Whether it is the turbulent journey of Ulysses in Homer’s Odyssey or the heroism of Rama in Valmiki’s Ramayana or Don Quixote’s search for chivalry in Cervantes’s great Spanish epic, there is something about the story of an individual who finds his true purpose in life after a period of intense self-scrutiny, hardship, and commitment, that finds a timeless resonance in our hearts. We may intellectually dismiss these warrior stories as childish fantasies of an unripe age, but, deep in our hearts, these myths, these stories of heroism, unfailingly awaken a power (however faint) that it is possible to fulfill one’s dreams, that all is not lost, and that a period of withdrawal, self-training, and introspection is necessary, to break out of the chrysalis of self-doubt about one’s place in society. Great myths, in any form – books, music, movies, dance – have this capacity to pull us into its orbit and tease out the dormant energy within. It doesn’t matter how crude or out of style the rendering may be, its effect is timeless, so to speak. The myth may be shaped in modern symbols or clothed in folklore, all it demands is one should be prepared to be receptive to the subtle vibrations of the myth for its magic to work. The supermans, Batmans and Spidermans of our modern myths are not so much born with their fantastical powers, but they were discovered by their protagonists after a period of trial and self-reflection. In a sense, these myths represent each one of us, as we journey through our lives attempting to find meaning and purpose to our living.
Since the last century, action movies have become the most powerful and popular myth-making vehicle for modern man. The movies couched in the myth of an ordinary individual careless of his own powers, thrown into a vortex of chaos and grief, and forced to retreat, regroup and retrain, to return to the world with greater powers, new skills, and clear goals, has dominated the martial arts genre. Starting from the seventies, from the famous Bruce lee movies to the hundreds of Chinese productions has repeated this story cycle in some form or the other. The story of a Hero is essentially about an individual thrown into self-doubt and inner chaos, who manages to reequip himself to face the challenges in and around him and return successfully to lead an integrated life. Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, and thinker called this the mono-myth: Doubt – Departure – Initiation – Return.
Of all the great martial arts movies that came out in the nineteen seventies, the one that stands out for me is “36 chambers of Shaolin”. The story of a young man witnessing his town and people destroyed by the Manchus decides to go to the Shaolin temple ( a real martial arts school in China transformed into a mythical monastery in countless Chinese movies) to train himself in the martial skills to defend himself, and once there, he realizes that such training is not given away easily. The first year in the monastery, the novice San Te hardly learns anything about Martial arts, he is given odd jobs at the monastery. Once the masters are convinced that the fire of learning martial arts is still intact, only then, do they open up the chambers of practice to him. The learning is not easy, each chamber deals with tuning a specific aspect of the body and mind, and after a few years of rigorous training, San Te emerges a transformed man. Not only is he an expert at Kungfu, but more importantly, he is clear about his goals, and he returns to society to share the gift of his understanding and training. This is the essential Hero cycle of each human being, at some level.
After nearly twenty years, I watched 36 chambers again last Sunday. I was deeply struck by the relevance and resonance of this myth and its lessons. The reason why this movie still remains a classic and a favorite is because of the deep resonance of its underlying message: to learn anything, to attain mastery in a skill, one must be ready to go through the necessary physical and moral metamorphosis that is necessary. There are no shortcuts to mastery. More than the fight sequences in the film, it is the training methods employed in the grooming of a novice monk that lingers long after. I particularly love how the movie portrays training as a process not divorced from daily life, and how the various chambers or skills are embedded in the daily routines of the monk. It emphasizes the point that anything we wish to acquire mastery in, should become an integral part of our life, and every living moment should burn in the flame of the goals we have set for ourselves. If not, the skill will remain a superficial accouterment never permeating the fiber of our being. A hundred meters sprinter cannot be an athlete only for those ten seconds he is on the track. In order to perform well in those ten seconds, he has to live the life of an athlete each moment of his professional career. So it is with any profession we seek excellence in. The myth embodied in the 36th chamber of Shaolin is a call to hard work, practice, and training to live the goal that we seek every moment.
In every hero myth, there is a mentor who arrives at the right moment to help and guide the seeker. The help doesn’t come easy, it arrives when the seeker has exhausted his own abilities to solve a problem like a cool breeze on a hot and exhausting day. This mentorship, this push the student gets could be in a tangible or intangible form. In other words, the mentor could be a physical entity who guides the seeker in the right direction, or it could be a casual gesture or comment from someone, it could appear in dreams; whatever the source of the mentorship is, it has the ability to draw out the answer from the seeker struggling to find expression. What is critical is for the seeker here is to recognize such the hint, the indication, when it arrives, and apply it to the problem at hand. The advice could be the catalyst that precipitates the transformation already immanent in the seeker. In the movie, the novice Sant Te has many mentors, starting from the man at a wayside restaurant who decides to pack a tired and injured Santen in a vegetable cart so he can reach Shaolin, to the many Shaolin masters in the temple, to the bolt of lightning that cuts a piece of bamboo into equal halves to give San te the insight to create his own weapon – all these sources of help prepare the student for his journey.
The idea of mentorship is wonderfully illustrated in the movie. When Santen struggles to use a floating piece of wood to jump over a pool of water, a veteran master teaches him how by throwing a plate into the water with just enough speed, force, and angle that it gracefully skims the surface of the water before rolling over to the other side. “Lightness, agility, and balance”, the master turns around and tells the class. This is mentoring at its best. The teacher does not show him how to jump across the water, instead, he shares valuable insight on the principles behind it. The rest is left to the student to practice and perfect the skill. The teacher’s job is to point the way, demonstrate the essential principles in a tangential manner, and the student has to walk the path. Sometimes the mentorship can be harsh, demanding, even tortuous. But that is part of the deal. In one of the other chambers Sant Te goes through, students are expected to carry panes of water over a steep slope, the instruction from the teacher is clear ” Do not help anyone else”. Again, very insightful mentoring. There are certain things each one should do for themselves. Help and support at an early stage can only hinder the progress. The student has to stumble, struggle, endure pain and failure, before coming out strong. Without the blossoming of individuality, nothing valuable can be achieved. Education essentially is about building such a personality – the process of individuation as Carl Jung called it. In ancient India, students were sent away to secluded schools, away from parents and family, and, interestingly, such practices were found in almost all ancient communities. The seclusion, the solitude, the nerve-wracking training is the crucible that turns a dependent boy or girl into a fully grown individual who can stand on their own with a distinct sense of self ( we see modern-day graduates also develop an all-knowing ego after a few years at college). This phase is necessary for further growth. As one grows older and wiser, this selfhood expands, and in a few cases, it expands so much that it embraces the whole society. That is the hero’s return. Typically in a myth, a hero is portrayed as someone who vanquishes a dragon, or a demon and completes a particularly impossible mission ( Labors of Hercules, the daring of Theseus, the life in the forest for Rama, etc) and comes back to spread the good news. In the movie, San Te’s wish, after he completes all the chambers, is to go back to his community to teach Shaolin Kungfu. A rebellious wish, no doubt, but there is nothing anyone can do. Ripe fruit cannot hang on indefinitely to the tree it belongs to. The hero myth is true of every prophet the world has known. A crisis, a retreat, an insight, and a return to sharing the insight with others. Kahlil Gibran’s magnificent poem “the Prophet” captures this essence with crystalline beauty.
As a child, I remember watching the movie with rapt attention at a theatre in Coimbatore. All I remember now, is the rush of adrenalin, a sense of heroism that coursed through my body watching San Te transform himself from a novice to a master. I admired his teachers, the wise men who spoke halting English. ( I didn’t know the movie was dubbed from Chinese, and the language was stereotyped for that time) I was learning Karate then, and for days and months after watching this movie, I remember being alone in a room reliving the role of San Te, practicing with a Nonjaku I had, and imagining the tingling sensation of pelting rain hitting my tonsured head as I vanquished my non-existent enemies. After all, It doesn’t take much to fire the imagination of a young child; unfortunately, as we grow older we tend to lose this wonderful capacity.
I am an educator and the lessons from the 36th chamber of Shaolin presents are timeless. Years ago, when I ran boot camps for graduates, this movie was my standard metaphor for a student’s journey. I would tell them on the first day, that the right attitude to take in a BootCamp, is humility, a humbleness about what you know. In the movie, San Te, when given a choice by his teacher opts to go to the 36th chamber right away, ignoring the basics. And master gently smiles and allows him to. However, when Sante enters the 36th chamber and experiences the level of mastery there, he is shocked and humbled. He runs out terrified and excited at the same time and pleads with this master to be allowed to start from the first chamber. There is a valuable lesson there in the art of learning. The masters have to make the students realize upfront their ignorance before any training can begin. In all spiritual traditions, there are such stories about students asked to empty out what they think they know. This is a critical quality to qualify for training. Once, the right attitude is in place, the training regimen laid out has to be strictly followed. Certain parts of the training make not make sense at all, but we must trust our teachers. That trust is a very important element in the learning cycle. If a student loses trust in the teacher, training effectively ceases. In the eastern tradition, a teacher is deliberately venerated as a god in human form, so that children implicitly learn to trust them, and even today, to a large extent, the culture in the east is to look upon teachers as Gods – infallible and trustworthy. This culture is, however, changing fast; but we must never forget why such an attitude was encouraged and fostered in the first place. There is a deep psychological basis to it – to learn something, we must be pliable and nimble within, and one cannot be both if you are strongly opinionated and not willing to trust. The reason Adult learning is difficult is that we find it difficult to trust. Having seen the world and experienced its sweetness and bitterness, equally, we become circumspect about trusting anyone, as children naturally would, and this suspicion extends to our teachers too. We depend on google reviews on those we plan to learn from.
In NIIT’s Stackroute programs, we have often seen students go through a profound transformation during a three-month training period. They begin hesitantly, unsure of their knowledge or capability, but once they begin to trust the training process and the teacher, the learning happens at a good pace. With each passing week, their personalities change reflecting the newfound confidence found in every completed task, and as the training program progresses, and they master increased levels of complexity, they emerge out of their shells, like a butterfly out of a chrysalis, ready to face new challenges and improvise. Each time, I witness such a transformation, such metamorphosis, I am reminded of a hero’s journey – the primeval myth that is relived and experienced again and again across cultures, and ages. Every achievement, however small or big, is heroic. There is a problem to be tackled, a self-imposed pause, a period of self-reflection and regrouping happens, and then there is a positive response to overcome the challenge. Societies evolve this way. In Arnold Toynbee’s magnificent study of history in eight volumes, a work that is unfortunately difficult to find these days, the great historian, surveyed the rise and fall of societies since recorded history and noted that civilizations that have reskilled themselves, adapted to changing conditions in a positive way, are the ones that survive. In Jared Diamond’s “The third chimpanzee”, “Collapse” “Guns, germs, and steel” – his trilogy of books on the evolution of societies, he repeatedly points out that every major innovation in agriculture, farming, and civic life is born out of challenges, and every challenge requires a complete reorientation and a new balance. And societies who are willing to put in the effort to reskill themselves edge the others away. Whether this is progress, in the sense we use the word or not is another question and one that need not concern ourselves in this essay.
The millennial generation may not be excited by 36 chambers of Shaolin as a movie experience. They have seen better martial arts movies, with better production quality and sophistication. But there is no doubt about the fact the narrative style adopted in the 36 chambers has influenced a generation of modern action movies, just like Bruce lee’s did. And its theme of training, discipline, and search for excellence strike a deep chord within, no matter how old the film is or how many times you get to watch it.