Home / Eighteen Lohan Palm / Lineage
傳承 · · Line of transmission
Where it
comes from.
A complete system of cultivation that travelled, survived, and came back — told as the tradition tells it, with the uncertain parts marked as uncertain.
The account as the tradition gives it
According to the tradition passed down by Grandmaster Chen Qiming 陳其明, the lineage originated in the Southern Shaolin Temple. After the temple was partly destroyed, one of its masters sought refuge in Tibet, where a monastery kept the Eighteen Lohan Palm as part of its Buddhist training from the 1700s onward.
The modern history becomes clear with Chen himself (1945–2022), a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine in Guangzhou. In the 1960s a Tibetan lama, Lama Tenzin, came to Guangzhou to exchange knowledge with local Buddhists and fell ill. Chen treated him and restored him to health free of charge. The lama settled at a temple in the White Cloud Mountains near the city and taught Chen the Eighteen Lohan Palm, by then carrying elements of Tibetan Buddhist practice. Chen studied with him for some thirty years, and practised the system for the rest of his life.
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To the 1700s · Southern Shaolin
The Southern Shaolin Temple
Lohan practice as the lineage account preserves it. After the temple was partly destroyed, one of its masters sought refuge in Tibet.
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1700s–1960s · Tibet
Tibetan transmission
The practice survives in Tibet through a Buddhist line, taking on its character along the way.
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1960s · Guangzhou, then Canada
Grandmaster Chen Qiming 陳其明 (1945–2022)
Lama Tenzin transmits the surviving Lohan to Dr Chen in Guangzhou. Chen develops and refines the system across his life, moves to Edmonton, Canada, in 2002, and teaches until his death in 2022.
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From 2003 · Canada
Sifu Neil Ripski
Neil trained with Grandmaster Chen as a formal inner-door disciple from 2003 until Chen's death in 2022. Chen formally recognised him as holder of the complete lineage in June 2013. He carries the Eighteen Lohan Palm transmission forward through his teaching.
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Now · Scotland
This practice
Before he passed, Grandmaster Chen asked that the Lohan lineage be carried to future generations. Ian trained in the system with Neil Ripski and is an authorised instructor. That transmission is what reaches this school.
A living tradition is not preserved by copying its outer shape. It survives through practice, experience, understanding and transmission.
Carrying it on
What transmission means here
Ian trained in the system with Sifu Neil Ripski and is an authorised instructor. That is a specific and limited claim: it means the material is taught as it was received, and that there is someone above him in the line to be answerable to. It is not a claim to have completed anything.
Neil visits the UK from time to time to teach the system directly, which is the clearest way for students here to meet the transmission at first hand. Dates appear on the classes page once confirmed.
Grandmaster Chen's own account of the internal work, Secrets of Longevity Revealed, has been translated in full into English by Ian — see study and texts.