[QUOTE=cjurakpt;881960]it’s basically a question of the difference between one’s personal “style” in context of whatever “system(s)” one has been exposed to / studied; [/quote]you are what you practice. this is the individual beauty of the arts… personalized expression.
in the beginning, you are “empty”, so when you start studying a given approach, you are less likely to express it differently then how it was taught to you, because it’s all you “know”;
it settles and becomes your core, your source which expresses itself thru your physical body.
to wit,
funny… first impression is you are in the law enforcement wavelength…
notice that the more dogmatic MA types tend to be the “one style forever” types - to them, self-actualization occurs within the confines of what they were taught and passing it on unaltered basically gives them a (false) sense of order and security
all part of the underlying concept of choice in suffering… people lacking conviction or faith tend to walk the road of suffering with others like themselves… lack of self-confidence manifests in herd mentalities…
- a lot of Korean MA (IMPE) seem to engender this sort of “devotion” to an extreme, although certainly it exists for MA of all cultures (so-called western as well); so for these people, “style” is a quantifiable objective entity; it is something that comes from without and exists as a meta-structure irrespective of the individual - inherently deterministic
if a people can’t even see what is across the border, they will only behave as the country they live in…
in Ch’an there is the notion of “drinking the dregs of someone else’s meal”;
are you drinking because you are thirsty or are you merely taste testing?
meaning that, as soon as you repeat, you cease to create (or rather, as soon as you attempt to repeat, because technically “repetition” even when intended as such is not possible), yo are simply eating someone’s leftovers;
yet the foundations of structure are similar courses of block… it’s only above grade that the individuality begins… everything has a root, yet the root does not bear the fruit.
now again, at the very beginning, there is necessarily a phase where one walks to the beat of a drum other than one’s own, but ultimately, there comes a point where one has to resume one’s own natural pace;
such is the lesson in the nature of [b]experience.[/b]
as such, we come to the true point which is the essence of why do we practice at all:
we practice to physically manifest our experience in living… if we were to do nothing… there would be no creativity.
I would suggest that the reason is freedom; what is freedom?
how can you suggest it being freedom if you do not know what freedom is?
true freedom is freedom from habit, from the unconscious, knee-jerk reactivity that draws on our experience of psychological time in order to come up with a response based on what has happened previously;
aren’t we free enough to choose wether we want to use something that has come before? it is a freewill universe…
in other words, if my habit is to become angry when confronted by someone in a certain way, then I will always be trapped into that reactive pattern (the analogy for MA is that every time someone attacks me, I unconsciously react a certain way that may or may not be appropriate to the actual situation, because that is how my “style” is “supposed” to react);
in order to change your reactions, you must change your mindset.
on the other hand, when we are truly free, we have the capacity to respond as opposed to react, out of our direct awareness of the situation at hand;
freedom does incorporate the fact that you do have options to choose from.
as such, we are able to meet life directly, without pretext;
everything has a source.
this takes a great deal of energy relative to the other way - our practice, whatever it may be, is the means by which we nourish ourselves in order to meet the challenge of life
you are what you practice… [b]practice makes perfect[/b]… funny… ive heard this expression expressed before…
so then we speak of one’s personal style, this ontologically flows from the net of past experience combined with something else - something ineffable, something that can’t be taught, something that occurs in those “a-ha!” moments
[b]enlightenment[/b].
- the moment when the fruit drops off of the branch on it’s own; meaning that, if we have the right teacher, he / she will support those moments instead of squelching them
nature is the best teacher and is more gentle than the breeze.
- meaning that this is a teacher that knows, eventually, that they are providing the student with the very means of passing beyond their tutelage into something unique -
in a sense they are not teachers, but messengers.
that is the hallmark of a great teacher!
you are unaware that he is.
that they hold the door open for you on your way out, with no expectation that you will do anything the way that they do it…
yet they will still just be themselves… no one is obliged to hold the door.
the danger of leaving too soon is simple: if you are still drinking from the wellspring of your teacher, then it may not be the right time to go;
if teachers are wellsprings, it’s the traveller that moves… not the spring.
but once you have dug your own well and the water is flowing freely…
just be the water… then there is no need to dig the well.
