Return to Five Immortals Temple
Special Delivery and Renewal
By: Cheng Tong - Dec 04, 2024
There is the excitement of the going, the anticipation of arrival, and a purpose to be fulfilled. There is excitement in the coming back, the thought of sleeping in your own bed, of waking up in familiar surroundings. Nonetheless, more than 40 hours of travel, flights, train rides, bus rides, and climbs, are daunting at any age. In my case, that is a few weeks shy of age 75.
Yet, I’ve learned to still myself in my daily training, in my Daoist Longevity Practice. Meditation, qigong, and taiji, all breath-driven skills, have collectively helped me acquire and maintain body wellness, quiet my inner self, and bring me into the present moment awareness where I wish to live my life.
After more than 31 years, it continues to serve me well, and it certainly did on the trip this fall. I was returning to China, and the memories of my various temple stays between 2015 and 2019 were suddenly fresh in my mind as if they were only days ago. I’d packed my book about temple life with my toothbrush and change of underwear, and it was to be delivered to the temple I had written of in the book. Only one other book had ever been written about it, written by a former student who had preceded me to White Horse Mountain and our Master.
In my time among the mountains of the northern Berkshires, I have attempted to sustain that same experience in my daily practices. I’ve been able to do so through the inspiration provided by my students over these years, wanting to transmit to them all I had learned from Master Wei Lun Huang in Boston and Li Shifu at the Five Immortals Temple. I’d maintained my daily practices, living what I had learned, living what I was teaching, and there I was returning to China to deliver my book.
I’d agonized over several years about its writing. How does one find the right words to convey such profound and life-altering experiences? It is easy to write a “what I did” book, but a “what I learned” book is another matter. I wondered if those words exist, even? I questioned whether I was a good enough writer to meet the challenge, and I had had my doubts. I still do. And yet . . .
One reader told me in a very kind note that she was on those stone steps with me as I climbed White Horse Mountain that first time, as a “testament to my writing skills.” I was gobsmacked to read that. I have struggled since my return from China last month to find the words to describe the experience of traveling there once again, to play taiji there once again, to feel the magic of temple life once again.
A dear friend gave me the words when he likened it to “renewing marriage vows.” It was a recharging, and a validation of the path I had chosen to walk. I came back to the red deck where I teach six days a week with great enthusiasm and a strengthened conviction in the efficacy of my daily practices and the truth of my teaching.
In a class with Master Huang a couple of decades ago, a student asked him a question. This student worked out at a gym every day, and wanted to know what he could do there to improve and strengthen his taiji practice. Master Huang looked at him for a moment and replied “The form,” meaning just keep practicing his taiji.
The student persisted and told Master Huang he didn’t understand the question. Master Huang told the student he understood the question very well; it was he who didn’t understand the answer.
While I understood the answer Master Huang had given the student, I returned from China this time with an even deeper understanding. As often happens in life ever so curious and seemingly coincidental, one of my students asked me a similar question recently – – how to cultivate more stillness in her life, how to become more sensitive to her own qi. “What should I do?”
My answer was Master Huang’s answer. Practice the skills. Meditate, practice qigong exercises, play taiji. It was so clear to me how these breath-driven skills can succeed in that cultivation. I returned from China even more convinced of the correctness of this answer than I had been before.
What did I learn in the delivering of my book to the temple and my Master? An easy question to answer, and here it is: I am walking the right path in my life, and I simply need to keep walking it. With toughness and determination, and a renewed vigor.
The Mandarin expression is “man man lai ” – – one step at a time, savoring each one of them. My renewed vow? There it is: just keep walking the path I am on.