In fact, when it comes to work, it is nothing more than going to work, going off work, the same in and out of confusion, occasionally some surprises, tomorrow life or continue. To say the most different, perhaps it is the workplace - Henan Songshan Shaolin Temple.
To say what kind of job this is, I'd like to share a recruitment notice:
Basic information:
Location: Henan - Dengfeng
Department: Hammer Spectrum Hall
Report to: Supervisors
Treatment: Higher than the average salary of the same industry;
Benefits: five insurance and one gold, job promotion, Skills training, performance bonuses, holiday gifts, team dinners;
Job responsibilities:
1. able to adapt to the changing patterns of spring, summer, autumn and winter with the 24 seasons and develop corresponding life strategies;
2 through the Zen, martial arts, medical training, to maintain the balance of the body and the mind;
3. because of the work required to require into the talk about Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, and back to dissertation
4. Regular bathing, chanting, burning incense, and linen clothing at work;
5. Ability to climb primitive mountain trails, with a strong sense of direction, as well as accepting the frequency of three times a week;
6. Ability to identify basic herbs, and their growth characteristics;
Requirements for the job:
1;
2. Proficient in at least one foreign language;
3. Knowledge of farming, brewing, tea ceremony and other handicrafts is preferred;
4. Those who are good at zither, chess, calligraphy and painting are preferred;
5. Familiarity with the state's religious policy;
6. Those who have irregular life will not be considered;
Company profile:
The company's profile:
The Shaoxu mountain secret forest. > Shaoru Mountain Dense Forest.
This atypical job posting was written when I was looking for a successor after two years at Shaolin Temple. Seemingly flirtatious, but actually sincere, about the fundamentals of working at the Shaolin Temple, roughly.
To summarize: I work in Shaolin as a cultural communicator, receiving diplomatic missions from different countries, exporting nationalism and Shaolin culture, and studying martial arts, meditation, and Chinese medicine in my spare time.
Many of my friends often ask me why I go to Shaolin? How can I enter Shaolin?
Personally, it seems to me that very often a choice of work, in itself, does not have much allegory. Just like some people after graduation to run to the investment bank or McKinsey, or into the Internet BAT, or run to Shenzhen, Silicon Valley start-ups, are a comprehensive decision, the key is that the certainty, as well as how your heart in the work of the extension.
The boy (me), in order to prepare for this job, half a year, if you count all the planning and preparation, at least three years. The preparation was rational, rigorous and monotonous. What was relatively exciting was what he actually experienced in Shaolin Temple during the cycle of seasons, spring, summer, fall and winter.
The first summer, usually around May 5 on the Gregorian calendar, is the month of May when the winds of heaven are coping and the first yin is born, and the Tuan says: "Coping, meeting, softness meets hardness. The Tuan said, "The world meets with the soft, the soft meets with the hard, the soft meets with the hard.
The Tuan is talking about the harmony between the strong and the soft, and the greatness of everything, just like Shaolin in the summer.
This is the busiest time of the year. Under the influence of the "One Belt, One Road" policy, Shaolin has undertaken a series of cultural exchange programs, with various groups from Vienna, Switzerland, and the five North African countries moving in one after another, and it's our job to develop and implement systematic training in the martial arts and Chinese culture.
Daytime
Every morning, we wake up at 5:00 a.m. and accompany a group of foreigners to start their morning training, and after breakfast, we practice together from grappling hands, five-step boxing, to open the mountain stick and the plum blossom single knife. I always tell my friends that it's extremely hard to practice martial arts, and it's about 2.5 times as hard as normal military training.
In the afternoon is the cultural class time, in the temple west of the Shaolin Cultural Institute, the classroom pen, ink, paper and inkstone as much as a lot of all kinds of colors of the hand "dragon fly phoenix dance" up ", however, the ink is not yet dry, Zen doctor masters and began to explain the meridians, acupuncture points, as well as acupuncture techniques. The day after day, so.
I like to stay with the African students, to experience that primitive life force. When one person laughed, the others laughed with him; when one person practiced martial arts and roared, the others roared with him. This is a very close link between people, which belongs to the spirit or a higher level.
I remember the night of the departure, the African group and Shaolin monks around the campfire, dancing the local African dance, singing ancient songs, every note and drum beat, all from the beating of life. Farewell, can also be sensational.
Night
However, there is no more interesting time in Shaolin in summer than at night, when you first meditate after dinner. The prerequisite for meditating is to let go of all the destinies and not to have a single thought, as the saying goes:
Practicing empty flowers, sitting in the water and moon dojo.
Subduing the devil's army in the mirror, and making a great deal of Buddha in the dream,
this is the practice of a lifetime. Sitting in meditation is actually a form of restoration and healing.
Subsequently refreshed, I will invite chatty friends to drink tea together, often such a situation: the left side of the tea table is a few foreign friends a face of question marks and a bunch of questions, while the right side of the three or two old monks laughing and pointing out, and then we sip tea while playing chess, I sit in the center as an interpreter, and this every day and every night in a collision of East and West of the beauty of, needless to say.
The foreigners sitting in the room are not ordinary tourists, most of them are officials of certain government departments in the country, or university professors, and the right side of the old monks, all have quite a Taoist practice, we talk about everything, when Freud, Sartre, Camus, Wilde, Hegel, and the views of Rembrandt, Weber, Woody Allen, and the realm of Cold Mountain, Laozhuang, Qianmu, Cao Xueqin, Li fishermen, constantly intertwined and collided every night. The summer evenings become interesting and long because of the interweaving and collision every night.
Of course, not every night is so noisy. Shaolin is a platform or vehicle that constantly attracts a number of traditional cultural artists to gather. Once late at night, talking to a guqin teacher, in addition to tea and qin, the night in the silent mountains, only the candle flickering constantly.
One night, Mr. Tsai Chih-chung said, "Zen is not just the moment of enlightenment, but also the life before and after enlightenment." It hit me in an instant. I used to put too much emphasis on the peak moment, but I forgot to think about what happens after I get it. What happens after liberation? Do you maintain it, or do you let it go slowly? These are the questions that no one can avoid.
In fact, just like this job, I treat it as an adventure, a redefinition of the work framework.
This job requires labor, dedication, and financial rewards. Learning culture, spreading culture, and then passing on culture, eating vegetarianism, practicing calligraphy, practicing martial arts, meditating, and picking herbs, each day's labor confirms the ideal mode of life in the heart. This in itself is a kind of completion.
But more importantly, this job is not so linear. There is not much linear promotion, salary increase, or buy a house or car, the peak of life, there is not too much similar comparison or competition, its peak may depend on each day, depending on each moment, it is non-linear, live well, every day can be the peak.
Shaolin's winter is simple, clean and subtle, and all that needs to be done is to get in and prepare for the coming year.
Once the snow closed the mountain, boredom in the morning, will walk to the supervisor's room, found him writing calligraphy, so the two people each write a few strokes, and then drink tea and chat, suddenly the wind out of the window, out of the door to see, the snowflakes fluttering and falling, the two people just look at a morning.
Salt fly chaotic butterfly dance, flowers fall floating powder trousseau.
The trousseau is a powdery, falling flower, and the butterflies are dancing on the salt.
Another snowy night, when Alphago and Lee Sedol were fighting, I went to an old monk who was a Go 4-dan player every night to review the game. That night was a snowy night, and we went to the fourth game, with Dai Quan's "Wukong" playing in our ears, a game in which Lee Sedol could almost be said to have been defeated to the point of being a bit miserable.
Review to the back of the old monk sighed: Alpha dog chess has a very deep Zen na! Said to say and then stop, red eyes, the song just to sing the line "gold hoop when the head, want to say yet to rest".
As you can imagine, Shaolin has no heating. The cold weather, only with the pines and cypresses than who withered first.
Ancient people say: the door can wake up the bones of the cold frost, the window in the residual light good reading. Therefore, every winter to do some combing, Shaolin has three treasures, here briefly mentioned:
Zen
Zen, is a very interesting branch of Buddhism. It does not emphasize chanting, meditation, or all formal practices; it is about every day's clothing, food, housing, and behavior, about epiphany, and life before and after epiphany.
In fact, most of the schools of Buddhism have the same goal, the doctrine of liberation. In order to achieve liberation, one has to go through a long period of practice, devotion and perseverance. But Zen has traditionally been, in one word, enlightenment, followed by liberation.
Shaolin is the ancestral home of Zen, with the cave where Dharma faced the wall, and the Lixue Pavilion where the Second Patriarch broke his arm to seek the Dharma. People come to Shaolin for these stories, but what they don't expect is that there are few large-scale pujas and not much chanting. Most of the monks write and drink tea, garden and raise flowers, and do some cleaning now and then. They are also happy to chat, two or three sentences can always make people laugh.
Sometimes, laughter is a kind of enlightenment.
The Zen method of teaching, in fact, has already explained everything: that is, the realm of the show, the topic of play, the next turn of phrase, the head of the baton, in order to posture speech, the right words if the opposite.
Mr. Feng Youlan once said that the origin of Zen is from the end of the Han Dynasty to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, as the outsider Buddhist monks, and the local Taoist priests often communicate with each other, this is called "Qingtan" Wei Jin style, and later evolved into Zen Buddhism. It was a religion of pleasure, and that was its good intention.
Cold Mountain once made a poem, I like it, here to share:
"High on the mountaintop, looking around the extreme boundless. The moon shines on the cold spring. There is no moon in the spring, the moon is in the blue sky. The song is not Zen."
Martial Arts
This is too big a topic, but it has to be said. Because we all have too many misconceptions about martial arts.
First of all, martial arts is a discipline, not a sport or physical education, it is very profound and very precise, often missing a tiny bit of the difference; Secondly, the purpose of martial arts is not to fly in the sky or float on the water, but to fight - the first time to knock down the enemy (including Tai Chi); Finally, the martial arts system originated in the Han Dynasty, and most of the theory is rooted in traditional Chinese medicine, but also in Chinese medicine. Most of the theoretical roots are in Chinese medicine, that is, the meridian doctrine in the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, which manifests itself in the form of routines, developed in the Tang and Song dynasties, and declined in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
This is a real world, with countless geniuses and masters who have devoted their lives to martial arts, and even in 2017, there are at least a hundred schools and styles of martial arts in China, whether it is Shaolin, Taiji, Baji, Bagua, or Yiquan, Jiuquan, Xingyi, or Wing Chun, which are spread all over the world, but are mainly concentrated in Henan, Shanxi, Tianjin, and Hebei.
A qualified martial artist from any of these schools can be deadly to the average person just by striking out. This is one of the major reasons why martial arts must be low key. In ancient times, when practicing martial arts, you have to pick the night to practice, but also to find four high walls of the courtyard, is afraid of other people to steal learning, because the real kung fu is extremely dangerous.
That said, in fact, not so mysterious, is through a lot of repetitive training, can quickly and effectively attack the most lethal points of others, but generally not practiced people basically impossible to avoid, and in a sense, a hit must be fatal, or is not practiced. Therefore, the master needs to be very careful in accepting disciples, bones second, character first. This is another important reason why the martial arts system is not likely to flourish.
I am practicing martial arts in Shaolin, summer external practice more, such as standing pile, stone locks, sandbags, piling, patting the water a variety of basic skills, the so-called outside the practice of sinews, bones and skin, but also to practice routines, such as the small Hongquan, five-step boxing, seven-star boxing, etc., basically during the day to practise, the night to wipe the medicine; in winter, it is the main internal work, such as the I Ching and the medulla oblongata, most of the practice of qi, the big winter night, and sometimes sit down and practice also can be sweating. These are the basic skills, at least insist on a hundred days, before counting the introduction, commonly known as "hundred days to build the foundation".
On the martial arts, in the end, it is still necessary to pass on the body, only on the hand, to know the weight and true or false. If there are really interested in friends, you can also chat with me privately, in fact, at present, China is interested in traditional martial arts, not a few people. I'm not a martial artist, I'm just half a martial arts fanatic.
Medical
There is an old saying in the martial arts that "the fist is easy, and the reason is medical".
Martial arts from a fight, evolved into a discipline, and Chinese medicine is inseparable. Such as where to fight, how to fight, the need for medical guidance; such as practicing or confrontation with injuries, the need for traditional Chinese medicine orthopedics; more some martial arts, such as the iron sand palm, must be used with the ancestral prescription with the practice, otherwise the more you practice the more injuries.
This urgent need led to the development of the Shaolin School of Medicine, which is mainly based on Chinese medicine. I simply learned acupuncture and pharmacology common sense, and occasionally went to the mountains to collect medicines, mainly for the four seasons of health. I have been able to get a few friends and relatives to have some minor illnesses, and I can simply treat them, but I've been very satisfied with that.
In fact, Zen, martial arts, medical three, in the eyes of the Shaolin monks, is the same concept, is connected. The so-called reasoning into medicine, to martial arts into Zen, and then Zen transport martial arts, the three are indispensable. Shaolin's boxing practiced for a long time, slowly can know how to health, people with wisdom, slowly more able to comprehend a Zen.
These are not jokes.
The above is a summary of my work experience in Shaolin Temple.
Finally, I would like to say:
There is a kind of life where you can't see the past and the future, because you live in the depths of the season.
The fruits of winter are about to begin sowing in the spring. The flavor of summer is in the night, in how to make the night of the field vast and long. In the fall, avoid idly watching geese, to brew and store food, collect herbs, otherwise the mood of depression and loneliness is easy to grow, it will be difficult to survive the winter. Long winter is a battle, the ancient winter is a matter of life and death, everything in heaven and earth meets the cold will kill, so the heart should be warm, and then supplemented by diet, guide. Bathing at the beginning of spring, trekking and singing, its joy is the gift of winter, making spring lovely.
Some people say that life is elsewhere. I do not agree. Every moment in life is not always going to be like this, looking out is sometimes a kind of exhaustion, it is better to learn to cherish the immediate with the heart.
Forget the past and the future, life will be vast, this is our wind.
End.