{"id":12558,"date":"2016-09-22T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T13:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=12558"},"modified":"2016-09-19T13:44:10","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T17:44:10","slug":"shaolin-monastery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/shaolin-monastery\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaolin Monastery"},"content":{"rendered":"

In addition to the amazing Longmen Grottoes and the historic White Horse Temple, Henan province<\/a> is also home to the Shaolin Monastery<\/strong> (\u5c11\u6797\u5bfa – sh\u00e0o l\u00edn s\u00ec). This ancient temple is a UNESCO site and is the cradle of Chinese Zen Buddhism. You may know it as the home of Shaolin kung fu <\/em><\/strong>(\u529f\u592b – <\/em>g\u014dng f\u016b)<\/em>, as it was made famous by a 1982 film starring Jet Li in his debut role. Let’s learn more about this temple, starting with a bit of history.<\/p>\n

History<\/h2>\n
\"Shaolin<\/a>

Shaolin Temple. Image by chad from flickr.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

According to legend, a dhyana master named\u00a0Buddhabhadra – Batuo<\/strong> (\u8dcb\u9640 – b<\/span>\u00e1 tu\u00f3<\/span>) in Chinese – was the first abbot of the Shaolin Monastery. It is said that he traveled to China from India during the Northern Wei Dynasty. He was given some land on the holy Mt. Song, where he built the temple around 495 AD. It was built on the Shaoshi peak in the forest, hence the temple’s name meaning “Temple of Shao Forest.”<\/p>\n

Some thirty years later, another monk traveled to the temple from India to teach Zen Buddhism. He was refused admittance into the Shaolin Temple and then climbed high into the mountains to meditate in a cave. It is said that he remained in the cave for nine years, where he sat facing the cave wall meditating. His shadow became permanently outlined on the cave wall, which is now a sacred place. He was finally admitted into the temple, where he became the patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China. While there, he\u00a0developed exercises to help keep the monks fit, which led to the development of Shaolin martial arts.<\/p>\n

The martial arts training would come in handy later on, as the temple and Buddhism in general would come under attack. When the temple became a safe haven for Ming loyalists, it was burned to the ground by Qing rulers. Shaolin kung fu<\/em> was outlawed, and the monks and their followers dispersed throughout the country. It was eventually allowed to reopen, but the temple was once again badly damaged during the disastrous Cultural Revolution.<\/p>\n

Once again, the temple was reopened and renovated. The original Shaolin kung fu<\/em> was replaced by a new, standardized form of martial arts known as wushu<\/em><\/strong> (\u6b66\u672f – w\u01d4 sh\u00f9). Thanks in large part to the popularity of the 1982 film “Shaolin Temple,” many training schools opened around the temple. These were eventually outlawed by the government and forced to move to the nearby towns, leaving only one school in operation at the temple site. The Shaolin Temple Kung Fu Academy<\/a> is the largest school of its kind in China. See a bit of what it’s like for the students there in this awesome video from National Geographic entitled “36,000 Kids You Don’t Want to Mess With:”<\/p>\n