20 Shaolin Sayings: The Proverbs Shaolin Masters Train By

For most of its fifteen centuries, the Shaolin Temple wrote almost nothing down. Its art moved from master to disciple in short spoken sayings: compact, rhythmic lines that each carry a complete training instruction. We have just published 20 Shaolin Sayings: The Complete Edition, a book that gathers twenty of these sayings, traces every one to a named source, and turns them back into what they always were: things to practice, not things to quote. Here is the story behind the book, and six of the sayings inside it.

What is a Shaolin saying?

Inside the training halls these lines are called 口头语 (kǒutóuyǔ), literally "mouth sayings." They were built to be spoken while training: short enough to hold in the mind during a form, rhythmic enough to survive being passed down through generations who never saw them written. A good saying compresses an entire method into a single breath. When a master corrects a student's punch with "the tip initiates, the middle follows, the root pursues," he is not being poetic. He is naming the exact sequence a strike should travel through the body.

That is what separates these lines from the "Shaolin quotes" that circulate online. Most of those are invented, misattributed, or borrowed from films. The real sayings are recorded in the temple's own literature, above all the multi-volume Shaolin Wushu Encyclopedia and classic manuals like Jin Jing Zhong's 1934 training text, and every saying in our book is cited back to those sources. If we could not name where a line comes from, it did not go in.

Six of the twenty

Fourteen more, each with its source named

The full book arranges all twenty sayings as a path in four chapters. The Gate covers how to begin: virtue, restraint, and why the master only leads you to the door. The Method covers how the body is organized: the six harmonies, the three sections, why "the hands are two gates" and the real striking is done with the legs. The Forge covers how skill is built: daily practice, training through the coldest days of winter and the hottest of summer, conditioning outside and breath inside. The Mind covers what it is all for: Chan and the martial arts as one, the eight strikes and eight forbidden strikes, and the ordinary mind that is the Way.

• Every saying sourced. Each of the twenty is traced to a named book of the Shaolin Wushu Encyclopedia or a classic manual, so you know exactly where the words come from.
• Chinese and pinyin throughout. Every saying appears in the original characters with tone-marked pinyin, so you can learn the lines as they were actually spoken.
• An "In Practice" exercise for every saying. Each chapter ends where the tradition insists it should: in your body, with something concrete to train today.
• Original ink-wash artwork. Commissioned illustrations in the classical style accompany the sayings through the book.

Prefer to start free?

If you would like a first taste of Shaolin wisdom before committing, our free ebook Shaolin Wisdom: 8 Principles for Life distills the philosophy into eight short chapters. And if the sayings make you want to train the art they describe, The Shaolin Foundations teaches the Thirteen Fist, the very form saying ten describes when it says the Shaolin fist travels a single line. For the inner path behind saying sixteen, read our guide to Shaolin meditation, Chan and Qi Gong.

Frequently asked questions

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Questions about the book or the training? Get in touch and we will answer honestly.