I became a lay disciple of Venerable Dharma Master Shi Suxi in 1988. At that time I was living in Zhengzhou, a city not far from the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province. Soon after I moved there, I had the good fortune to become acquainted with a gentleman named Wang Bing. He was very interested in martial arts and occasionally wrote for Chinese martial arts magazines. As I got to know him, I was surprised to find that he was also a practicing Buddhist, something that was not very common at that time. One day when I was visiting him at his apartment, he mentioned that he was a disciple of the Shaolin Temple. He asked if I would like go visit the Temple with him some time. I had been to the temple months earlier and hated it. There were merchants everywhere on the temple grounds and the place looked like a gaudy tourist attraction. I said sure and thought no more about it.
Several weeks later, on Oct. 13, Wang Bing showed up at my door and asked if I would like to go see a performance by the Shaolin monks and meet his teacher. We hopped a train to Luoyang and the next morning drove in a van to the Temple which is located near Dengfeng city. Wang Bing's wife got one of the young monks to give me a tour of the temple and this experience was much nicer than the previous one. When we got back on the bus for Luoyang, I was shocked. It was full of monks. We were their ride to the performance. Wang Bing introduced me and when they found out I was a martial artist, insisted that I take part in the performance. In fact, they wanted me to do two separate performances during the intermissions.
Since I had just finished studying Chen Taijiquan at the Chen village, I decided would do a shortened version of the form I had learned. I also wanted to do some Pekiti-Tirsia Kali, the Filipino Martial Art that I was an instructor in. Of course, they had never heard of it. Although I can't prove it, it is possible that I was the first person to ever demonstrate the Filipino Martial Arts in China. I told them I needed a pair of sticks so they cut a staff in half , making me a pair of sticks of just the right length.
I thought the performance was going to be for a small crown but when we got to the venue, I fount that it was an open air stadium with several thousand people in attendance.The provincial TV station was also there though I never got to see any video of the performance.
The monk's performance was incredible. Fast and powerful, they were awe inspiring. Then it was my turn. The crowd was eager to see a foreigner perform martial arts but as I started the slow motion movements of Taiji, I could almost hear them yawning in boredom. After the dynamic performance of the monks, Taiji was just too slow to hold their attention. Totally intimidated, I stopped at the first reasonable ending point I could find and got out of there.
The second performance was not much better. Arnis does not have any forms so all I could do without a partner was freestyle doublestick. To the crowd it no doubt looked like I was just swinging a couple of sticks around for no apparent reason. However, my performance was not completely wasted. A few months later, after I became a lay disciple, my Dharma Brother Deyang asked me to teach him the sticks. He wanted to learn the form and couldn't really understand how you could have a martial art without forms. Needless to say, the training didn't go very far. However, I was very gratified that he was able to see the value in it and was honored that he asked me to teach him.
After the show, we went back to the hotel where the monks were staying and Wang Bin took me to meet his teacher, Venerable Dharma Master Shi Suxi. He asked if I would like to become one of Venerable Master Suxi's disciples. I had no idea what that entailed. I knew very little of about Buddhism. I was far more interested in Daoism. This seemed like a rare opportunity however so there was no way I was going to turn it down. So, in a tiny hotel room I knelt before Suxi Da Fashi and recited some Chinese words that I did not understand and became a 31st Generation lay disciple of the Shaolin Temple. After much discussion between my now Shifu and the Temple's Secretary, I was given the Dharma name "Deqin" which means "overflowing with virtue".
Because Zhengzhou was only a couple of hours away by bus, I started visiting the temple every weekend or whenever I had a chance. Wang Bing told me it was customary to bring one’s Shifu a gift when becoming a disciple. I had a small statue of the Bodhisattva Guanyin and I presented that to Shifu. On my next visit, I asked about the statue but Shifu had given it away. I found out that Shifu would give away everything he had (or others would take his things). The only possession he owned were a set of prayer beads that had been handed down from teacher to student for over 100 years. He had no other belongings and never asked for anything for himself. He later gave those beads to me.
My favorite picture of Shifu was taken when we brought him to Zhengzhou to go to the hospital. He had been ill for some time but had refused treatment. It was quite a battle to get him to go. He didn’t want anyone to fuss over him. The night before we went to the hospital, we stayed at Wang Bing’s apartment. That evening, as he always did, Shifu walked up and down the hall reciting Sutras and mantras. Walking was difficult for him as his Parkinson’s disease was getting more and more debilitating. However, he persisted in his Buddhist practices. In my picture, he is walking away so you can only see his back. To me though, that picture says it all; regardless of the many adversities he had to face in his life-famine, revolution, torture - Shifu remained a devote Buddhist monk, the last true monk of Shaolin. .
