Opening the Dragon Gate by Chen Kaiguo and Zheng Shunchao and translated by Thomas Cleary. The Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard was probably the part of the title that caught my attention with this book, so I gave it a look. Before I got the book, I read some of the reviews and got to peek inside a bit to see what I was in for, and from what I got a chance to sample, I thought it was going to be great. The book sounds like it's going to take you on an adventure into a whole other world, and do so from a very involved perspective. Allowing you to see the process in true detail.
So I bought the book, and began reading it. The smile I wore on my face when I started reading, quickly vanished, and was replaced with a frown for more than half the book. In-fact, the only part of the book that I even grinned at was the very last chapter. And even then, it wasn't much of one. There were so many things in the book that either made me cringe, or I outright disagreed with, or even felt was too thin.
The book is about Wang Liping, and his apprenticeship under three masters known as Wayfarers, for 15 years. That pretty much sums up the book. It was pretty boring, I have to say. One of the things that really made me cringe was near the beginning. When the three masters first find Wang Liping, and his apprenticeship begins, what they do to him is nothing short of torture. And as it goes along, it continues to get worse and worse. They even kill him! Although putting it like that was is a bit exaggerated, but still true.
First they lock him in a shed of sorts, and tell him to sit still and practice structured thought. He can't leave or go to the bathroom, just sit and think. If he moves, they scold him. If he moves too much, they go in and tie in up with rope into the position that they want him to stay in, then ignore him until the allotted time is up. Wang tries his best to please these guys the entire time.
Then they put him deep in the ground where it was dark and damp and told him to sit and still his mind. Except he started to feel claustrophobic and began to have a hard time breathing. They left him, forcing him to deal with it, they ignored his pleas. They left him for increasingly extended periods of times, or even days, too, as this training progressed. I thought this was pretty bad, but they managed to save the best for last.
Next they put him inside an upside-down urn, just barely large enough to fit in. He got two bricks to sit on, and it was during scorching heat, so it was boiling inside. It was built over a cesspit, so it wreaked inside the urn with the scorching temperature, so much so, it made Wang want to vomit. If he lost concentration, he was scolded for it. One of the masters would come along every now and then and scrape or bang rocks on the side of the urn to distract him. If they were successful, Wang was scolded again.
They also would scoop up some of the foul filth from the cesspit and pour it over the urn and into a crack in the urn, making conditions and the smell worse, as maggots began to crawl into the urn. If he wavered, he was scolded. If he cried out for mercy, they made conditions worse. If he moved, they would poke him with sticks, and in some cases, wounding him. And at one point he had to pee. His cries for relief fell on deaf ears, and he was forced to relieve himself there in the urn, all over himself. He was of course scolded, and forced to clean up his on mess with his own clothes, and then return to training without fuss.
I don't know about you, but this sounds a lot like torture to me. And if this was back a hundred years ago or more, I might not think much of it. Since conditions and expectations where much more gritty and hard then today. However, it's not. This was back in the 1960's. Also, you don't need to go through all of this to develop strong concentration skills. The only reason I can see for putting this boy through such trials is for the sake of speed, which I think was a pressing issue to the Wayfarers.
After all this, and Wang Liping begins to master concentration, the torture lets up almost completely, and the atmosphere changes. They are all buddy-buddy now. They leave the village for what remains of this 15 year adventure, because of persecution and an upheaval that was taking place in China at that time. They wander the woods and mountainsides, visiting other Wayfarers and shines and healing people along their travels, as the masters convey their knowledge to Wang.
It went from cringe-worthy to boring pretty quickly, and never really manages to regain itself. At three different points in his journey, the masters poison Wang as apart of this process of training. It's apart of this cleansing and spiritual growth process. However, it too is unneeded, as there are more natural ways to achieve the same goal without such measures. And they weren't pressed for time, and Wang was far enough along to accomplish them as well.
They do talk a bit about some of what the masters and Wang himself can do with these abilities they've trained so hard for. But surprisingly, there aren't that many episodes in the book that feature these abilities. Nor are they talked about at any length or how they're done. Some of them are pretty cool. Like when the masters heal this man with a snake bite using chi. Or how they can make themselves lighter to move more efficiently and faster, even to catch up to a truck to hitch a ride, unbeknownst to the driver. Or how they can render themselves more or less invisible to people.
It focuses strongly on the experiences Wang has during his meditation sessions, and cleansing periods. Although they go into more depth for these experiences, they ultimately felt flat to me, lacking flavor. In many cases what is described in the book felt outright exaggerated upon. I don't doubt that these experiences are real or possible, just the authors ability to maintain the integrity of the truth. It felt like the author in someways was left with blank spots that they needed to fill in, and not knowing the truth, resorted to exaggeration or stretching to try and fill them.
In the end I can't say I would recommend this book to anyone, with the exception of someone who is interested in history, as it does cover this time period a bit. Or someone interested in a casual adventure, if they can get past the torture parts near the beginning.
If I could say a few good things about the book, it would be. It focuses on the power of concentration and what it brings. And that there is more to you then you might know. It does focus on the blissful states after you've managed some success, which is also true. However, it makes it sound like you have to go through hell to get there, and that isn't true.
3/10
Hope you enjoyed!
