A new Shaolin Temple USA
http://usashaolintemple.org/index.php?option=com_phpshop&Itemid=71
Anyone know anything about this?
No comments? It looks like they are planning a big facility.
Not wanting to speak out of turn…
…I’m sure richard sloan can speak most intelligently about this.
?
huh..
Okay Shi Yanming want’s to open up a training center, okay.
Shaolin Temple? Um wouldn’t there need to be a “Buddhist Abbott” needed for this position.
Hasn’t Shi Yanming left the priesthood (married (2) and children (?)). I think that removes him from applying.
I comment in regards to Religous Requirements and nothing to do with his skills/training (he’s got better physical skill then I’ll ever have).
warrior monks were not the same as religious monks-no matter what David Carradine might say.
It’s all about the dollar, anyway. I have seen too many people come to my school from them to learn how to fight. They don’t teach real application, and all, if any of their fighting is san-da, not kung-Fu. Too bad, too. I used to believe in the dream too.
[QUOTE=TenTigers;709858]warrior monks were not the same as religious monks-no matter what David Carradine might say.
It’s all about the dollar, anyway. I have seen too many people come to my school from them to learn how to fight. They don’t teach real application, and all, if any of their fighting is san-da, not kung-Fu. Too bad, too. I used to believe in the dream too.[/QUOTE]
Um! The word “fast food” comes to my mind..
cs
[QUOTE=Citong Shifu;709867]Um! The word “fast food” comes to my mind..
cs[/QUOTE]
The word mcdonald’s come to mind.
personally i like shi yan-ming. i met him a couple times and the times i have met him, and compared to the other monks he is more friendly and humble. even though he is a business man. plus i think he has done a lot more in the usa to promote shaolin early on then any of the other monks in the usa.
i have no comment about his training cause i never took it. i have watched it and it seems to work his students hard.
[QUOTE=jigahus;710293]The word mcdonald’s come to mind.[/QUOTE]
The word “Tax-free status” comes to mind…
only two comments
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how wonderful and great the USA is! In all of China there was only one (ok maybe two) Shaolin Temples… we’ve got like 4 of them now
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Whatever it is that Shi Yanming does, it is NOT san da…
LOL
Ross, you just need more Pak Mei schools to go out there and burn them down…
BTW, they’re planning on building one down here too… 500 man training hall, 500 room hotel and a golf course as well.
Well, I’ve seen Zen themed mini golf before…
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Ommm Ommmm Ommmm…
LOL, Hmmmmm, maybe I should shave my head, wear a robe, and start my own Shaolin Temple Resort…
On a serious note, the shaolin Temple in China and PRC get a major financial kick back from the USA Temples… What a gimmick… Makes me look down more on Modern Shaolin Wushu, which ny the way is a government version of pre-1900’s Shaolin Kungfu…
Anywho, I guess if it works for them, great. Eventually Modern Shaolin Wushu and the USA temples will be known as McDojo’s…
CS
Not true
The U.S.A. temples aren’t officially recognized by the Shaolin Temple proper, so Shaolin does not receive ‘kickback’. Each of the U.S. immigrated monks have set up schools. Some have called there schools temples and that’s arguable. The last time I was at Yanming’s in NY and Deshan’s in TX, they both set up temple ‘areas’ in their studios, but it’s little more than a glorified altar and a meditation space. Now, Guolin’s is different. He has a completely separate temple room that functions fully as a Buddhist temple. It’s overseen by a Buddhist teacher who doesn’t do kung fu. Many of the attendees of this temple don’t practice kung fu either. The kung fu studio is actually in back and accessed from another entrance (although both spaces are connected). Guolin has the strongest ties to Shaolin Temple and is probably the closest to being ‘official’. The others might claim official ties to Shaolin - and may indeed tithe to some connection there - but it’s not Shaolin Temple proper. Deshan has strong connections to the Shaolin wushuguan, which is in turn connected to the temple, the sports bureau and the tourist bureau, but is its own entity. Yanming has strong connections to Deyang, who is a senior well-respected monk in Shaolin Temple, who also operates his own private school. I’m sure all of these monks have other connections as well, just as anyone from China has connections. In China, this is guanxi and it’s the key to accessing anything and everything in Chinese culture.
[QUOTE=GeneChing;710715] Deshan has strong connections to the Shaolin wushuguan, which is in turn connected to the temple, the sports bureau and the tourist bureau, but is its own entity.[/QUOTE]
WRONG.
Deshan HAD strong connection to the wushuguan…but as far as i know now..he has no connection to shaolin …dat why all his new teacher he bring over are wushu coaches?
he sure does have a strong connection with the bejing wushu team though
well it is pretty simple actually.
Like many monks, he wants to spread his traditions and share with others. Since Yong Xin’s ascendency, a lot of monks have felt a little, shall we say, uncomfortable, with being official, lol…being quite unofficial has allowed us to take in people such as Wan Heng, for example…provide support for others, etc.
Since he got here, and from the days when Guolin and Yan Ming were with Yan Chang on Pike st, running a temple there, I think they wanted to set up a full blown monastery/temple/training facility, someplace near or in the Buddhist Alley in the Catskills. But for a couple of different reasons they went their separate ways. I don’t think there is much going on between them but I know Yan Chang stays in touch, and there is some communication back and forth occassionally with Guolin.
So slowly but surely, Yan Ming has been working on establishing a temple upstate, in which he wants to duplicate the training through which he came up, the surface of which we are scratching at now. He’s come a far way from duct taping flashlights to the walls and wearing five pairs of socks in the winter to stay warm and keep his knuckles from cracking open and I have to admire his tenacity.
We have quite a bit of funding now, with more coming through various initiatives. The last major drive culminated in a party, at which I was proud to offer my services as a Dj, I was psyched because I had just scored a nice set of 7s of some rare reggae, cost me two machettes in trade no less, and it went over real nice trust me when I tell you. Also, he does seminars. Stuff like that.
I think Guolin is about as “official” as it gets, as far as ties to Yong Xin and the Henan Shaolin temple, as he is training the other ambassador, DeMasco. I forget who is who these days. If anyone is sending money back to China on the regular I would guess it would be Guolin, it’s gotta be USSD, but that is pure conjecture on my part, and so what I guess? I don’t see anything wrong with religious organizations sending money back to the mother temple or church or what have you, that is just S.O.P, like it or not, I would just assume it as a matter of course. USSD is another matter entirely and that I think is B.S. to the tenth power for a lot of reasons. For disciples, they sure do blunder about, they don’t even understand their place in the lineage which is embarassing, and they sure can make some mountains out of molehills.
But we are not beholden to anyone but ourselves and our other temples, of which we have 4 now- Vienna, S.Africa, Trinidad, and Mexico, although I am sure Shifu has helped out some of his brothers back in China through some of the tough times when there was the purge and such.
I’m not surprised a lot of students leave to go and learn to “fight” at other schools, because nothing like that really happens until level 2 is reached, and that is mostly a lot of padwork, depending. What you do learn is not readily apparent as far as what most people think of when they think of fighting.
Level one is all basics, all the time.
We have a temple currently in manhattan- by that I mean we have a space which is used to train martial arts and instruct students in Ch’an, and to also conduct various ceremonies, although it is not exclusively one or the other and I don’t think any such distinction is really recognized unless it is convenient. Since a big part of Ch’an is dong ch’an, and since that is how Yan Ming teaches it, that’s how we worship, if the word fits. If it doesn’t, I’ll just shrug at you because you can be my guest at whatever you want to think. We have a body of disciples now, all having gone through the Gui Yi Fo, Fa, Sen, and this body of disciples learns Ch’an Buddhism, various sutras and recitation, etc.
As to the married/celibacy thing, I think it is fair to say that the CR upended that tradition, and as far as I am concerned, for the better, although many vehemently disagree with me. But the fact remains several of the senior monks who came back came back with families in tow, including two of the four olds, upon which the transmission basically hung from pre’28 Shi You San attack to now. Yan Ming will catch flak because he is rather open and unapologetic about it. To me, it doesn’t effect anything and the kids are a delight. Maybe for many only a guy locked up in some cubicle apart from the world can only be called a “monk” but that is a rather silly belief to hold to me and a little juvenile of a concept.
Ah,the money, well I wish we had it like people think we do, but I can assure you from direct personal experience he is not teaching or doing this for the “money.” Lol…perceptions crack me up. I guess the Pope does it for the money, lol…and the Dalai Lama does it for the money, and Mother Theresa did it for the money, and who else… Since I am not much of a horn tooter I’ll just leave it at that. It’s the year 2007 and tons of religious groups have had to adapt to using business models- Catholics have TONS, trust me- from the Trappists making Chimay into a brand that has now evolved into not just arguably the world’s BEST ales and beers, but to Cheeses etc, and Toner Monks who sell toner cartridges, to other endeavours, all for the money, heh heh heh…That always makes me laugh, for example, when last year we had our heat go off and I couldn’t sleep for the chatter of my teeth…or when my fingers were raw from stitching together our disciple books…
p.s. you can rest assured we don’t have any golf courses or hotels in the plans, lol…but I would bet my left arm you will be able to enjoy, so to speak, a bruising massage.
Originally posted by Richard Sloan
I’m not surprised a lot of students leave to go and learn to “fight” at other schools, because nothing like that really happens until level 2 is reached, and that is mostly a lot of padwork, depending. What you do learn is not readily apparent as far as what most people think of when they think of fighting.
That is a total cop out and a commonly used phrase in the contemperary wushu and McDojo world.
In any traditional CMA school, fight training is obviously apparent from day one.
Cheers,
BBK
I don’t buy it. Basics are the key to excellence. if he wants to spend extra time on basics, and then get into fighting later, that can only be good.
So long as he’s not giving Black sashes to people with 10 forms and no functional fighting skills, i think all is good.
These kinds of threads are always good for a laugh. The way people pick apart what you say. Here’s a little more meat for your grinder.
Just to satisfy a response and to kill time before I get into my next meeting, I use and have used my training, from day one, in the real world in my capacity of running various venues and nightclubs in Jamaica, so you can sit and spin on your cop out bullsh!t about what is and what is not “traditional” CMA training, what is obvious and what is not when it comes to training traditional CMAs, as if you are the arbiter of what that means. God. People should remember this is an internet forum, which is generally good for conversation, so when I respond to something Ten Tigers says conversationally, that is all it is, a conversational response. It’s not a response that is meant to lay out all information ever about the subject. While the influence of PRC wushu is apparent in the Henan Shaolin temple, especially now, I know the lineage of several masters and my own, and it traces directly back, monk to monk, to before the 1928 attack, which suppposedly crushed Shaolin, it dates back to before the turn of the century and obviously ****her. So um…yeah, it’s “traditional.” But at a certain point most “traditional” arts we have with us today are frozen in time, they always adopted the weapons of the day, but why did they stop? So to me, the sobriquet of what is “traditional” and what is not…it’s pretty humorous to watch armchair warriors bandy about this and that and eventually I lose interest and just frankly do not care because it is a waste of time and worse yet time wasted by people who are generally clueless, rather insignificant, and just have their little point of view to express in tiny words with tiny thoughts and they will go to bed at night dreaming their tiny or maybe inflated dreams of what have you and at the end of the day, it has little to no bearing on my day to day, it just wasted my time.
What I was generally speaking to was we have a lot of preperatory work and very often people don’t want to put in the time to get the best benefits. Don’t even pretend there isn’t a lot of that work in CMA to build foundations, speed, strength, and this tied inextricably to flexibility. I mean that’s obvious, because the MMA guys all complain to hell and gone about it, lol…That’s basically what I was referring to. There is no ****genous TCMA methodology to establish fighting skills anyway. Do an exhaustive survey and this quickly becomes apparent. IF there was one way there would be only one, Highlander, one style, or a few. Who needs TCMA for that anyway? All you need to do for that is learn how to fight, any fool can learn how to do that and the jails are full of these kinds of idiots. And if you want to learn how to fight, you basically have to develop what I call the hit on 16 mentality. People crack me the hell up, I want to fight I want to fight. Lol. No, they want to live out some fantasy where they beat up 5 attackers single handed and save the pretty girl cue guitar music. I love this one, they want to be prepared for the “real” world. But they spend time training twin broadswords. LOL. Good for you you are so traditional, you are sooooooo cool. Well I live half the year where there is still a sword culture, in that people still resolve issues by going to a machette or cutlass so to speak but I don’t know what you are doing in manhattan with your twin broadswords.
If you wanted to be prepared for street encounters the last thing in the world you would really want to do is spend years learning a martial art. You would want to be a cop. You have equipment, and numbers on your side. That would be best. I’m joking sort of, but if I can’t have fun with you and your post what good is responding to it. Then I would have really wasted my time. I don’t know many MA’s who train with modern weapons but I have met a few and admire their honesty.
Anyway, enough of the tirade, for all I know, TT is getting students from the other monks and none are coming to him specifically from us. But I don’t assume that, because it is just conversation. But I have seen Yan Ming turn people away who came in and right off the bat stated flatly they want to learn how to fight, because those toolboxes are better off someplace else.
The benefits of the training are “obviously apparent” when I can put my foot in your throat before you can blink after a month of training when I couldn’t touch my toes before I started, much less kick anything, or control your drunk ass 10 ways come Sunday right out the front gate to roll you around in the jerk chicken bones just from learning a basic stance form.
It’s been awhile since I’ve had to punch someone, but that’s probably because it is true what they say, at first it is about fighting, but later it is about something else. Besides, now I have people under me so I can just freshen up my ocktail when a situation comes up and let others deal with it.
Point is, I train with Yan Ming, and use the benefits gained from my training in my day to day. So to hear you comment about traditional this, cop out that, is where I kind of start to shrug.
Maybe Gene will take a pull at the grist mill, as he has what anyone can see is “tradtional” training and has written about his comparisons back and forth with Shaolin.
Over to you Gene…
mmmm Chimay
You know, I once bought Yanming a Chimay ale. 
I don’t know about Yanming, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, but I do it for the money. You have no idea how much it costs to produce and distribute an independant print magazine nowadays. That’s my cue to say subscribe now.
But back to the notion of tithing, beleive it or not, religious figures need money. Giving donations to monks is a common practice throughout Asia. Some donate meals. Others donate money. In addition, any disciple will support his master. This is universal, whether you are Shaolin or any other school of CMA. I support my master with a red envelope everytime I see him. I’m sure that Guolin supports his master, Abbot Yongxin. That’s tradition. It’s amazing to me how many people will say ‘traditional’ martial arts are dead in China and they don’t even know the basic traditions of Chinese culture.
The McFranchise model just doesn’t apply to Shaolin Temple. It reminds me of when I told a good friend that there was a McDonalds by Tiananmen Square. He shouted victoriously “We’ve won! We’ve won!” I said, “Yea, one McDonalds in Tiananmen. How many Chinese restaurants are there in America?”
Thanks for the update on Deshan, Pk_StyLeZ. I’m a little out of touch with the Houston scene nowadays (and some of that is intentional).
You know, it’s really not going to be about McDonalds and Shaolin. It’s going to be about Burger King and Shaolin. This will make a lot more sense next February.