White Lotus Philosophy

On Being a Practitioner

As you break and enter the kwoon for your lesson, clear your mind and let all the problems and preoccupations of your life fall away. To be able to learn, you must free yourself and find sanctuary in your art. Focus in on each moment of your class and be completely engrossed in your technique. During the lesson, nothing exists beyond the kwoon. Penetrate the moment and live it fully.

Work on the development of the chi flow through physical and mental practices. Vent any pent-up aggressions in a controlled manner. Practice the art for release and self-expression. The technique is not to frustrate you, but to set you free. It is all in your outlook.

Your teacher is your example. Learn by attentiveness and through imitation. Then inject yourself into the technique and it is genuinely yours. Show respect for your instructors. They have dedicated a good deal of time to their own study. By teaching you the art, they are sharing an intimate part of themselves. Receive their teaching with trust. Regardless of your admiration for your instructors, you must always believe that with the teachers' guidance and efforts you will become as adept at the art as they are if you apply yourself. As you stumble through the form for the first time, retain your self respect. Everyone had to begin somewhere.

You must be humble to learn. You have to trust your teacher to nurture your technique in the proper way. Train only in the ways you are shown by your teacher. Do not experiment with ideas from outside sources! Trust that your teacher is not keeping things from you, but keeping you from hurting yourself.

Be self-motivated. Do not make your teacher have to lift your legs and kick your butt all the time. Without having to deal with this burden your teacher can devote her/his time to correcting your technique and expanding your ideas.

Practice positivity when you work out. Feel confident. Your teacher will correct your errors. You know and your teacher can sense when you are unsure. No one else must know. If you are confident in class you will be confident in a fighting or self defense situation.

Your body is the vehicle of your art. Keep it healthy and clean. Everything you ingest becomes you and so becomes your art. Do not pollute your body with poor food or harmful drugs. Do not pollute your art. Be meticulous about your body, sculpt it with your art. It will show in your technique.

As you become involved with the art on a daily basis, you will almost always have temporarily strained body part. If you have an injury, talk to your instructor to build your body, not have a temporarily strained body part. You can train around the injury. We are here to train your body, not to drive you into the ground.

Do not misuse the knowledge you gain through the art. It is not a party game. Do not mislead others with what you know. Keep it, it's yours.

Always bring Kung Fu with you. Let it permeate all aspects of your life. Apply it to bring meaning to the most menial and routine tasks. Let it help win all your battles in life. Never put it down for too long.

-Simu Patti Everett

Kung Fu as a Way to Physical Fitness
& Emotional Well-being

Kung Fu is often thought of as an ancient method of pugilism, that is, fighting and self-defense. This is true and always has been at the core of its existence. However, the lay person does not often realize that to arrive at the point where we can take care of ourselves, defensively, we must also have ourselves together mentally, emotionally, and be well grounded in our spiritual direction. In order to be a good fighter one must know his strengths and weaknesses. One must work everyday on closing the holes in the armor by building up in the areas of self-knowledge and health. Therefore, Kung Fu can be and, must be, an art and practice which takes into account our totality, for we can not win any battle, physical, economic or emotional, if we are not strong and unified as an individual on all levels.

Training in Kung Fu, then, is a challenge to our instinct for survival to bring the quality of our lives to a superior level. This takes all of our attention all the time. Training in the martial arts is not simply physically demanding, but requires us to examine ourselves at the deepest levels. The Kung Fu practitioner's belief in the life force, or "chi" brings about a lifestyle which causes every moment to be an adventure in search of a way to become more deeply involved with nature and forge oneself into a worthy vessel for its pure expression. Undoubtedly, this causes many changes within the individual, all of which are positive, although growing pains are also a part or any new experience. When the life force seeks expression through us and we make an effort to recognize this we can cooperate and grow in ways that were previously unimaginable. As the Kung Fu man or woman grows and develops, so do the people around them. The intrinsic energy flows through the individual and out into the environment around them.

The process for attaining these goals in Kung Fu begins, of course with the physical training that is necessary for developing combative techniques and mental focus on strategy and fighting principles. This initial training brings out the chi flow from within because it is released by the practice of the survival skills. This primal energy finds expression in the various sophisticated and direct techniques of the art, thus giving the body greater strength, elasticity, and endurance. The old grow younger and the young gain temperance of their youthful carelessness. It has been found by historians and sociologists, such as Toyneby, that people in climatic areas requiring daily striving for physical survival tend to lead longer, healthier Lives, provided that the survival factors are not too extreme.

This all proves out through the daily practice of Kung Fu and other martial arts, since we find that we are using the combative techniques and principles to enhance the dynamics and quality of everyday non-combative" life. Please note that we are not practicing a hectic, frantic, or paranoid type of energy here, but rather a secure and self-reliant kind which allows for control environmental circumstances and avoidance of being the effect of them.

-Tao Ch'i Li

Philosophy of Kung Fu

A Porsche 911S (whale tale and all) is no better than a hollowed-out canoe in the jungles of the Amazon.

Learning comes from all your contacts, experiences and all facets of your life. The assimilation of learning is called knowledge, and the proper use of knowledge is called wisdom.

Combatively, the flow is like a flash flood in the desert. It moves to the places of least resistance and overwhelms them with sheer unchallenged momentum.

Make your opponent's technique, your technique. You should respond to any circumstances without pre-arrangement. Your action should be like the immediacy of a shadow adapting to a moving object against the sun. Adapt like a shadow. Respond like an echo.

Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster. Nothing is weaker than water, but when it attacks something hard or resistant, then nothing withstands it. And nothing will alter its way.

Find the state of no-mindedness. A state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

One who tries to stand on tiptoe cannot stand still. One who stretches his legs too far cannot walk. One who advertises himself is ignored. One who is too insistent on his own view finds few to agree with him. One who clams too much credit does not even get what he deserves. One who is too proud is soon humiliated.

Every conflicting center, every extraneous, disrupting, decentralizing emotion jars the natural rhythm and reduces a man's efficiency on the gridiron far more seriously than physical jars and bodily conflicts can ever jar him. The emotions that destroy the inner rhythms of a man are hatred, jealousy, lust, envy, pride, vanity, covetousness, and fear.

Alive, a man is supple, soft; in death, unbending, rigorous. All creatures, grass and trees, alive are plastic but are pliant too, and dead, are friable and dry. Unbending rigor is the mate of death, and yielding softness, company of life: unbending soldiers get no victories; the stiffest tree is the readiest for the axe. The strong and mighty topple from their place but the soft and yielding rise above them all.

Compilations by
-Simu Patti Everett

Cultivate the Power Only Alongside the Control

With the power of kung Fu comes the responsibility of having self control. Protect yourself and control the situation by doing the least amount of damage to others. Taoism and Zen Buddhism, the basic philosophies behind the art, espouse the belief that you are one with the rest of the universe (and so with your opponent). To hurt another you hurt yourself. If you are driven by vengeance or power hunger you will destroy others and also yourself. You must strive to cultivate a genuine benevolence toward mankind and nature. As you become more secure as a practitioner and as an individual this will come naturally. You will feel less threatened and will lose the desire for vengeance. Perhaps, the following quotes will facilitate your understanding. The philosophical aspect of kung fu is "Learn the ways to preserve rather than destroy. Avoid rather than check; check rather than hurt; hurt rather than maim; maim rather than kill; for all life is precious, nor can any be replaced."

"Kung Fu must be thought of, in its final form and spirit, as an expression of man's indomitable will to survive adversity in the most direct, self reliant manner possible. This requires only that which nature gave him, a mind and body, vigorously disciplined as an inseparable entity. Within this framework Kung Fu will be presented as an experience which begins on the physical level and gradually deepens to a pervasive philosophy the totality of one's behavior."

"If there is no contention, there is neither defeat or victory. The supple willow does not contend against the storm, yet it survives."

"It may some day become necessary for you to take a life. . to save another, or to save many. You will feel as I do, then ... you will feel sorrow no matter how evil is the creature you slay."

Forget the dominant western demand for someone to "overpower" an antagonist; dismiss any personal desires or emotions in the midst of conflict; instead follow the enemy's intent by permitting him to overpower himself. Kung Fu is sweat, repetition, pulled muscles, and hard work through sacrifice, time and effort. This is the method of Kung Fu, not the movie version.

Mastery of the simple life is the glory. Treat other students with respect. Those students who fail to respect you. They too are your teachers. Observe They teach you ugliness and how not to be. Train hard every day, but do not over-train. Learn to know how to get the most from your body, mind, and spirit.

Know yourself. Don't be an alien in your own body. Judge yourself only by where you are in each self contained moment. The past is gone, the future only a fantasy. Now is the only time in which you can act. Judge yourself not by the color of the ribbon around your waist, but by the quality of your art each moment you practice. Kung Fu can work for you or it can destroy you. Handle the art in the proper way. Let the symbology of the break stance speak for the art in general. Cultivate the power only alongside the control.

-Simu Patti Everett