Ben Zen is a black
Buddhist Monk that has been trained in all forms of the Martial
Arts. He started as a child at age five when bandits in a very
remote region of China killed his missionary parents. He was
taken to the nearest settlement and dropped off in the dead of night by
one of the bandit’s girlfriends. The place was a monastery for
Buddhist monks. They were fighting monks of the Northern Shaolin
sect from the original temple in Henan. Although they rarely
accepted outsiders to the monastery for induction they made an
exception this time due to the circumstances and the fact that the
child had no other options. He could tell them his name, Ben but
the rest of his memory was blocked by the horrendous ordeal. The
monks did not know that his parents were missionaries. The church
that sent them assumed that they were all dead. He was also the
only black child or for that matter outsider that had ever been inside
the temple. He was a bad student in the beginning due to the
trauma he had experienced. He would only do the least amount of
work to get by and would get picked on by all the Chinese
students. They would all laugh at his kung fu because it was so
bad.
One day he was
sent to study under a monk whose apprentice had graduated. On the
first day the monk told him to go out and play in the courtyard.
The monk went on into the training hall and started to do some intense
kung fu exercises that Ben had never before seen. The next day
when he came the monk told him to go and play in the courtyard
again. The next day after that was the same routine. Two
weeks went by and Ben started to watch him practice and try to copy his
moves on his own. A month went by and he was still watching and
practicing the moves and footwork of the old monk from his vantage
point looking through the window. It rained one day and the monk
still told him to go out and play. Three months went by in this
manner when young Ben finally asked if he could come into the training
hall. The old monk told him that only grandmasters or future
grandmasters are allowed to enter. Ben did not hesitate and
entered the hall and bowed to his new Shifu (master/teacher). The
old monk smiled. He liked the fact that there was no hesitation
in the child’s decision. It is a sign of dedication and
focus. They went in and sat down on the cold stone floor.
The monk said the first lesson is the most important lesson. You
will synchronize your heart to mine. The heart is the strongest
muscle and if you can control it you will be able to control
everything.
It took Ben a year
of total concentration to accomplish this one task. The day came
when he felt a spiritual and physical oneness with his teacher.
He learned to slow down his heart rate to one beat a minute, then to
one beat per hour. They were now in complete synchronization and
harmony so the training could begin. He grew into a tall handsome
man and was well respected by all the other students. He always
made sure that he did more work and did it better than anyone. By
all accounts he was a tremendous student, one of the best. Twenty
years later Ben graduated with many honors and did many good deeds and
brought much honor to the temple. The day came when he was
considered a Master. It was also decided that Ben should teach
the lessons of the Shaolin Temple to others in his probable birth
country, America. His teacher gave him a second name. That
name was Zen because he wanted Ben to always live a Zen life and just
be happy.
Ben immigrated to
America and started a school open to all nationalities from around the
world and soon became well known to those seeking spiritual
enlightenment as well as Gung Fu skills. The one thing he
stressed above all else to all his students was to never use their
fighting skills to harm another person. Unfortunately his
students didn’t listen to him sometimes and got into fights with a
rival Martial Arts gang called the Green Dragons. His school
flourished and his students started calling themselves the Zen
Boys.
Ben Zen also started to get feelings for a student named Lotus. He had never had this kind of feelings before in his life and didn’t know what was happening to him. By having these longings for this girl he was breaking own his solemn vow of chastity. A Buddhist monk wants to break the cycle of birth and rebirth to enter into Nirvana so as to attain enlightenment and free the spiritual self from wanting or needing all things in this material world. Ben Zen is a monk that has accidentally fallen in love with a student that loves him. He is at a crossroad in his life. If he goes with this girl he will lose his school and his credibility.
