The way Of Shaolin

Hello Raine!

 My name is Hangzhou. Welcome to your Shaolin Training

Lets enter the temple

 the Y behind the movement This is lesson number one, lineage In this lesson, we will learn the lineage, my lineage, and why it's important

The lineage poem, the Dharma name, what makes an official disciple, a monk versus a lay disciple, and common misconceptions So the lineage begins 1500 years ago with the first patriarch of Chan Buddhism, Bodhidharma There's you and me

Obviously, I do not know all of the lineage and it would be boring to try and learn It's not important as much

What's important is where I learned So, who is my teacher My teacher is 시녕하, 34th generation Shaolin, Warrior Monk, and Abbot, or Headmaster of Shaolin Temple in Los Angeles, which is where I trained

시녕하 was born Franko Tostini in Italy He grew up very poor and he found 시녕하, who was teaching military personnel in South Italy He was a half Korean half Chinese kung fu master and Franko Mai Shifu trained with him for 13 and a half years if I remember correctly in South Italy

Then Franko left South Italy eventually because the mafia actually was trying to control him He was a very strong fighter but he didn't want to hurt people and the mafia did want him to hurt people and when he asked to leave or threaten to leave they would hurt him or threaten to hurt or kill his family No one likes to be controlled by the mafia, right

So he eventually decided to leave and he came to Los Angeles not speaking a word of English, not knowing a single person, not having any money or any plan, just to close on his back, just the robe that he was wearing and he slept on the bus, he slept in the streets like a homeless man and he eventually started to gain a little bit of following by teaching 시녕하 and kung fu and he gained some followers, started renting out little studios here and there teaching in the park and eventually he did open the Shaolin temple in Los Angeles But before that he became an official Shaolin disciple under his second master, 시녕하 who is a 33rd generation Shaolin monk and the 30th abbot of the Shaolin temple from 1999 to 2025 and the controversy surrounding 시녕하 he was removed because of a lot of corruption, a lot of really dirty and evil things really

I'm not going to cover that here, this is just for the sake of learning the lineage So that's that But he did have a huge role in commercializing the temple in globalization and it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site under his regime I guess for lack of a better word

And he opened it to Westerners where before it was really only for Chinese and they didn't want anybody coming in They didn't want anyone entering into this world from the outside They didn't want Westerners learning it

But that changed with 시녕하 And my teacher, 시녕 하, he had this very historic honor of receiving these brand marks on his head in 2007 He was the first non-Asian, I believe the first non-Chinese even to receive these ordination scars

The ceremony has been banned for the last 300 years It was seen and is seen as unnecessary pain It's certainly very painful

But that ban was partially lifted in 2007 300 monks came from all over to partake in this ceremony They had to train for a month straight, very vigorous, very torturous training, very hard training in order to qualify

In the end, only 43 monks actually decided to have the branding done And the ab bot, 시녕 시, chose my 시녕하 to be the first to show the world that 시녕 is open to people of all different cultures and races, genders as well So it really changed the way that 시녕하 was received and really opened it up to the world, which is a very historic moment

So it's cool It's very cool to be his disciple And I became a disciple in 2021

I started training in 2020, moved into the temple and I lived there for three years and had my head shaved My chifu shaved my head there in that center picture It was during covid

So that's why we were wearing masks And it was really intense every day waking up at 6 a.m to take care of the temple

I served the temple I slept on the floor in this tiny little storage room for three years I didn't have a bathroom

I taught all of the classes once I was able to learn enough to teach, which was pretty quickly So 6 a.m Waking up, 8 a.m

we had a meditation class, Dharma walking and then Chan meditation, needed meditation And then we'd have our chigong in Tai Chi class Then we'd have tea

And then we'd have external training or kung fu conditioning And then we would break for lunch and take a nap And then I'd come back at 5 to teach the children

And then we'd have a break for tea and philosophy for another hour And then 7 o'clock was our evening class And that rotated between kung fu and chigong

So that was every single day for three years No breaks, no vacation I didn't get to go home to see my family

I didn't go home for Christmas If I really was feeling desperate, I would go see a friend I was still in Los Angeles, so it wasn't like I was in the mountains, secluded somewhere

But it was very, I was very, very dedicated And then I left and I returned back to the vulgarities of regular life You can ask me more questions about my story

I've made several videos about it as well, but we're going to keep moving here So the lineage poem, the abbot of the temple at the beginning of the song Dynasty, his name was Schratting, who you wrote the following poem for the next generations to derive their names from And on the left, you have a more temporary version that is read from left to right

And on the right is a more classical version that's read from right to left So there's 70 characters and each character pertains to a different generation And so if you are using one character as the 30th generation, then the next character in the poem will be the 31st generation

And that brings us to the Dharma name The Dharma name consists of three names First is the family name or the surname

And we're talking about the Shaolin lineage here, right Of course, everything here is about the Shaolin lineage Things might look a little bit different if it's like Thai or whatever, different country, different rules

But we're talking about Shaolin here So the family name is always she, to signify the family of Shakya Muni Buddha, who is Siddhartha Gautama It's another name for him

And the generational name is the middle one that is taken from that poem, the lineage poem that we just saw in the previous slide And the person name is the third one And that is chosen by the master and given to the initiated disciple when they receive their Dharma name

So here is my name, written in Chinese in Mandarin And the family name there is on the left That's the generational name is in the middle taken from the poem

It's hung, which means eternal or constant And then my personal name is the third character And that means silk

It's Cho Cho So my name is Shihong Cho

My Shifu chose the name soft silk for me So I will use that name on social media He chose that name for me because my personality is strong and soft, just like silk

So that is the story behind my name What makes an official disciple And I'll explain in a second why I put quotation marks around official

But an official disciple will have a Dharma name and they'll have a refuge certificate or some my teacher, my Shifu, called it a Buddhist passport because it looks kind of like a passport And they will have gone through a discipleship ceremony where they take refuge in the triple gem, which is the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha Sangha meaning the community of Buddhists

Dharma being the teachings of the Buddha And they would have to have dedicated training from an authentic lineage So here is my conversion document, my refuge certificate, straight from the Hanan Buddhist Association

My Dharma name is written on there There's a picture of me and it's stamped by the Shaolin temple in Hanan, China, the Shaolin temple, the northern Shaolin temple Okay, so why did I put quotation marks around official

We need to be careful because there are fakers out there Unfortunately, we wish that people could just keep it pure and keep it authentic, but it doesn't happen So as with any religion or any order, some people claim to be Shaolin disciples when they're not

So the best way to know is if they have a Dharma name, the current Dharma names that we see are dha, yang, yan, hung, and miao But it still could be fake, even if they do have a Dharma name And you don't have to ask people for their receipts or expect them to post their refuge certificate

You can sometimes get a sense and some people will go through the ceremony and receive their refuge certificate and never train I saw that happen at my temple and some people will just simply pay money to have the Dharma name and the document That happens too

So therefore the Dharma name is not necessarily a reason to trust or follow a Shaolin instructor, but it is certainly a good start And there's also many, many greatly skilled and knowledgeable instructors who aren't official disciples I'm just speaking about my specific lineage, the official disciple lineage, but that doesn't mean that someone has to be a Shaolin disciple for them to be knowledgeable and skilled, not at all

So do your research, of course, and now you have a hung cho So you can ask me, I have a lot of knowledge and I also know a lot of people that know more than me

So if I cannot answer the question , I probably know somebody who can So a monk versus a lay disciple Monks are disciples, but disciples are not necessarily monks

A monk vow is different than a disciple vow Some, well the monks, it means you live monastically in a temple and/or you've taken monastic vows So you've vowed not to marry

You've vowed to probably keep your head shaved, to not eat meat, etc And there are also many lay disciples They don't need to renounce the world completely

They can eat meat, keep their hair, marry, work They can open a kung fu academy outside Basically a regular or normal life

They are still committed, though, to learning, training, and spreading the dharma and spreading kung fu, spreading the culture So yes, I am considered a lay disciple and you might see these Chinese characters, ju shi, which means you are a lay disciple, a lay Buddhist Common misconceptions

So we talked a little bit about this already Assuming somebody is trustworthy just because they look the part, or just because they have cool kung fu moves, right Just because their kung fu is good doesn't mean they 're a real Shaolin disciple

A lot of people abuse the name and the image of Shaolin, unfortunately And with respect, just because you see a bald Chinese guy in a robe, it doesn't mean that they're an official disciple It doesn't even mean that what they're teaching is legitimate and authentic

The robe doesn't make the monk The monk makes the robe The fraudsters are smart

Some schools are charging westerners on an arm and a leg because they know that westerners want to go to China and live and do this cool like plot line in their story But they're teaching oftentimes a watered down version or something that will just look cool on social media like stick breaking I'm sure a lot of us have seen those videos of monks breaking sticks on westerners who are just training for their first week ever and they're absolutely not ready to be breaking sticks

So there's also websites that claim to be Shaolin temple that even have the domain Shaolin temple but it's not actually the Shaolin temple or schools that claim to be Shaolin temple and they 're not So we really have to be careful and do our research We also don't want to assume that we have to go to China to learn

There are many great teachers and instructors all over the world now Many Shaolin disciples all over the world I learned in Los Angeles, right

I never went to China to learn I have been to China but for something unrelated and assuming you need to leave your life behind to learn You don't

You can be a lay disciple If that's something that you wish to do, I'm not authorized to make disciples, at least not yet, maybe someday If that's something that you really wanted to do, I could perhaps find a way

But as the abbot has been removed from the temple, things have changed a lot and they've kind of gone back to their ways before the abbot Xiongxin took the office, I guess you could say And I'm not sure that they are being as , they definitely aren't being as open to Westerners and foreigners coming and learning I think they really closed a lot of that

But you don't need to be a disciple to learn You don't need to have a document You don't need to shave your head

You don't need to renounce meat You don't need to leave your spouse or your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever You can still continue your life and just learn

You do not have to shave your head and live in a temple for three years like me in order to learn That's why I am making this program to bring it to modern people in a way that can actually fit into your life and feel repeatable and digestible And we don't also need to assume we have to do a bunch of crazy acrobatics and feats of strength and fitness

At its core, Shaolin, Shaolin is a Buddhist school It's a Buddhist temple That is what it is at its core

It was a Buddhist temple long before it was a kung fu school And so if we practice diligently and learn, that is what matters the most We learn the lifestyle, the philosophy of Shaolin and the movement as well

But we don't need to be doing anything that's going to hurt us or anything that looks crazy or unattainable This should all be attainable And that's what I hope for all of my students to achieve

I'll see you in the next lesson