thats exactly the fault of it. If you come in with a chip on your shoulders, an ifneriority complex, a hatred for the world or certain individuals, training in boxing will not make you any happier of a person, it will not change your life, and you will be just as miserable/feel just as ifnerior/or have just as much hatred. That is why people like Tyson raped someone or bit someone’s ear off. Changing a human character is said to be one of the hardest things, for instance changing someone from a pushover/doormat/pansy into a toughguy, or changing someone from a thug into a calm person. What can one do to do that? what can oen learn? I remember seeying a news story about some kid who was bullied and took up boxing, and it didnt help him at all, ehwthe physical or mental Im not shure but he was in the news so he must have had to resort to worse means.
but, for me at least, there is enlightenment in striving against someone as hard as you can and knowing they are doing the same and at some point a victor is decided. it really doesn’t matter who wins, but that you did the training to get to the point that you can compete (not meaning sport comps especially) against someone at that level.
FTR, I’m not talking about hurting people. I will keep using the words ‘fight’ and ‘combat’ and ‘compete’ but at no time am I talking about a desire to actually hurt someone. That’s why sport competition is so important, IMO. A good sport program is designed to allow maximum endeavor with minimum hurt.
On the street you will almost always be fighting someone alot bigger/stronger/more agressive/with larger history of violence, than you. Or one with his friends ready to back him up, street fights are almsot never fair between two equals.
I don’t think I said anything about not teaching forms. I’m a firm believer in the use of forms. just not the overuse.
I basically agree with that.
FTR, I’m also not in disagreement that there are things, ‘dirty tricks’, in CMA that are usefull for fighting. Just that reliance upon them as fightstoppers is silly.
Great question. I think Gene made some great points as well.
If we look at military literatures and such things in ancient China, we will find that warfare has always be spiritual in nature from a Chinese perspective. There are a plenty of military manuscripts through out the ages other than Sunzi’s text that reflect the spiritual side of military action.
There aren’t a lot of study in military history in China these days. If we look closely, we will find a few interesting thing
Tang dynasty (618 - 906 CE) bascially is feudal system and its armies were not really professional armies. Most of the time peasants were drafted to do the biding of the feudal lords. It is of note that Japan was pretty much the same way until the 1500s -1600s where the samurai class rises.
Song dynasty (960 - 1279 CE) saw the potential problem of that and began to consolidate military power as well as reinforcing political control over the military. This gave rise to professional soliders. Despite the efforts of the central government, troops were still loyal mostly to their own leaders such as General Yue and General Yang. These are sometimes known as the “family Troops”.
Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644 CE) continued and extended the policy of Song dynasty where military personel inherit the titles and positions of their parents. For example, General Qi inherited his father’s rank and position as thrid in garrison command in Deng Zhou, Shandong (modern day Ponglai). BTW in Japan, the Samurais were kind of like that too. This further stablized the control over the professional army. Civil officiers, often Confucian scholars, were placed as the highest command of the troops. Military class was merely serving the political masters. What is of note is that the military class was mostly Daoist (folk Daoism). When your life is on the line, you will believe in anything that perceived as having the power to keep you alive. It also provides an escape in an otherwise very restrictive system.
I believe much of the blending of Confucian and Daoist ideology showing in Kung Fu especially in South Shaolin arts is bascially because of the Ming dynasty military policy carried on by the rebellion forces during Qing dynasty. We can easily see where the filial piety came from. In a very big way, Kung Fu today is really an extention and reflection of Ming dynasty military art culture IMHO.
TCMA should develop all aspects, not just one to the exclusion of others. A lot of TCMA that you see now is just Mun or Sun, somewhere along the way it lost the Mo.
Tao Lu (ie hand and weapon forms) are used as vehicles of mental and spiritual development. Why not just do Qi Gong?
Many “modern arts” only develop Mo. There’s no “art” to the martial art. Can they fight, sure! But do they use their whole selves to fight? Do they use there intellect and their spirit to fight. Or is is only force on force, body on body, strength against strength?
You might win a fight but if you walk away with a broken hand or missing teeth did you really win? That is where Mun and Sun come in. They take it to a higher level of mind and spirit against body.
My formula is thus:
Yi (mind-intent) =the right mindset
Xing (form)=bodily structure and shape
(also shape of specific techniques, static and moving)
Jin (body mechanics)=coordinated power/skill developed from practicing correct form
San Shou (application)=applying the techniques with the correct Yi, Jin and Xing under varying degrees of pressure.
Everyone has something to work on. Mostly I see bad attitudes that prevent people from ever even approaching the other aspects.
Fu-Pow hit the preverbial nail on the head so to speak.
Everyone has an aspect within themselves that needs work. Many of the masters today are no exception.
One of the largest factors in the modern world I think is the neccessity that is no longer there.
Generally speaking, on average one will never need to resort to melee combat to save thier life. So the emphasis on the extreme training methods has gradually decresed. Likewise, with an emphasis on western culture, one does not seek enlightenment because of a blanket of security that has been placed throughout society by government, religion, and ignorance.
Very few people, if anyone on the planet today has the value of experiences that were undergone by many of the past masters. The world itself is just a different place all together.
I feel good about my masters skill, I know he has fought, and I know he still can. I enjoy the fact that he is a serious buddhist and has respect for everyone. I also am glad that he seperates studies from his regular life, in class he is the master not your friend, end of story. But at the same time he is still a product of the modern world. We are all products of our environment. There is a great atmospher of traditionality at his school, but at the same time he has adapted well to america and has put methods in place to make the experience more exceptable for us all. The longer you train under him the harder the training becomes. This is a great way of challenging anyone.
I would never want to “reach back a thousand years” and recover the ancient methods. I myself am not ancient. There are traditional elements that mesh well with modern society and there are those that do not. Just as there are circumstances in effect today that just simply would not fly 1000 years ago in any culture.
I feel it is finding the balance within traditionality and modernity that will help keep the art we love alive and strong. Constant change is inevitable, and it shall always be. The ability to meld yourself with this change and adapt to your surroundings is, IMO, one of the most valuable aspects of a traditional mindset in regards to the combative arts.
oso. there are plenty of great teachers out there that arent fighters and dont teach fighting. but it this arguement always seems to go back to fighting. can a master be good but have no fighting ability? yes. they can be great. are they encompassing the whole aspect of traditional martial arts? not to me they are. is it their fault for not training to fight? might be, might not be. they might not have been able to train it at one time or another or was just one who never did it. thats fine. doesnt mean you cant be a great master cause you never learned to fight.
encompassing the whole art even means encompassing everything even the things you dont want to do. like fighting. i hate fighting personally. i enjoy the forms and exercise better then the fighting. but i do the fighting because its part of the art, learning to defend yourself. it also means getting into the spiritual side a bit of it too. that is part of the art. im not syaing you have to be buddhist, its the whole wu de thing.
oh yeah we do use pads. but sometimes you forget to control your emotions and things happen. injuries arent that often. i have only seen 2/3 serious ones in the 5 years i have been training. mostly just lots of bruising.
(but that you did the training to get to the point that you can compete)
(I will keep using the words ‘fight’ and ‘combat’ and ‘compete’)
all very different ideas with their own training methods.
Its kind of the same problem our military has in the middle east, when they feel that real soldiers ware uniforms and use tactics like large armies, or the idea that you can have a war on terrorism (an idea?)
Sifu Ross doesn’t compete nor was ever much of a fighter, yet look at his school and the number of prodigees he has. Hell he doesnt even teach the same style he was taught what I wonder is how he got business in the first place.
The spiritual component in your average martial arts school is pretty much moot or more often than not a convoluted mish mash of the head instructors personal reckoning of things and his or her world view. Is that spirituality? Is it a shot at enlightenment to study with someone else who clearly isn’t there?
I am not comfortable with this component in martial arts for a few reasons.
What is the tangible aspect of spirituality in martial arts that is not everywhere?
Or, how is martial arts anymore of a spiritual path than new age adult synchronized swimming?
Ancient Chinese culture is completely irrelevant for the most part to the average modern westerner and particularly those who practice martial arts. The Pai structure is neato and cool, but is not in keeping with the paradigm.
The required effort to become good at anything, to become masterful of ones chosen skills is not only found in the art of Kungfu. Nevertheless, the point is taken about people not going all the way, but then, who is teaching “all the way”?
No one, because you have to get there yourself. All a teacher in anything can do is show you something, it is up to you to do the rest. Even then, we’ve seen many teachers who make claims about the extreme danger of using such an art but there is pretty much nothing to substantiate these claims. Then when some venue like mma comes along and basically says if you want to support those claims then step up. Then the bells toll, the whistles buzz, and people fail to show up and those few that do certainly are in for their share of rude awakenings. So, yeah, as has been indicated above, the “my art is too deadly” usally translates out to “I don’t know what the heck I’m doing”
The reason I’m rolling back the covers on this is because of my own training experiences over the past 4 years where I have been exposed to what appears to be more practical and efficient methods of developing skills in martial arts that I did not find in the traditional and classical martial arts I have spent so many years with. It’s changed my pov on a lot of it in particular on the “martial” aspect.
The mantra is “You cannot swim if you don’t go in the water”.
I think there are a lot of traditionalists who haven’t dipped their toes in yet and when they do, they will be surprised at how cold that water is.
These are not some idle musings. I’m kind of ticked at the state of things.
WARNING!!! Most of this response is geared to OSO…everyone else might want to skip to that last three paragraphs…
OSO said]
so, I’m feeling like ‘traditional’ should really refer to the much older stuff rather then anything that was developed after…say, 1000 A.D. … or maybe even 960 since Chao Kuan Yin is said to have had a lot of influence on the shape of CMA during his reign.
Reply]
Not nesasarily so. The arts evolved quite a bit into the late Qing dynasty. The Emperor Sung Tai Tzu’s (Chao Kuang Yin’s) art really wasn’t perfected untill the late Ming either. Back in 960 AD, it appears that few outside of Shaolin even practiced forms. Martial arts were crude, and mostly restricted to a handfull of techinques (30-40) at best. These were practiced as individual drills with partners. My studies into Tai Tzu eventually revealed there WAS NO original 32 move form. The style was not really even about the Emperor’s favorite 32 techniques, but much much more about HOW to USE them to kick the snot out of others as needed, or desired.
The “Original” 32 move form was most likely developed somewhere between the Yuan dynasty, and the early Ming. Even so, each Tai Tzu line had added so much to the knowledge base by then that the newly created form surely contained much more than the original 32 moves, and was uniquely develped specific to each individual Tai Tzu line. Mst of which went on to evolve into completely new styles, or died off when times no longer required them.
Where am I going with this? Well, basicaly I’m siteing example as to why trying to go back to the very beginning of an art is not really holding to the “Traditional” either. If you really want to be traditional, then you should go to the art as it was at it’s peak. In Tai Tzu’s case that was during the ming dynasty. In the case of Bagua, that was only 120 years ago at best.
1000 years was a long time ago, and the arts may very well have been very refined by then, but final perfection of the chinese arts occured between the Ming, and Late Qing dynasty. Since that time the Chinese arts either remained the at same level (rarely), or greatly declined. The TRULY traditional masters are the ones who don’t worry about being carbon copies of thier teachers. They are the ones who hold true to the principals of the arts, and how to empart great skill in the styles to thier students.
Many who “Claim” to be traditional, are mearly play acting, and in reality are teaching in a VERY modern way that was developed at best in the last 50-60 years or so.
I love gong fu, but style purity is not the only issue to me, i want to be a complete fighter and believe i have the recources to do it, being exposed to other fighting arts.
Oh, and one other point, forms were NOT originally for students to train, they were for teachers to organise a cohiesive teaching curriculem. In the end, they had great benifit for students too, but they weren’t developed for them. The emphisis on forms in training is also a VERY modern thing.
My job causes me to miss out on such good discussions.
One problem with TCMA is that it is taught backwards in too many places. There was a time when the basics included internal training; yes, from the very beginning. The internal was not some advanced component that one should have to experience after 5 to10 to 20 years of training. If that were the case, there would be NO famous TCMA masters to read about. Also the basic training program is too short: one to three months. Basic level was from three to five years in some instances. And this does not include forms (with the possible exception of Tan Tui). Basic level included internal training, external training, meditation, fighting, drills and specialty training (palmwork, legwork etc). The advanced forms were earned;they were not paid for by monthly dues. After training this way one would be able to train the fighting forms in real time as well as use the techniques contained in them. Training this way is bad for business nowadays. I remember having to train Tan Tui 10 reps for each road (the roads were long). That was done with full power and low stances. It hurt BAD. So bad that after all these years, I am still waiting for my placenta to drop. It didn’t just train the body, it worked the mind on a very deep and psychological level. It questioned my commitment and my discipline. In all, I think it was worth the pain. Recently, a friend of mine had the idea to teach Tan Tui to his beginners-- the turnover was rapid. My friend did not realize that he needed to teach a balanced program. I remember reading an article by Robert Hui(I think that is mantis108) on “Defining Cross Training” It was the best martial arts based read that I have seen in many years. To put it simply, it was a template for a lifetime of learning that present TCMA could benefit from.
Another aspect, and I agree with oso here, is perception. TCMA are supposed to be soft, fluid, and deadly at its most advanced levels. A lot of this hype is put forth by the masters themselves in order to “teach something,teach nothing.” Some masters would even encourage their students to watch kung fu movies to learn how to fight. So if a neophyte were to go to a movie and see a triple feature-- Five Fingers of Death, Five Deadly Venoms and Fist of Legend-- he would be leaving the theatre quite confused. Real transmissions must be extended(ex: through fighting) and felt in order to be received and understood. And so with the initial impression of the soft fluid martial art, TCMA has tended to be a magnet for those who are not confrontational by nature and are really not into the feel of a bone breaking from the impact of their strikes. I am refering to that killer instinct.
One final aspect is the lack of understanding of what “kung fu” is. It is self discipline. That means that no one should ask more of you than yourself when it comes to your training. Some have erroneously believed that going and learning is progress. You need to interact with what you are learning with intensity and passion. In doing so, you spark the real light of learning that will never burn out. If you don’t it won’t come to you.
I started with Tan Tui and Shuai Jiao. Every step is a kick. The practice is to do every thing right every time. To save pain is to be really relaxed in moving. When kick or bounce leg, do not “tighten” till the last end point and a sudden stop. It has the sudden force near the very end. It looks powerful and yet saves strength. After a while, you kick as if you walk naturally. The moving practice is easy to “cheat”. The standing one is not. Try not moving in any stance for 25 min or more. I may stand on one leg and raise the other leg at waist high. The is the end posture of Tan Tui. You hold this posture as long as you can.
I have to relax my mind into stillness. In the summer time in Taiwan, there was a big distraction or challenge, the mosquito or fly. I would feel them landing on me and biting me. And yet no moving. “But Master, the mosquito is biting me!” think loundly.
Sorry.
My point is that practice to have very basic skills first. You have a good foundation then move on to more advanced stuff.
Take all the time you need. Patience is a virtue. The skills come with practice over time.
If you believe in overnite magic, that would be sad. Unless of course, you are born talented or gifted.
I was very clumsy when I was a kid. I lost a shoe into the lake in Taipei New city park while watching the Masters practicing. Everyone laughed at me. But all of a sudden, I have many willing teachers to teach me. Everything in Kung Fu is about balance. Balance in standing. Balance in moving. Balance in postures. Balance in neutralizing power. Balance in issuing power.
Oh, everything you heard and saw about CMA is true. Will you be there right away? probably not. How long it gonna take? years or decades. As long as it needs to.
You know what. Once you master whatever skills you cultivate, you still have to practice everyday or the skills will slip away. More so when you get old.
I practice CMA and religions since young. It is hard for me to separate the 2.
Back to regular posting.
I am ranting now. I still have a bad cold and drowsy on cold meds.
It isn’t just in the U.S, all over the world tma fail to show up or kill people, but if they really could do that do you think they would? what would motivate them to show up and use dim mak if some monk womewhere actually knew it. Do you think sifu ross’s teacher would show up in ufc 1? hell it was in his time I think and where was he? if we had the technology to resurrect past masters from the dead they probably wouldnt show up anyway. People who are really secure in their abilities and sued them in combat don’t need or want to do it in public venues.
Where am I going with this? Well, basicaly I’m siteing example as to why trying to go back to the very beginning of an art is not really holding to the “Traditional” either. If you really want to be traditional, then you should go to the art as it was at it’s peak. In Tai Tzu’s case that was during the ming dynasty. In the case of Bagua, that was only 120 years ago at best.
do you really think those guys at that time would teach you (a white esterner)? or they were any better than today’s fighters or hell todays practitioners of those styles? today we can learn all those sttles plus morer with no secrecy so todays practitiners should be better.
One problem with TCMA is that it is taught backwards in too many places. There was a time when the basics included internal training; yes, from the very beginning. The internal was not some advanced component that one should have to experience after 5 to10 to 20 years of training.
actually most of those guys would have a very dogmatic ways of trianing for instance standing in the san ti or horse stance for three years with no additional training just to test the students obedience and loyalty to the master. Sun Lu Tang for instance only did this for a period of time with xingyi, and that is just one example I can think off the top of my head. Also they did everything without questioning it or the master, not to mention each of those masters often would leave something out of the style by not teaching it to anyone.
do you really think those guys at that time would teach you (a white esterner)? or they were any better than today’s fighters or hell todays practitioners of those styles? today we can learn all those sttles plus morer with no secrecy so todays practitiners should be better.
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Not the point. I was pointing out that to be truley traditional is not to go ALL the way back to the beginning, but better to go to an art at it’s peak and see how it was taught. In Tai Tzu, there are a few lines that teach the way it was taught at it’s peak. Infact, Tai Tzu is a rather no nonsense art that has been relatively preserved since it’s peak during the Ming in many lines.
