Shaolin Monk Quotes

[...] it doesn't take much courage to fight when you still believe you can win. What takes real courage is to keep fighting when all hope is gone.

Only those who have tasted the bitterest of the bitter can become people who stand out among others. -Guanchang Xianxing Ji

A club hurts the flesh, but evil words hurt the bone. -Traditional Chinese Proverb

It is difficult for my fellow countrymen who have never lived abroad to understand that until a foreign man is about sixty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he'd like to punch an American in the face. Even people like the Chinese, who mostly like us, think of us--at least partly--as loud, fat, poorly dressed, overprivileged, hectoring, naive, arrogant, self-righteous bullies with little knowledge and no interest in any culture other than our own. I once had a conversation with a Japanese journalist who said to me, "You don't seem like an American." When I asked him, slightly hurt, why he said that, he replied, "Because you listen.

I may seem smaller than I look, but what people don't know about me is that I once weight-lifted my own weight when I was in high school, ran more miles than anyone else in Physical Education in my class in high school, and was trained by a Shaolin Kung Fu monk while being the only girl in class. I am also trained in archery and firearms. So when it comes to being physically small or petite and even looking like a girly girl; it doesn't matter. I am strong. I am awared and disciplined. And I can leverage the playing field because I am trained. - Kailin Gow in Strong by Kailin Gow

The sayers do not know and the knowers do not say.

This was not uncommon in government-run operations, where a request that someone do their job often induced a catatonic state that might last anywhere from a couple of minutes to an hour.

When you are the only laowai in a village of 10,000 Chinese martial artists and you've sat through several dozen films where a white man shouts, "You Chinese dog," before getting his ass kicked, it starts to irritate you. We all need role models.

[...] The monks sped up the process up for us laowai who have less time, less patience for basics, and a greater need for external markers of our accomplishments.

I'm sorry I looked. Or saw, I guess. I didn't go digging through your book. The pages fell out." "Yeah. I kinda figured that might have been what happened." He scuffed one heel against the cement. "The book fell out of my bag again...and,well..." And,well, there he was,forgiven. "Zippers," I said. "One of mankind's better inventions. Your bag has one; I've seen it." "You see much, Grasshopper." I blinked at him. "C'mon. Kung Fu?" He let go of his knees and sliced both hands through the air in a choppy spiral. "Shaolin monk fighting against injustice while searching for his long-lost brother in the Old West?" I shook my head. "Nope.Sorry."" "Sad. I bet you wouldn't recognize 'Live long and prosper,' either." "Nope." "How did I know? My dad got me into seventies TV.It's awfully brilliant. Or brilliantly awful, maybe." He had relaxed and was looking monumentally pleased with seventies television or himself or something. You're awfully beautiful, Alex Bainbridge. I managed to keep that one to myself,but... "You're really good." That one got away from me. "Your drawing, I mean.

Chinese is a tonal language. Words spelled the same way mean different things when pronounced with one of the four different tones: the 1st stays level, the 2nd rises, the 3rd sinks and then rises, and the 4th falls. For example, the sentence “ma [1st] ma [4th] ma [3rd] ma [1st]?” means “Did mother curse the horse?” First-year Chinese students either use their heads or their index fingers to try to get the tones right: half the class looks like bobblehead dolls, the other like conductors of a Lilliputian orchestra. “Where?

The weapon was a showpiece with a blade that was only five inches long and a handle made of carved bone. The carving was a depiction of a one-sided battle in which men with knives and arrows and axes slaughtered unarmed men who appeared to be praying instead of fighting. Bosch assumed this was the massacre of the Shaolin monks that Chu had told him was the origin of the triads. The shape of the knife was very much like the shape of the tattoo on the inside of Chang's arm.

Asceticism. "(from Greek askeō: “to exercise,” or “to train”), the practice of the denial of physical or psychological desires in order to attain a spiritual ideal or goal. Hardly any religion has been without at least traces or some delphic features of asceticism. Enlightenment, meditation, yoga, natural, free, sanctuary, homelessness, technology, spirituality, depth, mindfulness, function, society, benefit.

Many people do not understand the art of winning and this has been the case for many centuries. There was once a Shaolin monk who was constantly being challenged to fight. He always won, even against the angriest and strongest fighters, because they could not understand that technique is always superior to personal will and expectations. Some of the men noticed his skill and asked to be trained with him, and once their technique was good enough, they would try to defeat him. But the monk would defeat them instead because they could not understand that experience is always superior to technique. As the monk grew older, he did not desire to fight anymore, and so many men would insult him. But the monk was still winning,  because they could not understand that they were wasting an opportunity to learn and the monk did not desire to waste the little time he had left on earth. Before he died, the monk wrote a few manuscripts with his wisdom, but few were capable of understanding his words because their spirit was not ready. They were still thinking about winning. And so they lost everything, they lost the opportunity to develop a new technique, gain experience, study and understand how to win.

Many people do not understand the art of winning and this has been the case for many centuries. There was once a Shaolin monk who was constantly being challenged to fight. He always won, even against the angriest and strongest fighters, because they could not understand that technique is always superior to personal will and expectations. Some of the men noticed his skill and asked to be trained with him, and once their technique was good enough, they would try to defeat him. But the monk would defeat them instead because they could not understand that experience is always superior to technique. As the monk grew older, he did not desire to fight anymore, and so many men would insult him. But the monk was still winning, because they could not understand that they were wasting an opportunity to learn and the monk did not desire to waste the little time he had left on earth. Before he died, the monk wrote a few manuscripts with his wisdom, but few were capable of understanding his words because their spirit was not ready. They were still thinking about winning. And so they lost everything, they lost the opportunity to develop a new technique, gain experience, study and understand how to win.

the Chinese Communist Party played only a minor role in battling the Japanese. It was the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] that bore the brunt of the heavy fighting and was significantly weakened in the process. Without the Japanese invasion, it seems improbable that the CCP could have won the “Nationalist-Communist” Civil War in 1950. But historical memory is rarely gracious, self-deprecating, or forgiving, especially in a police state.) The

Like many sons of famous men who can’t live up to their fathers, Big Wang covered up his insecurity with a belligerent jocularity. Or to put it another way, he was an annoying prick who thought he was hilarious. He liked to make his power known by publicly berating

What takes real courage is to keep fighting when all hope is gone.

The North Beijing train station was a vivid example of the kind of pervasive poverty the Chinese people were willing to concede their political freedom to escape. It looked like a refugee camp after a war of ethnic cleansing. Actually, a refugee camp looks better, because at least it has Red Cross tents.

Two goals in a Maoist economy are to keep people working whether their job is necessary or not (idleness is the bourgeoisie’s workshop) and to make sure everyone is keeping an eye on everyone else.

Shaolin was the first known Buddhist monastery to develop its own fighting system—quite unusual for a religion whose pacifism rivals that of the Quakers.

Almost everything in China was subject to a negotiation because the Chinese believe all situations are contextual. The price depended on who you were. There was the Chinese friend price (deep guanxi), the Chinese friend-of-friend price (shallow guanxi), the Chinese stranger price (no guanxi), the smart laowai price (he knew what the Chinese price was), and the sucker laowai price (usually 100 to 200 percent higher than the smart laowai price). Taking their cues from the government, which had instituted different prices for Chinese and foreigners at tourist attractions, hotels, and friendship stores, the local merchants felt no unease in gouging a laowai

The Chinese expected the white man to pay more for his burden because the British, the Pablo Escobar of imperialists, had forced them to buy opium from India in 1850 and had stolen Hong Kong.

Almost all of it was a reconstruction of recent vintage, part of the government’s effort to increase tourist revenue after the devastation of the Cultural Revolution.

He had me at “hallo.” No red-blooded American can resist the siren song of TV exposure. It’s our God-given right.

There are few things more nerve-racking than trying to act normal with a camera in your face and someone shouting at you to “act normal.

If I had been a Chinese student, Cheng Hao would have shouted all these failings at me, while occasionally whacking me with a wooden staff to emphasize his criticisms. Shaolin’s pedagogical style was profoundly corporal. China has a saying parents often use with their children when they punish them, da shi teng, ma shi ai (smacking is fondness; scolding is love). But I was a foreigner. More important, because he was only nineteen, I was two years older than he was. So he only said, “Good…very good…better…you’re getting better” as I stumbled through the morning.

At some point within the first month I started talking to myself, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that I was also answering myself. I’d never imagined how crucial English was to my sense of a unified self—part

After spending a lifetime defining myself through business success and feeling unfulfilled, I arrived at the gates of the Shaolin Temple having left business behind in the belief that my happiness could only be found through a peaceful monk-like existence devoid of the challenges of business. What I discovered is that we can have both business and peace of mind, and that those qualities—warrior and monk—reside in us all.

The Japanese fighter was wired. He ran forward several steps and then backpedaled to where he stood before, ten yards away from his opponent. He repeated this several times. It was like he suffered from physical autism. “What does this stupid egg think he’s doing?” Deqing asked of no one in particular. “Feinting?” It was a surreal sight watching this karateka repeatedly charge forward and then dash back, as if his opponent lacked any depth perception and would therefore be fooled into thinking that the object in front of him was closer than it appeared. Finally,

Life is death. Death is Life. teach the deserving. Teach with Passion. Learn always. Assume Nothing.

Seclusion Won’t Do (The Sonnet) Each of you must turn into a sufi saint, Each of you must turn into a latin lover. Each of you must turn into a shaolin monk, Each of you must turn into a bengal tiger. It won't do to seclude yourself in a monastery, It won't do to seclude yourself behind a desk. The monk must come down to the streets of life, The scholar must till the soil with their sweat. Service of humanity is the fulfillment of divinity, Service of humanity is the right use of intellect. Occasional seclusion is good, to charge up the mind, But life-long seclusion from society is sheer waste. Enlightenment that doesn't eliminate separation is no enlightenment. Intelligence that doesn't elevate the collective is no intelligence.

The creation of the triads goes back to the seven teenth century in China. There were one hundred thirteen monks in the Shaolin monastery, Buddhist monks, Manchu invaders attacked and killed all but five of the monks. Those remaining five monks created the secret societies with the goal of overthrowing the invaders. The triads were born. But over the centuries, they changed. They dropped politics and patriotism and became criminal organizations. Much like the Italian and Russian mafias, they engage in extortion and protection rackets. To honor the ghosts of the slaughtered monks, the extortion amounts are usually a multiple of one hundred eight.

... crept up on his brother, quiet as a Shaolin monk crossing a shag rug... Not sure if he meant to; you learn to do things real quiet in prison.

INTRUDERS! WE HAVE INTRUDERS! SOUND THE ALARM! SOUND THE—” Bang! Iris, Phoebe, and the others remained silent as the Shaolin monk kitsune went down, steam rising from his head. They stared for several seconds, and then looked at Kevin, or, more specifically, the gun in his hand, which was pointed at the now unconscious fox-man. “What?” Kevin asked. “You just shot him,” Iris pointed out. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Kevin’s voice was so rank with sarcasm that the word sarcasm didn’t really do it justice. “Please, feel free to point out something else. Maybe something that I don’t already know.” Iris frowned at him. “Okay, then, how about this? You just shot your gun, and it was really loud. I’m pretty sure everyone in the entire palace heard it.” As if her words held prophetic powers, the sound of rushing feet echoed down the hall. The sound of running was followed by shouting. “I think I heard something this way!” “Do you think it’s intruders?!” “Could be!” “Let’s check it out!” “Oh, hell.” Kevin felt like facepalming.

I knew very little about Afghanistan. Like most of my fellow countrymen, I preferred not to learn too much about dysfunctional countries until after my government invaded them. It's emotionally easier that way.