It was at the millennium, when I was teaching in Amsterdam, that I read about him in the book “Magus of Java: Teachings of an Authentic Taoist Immortal ” by Kostas Danaos. I said to myself, I would like to meet the master.
Five years later, in Istanbul, I heard my friend David Verdesi talking on the phone. He was saying, Shifu, Shifu.
I asked him, Who is that?
David said, The Magus of Java.
I said, I would like to see him.
David said, You will.
Just like many of the synchronicities in my life, where I had strange encounters with masters, a year later I was invited by David to come to Java. Do not tell anybody about your trip, David said, and he cautioned me not to mention where I landed or where I went because the Magus preferred to live a quiet life. Almost every day, for a whole month, we went to see the Magus (also called John Chang by Kostas Danaos and Dynamo Jack by Laurence Blair). The sessions with him were the most extraordinary healing treatments I have ever seen in my life … and he did not charge anything for them. He emitted a current of electricity from his body and heat from his hands, he could move small objects from a distance. I do not know what else he could do. From his looks, one would not have guessed that in that small frame there was a rare human being. He looked like an ordinary man, dressed in shorts, a plain white shirt, one who talked softly and carried himself simply. Too often, we fail to recognize the Realised Beings/zhenren walking among us! When I asked him for the secret of his powers, he said, Sit down and meditate. It was much more than that, of course, as I discovered later. But that’s another story.
He was featured in a documentary by the Blair brothers that you can see on youtube. The Blair brothers also mentioned him in their book “The Ring of Fire.” Although relatively few people have seen him, his feats became the subject of much exchanges in coffee shops and on the internet.
I am sad to report that the Magus has passed away. My friend Manny Maramara was the first to give me the news. Then Keith Cini, another friend and an acupuncture colleague, e-mailed about it.
The death of the Magus is such a loss not only to his family, students and the world. He is one of those who, with the proper training and discipline, showed us the potentials of the human being, what we are capable of doing beyond our ordinary abilities. Very few masters I know had his level of powers. Perhaps it was his discipline, or his natural gifts, plus his access to methods of development, that helped him attain such height of attainment. His existence suggested that we, too, are capable of similar achievement if we only knew the process.
*His name was Lao Kim. He was also known as Lao Gam and Goon Tiong. You can see him doing a couple of Shaolin Hong Kuen forms on youtube. That’s the best way to introduce him to you.
I met him in the early 60s in Manila’s Chinatown through the intercession of his heir and disciple Johnny Chiuten (aka Wong Fiak San) who was my teacher. Chiuten shifu asked him to teach me in 1965. The old master was reluctant but Johnny was his adopted son who could not be denied. I studied with Lao shigong until late in 1970 when I left for the US. We met a couple of times in HK in the 1980s.
He taught me the martial forms when he was in his 70s. Nothing much was known about him.
Through the years, he remained a mystery. But I was a beneficiary of his selfless generosity. He taught me forms without asking for payment or consideration.
What did he teach, where did it come from? Where did he train? We heard that he taught a Shaolin Kungfu style called Angka, or Hong Kuen, different pronunciations of a 5-Animal system of combat. It included fist and weapons. I studied some of them in Binondo, Manila, from him and his disciple Johnny Chiuten. Martial arts master Johnny Chiuten filmed the forms on Super 8 in the 1970s. He brought the films to Canada in the late 1970s. He was planning to give them to me but they were borrowed by a friend and not returned until many years later. Apparently, they were copied in the meantime because I received a copy from a Filipino martial artist back 10 years ago. Dr. Jose Santiago Laraya, who also studied with GMs Chiuten and Lao, and I are researching the facts about Lao shifu and his system. We have not been wildly successful because many of the people who knew him are gone, including Johnny Chiuten and Ching See San. I will appreciate any information about the master. But of course, I would like the information to be reliable, and preferably supported by evidence or some kind of proof. I have read too many claims about martial arts, many of them wild speculations, repeated and repeated and often exaggerated.
From an analysis of at least 2 of the forms – Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy and Dragon-Tiger – I speculated that these originated from a Buddhist temple. The first form has Hindu and Buddhist antecedents: it suggests the young devotee of the Bodhisatva that later became the Red Boy in Buddhist China. He appears again in the 4-volume epic Journey to the West. I have a print that shows this young immortal with Sun Wukong the Monkey King and Guanyin. I also conjectured that the forms although similar in a few ways to other martial forms are really different perhaps unique in many ways. Some people called Lao’s system “village” or “old” style. Lao Kim’s Hong Cha/Angka/Hong Kuen (whichever way the name is spelled or pronounced) had an elaborate footwork embracing 5 or 6 of the different postures that are the foundational basis of the movements. I concluded that the style is possibly extinct or at least there are very few students who practice them because Lao Kim actually took only a few private students. Perhaps only Dr. Laraya and I are the last disciples of the old man?
Since I was a private student, I do not know the progression of training for a class or a group. As far as I know, the most basic fist form was the Cross form and the most advanced was Dragon-Tiger. I studied some of these forms with both Johnny Chiuten and Lao Kim. It was Chiuten shifu who gave me the initiation and teaching me the basic postures and taught me: Cross form, Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin (he called it Buddha), Ching Hua Kuen ( Kata 200), Pre-kata (Johnny’s name for it) and Dragon-Tiger (Johnny’s English name for it; Lao called it Long Hu).
I also learned those forms from Lao Kim along with Kang Li, Long Ho Hok Pai Kuen (Dragon-Tiger-White Crane), Offering (I don’t have the Chinese name for it), Ut Kit (I do not have the English name for it either), Broadsword (Flower), Straight sword, Staff (3 forms), Spear, Hoe, 5 sectional steel whip and Guandao. I know that he also taught the Tiger fork or trident but I did not study it.
Fist forms:
Kata Cross – Supdi kuen
Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess Mercy Kuanyin
Young Flower/Plum blossom
Fist/Ching Hua Kuen
Kang Li Kuen
Long Hu Kuen/Dragon Tiger
Offering
Dragon-Tiger-White Crane/Long Ho Hok Pai
Ut Kit
Pre-kata (Master Chiuten’s name for it)
Wat Let
Weapons forms:
Staff (3 forms)
Spear
Guan Dao
Broadsword
Straight Sword
5 Sectional Chain Whip
Hoe
I know that he also had a Tiger Fork/Trident form but I did not study it.
*August 2020 is the 10th anniversary of the death of my Shaolin Hong Kuen master Johnny F. Chiuten (Chinese name: Wong Fiaksan). I was in the Tao Garden in Chiangmai, Thailand attending the Universal Healing Tao instructors conference on the 30th anniversary of GM Mantak Chia’s teaching in the US when Dr. Ned Nepangue, a Philippine arnis de mano master from the island of Cebu, e-mailed that I should get in touch with Johnny: this may be the last time you can talk to him, he said. The following day I heard from Vic Ramos and Dr. Jopet Laraya and Maya (daughter of Johnny) that the master had passed away.
Johnny was the first and most important influence in my martial arts life and probably in many things that I do. He started me on a journey that affected my whole being and my direction. Who knows how the training affected my mental, intellectual, health and spiritual pursuits. He introduced me in the early 1960s to Shaolin Hong Kuen, this system of combat that originated arguably from a Buddhist temple. It combines methods of meditation and fighting, profound stillness and dynamic movement and different forms of breathing. The origins are obscure and have been exaggerated and mythologized in the narratives, but it is based on the 5 legendary animals: Dragon, Tiger, Leopard, Crane, Snake.
You can read an essay about him in the Writings section of the website.
*I mentioned that Lao Kim never did ask me for money or anything. He was generous with his teachings. He was so different from teachers nowadays who consider their lessons as a business. These are the teachers who charge a lot of money just to make themselves available for a meeting. They charge thousands of dollars to confer a discipleship. You have to pay hundreds to take a lesson. They’ll promise to teach you “secret teachings” and “powerful techniques” and “ultimate qigong,” unscrupulously promoting themselves to get rich. It’s totally unregulated. They’ll skin you like a rabbit. What is the going rate for a discipleship? I heard from reliable sources that it is $100,000. One qigong form costs $70,000, a Tai chi chuan student told me; he was trying to raise the funds to pay for it. There are still teachers who set reasonable rates. They should receive our admiration and support. They are perpetuating the tradition of martial arts in the ethical lineage of the ancient masters.
*I have been packing books to be shipped to the Carlos P. Romulo Memorial Library and Museum in Tarlac, my hometown in the Philippines. While assembling the books, I came upon a few of my favorites. I guess these are some of the books I am going to keep for a while.
The Dalai Lama’s Secret Temple by Ian Baker
India: A Sacred Landscape by Diana Eck
Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore
The Gnostic Bible edited by Mayer
Tao Te Ching by Jonathan Star (the book contains the text in Chinese, a glossary and alternative verses)
Tao Te Ching by Red Pine/Bill Cooper (the book contains commentaries by different masters)
I Ching by Al Huang
The 8 Extraordinary Vessels (transcript of a weekend seminar by Jeffrey Yuen available at the New England School of Acupuncture)
The Little Prince by Exupery
Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra by Paula Arai (on the art of Tsuneo Iwasaki)
3/18: A friend wrote to say that he has resumed his practice of yoga because he has nothing much to do now that he has to stay home in the Philippines. Nobody is allowed to go around a certain zone. Many stores, gyms, schools, businesses, churches are closed. It is a lockdown. Here is my reply to him:
“It is good to have an eastern practice to fall back on. There’s the story of a student who asked his master why he had to learn meditation. The latter answered, So that you’ll have something to do when you get old! This joke amuses me because I haven’t been able to practice Tai chi Chuan in a while due to a pinched nerve in my sacrum that triggers so much pain. Much of my practice is now focused on sitting meditation and weights (isolation and resistance). Happily, I do not miss the martial arts exercises. I did my cardiac rehab faithfully (9-11, MWF) but I skipped it last week because of my self-quarantine. As we get older, and our activities get limited, I guess it is important to recognize and accept that reality. No drugs should be taken to reverse what is natural and inevitable, unless there’s a good reason for it. There are other actvities we can pursue more comfortably and reasonably. The pandemic and the hip pain have made me focus on my Taoist internal practices — abdominal breathing, tracking the meridian pathways, Microcosmic Orbit/Xiao Zhou Tian or Small Heavenly Circle, Fusion of the 5 Elements and Enlightenment of Kan and Li.
I am happy that you are resuming your yoga practice. I did give you a book on yoga anatomy last year The book is a useful tool to combine western anatomy and eastern practice, I’ll try to bring some other yoga books when I visit next time. I do not know if you have the Iyengar’s Pranayama, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Bhagavad Gita (there are many translations), Bhakti Yoga, the Upanisads and Puranas. I have duplicate copies. Tell me what you need.
According to tradition, the eight limbs of yoga are:
yama (abstinences),
niyama (observances),
asana (yoga postures),
pranayama (breath control),
pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses),
dharana (concentration),
dhyana (meditation)
and samadhi (absorption).”
But the asanas of hatha yoga are very important and are usually the ones studied in the beginning. They are like the postures of Zhan Zhuang or Standing like a Post in Tai chi chuan. They teach how to stand still and train the body and the mind to be quiet. That is why the practitioner has to stay in a position for a very long time. Incidentally, the Taoist practices I have studied have similar branches: austerities involving dietetics/nutrition (Bigu or fasting is one, Huan Jing Bunao/Returning Sexual Energy to the Brain is another), qigong (includes breathing), sealing of the senses, meditation/zuowang (sitting in oblivion), among them. I am not sure if Hindu yoga has a practice similar to the alchemy of Fire/Li and Water/Kan and the Reunion with the Tao although I have read of the Atman/Soul, Self, Consciousness returning to the Brahman/God at the point of death.
We can talk about them if you have the time. I’ll be happy to make a presentation on my next visit. Perhaps we can have a whole day or even a weekend of practices, with the tuition going to charity.
I am packing 3 balikbayan boxes with books to be shipped to the Carlos P. Romulo Memorial Library and Museum in Tarlac, my hometown. Eventually, I’ll retain only a skeleton library containing my favorite books.
More later.
Ganbei!
Rene”
3/13: I am putting this last because I know you’ve had more than enough coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and I did not like you to have another one. We’re going to self-quarantine for the next 2 or 3 weeks and wait for developments. The elderly and those with pre-existing health problems like us are the most vulnerable in the population. That means me (79) and Lolit (78). I attended Taoist priest Jeffrey Yuen’s seminars in Tinicum, MD Friday to Sunday last week. One was on the 9 Heart Palaces, referring to the important concerns we have in life: health, abundance or wealth, prosperity, knowledge, travel, creativity, relationships, knowledge, wisdom, and home. The other was on Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine for the Recovery from Illness. Master Yuen discussed the treatment protocols for the CoviD-19 virus that were based on the tradition of the Imperial Medical College in the Ming Dynasty. He also talked about daily self-care, the health practices like nutrition, meditation and qigong (Ba Duan JinJin/8 Pieces of Brocade, Wu Qin Zi/Frolic of the 5 Animals and Yi Jin Jing/Sinew Changing Classic). There was nobody with any symptoms but there were at least 200 people there. Who knows if anybody could have brought it? So, I am kind of monitoring ourselves. I saw my internist/primary doctor yesterday for a painful hip problem. I asked his assistant if tests were available. She said No. Even if you have symptoms, you will have to go somewhere for it, she said. I cannot believe that nothing was done for almost 3 months, when the virus began spreading in China. Now, the government is frantically moving but I do not know if they should be into a bout of self-congratulations for doing what may be too little, too late! At the same time, we will be happy to see and encourage any positive movement towards solving this unprecedented occurrence.
I notified the organizers at Daoist Traditional School in Asheville, NC that I am not going to attend the 4-day seminar of Yuen shifu on the Spirit of the Meridians In April. Lolit has already cancelled our 7-day reservation at a hotel there. I hope the sponsors can put the seminar on live-streaming. I have already paid the tuition. (I just received notice today that they are going to arrange for liove-streaming. So I can follow the lectures on my computer while I am home.
I hope you received the Chinese treatment protocols I sent a few days ago. If you haven’t, please tell me. I sent them to almost everybody in my mailing list. At least they provide an idea of how the Chinese deal with the different stages of the disease with their healing modalities. But there are really very few herbalists in the world who know how to administer the herbs. The closest herbal pharmacies are in NYC and Philadelphia.
3/14: My son Al and granddaughter Ava, 19, dropped by this afternoon. No hugs, no handshakes, no elbow or fist bumps! They left after saying hello. I told them they should not visit at all. Isabel, 20, phoned and advised me not to go out. As you know, she is on the doctorate program in biomedical engineering at the U of Penn and she is a fellow of the National Science Foundation for her research paper on the new way of treating bacterias and viruses. Epidemiology is her passion. She worked almost 4 years with 3 scientists for her research in college. So finding a cure for diseases is up her alley. When I asked her, she said that there are people working on a vaccine. I hope she is involved in finding a cure. Ava, a sophomore and a member of the fencing (epee) team at Duke is home because school and competitions have been cancelled at least for the rest of the semester but Isabel is still in school.
It is easy to stay home because we really do not have a lot of contacts here. With the pandemic getting closer and closer, our activities are more restricted. But we have food in the pantry (pasta, rice noodles and ramen, sauces, rice, broths, beans, dried shiitake mushrooms) and in the freezer (fish, TV dinners, frozen veggies, chicken drumsticks). There is of course bagoong/fermented shrimp paste or fish as a last resort. It was a dish we depended on in wartime. Perhaps I should dip into my stash of herbal liquors one of these days! If we run out of groceries, we can always call Giant to deliver them at our door. We also have a lot of CDs, DVDs, reading materials (New Yorker, Vaniy Fair, Entertainment magazine, Buddhist journals and lots and lots of books). Al installed Netflix, so we have hours and hours of movies to look forward to. I have been reading Paula Arai’s new book “Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra” on the paintings of Tsuneo Iwasaki. It is one of the best books on art I have ever read. I also got a new bilingual and illustrated edition of Gitanjali by Tagore and 3 volumes of the Shiva Puranas from the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Saylorsburg, PA. So I am all set. I almost forgot to mention that Mark Wiley of Tambuli Media and I are now in the early stages of publishing my Taoist poetry book “Ascension and Return.” I do not have to do anything else at this point because the text is done. Some of the poems appear in the poetry section of my website.
Be well!
3/ 16: It is like a waiting game. We watch to see if we have fever or cough or any kind of symptom: wind, cold, damp … When are we going to see a doctor? We have been told that unless we have serious symptoms, we should not bother. Just stay home! I think the reason is that if everybody with mild fever goes to the hospital, it will be an over-crowding disaster; it will tax the capacity – personnel and supplies – of the hospital. Perhaps the real reason is that there is as yet no cure. You could as well stay home and self-medicate. Tylenol, cough syrup, whatever you can use to alleviate your symptoms. But nothing could be done about the root cause of the disease. That’s how helpless we are in the face of this malady. It’s like waiting for Death to knock at the door.
What I suggested but not described is that there are practices
from the repertoire of Eastern healing that we can do, alone or with our loved
ones and family. I spend many hours for
my regular rituals, usually early in the morning or late at night in the
isolation of my bedroom or study. These are meditations, qigong, movements or
just simple sitting and breathing. These practices are really easy, practical
and accessible. It is important to relax and be open, to enter the stillness of
the moment. That is the key to entering the circle and wrapping oneself with a
cocoon of Light, rings or belts of energy and vibration, from head to foot.
This shield can come from outside or from within. The slow breathing from the
nose and mouth can create a space of stillness that one can enter. Chanting
certain mantras or prayers or visualizing the sacred or one’s Guide can also be
an invaluable addition to your rituals. Tap into your own creativity and
develop your own personal rite. If you have not done it yet, designate a corner
of your home into a shrine with the items or icons that you connect
to in your spiritual life.
Here is a simple meditation from the basic teachings of the Universal Healing
Tao. I have done it since 1983. It is an entry-point practice for
beginners, but it can as well be done by advanced practitioners. One thing it
does is get you into looking within yourself, turning your attention away from
the distractions of the world, and orienting you to focus on yourself and the
world within. The technique is simple and easy but holds profound lessons for
those who are willing to try it. Eventually, if you do it for a length of time,
you’ll tap into its potential for healing and wholeness.
Inner Smile Meditation
*** adapted from Mantak Chia’s Inner Smile meditation
If you like to listen to music, play something that is meditative and soft. Sit down in a comfortable position on a chair. Straighten your spine, lower your chin, place your hands on your thighs with your palms up. Close your eyes. Relax your whole body. Place your tongue on the roof of the mouth just behind the upper teeth. Breathe through the nose softly and slowly. If you wish, you can bring in the Divine Light or the image of your Guide.
In the beginning you can just focus on your breath as you inhale and exhale. Picture the lungs expanding and contracting, the air coming in and out of your nose. You can spend some time on this part. It is very relaxing and healthy.
It is important to smile. Raise the corners of your mouth. Feel the face relaxing, the eyes getting soft. Feel a genuine connection to the organs as a part of your body, your energetics and yourself.
Take the time to smile to each organ … like smiling to a good friend.
Smile into or at the organs, starting with the Heart. Send your loving energy to the Heart. Feel the Heart being filled with your loving energy.
Send your loving energy to the Liver. Feel the Liver being filled with your loving energy.
Send your loving energy to the Kidneys. Feel the Kidneys being filled with your loving energy.
Send your loving energy to the Lungs. Feel the Lungs being filled with your loving energy.
Send your loving energy to the Spleen and Stomach. Feel them being filled with your loving energy.
Send your loving energy to the Heart again. Send the loving energy of the Heart to the different organs.
Collect saliva in your mouth and swallow it in 3 portions. Follow the saliva down with your Inner Smile through the digestive tract, from the mouth down to the anus.
Picture your skeletal system and send your loving energy to it starting with the head and down the back, arms and legs.
Picture your body and surround it with a cocoon of energy and white light.
You can spend more time in each organ in this meditation as you wish.