At TanDao, we say martial arts is more than fighting. When the warrior’s way of action blends with the monk’s way of stillness, the disciplining of mind, body and spirit for combat is elevated into a path of self-development. This is the legacy of the Shaolin Temple.
Yet we recognize martial arts originated for survival and expresses the human animals primal violence. As such, we watch reruns of the series, Fight Quest. Martial artists, Doug Anderson and Jimmy Smith, journey the world studying lethal methods like Israeli krav maga, Brazilian jiujitsu, Filipino kali, etc. Comparative martial arts.
Similar to Anthony Bourdain’s global trekking to experience culinary delights, but where Bourdain’s misadventures may lead to food poisoning, our dynamic duo face knockouts, bodily injury or even death. In each episode they go mano y mano with top fighters of each style.
No phony wrestling. No film fight choreography. This stuff is real. Doug and Jim are BAMoFos. It’s exciting. And brutal. Non martial artists or those who romanticize David Carradine’s Shaolin monk, may question the lofty ideals of the martial way.
As vicious and realistic as these techniques are, we find it interesting that some truly deadly movements are not depicted. Where are they? They are hidden behind the fancy Shaolin animal forms which modern martial artist’s dismiss as unrealistic. The secrets are still here.
Lawrence Tan
Check out our premium downloads – TanDao Tiger Combat ebook and video to learn more about realistic animal fighting.
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There exist only three respectable beings: the priest, the warrior, the poet. To know, to kill, and to create.~ Charles Baudelaire
Baudelaire’s quote captures the spirit of the TanDao Evolving Martial Artist. In Taoism, the bagua follows the flow of nature and the phases of life. We use this concept to express our TanDao triad ~ the Warrior: fire, physical energy (destroyer); the Scholar: water, metal – mental energy (preserver); and the Monk: earth’s mountain and wood, spiritual energy (creator). This is martial arts, wellness, life.
Trinitarianism, or belief in the Trinity, is found in Asian and Southeast Asian religion and folklore, Catholicism and in other traditions. The Sanskrit word Trimurti refers to three forms. In the Hindu tradition, believed to date back to the Rig Vedas, it is the Great Trinity or Triad representing three aspects of a supreme being. This expression takes its one form in the three distinct faces of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Each represents a stage of creation: Shiva, the destroyer, physical – fire, consuming, transforming; Vishnu, the preserver, mental – water, sustaining life; andBrahma: the creator, spiritual – earth, where life emerges. There is also the Christian doctrine of the Trinity – the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the Triune, the essence of being. Body, mind, spirit.
We put it all together and had fun making our martial art video – Warrior, Scholar, Monk.
Imagine: having the opportunity to spend a year working with the master who taught Bruce Lee kung fu. Awesome! In 1982, I wrote and directed the first video on Wing Chun – The Science of In Fighting, with Wong Shun Leung. He was one of Grandmaster Yip Man’s inner circle disciples and who’s fighting abilities were recognized by his title, “King of Talking Hands”.
Wing Chun and JKD aficionados may know that although Yip Man is Bruce Lee’s formal master, it is Wong Shun Leung who actually taught Lee. In Fiaz Rafiq’s book, Bruce Lee Conversations, according to Master William Cheung, Lee’s Hong Kong friend, after less than a year in Yip’s school, students pressured Yip Man into expelling Bruce Lee. Cheung implies this stemmed from jealousy of Lee’s great skills and reflected the conservative mindset that kung fu not to be taught to foreigners because Lee was a quarter-German. Perhaps this incident motivated Lee to defy tradition by teaching non Chinese in the States.
Wong Shun Leung may have been a motivation for the young Lee to explore other martial arts. Jesse Glover, Lee’s first student in Seattle, recalls in his book that after a visit to Wong in Hong Kong, Lee realized he was unable to defeat Wong Shun Leung using pure Wing Chun. Lee’s desire to find ways to surpass his teacher may have lead to his creation of the eclectic JKD.
Master Wong Shun Leung, quiet and humble, was surprisingly open in explaining and demonstrating the secrets of Wing Chun to me, to transmit his beloved art.
Interestingly, the presence of this famous master is found not only in Wing Chun and JKD, but also in our TanDao System. The theoretical foundation of Wing Chun (centerline, economy of motion, etc…) holds universal principles that apply to all systems and forms the basis of TanDao. It is evident in our animal combat (tiger, snake, crane, leopard and dragon) and Tan’s Dazzling Hands (internal open hand combat) which evolved beyond Wing Chun punching. Check out our TanDao Tiger Combat video and ebook, see if you can discover these principles concealed behind our practical modern animal combat.
This awesome Lion Dance ushering in the New Year is spectacular, performed at Pearl River Mart in New York City’s Soho district by the Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute troupe. Toni filmed this ceremonial lion dance performed for centuries throughout southern Chinese villages. And here we are in our global village!
Learn more about the history and mythology of the Lion Dance.
Some may be unaware that it is the most skillful practitioners of traditional kung fu schools that perform the acrobatic lion dance. In China, the study of kung fu is more than self defense; the physical skills are employed in the lion dance, a ritual vital for establishing harmony and ushering good luck for the community. Modern martial artists may be unfamiliar with this cultural component of Chinese kung fu.
Martial artists with an eye for classical stances will see concealed behind the lion movements are horse, cat, bow and arrow, and twisted stances, the basis for fighting. Modern martial artists criticize these stances as static and unrealistic. Watching the agile lion movements attests to the claims that these stances can be employed in a natural and fluid manner.
In China, kung fu is more than a science of fighting, it is also, as the lion dance exemplifies, an art. Enjoy the performance!
The Year of the Tiger celebration lasts two weeks. A week ago, we marked the New Year by launching our martial art ebook and video – TanDao Tiger Combat Series. Toni, our resident Taoist & Chinese cosmologist, cautions this year of the metal tiger will provide ongoing challenges. But with the courage and tenacity of the tiger we can overcome adversity. An experience we had last November is appropriate and we would like to share it with you.
We went to the seashore to film our tiger videos as we were planning to introduce our Shaolin/JKD tiger style for the lunar new year. But a Nor’Easter storm put a halt to that. It was awesome to see the tumultuous ocean, but our mission was aborted by bad weather. We were bummed. The last evening, however, we managed to film a wellness exercise to a stupendous sunset and in the following dawn we also filmed tiger kung fu form sequences. We were on a roll. (Click on links to see the videos!)
Our schedule was actually completed. We were elated. While walking back along the seashore looking through rocks and shells for our zen garden in the city, a tiny object in the sand simultaneously caught both Toni’s and my own attention. It was a tiger figure. An omen? Although our rational minds may regard this as superstitious, a holistic view sees it as synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence as psychologist Jung would say.
As for our tiny, smiling tiger talisman, we choose to view it as a positive omen. After all, this figure was utterly miniscule in the vast space of the seashore. Yet we both found it. Go figure… What do you think?
In the week since its release, we’ve received enthusiastic responses to our TanDao Tiger Combat downloads from martial artists of different styles. We take it as a good sign. May the tiger bring us all a good year!
