Reddit Reddit reviews The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts

We found 6 Reddit comments about The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Arts & Photography
Books
Art History & Criticism
Arts & Photography Criticism
The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts
Check price on Amazon

6 Reddit comments about The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts:

u/TimofeyPnin · 7 pointsr/AskHistorians

An excellent source on disentangling martial arts legends and actual history is Meir Shahar's The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial arts.

In it, he discusses the development of the Shaolin temple's unique styles of staff play and empty-hand boxing, and argues that while we have references to Shaolin monks participating in combat as early as the end of the Sui dynasty (581-618CE), it isn't until the Ming (1368-1644) that there are attestations of a style of practice specific to Shaolin.

He also spends a significant amount of time on the historical inspiration for legendary masters, with sections on Cheng Zongyou's staff method, Li Zhishen (the "tattooed monk"), Huimeng, and others.

With regards to your "wandering warrior" question, there was a long tradition of staying to the "rivers and lakes," and yes, there were itinerant martial artists who gave rise to legends. One of the most famous Chinese novels, The Water Margin treats this subject.

I can't recommend the Meir Shahar book enough, though.

u/taosecurity · 5 pointsr/martialarts

If you would like to learn the reality of the Shaolin temple, consider reading

The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts

https://www.amazon.com/Shaolin-Monastery-History-Religion-Chinese/dp/082483349X/ref=nodl_

u/kwamzilla · 4 pointsr/kungfu

Some books:

u/desertmystic · 3 pointsr/history

In 2008 Meir Shahar, from Tel Aviv University published a fantastic book on exactly what you're interested in.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shaolin-Monastery-History-Religion/dp/082483349X

There's also Peter Lorge's book (history prof at Vanderbilt), Chinese Martial Arts, an overall history of the subject to which Shaolin is pertinent but tangential.

http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Martial-Arts-Antiquity-Twenty-First/dp/0521878810/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=002H816HNWXX66N4P46H

Most everything written on the subject is hagiography, but the above two are works of history, if that's what you're looking for.

u/10000Buddhas · 1 pointr/Buddhism

Hi Nikolai,

This video is directly from the Zen monastery you saw in extreme pilgrim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn-M9IyNMTk and may be of interest.

For a literary dry history of Shaolin and martial arts, Meir Shahar wrote a recent book summarizing a good amount of information and is a good start on the topic : http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/082483349X

Note that his book is not from the point of a practitioner, nor from one steeped in the cultural nor social conditions in and around the temple, let alone in Chinese society.. there's a lot to be said about Chinese oral history, destroyed records, cultural shifts in the past 50 years, and language difficulties that make the subject hazy and complex.

There's also mixing between "shamanic" and qi cultivation practices associated with daoists and early Chinese Buddhist practice, where Zhen Qi cultivation becomes a similar theme, and one of the practices involved in the video above (dissimilar to the other fighting/krav maga you're mentioning). So yes Qi cultivation had been around since before Bodhidharma in China and early practitioners applied various qi concepts and methods (although no evidence any came from or were associated with Bodhidharma)

u/Deanwinjester · 1 pointr/Buddhism

Check out this scholarly book about the Shaolin The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts