The more pain a monk is able to take, the faster their progress will be, so it is essential to harness their potential at this age. Flexibly is an important characteristic for a monk to have, as it helps with pain tolerance. According to the monks at the temple, youth is a very important stage in the development, as children not only are faster learners, but also can become extremely flexible around five or six years old. A ten-year-old disciple’s day starts at 4 am in the morning, with a run up Shaoshi mountain and a crawl back down, before constant grueling drills with breaks only for Buddhist education or austere meals. The most important stage of a monk’s development is in childhood, so children are trained day in, day out at a very young age, similar to the way Chinese Olympians are started in elementary school.
Monks at the Shaolin monastery explain that the art of Shaolin is about constantly improving, and one never stops learning in a lifetime of practice. The life of a Shaolin Monk is relentless practice in pursuit of physical and mental perfection. The Chinese emperor at the time had built a monastery in the woods at the base of the Shaoshi (少室 Shǎoshì) mountain in anticipation of the Indian monk to coming to teach disciples, thus naming it Shao after the mountain, and lín (林), as in "forest." In order to survive and live a self-reliant life in the woods, the Shaolin monks had to learn defensive arts to protect themselves from bandits and wild animals, which is possibly how the ascetic yoga brought by the Indian monk developed into a fighting form. With him, he took Indian yoga practices that build the physical strength and endurance necessary for long periods of meditation and the aesthetic lifestyle of a monk. While the origins of the Shaolin kung fu are almost completely shrouded in mystery, one narrative that tends to stick is that an Indian monk who went to China at the behest of the Chinese Emperor, a devout Buddhist, to teach Buddhism. Around 1,500 years ago, the monks at Shaolin Temple created a mystical fighting art that unifies the physical and spiritual powers of the body, providing the inspiration for the modern-day kung fu fairytales. While kung fu is an umbrella term for hundreds of styles of Chinese martial arts, the most renowned martial arts masters were Buddhist monks from the Shaolin Temple (少林寺 Shàolínsì) in Henan province. In ancient Chinese, kung fu (Mandarin: 功夫 gōngfū) meant “utter devotion,” and today it is translated as “accomplishment of man” (功 means a feat of hard work, and夫 means man). Kung fu is probably one of the most recognized elements of Chinese culture, having made its way to international audiences through movies and TV shows.
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