BOOK PALM & CANDLE: A Biography of Sifu Chik Qadir Mason
- Dylan Kirk
- Jul 31
- 4 min read
Prologue
The old master sat with his young disciple in a dark room meditating.
The disciple asks: “Master, where does the darkness come from”?
Without hesitation, a flash of light consumes the darkness and settles into the flickering light of a candle. With a gleam in his eye, the Old Master says: “If you tell me where it went, then I will tell you where it came from.”
Somewhere in an urban park in Philadelphia….
His silhouette is unmistakable. An old man pauses from doing movements in a park, a streetlight is shining behind him in the dusk as the heat of a summer in Philly gets some evening relief. He is limping, worn and injured from the lifetime of a martial artist. At first appearing slightly disheveled, then his eyes pierce as if he knew your ancestors as his features come into view. A strong voice is chatting up strangers in the park. Shaved head, Sanskrit tattoos, and the baggy clothes infusing traditional east Asian style with urban Philly style. A Bagua patch hand sewn on his sling bag with red ink characters: 八卦掌.
“I come from the sultans… “ he says.
Others just stare, ready to walk away.
“My great great grandfather was the Sultan of Syria”
The onlookers pause, then return a slightly guarded smile, unsure if he is just a friendly old man or some threat.
“Oh word?” they said.
“Yes he was! His name was Sarkariuss Chipporian, Sultan of Syria….
The intrigue of his eccentric look, and his charismatic smile disarmed them as they slowly gathered around to hear his stories.
Sifu’s heritage was that of a warrior-scholar whose legacy carried traditions of leadership, mysticism, and martial discipline that trickled down bloodlines and lineages. Everyone could see that Sifu was built differently, seemingly invincible in his ways. A life of fighting, but healing faster than the wounds could land. An ever bright burning spirit, that others just couldn’t seem to catch up with. The way he would jaunt across lanes of traffic without so much as a pause… and, his endless tales of his life, transmitting wisdom and experience to everyone around him.
“Have you ever heard the Tale of the Sands?” Sifu asked.
By now they had warmed up to his smile and charismatic nature as their guarded stance turned into curiosity.
“A stream, from its source in far-off mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared.
It was convinced, however that its destiny was to cross this desert, and yet there was no way. Now a hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered: ‘The Wind crosses the desert, and so can the stream.’
The stream objected that it was dashing itself against the sand and only getting absorbed: that the wind could fly, and this was why it could cross a desert.
'By hurtling in your own accustomed way you cannot get across. You will either disappear or become a marsh. You must allow the wind to carry you over, to your destination.’
But how could this happen? 'By allowing yourself to be absorbed in the wind.’
This idea was not acceptable to the stream. After all, it had never been absorbed before. It did not want to lose its individuality. And, once having lost it, how was one to know that it could ever be regained?
'The wind’, said the sand, 'performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water again becomes a river.’
'How can I know that this is true?’
'It is so, and if you do not believe it, you cannot become more than a quagmire, and even that could take many, many years; and it certainly is not the same as a stream.’
'But can I not remain the same stream that I am today?’
'You cannot in either case remain so,’ the whisper said. 'Your essential part is carried away and forms a stream again. You are called what you are even today because you do not know which part of you is the essential one.’
When he heard this, certain echoes began to arise in the thoughts of the stream. Dimly, he remembered a state in which he -or some part of him, was it?- had been held in the arms of a wind. He also remembered -or did he?- that this was the real thing, not necessarily the obvious thing, to do.
And the stream raised his vapor into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upwards and along, letting it fall softly as soon as they reached the roof of a mountain, many, many miles away. And because he had his doubts, the stream was able to remember and record more strongly in his mind the details of the experience. He reflected, 'Yes, now I have learned my true identity.’
The stream was learning. But the sands whispered, 'We know, because we see it happen day after day: and because we, the sands, extend from the riverside all the way to the mountain.’
And that is why it is said that the way in which the Stream of Life is to continue on its journey is written in the Sands.”
Sifu reflects the perfect dichotomy of the light of transcendence and the trauma and hardship of a life of suffering. As a Syrian Armenian, his Grandfather was beheaded during the Armenian genocide. His grandmother fled to the US with two children, one was Sifu’s father (Henry), and his sister Dorthy. While Dorthy was quickly adopted, his father (Henry) was not. After some time, he was sent up to be raised in a Sufi orphanage in Hamilton Canada. His father Henry would go on to learn about Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teachings and study Omar Khayyam’s poetry being steeped in Sufi culture and heritage. Despite these spiritual insights, the generational trauma remained. His father would go on to become a navy welter weight boxing champion named “Boston Blackie" and as he tried to make his way in the new world, he would do what he had to, working as a bookie, racehorse owner, and taxicab entrepreneur. This was the world that Sifu Chik entered...
*Stay tuned as we share the stories of Sifu's life, chapter by chapter, infused with his spiritual wit and wisdom.
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