Shaolin Warrior Temple in L.A. Storefront

Gendy Alimurung (Candyland, LAWeekly.com, Sept. 29, 2011)

Shaolin Warrior Monk Operates from an L.A. Storefront

Master Shi Yan Fan, Shaolin warrior monk (Simone Paz/Laweekly.com)

The Shaolin temple in China is 1,500 years old and one of the nation's most ancient sacred treasures, the source of all martial arts. The Shaolin temple in Los Angeles is 3 years old and is located in a Sherman Oaks storefront next to a pet store.

It is, however, no less sacred to those who seek refuge here from the modern world. Here, the warrior monk known as master Shi Yan Fan, or "Powerful Sky," teaches Zen Buddhism and Shaolin kung fu. "Shaolin means young forest. Shao for young. Lin for trees. It means you can live forever," he'll say to those who wander in.

(Hellfil2e) The official ordination of the first Western Caucasian disciple to receive JieBa at Shaolin Temple in Henan, China, in centuries

The temple wasn't always there, at least not in the physical sense. When the master first came to Los Angeles from China, he would train students in community centers, gyms, parks, and forests. Eventually, the students got tired of carrying their weapons everywhere. They opened the temple, donating its rent, furnishings and upkeep.

Master Shi Yan Fan wasn't always a kung fu master. Actually, he wasn't always Shi Yan Fan. For all of his youth he was Italian-born Franco Testini. Though he has trained his entire life, only recently did he become an official Shaolin warrior monk, the first to do so in 300 years. He was branded on the head with nine incense sticks for five minutes. The last two minutes, when the incense burns through your skin, he says, "are very painful."

(Hellfil2e) The story of Shi Yan Fan in Italian

The ceremony was performed in 2007 at the Shaolin Temple in China when the Chinese government lifted its centuries-old ban on the practice. There was much fanfare. Preparations lasted a month. There were arduous training sessions and equally arduous lectures. Knees and foreheads became bruised from bowing for five hours a day. Some monks fainted from exhaustion. In the end, 100 monks were scheduled to receive the burn marks, but only 43 went through with it. "They got scared," Testini shrugs.

Testini has given his life to Shaolin. His mission is to share it with as many people as he can, and by share he means teach them compassion (a noble endeavor), to exercise every day (preaching to the choir) and to be happy without material possessions (good luck with that).

Training American disciples in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles

Testini speaks quickly and with a thick Italian accent. His assistant, Cindy, occasionally serves as unofficial interpreter. She also has given her life to Shaolin and, by extension, to her master, or as she calls him in Chinese, shifu. Training in Shaolin, the master taught her, isn't about tournaments and color belt systems and trophies. It's about learning to be Zen. More

Shaolin Temple Secret: Dragon Herbs

Ron Teaguarden (DragonHerbs.com), Wisdom Quarterly edit


American herbalist Ron Teaguarden and Buddhist monks strolling at the Shaolin Temple.

Inside the Shaolin Temple’s Herbal Tradition

Last summer (2010) master herbalist Ron Teaguarden spent some quality time in China. He took this trip to identify, qualify, and purchase herbs in person for our "Dragon Herbs" products. We meet up with growers, collectors, processors, scientists, teachers, masters, and experts that make tonic herbalism so remarkably great.

He also got to meet up with the great China crew. These are things done every year. But this trip had a wonderful, special bonus. I took a truly exotic excursion to the mystical Song Shan Mountains, Henan Provence, China’s heartland, and visited the world famous, 1,500-year-old Shaolin Temple.

Monk Wang Hui and Ron at the Reishi mural in the Shaolin Temple inner sanctum

Many people know that the Shaolin Temple is the iconic birthplace and incubator of kung fu. Shaolin kung fu is extreme, extraordinary, and steeped in spiritual practices.

Indeed, kung fu is a fundamental part of the Buddhist monks’ daily routine. It is a path to enlightenment. As a result, the Shaolin monks who practice kung fu are known as “warrior monks.”

There are also monks at the Shaolin Temple who do not practice kung fu. They focus on Buddhist meditation or the healing arts.

They are therefore known as “meditating monks” and “healing monks.” As awesome and popular as this kung fu legacy is, the Shaolin Temple has an even greater historic legacy: It is the temple where Zen Buddhism was first conceived and where it developed into one of the most famous and important spiritual practices in the world.

These days, in the west in particular, people think of Zen as a Japanese path. But the Japanese were not the originators of Zen. For centuries before Zen was adapted into Japanese Zen Buddhism, it was practiced and developed in China.

In China, the practice is “Chan” (禪). Zen is simply the Japanese pronunciation of the foreign Chinese word Chan. [The original Indian-Buddhist word is jhana, from the ancient Sanskrit word dhyana.] Actually, Chan Buddhism spread first from China to Vietnam (Thien), then to Korea (Seon), and then on to Japan (Zen). From Japan, it has spread throughout the world. More

Magic Mandala of Los Angeles (audio)

LISTEN: Buddhist monks spend a week in Pomona creating peace-and-compassion mandala sand painting

Daily Bulletin

A whisper of a breeze blew gently into the room at the Land of Enlightened Wisdom Buddhist Center in Pomona, fluttering over closed eyes of those breathing quietly and waiting for a sacred ceremony to begin.

The silence lifted as seven Tibetan monks from the Gaden Jangste Monastery in India began to chant a mantra (prayer). The low rumbling resonance of their voices penetrated the quiet as the monks prepared themselves and purified a simple space so peace prevails.







No one physically touched another, but the minds and spirits of the monks quickly and non-dramatically linked with others present.

The monks, led by renowned physician and revered teacher (geshe) Dorji Wangchuk, slipped into deep meditation as their chants harkened Avalokiteshavara -- the [bodhisattva of compassion] -- and sought his blessings on the peace-and-compassion mandala sand painting they would create at the Pomona center located at 1317 N. Park Ave.

(hairyprincess blog)

Although they spoke no words, the melodic harmony of their chanting voices lyrically blended together. Sunlight streaming through the windows caught crimson and gold colors in the monks' robes and cast light and shadow on the intricately carved ancient Tibetan trumpets, drums, cymbals, and percussion played. More

The full ordination of monks and nuns

Buddhanet.net (edited and expanded by Wisdom Quarterly)

Ten precept Buddhist nuns are actually novices not (fully ordained bhikkhunis) "nuns" (overseasspice.com).

During the time of the Buddha, monastic ordination gradually went from a simple invitation by him (Aham, Bhante or "Come, Venerable"), to the consent of other full monastics in good standing, to a more complex public ceremony.

The first few hundred students were personally ordained by the Buddha. They simply asked him for permission to join the order, and if he accepted them, he invited them with two simple words.

Later as the Monastic Order (Sangha) grew, it was not possible for all students to see the Buddha. So he instructed his best students to ordain some of them. The newcomers shaved their heads and beards (in the case of men) and put on saffron patchwork robes. Then they formally sought guidance from the Buddha, Dharma, and [Noble] Sangha by reciting the Three Guides (often mislabeled "Refuges").

Later, when some less suitable people wanted to join the Order, ten precepts were added to the Three Guides.

Later still, after people complained of the behavior of some monastics, novices, and probationers [in the case of those who had converted from a non-Buddhist monastic tradition], more detailed rules of conduct and etiquette were introduced for monks and nuns who completed their novitiate training. The total number of rules increased from ten to more than 227.

Western Buddhist monks and nuns and visiting tourists in the Dalai Lama's teaching audience (dalailama.com)

Eventually the monks seem to have edged out nuns. This was hastened by eight special rules (the eight garudhammas) that seem to have no purpose but to subordinate nuns to monks.

They were not likely instituted by the Buddha, as is generally believed, but seem to have been inserted by monks.

One rule in particular required monks and fully ordained nuns be present for the full ordination of women, with no such rule for men whose Sangha was independent. Eventually, there were not enough nuns to conduct ordinations, and before long there were no nuns at all in the earliest surviving form of Buddhism (Theravada).

Whereas monks and nuns look the same -- same saffron robes, alms bowls, shaved heads -- female novices in different countries use many colors. And over time even monastics in various Buddhist countries adopted different colored robes.

Monks and nuns from different countries learn the Dharma (Buddha's Teaching) in their own language often also learning Pali and Sanskrit. Their robes may look different, particularly between the two major schools, Theravada and Mahayana.

Monastics from the Theravada tradition come from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. Those in the much larger Mahayana tradition are from China, Korea, and Vietnam, while Tibet calls its special brand of Mahayana "Vajrayana" and Japan calls its brand "Zen." More

• Actress Joey Wong (pictured above) is a Buddhist nun
• Buddhism and Islam in Indonesia
• The Oppression in Burma includes nuns

Brains of meditating monks get MRI scans

Matt Danzico (BBC News, New York)

VIDEO: Meditating Buddhist monk submits to brain scan in fMRI

In a laboratory tucked away off a noisy New York City street, a soft-spoken neuroscientist has been placing Tibetan monks into a car-sized brain scanner to better understand the ancient practice of Buddhist meditation.

But could this unusual research not only unravel the secrets of leading a harmonious life but also shed light on some of the world's more mysterious diseases?

Zoran Josipovic, a research scientist and adjunct professor at New York University, says he has been peering into the brains of monks while they meditate in an attempt to understand how their brains reorganize themselves during the exercise.

Since 2008, the researcher has been placing the minds and bodies of prominent Buddhist figures into a five-tonne (5,000 kg) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.

The scanner tracks blood flow within the monks' heads as they meditate inside its clunky walls, which echoes a musical rhythm when the machine is operating.

Dr. Josipovic, who also moonlights as a Buddhist monk, says he is hoping to find how some meditators achieve a state of "nonduality" or "oneness" with the world, a unifying consciousness between a person and his/her environment.

Zoran Josipovic looking at brain scans on a computer. The study specifically looks at the default network in the brain, which controls self-reflective thoughts.

"One thing that meditation does for those who practice it a lot is that it cultivates attentional skills," Dr. Josipovic says, adding that those harnessed skills can help lead to a more tranquil and happier way of being.

"Meditation research, particularly in the last 10 years or so, has shown to be very promising because it points to an ability of the brain to change and optimize in a way we didn't know previously was possible."

When one relaxes into a state of oneness, the neural networks in experienced practitioners change as they lower the psychological wall between themselves and their environments, Dr. Josipovic says.

And this reorganization in the brain may lead to what some meditators claim to be a deep harmony between themselves and their surroundings.

Shifting attention
Dr. Josipovic's research is part of a larger effort better to understand what scientists have dubbed the default network in the brain. More