&&&&
Who am I?
I'm not some ancient Chinese sage. Instead, I'm a white Canadian who is past middle-age moving towards being a senior citizen. I don't know any oriental languages. I've never lived in or even visited China. I'm not even a scholar of anything Chinese. I have a Master's degree in philosophy, but I have worked for about thirty years as a porter in an academic library. Nothing about that would give anyone a reason to read my book about Daoism.Well, there is other stuff too. Many years ago I decided that I was out of shape and should follow an exercise regime. I thought martial arts were cool, so I looked around for one. I had never heard about this thing called “taijiquan”, but there was a club in town and it looked like something I could do to get more fit. Maybe later on I'd switch to something better, like tae kwon do or karate. It turned out that taijiquan was more interesting than I had thought. There were a very interesting bunch of people involved with the club and I started hanging out with them. Eventually I ended up going with them to events at the school's “head office” in Toronto.
There I met the founder. He was a strange immigrant from China who didn't speak a word of English. He did bizarre things like insisting on sleeping on the floor of the studio with a telephone book as a pillow. He also liked to eat and would often ask us to go out after classes for meals. I'm a bit of “joiner” and I eventually volunteered to do some stuff for the organization.
One day this guy---Moy Lin Shin---asked me (through a translator) if I'd like to “join the Temple”. I asked what it involved and the first thing he said was “well, for starts, it costs $300 to join”. That stopped things for me right there. I said “well, it might be a good idea but there's absolutely no way I can afford that”. (At the time I was working as a janitor for minimum wage.) Next week he came to me again “if you want to join the Temple, there's a 'special introductory offer'. You can join for $30”. I thought “what's there to lose?” Eventually I got ushered into this hot little Daoist Temple that had been built into an apartment in the heart of Toronto (the Fung Loy Kok), told to wear some very heavy robes over my street clothes, and went through this elaborate ceremony that involved me kow-towing in front of an altar and offering three splints of wooden incense on a brazier.
I did some other stuff for the school and spent a summer helping out as a live-in volunteer at a retreat centre in Orangeville. But eventually I found myself in the middle of some very strange inter-personal dynamics in the organization and decided that I was no longer interested in the Taoist Tai Chi Association of Canada.
Then something very interesting happened. After I left Mr. Moy went kinda berzerk. I was told that he sent telegrams (yes, they still existed back then) all over the world saying that I was “persona non grata”. That struck me as totally bizarre because I really wasn't that important to the taiji school or the temple. It was only many years later that I found out why he flipped out.
.........
I came across this group called “the Taoist Restoration Society”. It was a non-profit that was trying to help preserve and restore Daoism in China. It had the support of quite a few scholars and a very impressive website. One of the features that they had was an “ask an expert” question and answer forum. One day someone asked an expert how one would go about being “baptised” as a Daoist. The professor said that that was impossible as Daoism is an elitest religion that doesn't have “followers” like members of a Christian church. Instead, it is more like what we in the West would know as a monastic order. At that point, I stepped in and describe the ceremony I'd gone through and asked what that was if it wasn't something like a Christian baptism. The academic responded by saying that that hadn't been a “baptism”, instead it had been an “ordination”.
I was dumbfounded.
Later on, I connected on line with a scholar of religious studies who was researching the Fung Loy Kok Temple. When I explained my background to him, he got very excited and eventually travelled to my home to interview me about my experience. He told me that Mr. Moy had only asked a very small number of people to “join the temple” and that it was extremely rare for anyone---let alone a Westerner with no Chinese---to go through that ceremony at any Temple in any country. I literally had had no clue about this. It explained why Moy had reacted so explosively to my defection.
Well, that's a cool story, but so what? Not much. But there are other things. A strange thing about my defection from the Taoist Tai Chi Association was that I ended up sticking with the practices that I learned there. I kept up the regular taijiquan practice. I pursued various meditation techniques for decades. I went to workshops from other schools and learned stuff like the Yang sword routine. I even joined the Canadian Taijiquan Federation for a while and went to events when possible. I also spent time trying to learn from non-Daoists. I had a Roman Catholic hermit as a spiritual director for years. I've also gone to Zen meditation retreats, classes inspired by other Buddhist traditions and so on. I've also spent a lot of time studying books about Daoism. I happen to have a Master's degree in philosophy which allows me to use some of the academic “tricks of the trade” to try and learn as much as possible. Working at an academic library and having access to the Internet haven't hurt either.
It wasn't that I really thought of myself as a Daoist through most of this period. Indeed, I was more interested in Buddhism or Sufism. I even seriously contemplated becoming a Roman Catholic. (I gagged at a class for potential converts that exposed me to what “popular Catholicism” really looks like.) I did “sign the book” and become a Unitarian---but I eventually drifted away from that too. There always seemed to be something keeping me from completely integrating into these systems of thought and communities of believers. So when I found out about my “ordination”, I decided that I might as well hang my hat on that hook as any other.
I recall reading somewhere (although I've never been able to see that reference again) that there is a custom among some Daoists to follow a practice called “cloud walking”. This involved travelling from temple to temple in order to learn from the different communities in China. In fact, the temples didn't even have to be Daoist, as it was assumed that “all religions are one” and that there was much a person could learn from studying with Buddhists and even Christians and Muslims. Since I have spent my life trying to learn from any number of different spiritual traditions, I see myself as someone who has spent decades “cloudwalking”. And because my last name, Hulet, is supposed to mean “member of the Owl Clan” in old Welsh (at least by family tradition), I have taken on the religious name of “the Cloudwalking Owl”.1
If that little snippet of an autobiography peaks your interest, then maybe you should go on and finish the rest of the book.
*****
1People who know something about traditional Daoist naming systems might bridle at my taking on this name. Traditionally lineages have a “name poem” and people's religious names are assigned sequentially from the words in it. That means that anyone in that tradition can hear a person's name, look up the poem, and tell which person has seniority over any other. The tradition that Moy came from, the Yuen-Yuen Institute in Hong Kong, doesn't follow that system. It is more of a “reformed” type of Daoism. It was formed by refugee Daoists who fled because of Communist persecution. Since these refugees had come from lots of different schools, sticking to a lineage poem system made no sense and it was discarded.
&&&&
I put a lot of work into my writing. If you like it, why not subscribe? The amount you send is up to you. Patreon and Pay Pal make it easy to do. And you'll feel a "warm glow" by helping a local "creator". 😉
&&&&
No comments:
Post a Comment