Buddhism Martial Arts and Sorcery During the Tang Dynasty
Woodblock print, 1835, by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The histories of Buddhism and the martial arts are intertwined to such a degree that a full understanding of either Buddhism or martial arts requires cognition of the other. Mind control, the body as a vessel for spiritual practice, and the cultivation of transformed states of consciousness by which to execute expert acts connect fundamental qualities of both Buddhism and martial arts. Both fields of study are vast with periods of murky history; both have traded in secrets. Lineages are established, contested, and invented, while modern nation states take tried to erase whole social histories that included intense fighting, to erase organized religion itself, every bit if at that place was never a time when martial skill, theater, and religious ritual overlapped and nourished each other. Tibetan monks disavow their bloody pasts with a modern emphasis on peace, while monks of Shaolin market place their well-deserved renown and find a regulated mode to go along to practice in modern China.
Historically, modernistic categories did non utilise. Dance, ritual, fighting, sex, meditation, visualization, magic, and fine art were of a piece, connected in movement basics, ritualized practice, and philosophical cohesion. These elements were not learned and studied in isolation. In some aboriginal Buddhist contexts, trip the light fantastic means meditation;is meditation. Trip the light fantastic toe almost always indicated a transformation of mind continued to a deity: deities don't walk. They dance.
Date and photographer unknown. Prototype courtesy of Angry Infant Books
Pyrrhic dances were a part of military strategy; other dances were used to train militias. Ritual was often about exorcism, the pursuit and conquering of a demonic forcefulness. Inter-dimensional wrestling with parallel battles for victory in earthly and heavenly worlds was a basic concept of fighting. Nowhere is this more riotously depicted than in the fights of Lord's day Wukong, the Monkey Male monarch from the 16th century Chinese literary classicJourney to the W, derived from the true story of the Tang dynasty scholar Xuanzang traveling to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures.Hugely entertaining and elaborately described fights go on for pages and pages—under water, in mid-air. They fight with magic, with farm tools, with superhuman strength, and with strategic cunning. It is a story of eventual enlightenment, representing the unresolved elements of the human personality. They fight a lot; they fight anyone: human, divine, or demonic. It is comical and cruel. The poor Monkey King is a Buddhist seeker, never discouraged, merely no fight is an easy i. The idea of the martial arts as some kind of health regimen and isolated sport is a 20th century invention.
tattooed on his back, carrying a pole. c.1827–30, Woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
Described by legend as: "a waist like a wolf, arms like an ape, a body like a tiger, and Sun
Wukong, the Money King tattooed on his back." From 108 Heroes of the Popular Water Margin.
Image courtesy of the British Museum
More to the point, what would brand for a better Chinese opera in the center of town than the exploits of the Monkey King? Elaborate fights by skillful martial artists. This is what fabricated the Quentin Tarantino filmsKill Bill: Volume one andBook two (2003 and 2004) and so entertaining and pop. "Kung fu" movies are an industry, just as Chinese opera has always parlayed intense fighting every bit amusement. It is not hard to understand. Violence and humor join in the spiritual pilgrimage ofJourney to the West.
This is all the more poignant, centered equally it is on the staid and hapless Buddhist scholar Xuanzang seeking to discover texts in the Motherland of the Buddha. It is easy to see how fighting, performing opera, and the practice of monasticism fed off each other's techniques and borrowed stories: the better the fight, the better the evidence. The Monkey King had martial invulnerability but he wanted the invulnerability of a bodhisattva and he would vanquish you to a lurid if you didn't requite him the scripture he asked for.
This American circus spectacular was comprised of Chinese martial artist entertainers. Artist unknown. Image courtesy of Joseph Svinth
Scott Park Phillips is a martial arts anthropologist from a line of rabbis, social philosophers, and anthropologists. He is a "somatic historian," using the body as the location and decision of history. Phillips is a talented martial artist familiar with many styles, their philosophies and histories, and a dancer trained in Western and Indian classical styles. He has a bones understanding of Chinese writing and speaking. Phillips has gained popularity as the author of ii books that seek to correct mod notions of Chinese martial arts and suggest other scenarios of appreciation.Possible Origins: A Cultural History of Chinese Martial Arts, Theater and Organized religion(Aroused Baby Books 2016) and its follow upward Tai Chi, Baguazhang and the Golden Elixir: Internal Martial Arts Before the Boxer Insurgence(Angry Baby Books 2019) make headway into the rich Chinese societal milieu that produced and sustained martial expertise as it was variously expressed in monasteries, Taoist temples, Chinese opera, and warfare. Nosotros tin can better see that in a guild where kidnappings and throat-slittings were commonplace, the ubiquity of martial skill was a necessity. Martial arts were part of establishing and protecting lodge.
Phillips himself straddles the worlds of martial arts practise, scholarly writing for thePeriodical of Daoist Studies, and a YouTube aqueduct featuring conversations with all sorts of important motility practitioners and historians. His books are a celebrity of clear writing, with ample annotations of everything from art to classical literature to online video content. As Socrates made clear in theSymposium, the all-time dancer is not always the best speaker. It is notable when an proficient movement practitioner is also an historian and an writer. In a crowded field of books well-nigh martial arts, Phillips' writing stands out as a new model of inquiry too as making his own practice a blazon of living speculation.
Historically, one culmination occurred during the failed Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), when a vehement uprising of martial artists was denied its claims of invulnerability, defeated with the use of guns. Function of the defeat was a promulgation of the idea that their practices of strengthening the mind with the feel of emptiness, sometimes chosen theGolden Elixir, was superstitious, flawed, and fatal.
This show was a re-enactment of the Chinese Boxer Insurgence, an anti-foreign
martial arts rebellion, subdued with the assistance of foreign nations and guns
Since that time, Chinese governments have promoted a health-oriented version of the martial arts, something Phillips calls "the YMCA model." In fact, the popularity of the YMCA in China significantly impacted the popular thought of martial arts. So did "kung fu" movies, in which some of the old ways survive every bit modern entertainment. Scott Park Phillips investigates the intersection of cultural behaviors, describing a complex environs in which Buddhism is always nowadays, interacting with other realities of the time such as constant warfare and local fighting—and the presence of many orphaned children.
who worked for the Allied war effort in 1918. They stayed in camps fix past the YMCA.
Two workers in this military camp practice their Shaolin martial arts. These workers as well brought
their ritual robes and masks, and even performed unproblematic versions of popular operas.
Image courtesy of Aroused Infant Books, copyright IWM
"Let me pigment a picture for y'all," Phillips offered. "Buddhism. India. Let'south commencement with India. India had splendid martial arts simply not as formal lineages, more every bit elements of ritual, games, trip the light fantastic toe, and sport. Where Buddhism spread, Indian cultures spread, and Indian fighting styles and concepts went along. The older caves at Dunhuang have fighters, sometimes asyakshas, which are derived from India. Basically martial art was of two types: within the tribe to discipline, train, or perform; and without the tribe for protection of family and land."
Buddhism's arrival with a universalist notion of culture is what inspired so many artists. At the same time, information technology cast martial arts in a different light, in a larger arena of deity action and supra-cultural unity. The multi-armed deities were armed with weapons. Wisdom was a sword. This alloyed well with the tradition of Chinese immortals, many of them old human generals and warriors. The pantheon of immortals in Chinese opera—itself once a ubiquitous theatrical expression at a local level—included anyone: Taoists, Buddhists, legendary characters, saints, divine creatures. (The Birthday of GuanyinAmongst the Immortal is a Cantonese opera masterpiece.) Hanuman the Indian monkey deity is none other than the Monkey Rex ofJourney to the West.To this day in Varanasi, wrestlers vie all year long to be the victor and then portray Hanuman in the annual festival. Within Chinese Buddhism and Chinese opera, the Monkey King becomes a bodhisattva, kick and screaming the whole way, mad at everybody, the star of the testify.
Qingdao Peking Opera Company, Manila, 2018. Paradigm courtesy of What'due south Happening PH
Phillips continued: "The Shaolin monastery was in fact a mini-country for centuries, with its own government and rites. It was a strategic armed forces fact that whomever controlled the Shaolin Pass, controlled the area. Naturally, necessarily, the occupants of the mount overseeing the whole landscape were the best fighters. Buddhism brought monasticism. Then where information technology assimilated easily with certain Taoist practices similardaoyin and sitting-and-forgetting, monasteries posed a new social structure with which to railroad train adherents in ritual and fighting, but likewise, thank you to Buddhism, in the cultivation of mind and every bit a refuge for orphans, who were common in times of fighting. By the Song dynasty in the 11th century, Taoism and Buddhism were well integrated and fifty-fifty competitive."
sometimes called "Holding Up the Heavens." Appointment unknown.
Image courtesy of Wellcome Images
"These same boys who were trained in martial arts and Buddhist ritual practice did non always stay with the monastery. Work options were limited basically to being bodyguards, traveling opera performers, or being hired for a private militia. The traveling opera performers were experts in martial arts and the use of weapons. They were acrobatic and were required to portray a range of immortals and deities. Humorous plays included mocking monastic behavior and prohibitions, in a similar mode to the mockery of monks in the Western Middle Ages. I call it a transgressive path of 18-carat practice. Theater and monastic rites were exorcistic. Theater was an expression of the orthodox indigenous religion of China.
"Chan Buddhism, or Zen, came from Taoism. Again, Buddhism added monasteries and a rigorous canon of texts, and in fact inspired Taoists to organize amend their texts and adherents. Taoists have e'er performed martial and energetic arts.Daoyin, which I mentioned earlier, is a practice with archaic roots, combining breathing with stretching and pulling. I see information technology as separating your body from 'your story.' This style you tin embody the absolute limit of wildness as well equally the absolute limit of cocky-containment.
"I suspect thatdaoyin influenced the development of yoga in eras when Indian and Chinese Buddhist and basically Taoist practices integrated. Certainly, once Buddhist monasteries such equally Shaolin were established,daoyin was good by monks at monasteries in didactics meditation practice; by opera performers for strength, agility, and fighting; and for Buddhist warriors who could empathise thatdaoyin was the way to feel emptiness. Fighting is a Way. To be a Buddhist warrior meant, in part, to practice the Golden Elixir internal techniques."
Golden Elixir technique for emptiness.
Artist and appointment unknown.
From Core of Culture
"This emptiness is where Buddhism and martial arts really connect. In the do of the Golden Elixir something alchemical in Taoist origin becomes an experience of emptiness and compassion, with the mental and breathing practices of Buddhist meditation connected to movement forms. In ane of theJataka Tales, the Buddha is Rex of Monkeys. InJourney to the West, the Monkey King practicesdaoyin and performs the Gilt Elixir as he seeks Buddhist enlightenment by protecting the Chinese Buddhist scholar on his travels to Bharat. In actual warfare between kingdom states in China, militias and armies brought both Taoist and Buddhist sorcerers to the battlefield. At that place is a deep integration of organized religion, practices of the mind, theater, and martial arts."
With special thanks to Scott Park Philips for his kind aid in preparing this commodity.
Come across more
Scott Park Phillips
Scott Park Phillips (academia.edu)
Scott Park Phillips (YouTube)
Core of Civilisation
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Source: https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/buddhism-and-the-martial-arts-a-conversation-with-scott-park-phillips/
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