Chengdu and Meditation

The past few months at the academy have been great, with the traditional class focusing on Bajiquan and Baguazhang as well as doing 3 days of meditation and traveling to Chengdu.

The trip to Chengdu was filled with hotpot, pandas, and temples. We caught a twelve hour overnight train to Chengdu from Shiyan. We arrived in Chengdu just before the beginning of a big travel holiday in China, so the city was packed with people. After checking into our hostel everyone got together for a feast of a lunch at a Thai restaurant and everyone left stuffed with spicy Thai curries. After a few hours rest we all traveled to the major Tibetan part of the city and walked around before a large hotpot dinner. Chengdu is very well known for its outrageously spicy hotpot. This was the first, but not the last hotpot of the trip. That night everyone in the group headed to the Jinli night-market for a while.

The next morning, everyone got ready to head off to one of China's great mountains, E Mei Shan. We arrived in E Mei ready to eat (as usual) and ready to tackle at least some of the enormous mountain. E Mei is a mainly Buddhist mountain and still maintains an active Buddhist community. The group spent two days in E Mei admiring the enormous and unique temples, gardens, pagodas, vistas, and endless beautiful views to take in. On our first day, the traditional class performed an impromptu Bajiquan and Taijiquan in front of Baoguo temple to a cheering and surprised crowd of tourists. Though it rained on and off the second day of touring around the mountain, everyone greatly enjoyed their time in E Mei with hopes of returning. After returning to Chengdu from E Mei everyone was tired and worn out from hiking around the mountain, so it was an early night.

The next morning most of the group went on a tour of the panda breeding facility in the city. For most of the group, this was the first time seeing pandas outside of television and pictures and everyone that went came back with more pictures than their memory cards could handle. A small delegation of three decided on attacking every bookstore in the city that morning instead of going to see the pandas and came back with a bounty of books.

That afternoon, the group traveled to Qing Yang Gong, or the Green Ram Palace. Qing Yang Gong is the oldest Daoist temple in Southwestern China, built during the Tang Dynasty. Qing Yang Gong, situated inside of the city, is a beautiful and exquisite example of Daoist culture and architecture. We even ran into some of our kung fu brothers from Wudang who had recently opened a small Wudang kung fu school at the temple. Their school was situated right outside of one of the most beautiful temples inside of Qing Yang Gong which contains an enormous statue of Lu Dong Bin, one of the Eight Immortals. With less than one day left, everyone decided to travel to different places of interest in the city, with the larger group taking taxis to the large Wen Shu Buddhist monastery and the surrounding neighborhood.

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the trip to Chengdu with hopes and promises of returning to the city and surrounding areas someday. Before leaving for Chengdu, Master Yuan had been drying many different types of Chinese herbs in order to make medicine for a planned three days of meditation. When we returned to the academy, Master Yuan informed us that it was time to finish up with making the medicine, which was a very involved group project that took a few hours.

The next morning, we began the three days of meditation. During these three days, everyone who took part ate only fruit, rice soup, and some vegetables as well as the medicine balls. We practiced qi gong first thing in the morning and then meditated for three two hour sessions during the rest of the day. Although the meditations were challenging, everyone learned a great deal that helped to deepen their experience as well as to deepen their interest in personal cultivation. Check out the pictures that we have posted from the trip and keep checking in for more updates!