ZHAN (eBook)

Introduction

Growing up in New Jersey, I was always one of the smallest boys in my class. I excelled in mathematics, but, when it came to sports, I did not do so well. I was always the last one chosen for the team. I dreaded going to PE class. I was bullied and picked on for my size. I was often afraid to walk home after school, knowing that I would be stopped and harassed by older boys. I felt weak and was not very confident in my ability to protect myself from abuse. Perhaps it was this experience that inspired me to take up judo and later to study aikido in my early twenties. I wanted to feel strong and safe in a world that often felt scary and threatening.

When I returned to New Jersey after obtaining my M.A.in phenomenological psychology at Duquesne University, a friend of mine introduced me to aikido. I found an aikido dojo about thirty minutes from my home. Besides the philosophy of nonviolence, I loved the flowing, dance-like quality of the art. It was a metaphor for how I wanted to move through my life. I imagined that if I could learn to move with that kind of assurance, I would feel both stronger and safer. After training for two years in New Jersey, I moved to Northern California, where I would continue my aikido training for the next thirty-five years.

Aikido is a Japanese martial art created by Morehei Ueshiba. Ueshiba was a practitioner of Daito-Ryu Aikijitsu who, after a spiritual awakening, left the art to create his own – aikido. Ueshiba, who was under five feet tall, was able to defeat challengers who were significantly larger than he was. He was also able to effortlessly deal with multiple attackers at the same time. He exhibited effortless mastery. He was inspiring to watch. Although Ueshiba himself never taught techniques, his students categorized what he did and created a system of techniques that was passed down. In aikido, we practice set movement patterns. There is an attacker (uke) and a defender (nage). The teacher will demonstrate being attacked by an uke and then defending against a particular attack with a certain technique. All the students will then pair up and practice that attack and that technique. There are tests and ranks as one progresses in the art.

After thirty-seven years of training in aikido, I saw no one who was able to reach the level of mastery that Ueshiba manifested. No matter how hard the students practiced, they were never able to do what Ueshiba did. It was clear to me that just practicing the techniques over and over again would not lead to the kind of transformation I was looking for. In fact, a teacher of mine, Henry Kono Sensei, told me that, when he studied with Ueshiba, he once asked him: “Why can’t we do what you do?” Ueshiba’s answer was that Kono and others did not understand yin and yang in their own bodies. Like Kono, I wanted to understand yin and yang in my own body.

In my search to understand yin and yang, I met a Chinese sifu named Fong Ha. Fong was seventy-seven at the time and had just been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer. He was a small, gentle man with a beautiful smile who reminded me of Yoda from Star Wars. The first time I met Fong, he was unable to cross the street without leaning on me and could no longer teach class. Frankly, it seemed he wasn’t going to make it. Three months later, I was shocked when I went to his class in San Anselmo, near where I live in Northern California, to see that he was walking with a cane and teaching taijiquan. I could not believe his recovery. I later learned that he had refused all radiation and chemotherapy and had recovered simply through his own nei-gong practice. Fong was still quite weak, yet he was able to bounce anyone who touched him. It did not matter where on his body I touched him – his back, his leg, even his head – he was able to move me with no effort on his part. It wasn’t his strength – he was seventy-seven and recovering from cancer. It wasn’t even technique – he used no set forms that I could see. And although he began studying taijiquan with Dong Yingjle when he was fifteen years old, practiced tui shou with Yang Sau-Chung, and lived and trained with Han Xing Yuan and Cai Songfang, he claimed that his ability had nothing to do with his training.

I was amazed. I wanted to know how he could move people twice his size with no effort at all. He claimed that this was not some skill he had learned but was a natural ability we all possess. The only difference was that he chose to cultivate this natural ability. The ability he had was like an external immune system. Just as our immune system naturally fights off bacteria, his body seemed to naturally respond to external attacks without direction from his conscious mind. This ability existed in his body. He was not applying some external form. There was no form.

I asked him why, if this was a natural ability as he maintained, he was able to manifest it but I was not. He compared this natural ability to a tree that bears fruit. I was a young tree that had just been planted and was not yet ready to bear fruit. No matter how hard I tried I could not bear fruit because I was not mature enough. Fong seemed to be telling me that this ability to “bounce” people was a natural ability we all have. In fact, when Fong was “doing” something to someone, that was simply his body protecting its own equilibrium. Fong had cultivated this natural ability to maintain balance in all situations. I was looking for Fong to show me how he did what he did, so that I could diligently practice and, after a time, perhaps I would be able to reproduce it. I would quickly learn that this is not how my learning process would unfold. Soon after I met Fong, he told me this story:

There was once a lion cub who had been orphaned when his mother and father were captured. He ended up living with a flock of sheep and was brought up as a sheep. He came to think of himself as a sheep. When a lion came to attack the flock, he ran away with the other sheep. The lion captured him and asked the young cub why he was running away. The cub said it was because he was a sheep and did not want to be eaten by the lion. The lion grabbed the cub by the scruff of his neck and took him to a small pond and had him look in the water. The lion said: “Look at your reflection. What do you see?” When the cub looked at his reflection, he saw a lion staring back at him. He turned to the lion and asked: “How do I be a lion?” The lion said: “Just open your mouth and roar.”

I thought about this story for years. We think we are sheep and therefore we need a shepherd. I felt at the time that I needed someone to show me how to develop the martial skills I was looking to build. I needed a teacher. I wanted Fong to be this teacher. Instead, Fong told me that I was not a sheep and therefore did not need a shepherd. I was just like him, a lion, albeit a young one. He gave me self-awareness. Basically, he told me that I was confused about who I was. I thought I was one thing, but, in fact, I was something else. He could not help me be something I was not. All he could do was to show me my own true nature.

When we look at someone like Ueshiba or Fong we see the fruits of their practice, their ability to neutralize the attack of others and to effortlessly move them. We want to be able to do this ourselves. We focus on what the eyes can see. We focus on the fruit. Show us what to do so we can practice it and also master it. Yet the fruit is simply the manifestation of a process of cultivation. We don’t see the cultivation; we only see the fruit. We also fail to ask ourselves why. Why do we want to be able to do this? In my own case it was about fear. Perhaps if I could do this, then people would admire and respect me. My own sense of worth was dependent upon others’ recognition of me. This, I was to learn, was simply the hook to keep me cultivating long enough for me to fall in love with the cultivation itself. Rather than cultivating in order to get somewhere, I simply cultivated for the joy of it. Fong would tell a story of slaves on a boat whose legs were chained together so they would all row together. They became very strong and proficient rowers. However, do you think they ever desired to row once they were freed? Cultivation, he told us, is pleasurable; not something that you need to force yourself to do.

What allowed my teacher to perform in the way he did was that his actions were coupled to the world he perceived. I came to understand that the way Fong viewed the world was not the same way I viewed it. I remember one morning at practice there was a dead squirrel next to the tree we practiced around. Squirrels were always running up and down the tree, playing with each other, when we practiced. We dug a hole and buried the squirrel. Burying the squirrel was not an interruption to my practice; it was part of it. Fong’s love and care for all life deeply touched me. The world was not a threat and danger to him; rather it was an extension of him. In all the times he bounced me, I never felt he was trying to dominate or harm me in any way. He did not need to make me feel small in order to feel good about himself.

Just as Nisargadatta Maharaj’s teacher told him that he was not what he took himself to be, Fong told me that what I am is not what I take myself to be. I am limited only by my own thinking and beliefs. I discovered I was not interested in learning in a conventional way. Instead, I desired to move in my own way – spontaneously, freely and uncontrived. My cultivation process has been about letting go of what all others have told me and discovering my own natural state and ability. I want to share...