Master Zhu Xilin

Master Zhu “Drew” has been one of the most influential people I have met in my life, his teachings have affected every aspect of my life. Since I’ve been studying with him every interaction, conversation, or insight I could attribute at some level to his teaching.

I met Drew in 2008, my partner Angie was practicing Taiji at a local martial arts studio. She heard there was a master from China teaching at that same studio, she had been studying Taiji at this time for 12 year and was curious about what he had to offer. After some conversations with him she started attending his classes. At this time my only frame of reference for martial arts were the martial arts geeks I grew up around, they threw Chinese stars, wore bandanas like they wore in the movie the Karate Kid, and watched Bruce Lee films. I didn’t have an issue with them, I pigeonholed them, they did their thing and I did mine. Angie had been studying for some time with Drew when he started planning a trip to Beijing for his students. The trip was a chance to visit where he grew up and to practice at Purple Bamboo Park (Zǐ Zhú Yuàn Gōngyuán), the park where he studied before moving to the US. I wasn’t planning on going, but the more she talked about it, the more I wanted to go. Not too long after I decided I was going to go. Before the trip Drew started teaching Chinese language classes, the classes consisted of how to say hello and other language basics. It was in these classes I first met Drew.

When I was in my 20’s I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder, ulcerative colitis. Over the years the symptoms became more painful and lasted longer. I could lose 12-14 days a year bedridden and in pain. I had investigated different remedies, western doctors and medication, changes in diet, changes in exercise, nothing seemed to help. I believed what the western doctors told me, that I would have this disease for the rest of my life and all that they could really do was offer some relief. One evening Angie came home from Drew’s class and said he told her “If I did these exercises (qi gong) that my auto-immune disease would go away”. I had yet to speak to him and was amazed when I heard what he said, I also realized he saw something. It was like a bolt of lightning, hope from a clear blue sky. That disease had wreaked havoc on my life for years, I’d reached a point of desperation and was open to any ideas or suggestions. This is when I first started conversations with Drew.

He was still teaching language classes after our China trip, in one of the classes we were working through some calligraphy when a classmate asked a Taiji question. Drew answered the question and brought up some pictures of his masters from China. They were black and white photos, the masters looked stereotypical, wearing martial arts garb, one had a long flowing beard and looked like a caricature from a Kungfu movie, they looked mystical and wise and stood in positions I didn’t understand. When I saw these masters doing what they did while I sat practicing calligraphy, something clicked. I saw it wasn’t just a practice, it was a philosophy and a way of living in the world. After this insight I started my full study with Master Zhu.  

I think it is important to understand what it means to be a Master in the Chinese tradition. Drew is a lineage carrying master from Beijing. The knowledge he carries comes from a family of practitioners; these practitioners have passed the knowledge he carries through multiple generations. This knowledge is a pass-fail system, either you know it, or you don’t. To be a lineage carrying master, first you must be a lineage student. To be a lineage student means to be accepted by a master and admitted into the family lineage through ceremony. As a recognized lineage student only then is the heart of the family knowledge revealed to them. It also means that they are responsible for finding students to carry the family lineage into the future. I heard a classmate once say, “There’s a book in China somewhere that says he knows this, and that means something”. 

The lineage book:

The Lineage book title: Wang Peisheng and his classmates Bi Yuanda, Wu Style Taiji Lineages.

This text contains 7 generations of masters.

Drew’s picture and entry from the lineage book:

On the surface Drew’s classes are stretching, repetitive motion, and meditation.  Drew doesn’t lecture, his classes are set up as question and answer. If the students don’t ask questions, he will sit quietly and observe. It is the students responsibility to move the class forward. When I first started attending classes I asked a ton of questions, the more questions he answered the more questions appeared. During the first years of his classes conversations ranged from all forms of Taoist philosophy to martial arts to Chinese politics. We talked extensively about the I Ching (Book of Change) and Chinese medicine to the energetics of acupuncture meridians and the Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor’s classic on internal medicine). Early on I realized that I was being exposed to a whole different system of understanding the world. I also realized that if I was going to understand this teaching, I would have to change how I interacted with this new knowledge.  I decided to partition my mind as best I could. I would try to understand the Taoist way within its own system. I actively tried to not compare anything I was learning to anything I already understood. This decision turned out to be a crucial piece that helped change the direction of my life.

As a human being living in a postmodern world, my belief structure and how I make sense of the world is unique to me. My interactions were a Hodge-podge collection of philosophy and thoughts from a broad spectrum ranging from James Joyce to Phillip K Dick to Richard Rorty. I used systems to make sense of the world, anything from chaos theory to game or economic theory was open to my investigation. This sense making structure had no real foundation, outside of a few profound experiences that tied my thoughts together. What Drew taught was a system that made sense to me from a scientific/intellectual level to a physical/spiritual level. It gave me a way of understanding all facets of my interactions with the world, from my mind to the body to the spirit. It also gave me a structure and a framework to wrap my thoughts around and grounded my experience in a way of being.  

Throughout the past 12 years that I’ve studied with Drew, what started as a partitioned mind turned into a re-evaluation of my life at every level. I examined how I thought, what I believed and where those beliefs came from. When I think of what it means to follow the Taoist way, the only thing relevant is to understand change. Change is the only thing we experience, multiple layers of change, infinite fractals of change... As I re-evaluated my life through this lens, the beliefs I held from my past became non-sensical. What started as a curiosity experiment changed into a way of living in the world. There’s an MC Escher woodcut print named “Day and Night” from 1938 that shows a checkered geometric farmland transforming into black and white birds flying east and west as they rise from the earth. For me this piece of art is a symbolic representation of the transformation of my consciousness. If I were to sum up the last 12 year of study with Drew in one experience it would be this: When I was in my 20’s a friend from a local Coffeehouse gave me a copy of the Tao te Ching, I thought it was an interesting insightful little book. After studying for 5 or 6 years I reread it. What I read had changed profoundly, it had gained depth and richness. It was like the Wizard of Oz when it changed from a black and white film in the farmlands of Kansas to a vibrantly colored film in a magical world.   

The people I’ve met on this journey have been amazing as well. I attribute it to having something to offer, a different, unconventional view. It feels like possessing a ticket, an entrance into another world with a different cast of characters who have been drawn together by curiosity. Along this path I’ve sat in a palace of consciousness, surrounded by paintings from the inner world while sipping tea with a man trained in the Guru tradition. I have laid on a table stuck with needles while the practitioner helped heal the dysfunctions of my life while telling me stories about Chinese restaurants, Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, and Newton’s importance on modern thought and physics. I have sat in Chaco Canyon across from strangers that told my story in their words while answering questions I had thought, but hadn’t asked. I’ve gathered and built fires with others on the shores of lakes as we honored the shifting seasons by remembering what it means to be human beings as we watched the rising sun. These situations and people I never searched for; Ideas would form or there would be a conversation and they would manifest themselves, as if by magic, in physical form. From where I stand this path unfolded as Drew appeared in my life. The Taoist practice and teachings I’ve acquired from him have had a profound effect on my life, they have changed my perception and given me a conceptual vocabulary to work with. The auto-immune disease that plagued my life has been extricated from my body. What I’ve learned from this practice has given me my health back and changed my life in profound ways and for that I am grateful.