Leo Gaje: Basics of Pekiti-Tirsia Kali

 Official Karate Magazine April, 1977

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Real Training at the Shaolin Temple

In January 1989, I had taken several days off from my English teaching job at the Zhengzhuo Institute of Technology to stay at Shaolin. It was a very special visit because I was able to spend a lot of time with my Shifu, Venerable Dharma Master Shi Suxi. He during that time he asked me to take the Bodhisattva Precepts at the White Horse Temple but that is a story for another time.

On one particular evening, I was hanging out with my Elder Dharma Brother Deshu in his quarters, when three young men from the village nearby showed up for training. The three had been accepted by Deshu as lay disciples and been given Buddhist names. Xinghao was the oldest at 19, Xingyun was 18 and the youngest was Xingyuen at 16.They had been coming over at night for some time to train with Deshu in his quarters.

For their training that evening, they were given only one basic exercise to practice. It was a brief sequence that was designed to develop one’s foot stomping ability, among other things. It consisted of a right kick and left punch to the left with the right foot pulled diagonally downward to stomp the floor with the ball of the foot. A half kneeling punch at the center was followed with the same movements on the opposite side. The three were told to do 200 repetitions with each leg. This took each of them over an hour to complete.

During this time, Deshu and I chatted and drank tea. He didn’t offer any instruction or corrections to the boys, only glancing over occasionally to see how they were doing.

Once they had finished their 200 repetitions, Deshu then had each of them stand on two bricks that lay flat on the floor, one under each foot. The bricks were standard clay building bricks which had not been prepared in any way pulled from a pile covered with snow outside the living quarters. They were placed flat and there was no space between the brick and the floor. The three students were told to do the exercise again until they successfully broke one or both of the bricks. Any breaking expert will tell you that breaking a brick in such a manner is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

By the way, I was told it was this very exercise that had caused the depressions in the Buddha Training hall, not standing in horse stance with each foot in a different depression as is often cited. The depressions are way too far apart for anyone to stand with a foot in two of them and besides, simply standing would never cause the depth of the depressions that exist. It was this same exercise that the boys were practicing that had created the depressions; each one pounded down by years of repetition.

The monk made depressions in the Buddha Training Hall

To my surprise, the youngest boy, Xingyuan, who had been training with Deshu for quite a while, was able to break both bricks in less that 10 attempts. He was very happy and I could see that Deshu was pleased. In contrast, the other two students were pretty lazy, always resting and not trying very hard. Deshu got pretty mad at them, hitting and kicking them to correct their form and “motivate” them to try harder. Frustrated, he even made Xinghao kneel on the cold, hard concrete floor for a long time. I was a bit frightened by this change in his demeanor although he would always smile and speak gently to me.

Looking closely at the brick in the foreground you can see that it has cracked.

Finally, Deshu got disgusted with them and just stopped teaching. He berated them, saying that they were not living up to his standards. He told them not to come back until he called for them. I could see that it was not an easy decision for him to make and he brooded over it for a couple of days.

Martial arts training in China can sometimes be harsh, especially for Chinese students. Actually studying at Shaolin with a genuine monk brings one a lot of prestige so many are more interested in bragging about it rather than actually putting in the time and effort. I put Deshu’s rough teaching methods down to the passion he felt for the art and the obligation he felt to pass on genuine Shaolin martial arts to the next generation. The teachings had to be pure and the standards had to be high less true traditional Shaolin Quan be corrupted or lost. In fact, Deshu cautioned me not to teach the system to just anyone. Any prospective student, he told me,must be of high moral character and unwavering dedication. Such worthy students are difficult to find in the modern world, even in China.

The poem from which Shaolin generational names are drawn

A note on Shaolin Buddhist names. In China, when someone becomes a Buddhist, he is given a generational name by his Master (Shifu). Shaolin names are based on a poem written hundreds of years ago. 30th Generation names would all have the character “Su” which means vegetarian as the first part of their generational name. All disciples of the next generation, the 31st would begin with the character “De” which means virtue. My name, for example, Deqin can be translated as “Overflowing with Virtue”. “Xing” is the 32nd Shaolin Generation name so all disciples of the“De” generation would have the character “Xing” as the first part of their name. The 33rd Generation begins with “Yong” and so on. Therefore it is very easy to tell to which Generation a disciple belongs. All disciples of a given generation are considered “Dharma Brothers”. Seniors are addressed as shixiong while juniors are addressed as shidi.

All ordained monks have the last name “Shi” which is short for Shijiamoni, the Chinese transliteration of the original Buddha’s name Shakyamuni. Lay disciples, followers that have not“left home” and been fully ordained as Buddhist Monks. should never use the name “Shi”. Instead, they should use their own family name. I therefore use my Chinese family name “Ke”, a translation of Kelly. So my correct name as a 31st Generation lay disciple of the Shaolin Temple is Ke Deqin. Falsely claiming or leading others to believe one is an ordained monk of the Shaolin Temple is unethical and wrong and indicates that one is unworthy of the privilege and honor of being associated with the Shaolin Temple.