On the Perfection of Zeal
by Justin Liu -- Northern Shaolin Instructor, Wing Lam Kung Fu

"What is zeal?" asks Santideva, the eight-century Indian Buddhist monk who composed the Bodhicaryavatara (A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life). "It is enthusiasm for virtue," he answers. This enthusiasm is a vital part of Buddhist spiritual training, as constant vigilance is required to keep the mind free from mental afflictions. And as the Chinese martial arts originated at the Shaolin Temple as part of the Buddhist practices of the Shaolin monks, such enthusiasm is likewise an essential part of our Kung Fu training.

Today, in Shaolin Village, the students training in the many Kung Fu schools that surround the Temple display an almost unimaginable amount of zeal. Words simply fail to do justice to the effort, enthusiasm, and consistency with which these students train. There are literally thousands of Kung Fu students in the village, most of whom work out three times a day--for a total of six to seven hours of hard training per day! That is more than many American students train in two weeks. On a recent trip to Shaolin Temple this June, my room was next to a practice area used by a class taught by one of the senior monks. I would literally both fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning to the sounds of vigorous training outside my window.

Sifu Lam has several times described to me the training he received in his own childhood in Hong Kong. The training hall was also his Sifu's home. There were no formal classes, group training sessions, or even established training programs. Students came to the school when they could and trained on their own. If a student trained with sufficient zeal, he or she would receive instruction from the teacher. Sifu Lam has told me that his Northern Shaolin teacher, Yen Shang Wo, was an extremely terse man, offering little praise and only very brief instruction. Obviously, in this kind of training environment, students were forced to rely on their own desire and developed their own enthusiasm and discipline.

Grandmaster Sun Jian Yun, the Grandmaster of the Sun T'ai Chi system and Sifu Lam's T'ai Chi teacher, offered me a very insightful analogy last year. She told me that the teacher opens the door, but it is up to the student to go through the doorway. The teacher provides neither the desire nor the motivation; the teacher merely shows the path that the student must follow. For the teacher to play this role might well seem foreign to us here in the U.S., entrenched as we are in our personal trainer-career coach-support group culture. However, in traditional Kung Fu training, it is an essential facet of the student-teacher relationship, and part of what differentiates traditional training from cardio-kickboxing-tae-bo-aerobics. For if the teacher did provide the enthusiasm, he or she would be robbing the student of one of the greatest benefits of traditional training: the ability to motivate and discipline oneself.

In my own training here at Lam Kwoon, it generally takes Sifu Lam one or two hours to teach me a new set in the Northern Shaolin style. He "opens the door" by teaching me the sequence of blocks, kicks, and punches that make up the set. But it is up to me to "go through the doorway," and that time is measured not in hours, but in months, or maybe even years. The time it takes to "go through" is spent alone on the practice floor, working through the movements of the set and reciting it over and over. This is where the true value of training lies, and when the zeal of which Santideva writes is cultivated.

So how do we find the zeal in our training? Santideva writes that "one should strive to increase one's zeal with the powers of aspiration, self-confidence, delight, letting go, dedication, and determination." When training, aspire every day towards making some sort of improvement. Improve your flexibility, your speed, or your endurance. Believe in yourself: find the self-confidence that will allow you to reach your potential. Experience delight in the sweat and the exertion that comprise Kung Fu training. Let go of beliefs that might be holding you back: "I'm not flexible enough. I'm too slow." Apply yourself every day with dedication and determination. Minute daily improvements add up to big improvements over time.

Many times, while leading class for Sifu Lam, I exhort my students to execute every kick as quickly as they possibly can. With just this one simple instruction, I always see immediate improvement. This is zeal. Focus your entire body and concentrate your entire spirit in each movement that you perform throughout a training session. This is zeal. If you normally recite a set five times in a practice session, do it ten, or even 20 times. This too is zeal.

Santideva writes that "just as there is no movement without wind, there can be no spiritual progress without zeal." We could equally well say the same about our Kung Fu training: "there can be no progress in Kung Fu without zeal."