Kung Fu and Shaolin Philosophy
Kung Fu
My husband recently came home with the second season of Kung Fu, 1972-75 starring David Carradine, and that’s about all the TV we watched for 3 weeks straight. I didn’t tune into all the episodes – maybe half, but despite its cheesiness, I sort of liked them. I vaguely remember watching the show the first time around, but found myself drawn into the story of “Caine”, a Shaolin Monk who is on the run after killing one of the Chinese Emperor’s nephews in retaliation for his mentor’s murder. He finds himself in the American west around the mid to late 1800′s looking for a long lost brother.
Is that not a bizarre story plot – Buddhist monk walking barefoot town to town constantly finding himself in the midst of gun slingers and moral dilemmas in the wild west?
In the show, Caine continually flashes back to the Shaolin Temple, where he received his training after being orphaned as a child. These “flashes” always seem to occur when he is contemplating a course of action or formulating a sparse, yet wise response to a critical situation. The Shaolin Temple is thought to be the birth place of Zen Buddhism in China, hence the source of Caine’s calm spiritual demeanor on the series. He defends himself – yet never attacks, is always honorable, never judges, doesn’t need much, doesn’t lie, cheat or steal and always stands up for the down trodden, wronged or over looked persons. Caine never seems to look for trouble, but trouble always seems to find him – or maybe his eyes are just open and he doesn’t turn his back on the issues. I am guilty of closing my eyes occasionally when it doesn’t fit my schedule/plan. It’s not something about which I’m proud and also easy to do when a person is not totally invested or connected to their community (work, neighborhood, school, etc.). Yet in the TV show, Caine is most definitely not tied to any of the communities or people he runs into and still helps his fellow human being.
Anyway, where am I going with this? As I watched some of the episodes, I entertained the notion that as a human race, we would be much better off if we all acted like David Carradine’s character on Kung Fu.
Yes, my husband and I made fun of some of the pickles he got himself into, the rampant bad acting, humorous special effects and the sheer ridiculousness of the plot. Even so, we kept on watching. I know TV is not real life – but the show is fresh in my memory and I felt like writing about it. On a related note, one of my favorite podcasts is Zen is Stupid, which is sort of a funny title for a show with a Buddhist bent. I’m not even Buddhist, yet enjoy the insight and sometimes off topic banter between the hosts.
Meanwhile, it’s Friday evening and I survived a week of substitute teaching. It was a good but exhausting experience and on a positive note, those darn monkeys have finally stopped chattering.
Have a good weekend,
~Cynthia
