Shi Heng Yi: the very modern monk

Photography Paul Stuart

Shi Heng Yi’s brand of Buddhism doesn’t demand a life of egoless simplicity and celibacy, detached from the modern world, as you might expect from the monastic. Today there’s a visiting Kung Fu grandmaster leading an event who, Shi Heng Yi later tells me approvingly, “wears a big gold chain, has a Rolex, drives a Porsche”. A drone and two cameras film his seminar, to be uploaded later online. He recently became a father for the first time, which is unusual, though not unheard of, in the world of public-facing Shaolin leaders. He and his partner are raising their young son in Romania, where Shi Heng Yi spent formative years in his 20s.

The class continues. An imposing, bearded man with a beanbag on his head addresses his pupils. “You are more than you think”, he tells them. “Don’t underestimate yourself. Don’t overestimate yourself, either. Now, we’ll breathe.”

For more than a millennium, monks and grandmasters like Shi Heng Yi have travelled to spread their gospel. Early iterations of Buddhism in China focused on recitation of the sutras, not physicality. Physical practice was integrated into the first Shaolin temple in order to save the monk’s bodies – weak from studying – from degenerating, and to help them protect their temples from looting. They developed their own style of Kung Fu, and a new school of thought: “Enlightenment won’t come from studying books alone,” says Shi Heng Yi. “It needs to be found in movement and daily life.”

Dr Zhouxiang Lu, an Associate Professor in Chinese Studies at Maynooth University, Ireland, told me: “Shaolin monks became influential figures who’d traverse China for up to a decade, eventually setting up their own monasteries.” Here, they’d develop their own ethos based on Chan Buddhism’s foundations. “When you start a new lineage,” Lu continued, “you need to be unique, not simply a copycat of other monks. You create your own ideas, philosophy and practice to differentiate yourself, and recruit more followers.” Shaolin monks were, essentially, early influencers of the mind, body and soul.

Integral to building a following is lore, and Shi Heng Yi has his own mythology. Both of his parents fled Communist Laos in the late 1970s. His mother crossed into Thailand by boat with little more than the dress she was wearing and a pocketful of change. In Bangkok she was arrested repeatedly, forced to steal, unable to pay for the basic necessities. After a year in a Unicef refugee camp, came the move to Germany.

The family settled in the town of Kaiserslautern, 10km from Shi Heng Yi’s temple. His father worked in a factory and his mother cared for the elderly. When he turned four, he was enrolled in a local Shaolin club. “Two hours, maybe, a couple of afternoons per week at first. I’d see these people on TV – Bruce Lee, Jet Lee, Michael Jackson – using their bodies as an instrument to express something beyond speech. I wanted to be like them.”

These training sessions increased incrementally. “I’d train three, four, five times per day by my teenage years. It was school, training, eating, bed.”

As with all origin stories, there came a moment of jeopardy. “Being a small child in Germany,” he says, “you’re not supposed to have much to say. Add to that the fact I had Southeast Asian parents? I had even less sway. I felt I was missing out on other aspects of my life with such rigorous training schedules.”

As a university student, then while living in Romania through his early 20s, he decided he “needed to break free”. He writes about this in his book: “It was a dark and wild time. The world glittered seductively, tempting me with drugs and a quick buck. I got caught up in mass brawls…” One night he was at a party with friends and a fight kicked off. On the street, someone revealed a gun and Shi Heng Yi was unsure how to react. “It was so frustrating,” he recalls. “I’d dedicated my life to being able to protect myself. Then came a situation just like in the movies I’d grown up watching. And I did nothing… It ate away inside of me.”

This led to a period of soul-searching and self-discovery. He returned to Kaiserslautern in 2011, took out a loan and purchased this property. “I wanted to be spiritual, with a high level of martial arts,” he explains. “I was looking for someone who combined both these worlds. And on my journey, from the age of 12, until I came back here to build this temple, I simply couldn’t find this person anywhere. So it had to be me who’d achieve it.”

In conversation he is softly spoken, calm and confident, but often talks in big-picture generalities. He speaks for a further hour, about self-control, the path to inner clarity, the search for greatness. When I arrived, I felt immediate discomfort and over the course of our meeting it didn’t entirely ease. I’ve learned to be suspicious of men looking to cultivate a cult of personality and exert traits of superiority, however compelling their narrative, so accustomed have I become to populist leaders, accused sex-offenders and conspiracy-theory peddlers doing precisely this.

I think of the parallels between Shi Heng Yi and someone like Andrew Tate. Not just the physical similarities between the two men (the shaved heads and the muscular physiques), but their trajectories, which are comparable, too. Both studied martial arts through their early years. (Tate was a successful kickboxer before pivoting to self-proclaimed sexism.) Both men live in Romania and have used social media to build a fandom. There’s a resemblance, even, in some of the language the men use. “We’re facing an identity crisis and have lost all sense of who we are,” Shi Heng Yi tells me. Lamenting that men have gone adrift is Tate’s bread and butter. “If you don’t wake up,” says Shi Heng Yi, “you live in a dream land. An illusion. You don’t see the world for what it is.” He repeatedly speaks of the need to awaken. The phrase “WAKE UP”, meanwhile, is plastered across Tate’s online content. Both men talk, repeatedly, of their superhuman power and discipline, post clips to highlight their physical strength, and tap into the search for gurus and community that preoccupies many men today.

Each trades off the same feelings experienced by many men in modern life: that something is missing. But, of course, their ideologies diverge. One points to the comfort to be found in what Shaolin labels the “inner world”, to find peace and eliminate hatred, greed and ignorance. The other regards these as virtues, and focuses on faults he finds in what Shi Heng Yi considers the “external world”, propagating misogyny and victimhood and the very urgent purchasing of Bitcoin instead.

“All of that is fake,” replies Shi Heng Yi, when I mention Tate and the culture he’s propagating. “Instead, go for a walk. Carry water. Chop wood. Help an animal. Paint the walls. Drink tea. Talk to your friends. Do this and the world changes.” He rhythmically slaps a variety of spots on his body, thudding echoes shaking the lukewarm contents of our teacups. “This is what’s real. Losing this translates into more keyboard warriors. Only this way will you be able to differentiate between real and fake, illusion and reality.”

At one point during my day at the temple, I’m shown inside a building, past a canteen, and upstairs to the temple’s tea room. Shi Heng Yi sits at a low table, on a cushion, and gestures for me to join. There are ornate instruments for tea ceremonies neatly lined up behind him. He pours hot water into a pot, slowly swirls it around, then discards its contents. We wait in silence.

“There’s a saying,” he says, eventually. “In the way of tea, you come to understand lots about life: small details, taking it slow, being conscious of every minute. This way, what you ultimately drink has a different type of value.” He goes on, “It’s a metaphor for life.” This outlook is reflective of the Shaolin way. “Everything you do, in every moment, if in the right state of mind, can be awakening.” He selects a pouch of fermented oolong, and leaves it to brew.

Shaolin Spirit: The Way to Self-Mastery is out now