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Thunder Path in Huangshan by Rene J. Navarro, Dipl. Ac. (NCCAOM) Huangshan! Huangshan! Huang- shan! - after a Japanese haiku “There’s more in the rabbit hole!” - David Verdesi Shen October 31, 2007,
We've come down from Huangshan/Yellow Mountain, Anhui Province, where for 2 weeks we trained in the foundations of the Thunder Path under David Verdesi Shen and his Xing Shen Zhuang Fa assistant Gonca. After the training, we celebrated with a group of other students from You should see beautiful November 11, 2007, Now, back in the One of the astonishing surprises in our training was that two hermits (they’ll remain nameless here to preserve their privacy and anonymity), Taoist and Buddhist masters, descended from their cave and joined us for a few days. One the Grandmaster/Shigong was 118 years old and his younger brother – “Uncle Master” we called him -- was 100. We visited them in their mountain sanctuary about an hour from our hotel. From paved highway our cars entered a stony road negotiating a long ascent to the top and parked in front of a solitary house. We walked to a waterfall up to the entrance on which was carved the Chinese characters for “Cave of the Immortals” I believe. Each side of the long dark passage was lighted with candles like a scene from a movie. At the rear of the cave, we saw the GM and Uncle Master meditating on a ledge in front of a wall with Chinese inscriptions. The GM posed for pictures with the group and a solo one with David. It was the fourth time David had met the GM. Last year, the GM had directed Jiang shifu, David’s teacher (age 43), to take him as the first western disciple in the lineage. David wrote to me a long e-mail about his acceptance into the fold, about the different masters who came down from the mountains and temples to attend his initiation led by the Grandmaster, and the different feats that were exhibited at the ceremony. ~ It was also the Grandmaster who predicted a month before our training in Huangshan that David would succeed this year in achieving Yin Yang Gong, the ability to emit “electricity” in his body like John Chang, the legendary Magus of Java.* At the hotel, the two ancients did some awesome demos -- pyrokinesis, telekinesis, etc.-- moving objects, burning paper, withering a plant, among others -- from a distance. I can't believe that these Immortals/hsien -- perhaps that is what they are called in Jiang shifu performed a great empowerment and blessing ceremony that induced a honey-like secretion (ambrosia?) in our mouths and throats, transformed ordinary bottled water into a sweet drink (speaking of holy water!), and coated our fingers with the same sweet substance, from a distance. Believe it or not, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, we licked somebody’s finger to his embarrassment. Jiang shifu did the ceremony a few times during our visit and even sent us off with a few bottles each.** Shifu also gave us regular treatments with qigong, Chinese acupuncture and herbs in the course of our training. It was the most sophisticated and well-rounded Chinese medicine practice I had ever seen anywhere in my years of Oriental medical studies. The skills that we had found awesome were being used for healing: Shifu was drawing blood without lancets, just with his qi, diagnosing illness and deficiencies with his Third Eye and his “electricity” and moving qi with his palm. He prescribed herbs and dan/pills/elixir and herbal tonics to students who needed them.
As the Grandmaster predicted, David passed his test for Yin Yang Gong by demonstrating his ability on 12 of us. Yin Yang Gong is considered in the tradition as a significant step towards mastery and immortality. It was a very touching, and dramatic, moment for David, perhaps the crowning achievement at this point in his more than 15 -year search that started when he was a young teenager looking for masters among the Chinese restaurants in
I had known David since he was 16 when he used to join me at dawn for martial arts practice in upstate NY, and later, in Chiangmai, when I used to wake him up at 4 or 5 so we can work out together on a Shaolin form called “Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy” which he wanted to learn from me. Over the years we met in I had attended David’s seminars and retreats as his guest in Chiangmai (several times, once with one of his teachers Professor Wang Ting Jun) and When he mentioned Huangshan, I perked up: I toured the mountain two years ago, explored the peaks and panoramas during the day and night, at dawn I watched the magnificent sunrise, and practiced qigong and Tai chi chuan in isolated spots and fell madly in love with it. There are contradictory stories but the Yellow Emperor/Huangdi was supposed to have ascended in broad daylight on one of the peaks. Huangshan was the most exhilarating journey I had taken in my years of traveling in China … which included a 3 -day train ride down to Cheng-Du in 1983, a cruise down the Yangtze through the 3 Gorges in 2005 … Great Wall … and Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai Suzhou, Xian … mythic cities of my imagination. So, when the invitation came, I said yes without any hesitation. It turned out when we arrived in the city that it wasn’t the majestic wonderland that mesmerized me before in an earlier incarnation. It was in We were all puzzled to be in that city because we had expected high peaks, cloud-covered valleys, dangerous cliffs and gnarled pine trees ... and isolation from the known world. There was a reason however why Jiang shifu chose the place: its close proximity to the mountain cave of the Grandmaster. Under the guidance of David we practiced every day together as a group (there were 13 of us from different parts of the world). David covered many subjects, regaling us with stories of the masters he had met and studied with, and introduced us to the foundations of the Thunder Path/Lei Shan Dao. Gonca led us in the contortions of Xing Shen Zhuang Fa. Early in the morning or at night, I practiced alone or with David and Gonca on the rooftop of the hotel or in a park. I brought my sword from David was given several dan/pills, the size of a small plum, and herbal tonic every day during our training. His qi was locked by Jiang shifu in a procedure that snapped the tendons and looked painful. At the end of our training, his dantian was locked too: he was warned not to do anything that would use his gong for a period of 6 months. It was all a very elaborate grooming for a young disciple of the Thunder Path. ~ I do not think much is known about the obscure, mysterious and secretive tradition of the Thunder Path, sometimes called Lei (Thunder) Shan (Lightning) Dao (Path). Oral tradition reveals different threads running through much of Thunder Path’s unverifiable history. We hear about Mo-Tzu, Damo of Shaolin, Chang Chun, author of the monkey epic Journey to the West, or Chang San Feng, the legendary creator of Tai chi chuan, being associated with the Thunder Path,. The lineage (or lineages for there are several different schools) seems to disappear and go underground, and then reappear as the transmission is revealed through a mysterious manual, a strange master, an epiphany or a mystical experience. One of the last public manifestations I think is John Chang of Java, who studied as a child with Liao shigong, an old, mysterious Chinese who was supposed to have given him a book of the 72 levels of expertise! This tradition calls its lineage the Mo-Pai, after Mo-Tzu, who lived about 2500 years ago.
In the early 90s or late 80s, a couple of documentarians traveling through Indonesia chanced upon John Chang (not his real name), filmed his demonstrations, Kostas Danaos wrote a book about him entitled The Magus of Java: The Teachings of a Taoist Immortal and the rest is, well, history.*** There are other masters of the tradition, I discovered, but they are anonymous, preferring to stay in the background. According to David, Lei Shan Dao is one of at least 6 paths to immortality which include, among others, Jin Dan Dao, Yang Shen Dao and Tong Ling Dao. Jiang shifu’s lineage is traced back to Damo, the legendary monk who settled in the ~ Last year (2006), David invited me to Java to see John Chang, the Magus and Thunder Path master. I was astonished to meet a man my height, perhaps even with my looks, who was wearing rubber slippers/flipflops, a white t-shirt and shorts. It was as if another man materialized in front of me. He was not what I had expected. I had fantasized somebody else – somebody who exuded qi and presence -- for almost 10 years. Now, for the first time I looked into the deep and imperturbable eyes of this master, who was also born in 1940, the year of the dragon. Upon David’s request, the master demonstrated his gong/expertise to me. I had never seen – or felt – anything like it in my more than 40 years of searching. An electricity-like vibration shook me to my core. He said it was only 5% of his power. When he tested my dantian, he said it was 20% full. I did not know if I should be happy or embarrassed. The Magus’ powerful skill, as far as I know, has never been used by him to harm or injure anybody (although I have like others thought of the possibilities and consequences in a fight) but to heal (well, there are stories about his exploits when he was very young). Many patients from around the world have entered his clinic. During my visit, the next few weeks, he treated me, successfully, with acupuncture for a very serious rotator cuff injury and a chronically painful ankle. When Chang shifu manipulated the needles, the pain was so excruciating, it was like somebody stuck my finger into an electrical socket, despite the fact that somebody was standing barefoot holding my arm to ground me. I have honestly never seen anything like it in my life as an acupuncturist. I asked about payment; I was told the master never did charge for his acupuncture services or his teachings. During my stay in Java, the friends of David – students of the Magus -- showed me their martial art called Pa Lei Chuan/8 Thunder Fist, a part of Lei Shan Dao, and I found it very effective. Meantime, David continued teaching me the basic foundations of Thunder Path – the different strains of the lineage, pathways of the work, the essentials of establishing the Dantian, timetable for the different techniques, among others -- lessons which started when I saw him in Istanbul 3 years earlier. I took notes, practiced the pieces he gave me, and promised to pursue the art into the rabbit hole in the years to come! Before we left That’s it? I said to myself. I was disheartened. No technique, nothing to do or focus on, just sit down and meditate. David had seen many of the Magus’ powers and concluded it was not just “magic” or illusion. The man was real. I trusted David because I knew he was willing to go out of the way to find true knowledge. Sometimes, when he heard about a “master,” he would check their reputation and verify what it was they actually had. He would pay tuition and seriously study. He would test if they had “gong” or if they had the spiritual development or whatever their skills were. Needless to say, he was disappointed often … and it cost him money and time, but he carried on with his search. Imagine visiting a master you’ve heard so much about, paying for the airfare, the hotel, food, whatever else is required, and waiting for several days to see him, and then being told that he is not available … or finally seeing him and being told that you do not have “shen” and to please, come back in 3 years! It is the stuff of many quests. I am not surprised through his persistence, that he found the authentic master teachers – the likes of Jiang shifu, the Grandmaster and his younger companion, Wang Liping, the subject of the biography “Opening the Dragon Gate: The Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard,” and others. ~ After the 2-week intensive in Huangshan, some in the group went to Just as we arrived at our destination, David broke the silence and said, “Rene, why don’t we spend the night in It was an incredible journey for me. I learned many new things, met a bunch of wonderful people – searchers all -- from different parts of the world, and of course saw those awesome masters. It is clear from what I have seen and read that the secrets of China are still around, kept in hidden spots, perhaps in caves by hermits, that what we see in the parks, temples and training halls is only the tip of the iceberg, that there are masters out there who carry the real transmissions. Maybe one day, we will be lucky enough to have a glimpse of and understand and perhaps learn the awesome powers and spiritual achievements of these exceptional beings. At the same time, it is important for me, as well as for others, to take those astounding demos not so much in terms of power but in the context of healing, spiritual development and transformation, and the potential of the human being. As David said, we should see beyond the obvious impact of the demonstrations: they are meant partly to satisfy the need for concrete proof of human possibilities and partly as a basis for scientific verification of a person’s attainment. I do not know if I am quoting David correctly but he did say that we need something more substantial than claims of mastery and achievement. In passing, it should be mentioned that, during the course of the 2 weeks, we witnessed only about two hours of demonstrations, one showing the transfer of energy from 14 bulls to humans. The healing sessions with Jiang shifu must have taken at least 10 hours at different intervals while the training took at least 6 to 7 hours a day. Demonstrations often bore me, but still, I cannot deny I was of course impressed with the exhibitions. Who wouldn’t? But for me, at my age, what I want to pursue is training in … stillness and clarity, perhaps, and in the cultivation of the heart. I don’t know what it may entail, I do not know its consequences, I am still at that stage when I am exploring the different paths. Searching for peace and quiet within is probably the most difficult quest in the world because the senses and the mind are always picking up something, always being ambushed by desires and thoughts. The way to emptiness is full of obstacles because life is teeming with temptations and the inner self is a constant battlefield. Of course, power is important -– imagine what a person with a pure heart can do with it –- but it can also fall into the wrong hands. Love – and healing -- should be the foundation of life. There is too much meanness and cruelty, even in everyday life, not much patience, acceptance, forgiveness and accommodation. Like success, fame and fortune, power can distract us from our intended and true goals on earth. We have seen masters who have been derailed from their intended mission because they were blinded by the blandishments of the world or mislead by their own greed; and those who seek power often get bogged down in showing off and blatant exhibitionism. Either way, the route of power, unless guided by pure intention, is invariably vain and corrupting. David emphasized the need for “prayers” … or an attitude of reverence for the sacred in our lives. Whatever it is we believe in, he said in Huangshan, we have to honor the divine. We are indeed just like the shamans in the Chinese character for “ling” or spirit -- we can only mediate between heaven and earth to bring down the blessings and grace from above. I don't know if I can describe the trip completely. All I can say is that it was much, much more than I expected. It was both humbling and enlightening. A great gift to this dragon on his 67th (68th in Thanks to David for inviting me as his guest in the seminar and at his wonderful home in ~ * Yin Yang Gong, the mating of Yin and Yang in the Dantian, is considered 4th level achievement in the Mo-Pai tradition. ** The first time I saw what has been called “Holy Water” technique, it was done by Lao Cang Wen at the ***The documentarians returned to Java sometime last year and filmed another – longer – demonstration which is shown on youtube.com. While you are on youtube.com you can type in the name of Lao Kim, my teacher in Shaolin in the 60s, to see his Long Quan form. He was in his 70s at the time. You can also see Vincent F. Chu, the son of Gin Soon Chu, my Traditional Yang Family Tai chi chuan master in © RN 2007 The author: RENE J. NAVARRO, Dipl. Ac. (National Commission for Certification in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) is a licensed acupuncturist, herbalist, martial artist, healer, published writer and poet. Among the teachers he has studied with are: Lao Kim and Johnny Chiuten (Shaolin), Kiiko Matsumoto (Japanese acupuncture), Mantak Chia (Healing Tao), Gin Soon Chu (Traditional Yang Family Tai chi chuan) and Jeffrey Yuen (Chinese medical classics). He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science ( |
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