History of Shaolin Monks
The history of Shaolin begins about 1500 years ago, when a stranger arrived in China from lands to the west, bringing him a new interpretation religion and spans all the way to modern day china
Tourists from around the world come to experience displays of their ancient martial arts and teachings
The stranger was Batuo (teacher from India)
When Luoyang and the Wi dynasty fell in 534, temples in the area were destroyed, possibly including Shaolin
Around 600, Emperor Wendi of the new Sui Dynasty, awarded Shaolin a 1,400 acre estate plus the right to grid grain with a water mill. During that time, the Sui reunified china but his reign only lasted 37 years. Before long the country dissolved into the control of competing warlords again.
Shaolin and China’s other Buddhist temples faced many purges and Shaolin was shut down in 622, with the monks forcibly returned to lay life. The temple was allowed to reopen two years later due to the military service its monks had rendered to the throne
The Tang emperor Wuzong feared the power of the Buddhists so he razed almost all the temples in his empire having the monks defrocked or killed in 841. Shaolin was spared, however, as Wuzong idolised his ancestor Li Shimin
Batuo’s legacy
It’s hard to imagine what the first abbot of Shaolin would think if he could see the temple now. He might be surprised and even dismayed by the amount of bloodshed in the temples history and its use in modern culture as a tourist destination
However, to survive the tumult that has characterised so many periods of Chinese history, the monks of Shaolin had to learn the skills of warriors, most important of which was survival. Despite a number of attempts to erase the temple, it survives and even thrives today at the base of the Songshan range.
Still, buy the 1500s, the monks of shaolin were famous for their staff-fighting skills. In 1511, 70 monks died fighting bandit armies and between 1553 and 1555, the monks were mobilised to fight in at least four battles against Japanese pirates. The next century saw the development of shaolin’s empty-hand fighting methods. However, the monks fought on the ming side in the 1630s and lost.
For 11 years, he followed the same daily routine with several hundred other monks at the temple:
Wake up at 5:30
Attend chanting for 2 hours
Eat breakfast at 7:30
Study break for 20 minutes
Two hour kung fu training session
Lunch at 11am
Hour long break
Study session of the diamond sutra
Another two hour training session
Dinner at 5:30
Heart sutra chanting for an hour
Meditation and bedtime at 10 pm
“Discipline first. Then learn Buddhism. Then you understand what life is. Then you understand what impermanence is. If a person doesn’t have discipline they cannot do anything”
All forms of Buddhist practice are first and foremost programs for training the mind in gaining immediate, intuitive insight into the nature of the true reality and generating ever greater compassion for all sentient beings
An examination of the historical records reveals that the origins of the Shaolin martial arts were economic and political rather than spiritual- the Buddhist faith prohibits violence, and yet the Shaolin Buddhist monks have been perfecting their fighting techniques for centuries
As early as the Chinese Middle Ages, the Shaolin monastery possessed a large agricultural estate that required military protection.
In the early seventh century, the monastery was embroiled in a military confrontation over the capital fear of far-reaching political consequences. Its heroic monks assisted the future emperor Li Shimin in the campaigns leading to the founding of his mighty Tang Dynasty. The grateful emperor bestowed upon the monks an imperial letter of thanks, sanctioning their military activities for years to come
The history of the Shaolin martial arts reveals an intimate connection between monastic fighting and the vexation of Buddhist martial deities.
If shaolin monks exploited the violent potential of Buddhist military divinities, they made similar military use of another Buddhist emblem- the staff, which functioned as a symbol of religious authority
Monastic regulations required itinerant monks to carry a staff, which Shaolin warriors gradually transformed into an effective weapon - this led to the Shaolin monastery was renowned in china for its superior staff techniques
The Shaolin methods of fist fighting draw on native traditions no less than on the imported Buddhist faith which had arrived to China from India.
These techniques largely evolved from an ancient Chinese gymnastic tradition that had arrived centuries before
During the 16th and 17th centuries this ancient Chinese gymnastic tradition was gradually integrated into the newly emerging systems of barehanded fighting, creating the Shaolin synthesis of fighting, healing and religious self cultivation