A Journey to the Zen Source

I was on my way to Japan when I met Osho in Bombay way back in 1970. My trip was then somewhat delayed!

Eventually, after Osho left his body twenty years later, I arrived in Japan and instantaneously felt I had come home. I had been lovingly obsessed with all things Japanese since the age of 14 when I saw a Japanese woman doing an Ikebana flower arrangement and had, without realising it, began to live in a Zen way.

With Osho the search for my own being became conscious, deep and intense but I knew all the time that my way was the Zen way.

Unlike the majority of my close sannyasin friends I am not overly enamoured of India – the chaos, dirt, squalor is a bit too much for me. I always said I was in India only for Osho. I am also totally uninterested in therapy groups, bodywork, tantra, yoga, tarot cards, chakras and whatever, so have always felt a bit of an outcast in the sannyasin scene. For me the Poona Resort as it is now has no connection with my life as an Osho sannyasin and – although it did take some time to let go of my attachment to the place – I no longer feel any pull to go there.

So for many years I have felt a bit directionless. Yes, I meditate, go to and help organise many sannyasin events and celebrations, enjoy living in the most beautiful part of England and feel eternally grateful for the deep friendship of many close, wonderful, beloved sannyasin friends. But still I felt that the intensity needed for total transformation was missing. Having experienced this intensity when living in Lao Tzu House and being a hundred per cent devoted to Osho, I felt an underlying 'divine (I hope!) discontent' no matter how much I appreciated all that my life was giving me.

Inspired yet confused by a BBC documentary!!

And then, in January this year, I watched a BBC documentary called 'Extreme Pilgrim' which showed an English vicar, Peter Owen-Jones, exploring three different kinds of 'religions': Zen Buddhism, Hinduism and old-style Christianity. The second two programs left me cold but the first one blew me a way. The documentary showed an extraordinarily beautiful Buddhist monastery on one of the peaks of the Song Mountain range in Henan Province in China and this, with the way the people were living there, just hit the centre of my being with the proverbial 'ton of bricks'. I was in a kind of satori for days, weeks – still am, in fact! We all know that feeling of 'This is IT' that we had when we met Osho. I experienced that feeling again.

But, of course, along side this feeling was one of huge confusion. Me, a devoted Osho sannyasin, going off in a totally different direction? To China, a country I have never ever considered? China, where Osho books are banned and where the few small sannyas centres started by Chinese sannyasins have been closed down by the authorities? To even contemplate visiting this unknown place – which was pulling me with a strength as strong as I had known when being pulled to Osho – was difficult to cope with, despite the fact that Osho had talked so much about this place. This, he says often, was where Bodhidharma brought Buddhism to China, sat in his cave on the mountain for 9 years and then came back down to settle in the Shaolin Temple and teach his new form of Buddhism – Zen. (Rather simplified but that is more or less the gist of it!)

Yet with the pull so strong, I started trying to find information about the place. I searched and searched the net but gleaned only a few details, certainly not enough to make a journey feasible. At the same time I was in so much confusion at what seemed like a departure from my life as an Osho sannyasin that I did our traditional 21 days retreat – doing all the meditations and going to the evening meditation at Croydon Hall everyday in the hope of finding some clarity about what was happening. Am I mind-fucking or is this real? During the first discourse on the first evening, Osho spent the entire hour talking about Bodhidharma going to China and meditating in that cave for 9 years! Was this an answer?! And at the end of the 21 days the pull to journey to this place was as strong as ever – so I decided to go.

Just at this point I found a gongfu website, written in English, about a gongfu school in Dengfeng, the town where the Shaolin Temple is situated, at the foot of the Song Mountain. In some small photos on this site I thought I could identify the two Chinese Masters I had seen in the documentary – Master Wu Nanfang and Master She Dijian – so I wrote an email asking for some information. Three weeks later I got a very sweet email, written in excellent English, from a young Chinese woman called Naomi who confirmed that the two men were indeed the masters featured in the documentary and who also said that she would be happy to give me any information required and to help if I decided to visit.

My mind was immediately made up and I was about to book an air ticket when I got a call from my good friend, Pankaja. At some point I mentioned that I was going to China because of the impact the documentary had made and she gasped in surprise saying that she had seen it and had felt the same way and could she come with me? I was thrilled to have someone to travel with and two days later we booked our tickets.

One further thing was to happen which finally put all my doubts to rest. During a morning satsang during the July Celebration at Croydon Hall there was a quote by Osho which again blew me away. I don't have the exact quote but he said something like this: 'I can start you on your path and guide you along the way but YOU have to complete your own path. That I cannot do for you'. I knew then that I wasn't leaving Osho and sannyas behind and that this wasn't a new direction but simply the completion of the Zen path he had guided me on for so many years. His commonly uttered words: 'Don't look at my finger; look at where I am pointing' took on a new significance – as often happens-and I thought that this really was what I was doing: looking no longer at him but at what he had been trying to reveal to me. Given my love for him this was not such an easy transition!!

Momentous meetings with a mountain and open-hearted people

Arriving in Beijing at the beginning of October I had the same feeling as I had had when arriving in Japan: a deep feeling of 'this is right', of coming home. Naomi, true to her word, had helped enormously by giving loads of advice, arranging a taxi to pick us up at Zhengzhou airport and booking us into a really nice hotel in Dengfeng. We met her that evening and found ourselves all totally in tune. A wonderful meeting with a delightful and awesomely intelligent young woman. She informed us that she had arranged for Panky and me to join a group of the Dutch and Chinese gongfu students studying at her gongfu school on a visit to the San Huang Zhai monastery the next morning.

All feelings of jet lag and weariness from 3 days of travel were forgotten and the second morning in China saw us climbing up a near vertical stairway cut into the side of the mountain. The views were stunning and then, almost exactly 9 months after I had first seen it on the TV, there in front of me was this extraordinarily beautiful monastery. My joy knew no bounds – but there was more to come. After a cup of green tea, Naomi announced we had been invited to meet the master in his private quarters. We then climbed up more steps to a small temple where we met Master Wu Nanfang who had given the very beautiful talk on Zen in the documentary. We were entranced and awed by his presence and by the mind-boggling mountain setting we found ourselves in.

We were invited to have lunch and spent some hours exploring more of this incredible place, both the mountainous rocks and the monastery which is still in the process of being constructed – an incredible feat as everything has to be carried up that vertical path!

A Necessary Digression – an explanation of Wugulun Gongfu

Lest you think I am about to embark on a career of gong fu at my ancient age, I should explain a bit about Wugulun Gongfu, the original form of Shaolin Gongfu. We usually think of gongfu as a Jackie Lee-type performance, full of grunts and yells and the breaking of bricks and other stunning gymnastic feats. This is what much of gongfu has become and, sadly, the traditional form that Bodhidharma and his successors developed, is fast disappearing hence the efforts of Master Wu Nanfang and Master She Dijian to preserve it.

The original gongfu movements were based initially on the observation of animals and birds, and were designed to exercise the body in a harmonious way to offset the long hours of sitting still in meditation. The movements were designed to aid meditation and enhance the body's health, not as a performance. 'Right' eating eg vegetarianism and Buddha's 'right' living eg use of herbal medicines were also integrated into what, in modern terms, is a totally 'holistic' way of living. Wugulun Gongfu thus embodies the three principles of ChanWuYi: Chan – meditation, Wu – appropriate movement (cf Osho's active meditations) and Yi – 'right' living. It is this original system of gongfu that is practised by Master Wu Nanfang, Master Dejian and their disciples and it is this, plus their emphasis on joy and humour, that resonates with me.

Around and about in Dengfeng

The rest of our time in Dengfeng was a series of wonderful surprises as each day we explored different aspects of this place. Song Mountain is the most important of five sacred mountains in China and there are many, many temples to visit: naturally the Shaolin Temple, but also the Confucius Sangyang Temple and the FaWang Temple where Indian Buddhist monks came to live in 76 AD. (Bodhidharma came about 400 AD.) We also spent a totally beautiful day with Master Wu Nanfang at his Wugulun Gongfu School in a small village just outside Dengfeng, being open-heartedly welcomed by him, his students, the people helping to run the school and the local farmers who we met when we went for a long walk in the surrounding countryside. Naomi's excellent translating skills made delightful communications possible.

The Cave of the Ten Thousand Buddhas

We made an excursion to the Longmen Caves in Luoyang, about one and a half hours drive from Dengfeng. I particularly wanted to go there as I wanted to see the cave of the 'Ten Thousand Buddhas' – a phrase Osho uses so often. Here I must mention my gratitude to Bob for his website: www.livingworkshop.net. For many years Bob has loved both Osho and China and has mapped all the references Osho made to China and put up his research on this website. This was all a huge revelation to me – I simple did not realise how much Osho drew on ancient Chinese knowledge, history, traditions and stories. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were his all time favourites and according to local stories they lived not far from the Song Mountain. This area really is the source of Zen.

My path continues...

Each day brought new and wonderful sights and experiences, but, much more important for me, was what was happening internally. I was almost overwhelmed by the feeling of being at home again and by the feeling of this all being totally right. And never ever have I been so in love with a physical place – this incredible mountain. I felt I was again back on my path. I don't need another master, I don't need guidance from anyone – Osho gave me all that is necessary – but I do need a harmonious Zen ambience in which to go deep inside. I found this ambience here. I felt at home with these mountains and the beautiful, generous, very real people I met here so I am going back for a longer time in spring next year.

YouTube links:

1) the San Huang Zhai Monastery part of the BBC documentary showing the vicar, Peter Own Jones, visiting Bodhidharma's cave and then the monastery and Master Wu Nanfang's talk on Zen: www.56.com/u21
2) a very beautiful Chinese-made documentary about the monastery: www.56.com/u69
3) various clips of our trip put up by Panky. Click on More from Pankajabrooke to see all the clips) uk.youtube.com

Photo links:

Picasa web album links with Veena’s photographs (there are more but these are probably the most interesting):
1) A Mountain A Monastery And A Man
2) From The Other Side Of TheMountain Via The Cable Car
3) The Best Day

text by Veena – December 2008 – songmountain8 (at) googlemail.com