cured themselves by just practicing standing without any medicine. How could it be so ?

Traces of standing positions exercises still can be seen in the One Thousand Buddha's Hall. The story goes that the monks used to go through three stages when they took wushu training : stance practice, strength trial and practical boxing, of witch the first is the most fundamental and monotonous exercise. It requires the so-called "six coordination's" of the practitioner, including three external coordination's and three internal ones. The three external are the coordination's of hands and feet, elbows and knees, shoulders and hips. Coordinating here means positional symmetry ; the coordination's of hand and feet, for example, means that the hands and feet should be on the same vertical line. The three internal coordination's are those of mind and will, will and qi (internal air),qi and strength. The beginner usually feels his feet gradually giving way after only five minutes of such standing position exercise, and he will have some difficulty in smooth walking the next day. But he can sustain it longer and longer as time passes by. A veteran practitioner with great skill can hold out in such standing position for more than an hour. The standing exercise offers a good training of the lower part of one's body, and enables the practitioner hard to be knocked down, in addition to training one's qi. A saying in wushu goes that "Internally train the qi, and externally train the physique." When practicing stance, both internal and external trainings going on in balance. Externally all the movements must be correct, and the muscles must relax ; internally any tension must be removed, any distracting ideas must be excluded, the breath must be even, the strength must be concentrate and the whole mental state must be brought to calmness. If preserving in such exercises, one would feel the qi at the abdomen, a clear head, refreshed and energetic. This is known in traditional Chinese medicine as the technique to exhale the stale and take in the fresh, witch can improve blood circulations and metabolism so as to get stronger disease resistance.