Reflections of Study

by Luke Rolls

“The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. He helps people lose everything they know, and creates confusion in those who think that they know"

Tao Te Ching

It's a humbling experience to study under a Shaolin Master, dedicating their time and energy to your very development. The lesson of 'my teacher thought I was cleverer than I was, so I was' resonated with me in the expectation and belief I felt training under my master. This high regard towards students was not informed of course by academic theory but from the heart and on another level, a lineage that stretches back over 1500 years and values the training of the body and mind as a path to spiritual development and enlightenment.

Imperfections and old habits come out clearly in the light of training under a master. Being shown just how you did something, a specific jump or a move in a form, you see with clarity about yourself and the ruthless kindness in which it was pointed out brings about a giving up for a moment and even a bursting out in laughter. Being shown a mirror of your unperfected self becomes a cathartic experience but also importantly leads to being able to receive something else in its place, something of presence, aesthetic and skill. A great aspect of having a true teacher and the right conditions for growth, the ego is without so much it's usual grip and in it's absence can come a natural sense of peace, aliveness and in-touchness with life.

Something sometimes inspiring about the oldest student in a group is the way they help their brothers and sisters out when required. You can see a pure kind of care and teaching in the way they act. They know how because of being taught by their master and of course their past experiences starting training. Over long hours of endurance, in them, there seems to come a sense of humility and dignity rather than any kind of showiness or anything else achievement could bring. It's been said about teaching that if you haven't been purposefully taught how to teach, you will naturally fall back on the way that you were yourself. That has two sides to it but what an amazing thing to see the possibilities of authenticity and a 'lineage'.

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."

Zen Proverb

Training Shaolin is an undeniable challenge and a soberingly sharp contrast to most lifestyles of the west; the only comparison that comes to mind might be professional athletes exercising routines. And yet the students who cross the world to undertake the training are energized and enthusiastic to surrender their previous lives of restless comfort for something else, a training system that has been developed and passed down over centuries with roots in the founding of Zen Buddhism. Rising with the sun to start a day of physical exertion and discipline unknown before; it's often a shock to students who weren't sure what to expect but now see why they came. Getting pushed into the splits, running daily for miles, crawling down stairs by hand, waking up feeling like they're muscles must have been in an accident!, attempting somersault flips to possibly painful consequences; all most likely a change in living. But ask any student who's been to train under their Shaolin master in China and what they'll invariably tell you is that they miss it, they want to go back and they long for the disciplined life that they feel to have benefited them so much.

Although training is difficult and challenging, whether during or directly after, students naturally feel an increased fitness in their bodies, but also a real sense of achievement and well-being. You might say 'happier' for having had the experience, although on return they then face the challenge of adjusting back to their previous lives and all that entails. So is it a paradox that training is difficult and inevitably involves a type of mental endurance and physical pain but that it contributes somehow to one's happiness? Is there a learned acceptance of the Buddha's first teaching of the truth of dukkha / unsatisfactoriness? It's interesting to note in the west that practicing Buddhists were shown in recent years studies to be 'happier' than most other people. Buddha's teachings of course point not only the truth of unsatisfactoriness, but also to a path of its release. It seems as though in some acceptance of the truths of existence, in place of struggle, another potentiality can emerge, one that embodies a greater sense of awakeness, joy, satisfaction, clarity, confidence and compassion.

“Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher's help,"

Bodhidharma

Is training for everyone? A Chinese proverb answers: "there are many paths to the top of the mountain", but from the top "the view is always the same". Anyone wishing to take the Shaolin path had to historically be accepted as a pupil and for whom strict rules were laid out. Legends often set the scene of a disciple waiting outside a master's temple for days on end, repeatedly told to go away until after a prolonged amount of time finally being allowed in. They demonstrated the dedication considered necessary for the training. Quite a different atmosphere to that found in mainstream western society, and informed by what must be a deep cultural respect for the authority of a master and the important teachings they can pass down. Training in China therefore becomes a learning on different levels, one in coming to discover the cultural aspect through which unique qualities come through. With all of this accompanying them, a student reflects with a real sense of gratitude for the opportunity they were given being able to train and in particular, to their master, without whom, they would never have been able to make the journey.