“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” so to speak.
My sifu puts a definate emphasis on this matter.
“this is how I do it” he’ll say when demonstrating some movements in the forms. Then he will show you one or two of the applications for the movement. The rest is left up to the artist to interperate from there.
Sounds like you’ve got whatever you’re doing all worked out. Let me put it this way…my way of thinking about it works for me and your way works for you. Carry on.
oso qi
Qi as in ‘breath’ or ‘Qi’ as in…oh, energy for lack of a better word.
According to my dictionary, qi has six definitions: air, gas, breath, smell, airs/manners, & spirit.
I still have this whole ‘chicken or the egg’ question in my head about the ‘energy’ aspects and when the idea of ‘qi’ as energy came about. Is it said differently when meaning ‘breath’ or ‘energy’?
Same character. It’s actually the same in our language roots too - the root ‘spir’ is in ‘spirit’ and ‘respire’ because the ancients all beleived the spirit resides in the breath. It’s like ‘inspiration’ which can mean to ‘breath in’ or ‘exaltation’
why would i t show up in swordplay first?
Hell if I know, but that’s the what the written record shows…
Sevenstar:
For example, I have no desire to gan spirituality from ma… I have church for that.
If your spirituality stays in church, you have no spirituality. Just like if you can only fight well in your school, but not in the street, you can’t really fight. I search for spiritual growth in every aspect of my life, my home, my work, my practice, and my play. To do any less is to cheat yourself of life’s greatest bounty.
you missed my point.
Jujitsu was a TMA
Kano turned it into a Modern Martial Art (MMA :eek: )
that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that I don’t have to learn it in my MA. that time is better spent training. Naturally, it will (or should) carry with you everywhere, but that’s not a necessary function of MA. There are people - some on this board - who have said that without spirituality, there is no MA, and that is why some don’t consider martial sports as martial arts. This, IMO, is untrue.
Sevenstar
I hear ya, man. That’s the problem when you bring spirituality into the equation - it creates paradox and that jams the minds of the orthodox. Part of me concurs with you - surely you can have a martial practice without spirituality. There’s nothing spiritual about military skills; that’s just how to how to kill someone. At the same time, if you truly beleive in the power of martial arts, to practice it without spirituality is like handing a child a loaded gun. To me personally, the most important thing about martial arts isn’t the art itself, not art for art’s sake - which could be all competition is about - it’s what you do with it.
“Why would it show up in sword play first?”
Im going to ponder in print here…
I would guess that up until the point a sword was introduced into chinese culture, primary weapons were, sticks and spears and hands and bows.
if you look at those weapons compared to a sword they are some what limited in the variations of movements in which they are quite deadly.
when you are facing another man sword to sword, you must (more so than many other weapons) be able to “feel” his intentions, because the moment you slack, your dead.
I most assuredly understand the deadly applications of earlier concieved weapons as well as hand to hand combat, but we must also remember that combat as whole was not really in an organized state until well after the invention of the sword.
It may have very well been the pressure brought on by such deadly technology that forced men to rethink thier ground and re establish new methods with which to gain an upper hand in the new state of affairs.
Even with modern weapons we must have proper control of our qi (breath) in order to have deadly accuracy…
a perpetual inevitable cylce?
just some random thoughts on this particular subject…
I don’t think there are teachers having students do zen ponderings during class. Its a bit overblown. Its more a part of the physical training process than somebody standing there preaching gospel to you.
Contolling pain, anticipating the opponents move, moving with fluidity, etc, are more concrete lessons learned by practice than by absract notions. This, if anywhere, is where the actual “spirit” is in training.
"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."-David Jamieson~
Lifeguards swim, but you see them out of the water. You do Not have to be In the water to be able to swim. It can be true that at least some lack comprehension.
People say do kung fu for self defense. Some might think learn kung-fu to learn how to fight. But to fight so that they do not get beat-up. People look down at Kung-Fu as failure in fighting. The concept was learn to fight so you don’t have to fight. With that, Kung-Fu has been about not fighting, either by overcomming or merely keeping you away from risk zones because you were at class instead.
Training fighting instead of kungfu has two arenas, sports and beating people-up.
You go fight. I’ll have Kung-Fu.
Kung-Fu is Chinese, if you are not Chinese culturally you might not comprehend Kung-Fu.
You can enjoy and benefit without complete understanding. Hopefully we all can benefit.
I No_Know
so you think Tank Abbot is an artist? do you think the so many mma fighters who go ins winging with haymakers and/or continue beating people whoa re already down ahving to have the referee basically tackle them to get them off the guy artists?
so you think surviving a streetfight is winning? Im willing toi bet 95 percent of people who fight on the street survive.
that’s the thing, in that particular gym there was alot of pressure for everyone to fight and represent and if youd idnt people might look at you as weak or something. Cause people kept asking me and I didnt want to do it so I always had good excuses, and I really dont want to or have desire to do it.
jiu jitsu sia different style, and judo isnt a modern mma, not too many people in mma crosstrain in it and the general bjj community laughs at it. Hell there were no if any examples of hip throws being utilized in mma till the last year or two or so.
same thing could be said about conditioning.
I kind of agree with this. Some people are just natural fighters. For example a guy one time went into my former gym taking the boxing class and when I sparred him he was harder to fight than the majority of people I was sparring. This is because he was very unpredictable and moved back everytime I tried gettnig close to him thus I couldnt hit him, and was very agressive when i finally did close the gap. And he would punch so often instead of feeling out your opponent like most people do that you couldnt egt a hit on him cause you would be always on defense.
Also there are many boxers who hardly ever spar but hit bags, speedbags, double end bags, etc. but when they do spar they are badass. Or look at por boxers, they only fight few times a year yet show no ring rust.
Sun Lu Tang would disagree with you.
missed this…thanks for the details.
I have definitely seen more of the mystical side of the arts in my southern training versus my northern.
Greetings..
TCMA, more-so than most, was a life-style.. self-defense being a large portion of that style, but not the only focus.. Temples were not exclusively dedicated to producing fighters, they also produced superior people.. I use the term superior not as a distinction separating TCMA from others, but as homage to those that dedicated their lives to the cultivation of an ideal.. Hardcore dedication to developing a singularly devastating fighting method without the balance of a well-rounded lifestyle leads to an imbalance in one’s existence.. I am all too familiar with the mind-set of those that train to the exclusion of all else, I did at one time.. sparring and controlled competitions just didn’t do it for us, we need validation in a real environment.. we took jobs as bouncers, door-men, etc.. basically, we exported violence, we sought it.. and, my spirit suffered, my life suffered.. in my mid-thirties I began a family and everything changed, I knew I didn’t want my kids to be raised by someone that held violence to such a high standard.. oh, and my wife was a bit of an influence, too.. although she tolerated my previous training and my inclinations to test my skills, she was adamant about the responsibility for a new life to have a balanced upbringing.. and I agreed. My kids have trained in martial arts, my son is a world-class fighter, but.. he is a deeply honorable and spiritual being, unwilling to harm without just cause.. his training is as intense as any I have seen, but for him it is a competition with himself, always trying to be better than the person he was the day before..
So, after deciding to review a life spent seeking the next opportunity to “play the game”, I discovered TCMA… it was there that I began to see the value of Wude and transformation of hard fighting skills into a well-rounded art form.. it was there that I connected with Taoist philosophies.. it wasn’t that I didn’t have certain spiritual inclinations previously.. I had just not seen it so well interwoven into fighting arts, resulting in a life-style that feels “right”.. true, it may be more of a maturity thing, but.. being a superior fighter is empty without an ideal worth fighting for.. This world is full of macho-types willing to engage anyone that doesn’t yield to their ego.. hence the current state of world affairs.. and, to be sure, there are “ideals” that themselves are violent and promote instability.. but, in TCMA I found a certain honor and integrity that added value to an otherwise pointless education in the skills of destroying other beings.. self-defense alone is a reasonable goal .. but, contesting who is the best “fighter” has little value except for the ego.. surely, striving for excellence is a valuable goal and a good tool for developing better skills, but.. at some point competition becomes a simple venue for violence.. hence, the value of TCMA, controlled violence with a conscience.. Contests that seek to determine who is the best fighter will continue to deepen and expand violence at levels that become socially counter-productive..
If one’s only goal is to finely hone the skills of fighting, TCMA might not suit them.. if one finds no value in spirituality, it is likely they will find little value in TCMA.. Many proponents of extreme fighting assert the value of being able to handle superior fighters.. but, how often do we encounter highly trained fighters in street situations? Self-defense is more than pure fighting.. it is also strategies that avoid such situations.. it is not show-casing your abilities, but surprising the unsuspecting adversary..
Now, I do agree that TCMA has some issues that need attention.. fraud being one major issue.. and, its willingness to test skills being another.. but, the testing of skills need not be pure violence, we need to focus on the “art” of martial arts as well.. I think society is ready for a culture of Martial Artists that offer role-models rather than brutish “bad-boys”.. with extreme fighting as a role-model, imagine the potential for escalating street violence.. TCMA is an alternative to raw fighting arts, there will always be a venue for the absurdly violent, it is an element of our nature.. but, I find TCMA to be a path around and beyond that mentality, an evolution of the Art.. TCMA preserves a rich tradition while encouraging evolution.. I find great satisfaction in letting TCMA values guide the uses of the other arts I have trained in.. in finding a spiritual connection to a martial journey..
At the end of the day, it is the student’s nature that chooses the path.. Martial skills with a spiritual balance.. or simply a venue for expressing an inherently violent nature..
Be well..
PS: I know this is kind of “sappy”, but in my old-age TCMA has real value.. TCMA is what we make it, and we have a great opportunity ahead of us.. Maybe it should be referred to AFA (American Fighting Arts) with a Chinese Tradition..
Well said.
And dont worry, its only “sappy” to those who dont understand what you are saying.
TCB, agreed well said.
One clarification, you seem to be saying that all TCMA was temple oriented. Am I misunderstanding you?
I too was a bouncer for about 7 years between the ages of 23-30. Part of the reason (besides the chicks, of course 
) was to have a valid opportunity to test my skills. I didn’t seek violence per se. I’m very happy to say that in 7 years I only swung on guys twice and those times were times when I could not control them with chin na or grappling…i.e. softer methods failed due to the severity of the situation. I ended up running the crew after the first year and developed a staff of guys that didn’t have the ‘punch first, ask questions later’ methodology. I fired people if they demonstrated that. I took my job of providing a safe, legal environment for people to have fun in pretty seriously.
I totally agree with the need for a balance in the pursuit of martial skill.
I’m just seeing an imbalance the other direction.
but, contesting who is the best “fighter” has little value except for the ego.. surely, striving for excellence is a valuable goal and a good tool for developing better skills, but.. at some point competition becomes a simple venue for violence..
I see your point and there are certainly people out there who are doing that but that is not my goal nor one I propagate in my students…I’m just short of words to describe exactly how I feel. 
It’s different then that for me, it’s not just being able to beat the crap out of someone…I’ve never beaten the crap out of anyone in my life.
let’s take a look at the warrior/scholar/monk thing that fu mentioned.
How many of us here had a genuine warrior/scholar/monk as a teacher?
How many of us here are warriors or scholar/monks?
How many people who train in MA in general fit this description?
How many buddhist temples exist that propogate the full course of Kungfu in this modern world we live in? Besides Shaolin, which as we have been shown again and again by various roving correspondents isn’t exactly what we had in our minds.
In order to transform ones martial ability from technique to alive and effective one has to kill the master it seems these days. My experiences over the last few years have revealed a couple of important things to me about the nature of martial practice and the nature of myself as a practitioner. One of the surprising things was in the beginning that the amount of time required to gain proficiency is not some drawn out timeline consumed with inward reflection.
It is hard practice of effective methods that will get you there and get you there in a comparably short timeline compared to the old “it takes 10 years to master such and such”.
I have seriously met guys with less than 1 year in with sportive combative arts that have a far better understanding of the meat and potatoes of combat than same time in people I’ve met who are just finishing up their first or second form in a system, have had no mat time, don’t do a lot of resistance training and tend to be wrapped up in the mystical aspect.
I’ve spent my time getting form down and working all the “art” I’ve learned over the years and frankly, I find that there is too large a portion of it that is not exactly what I would call practical or effective in any venue. That might lead some of you to say “well you had a crappy teacher” or were studying in a mcdojo or some such other line of thought, to which I reply, no. My teachers in TMA were all high level proficiency. Only one of them had peeps in organized tournaments and none of them stepped out of the box when it came to modern martial arts and all of them had a view of it that it was barabarian and not in keeping with the path of the Kungfu person, the Karateka, or the sportist fighter.
The more people I cross hands with that have adopted some of the methods of mma and worked them into their own curriculums the more I understand that perhaps this was actually the return to the gist of the matter in martial arts.
For too long the martial arts had deteriorated into some fortune cookie quoting circus act and now that actuality was creeping back into things, I honestly think this is where the teardrops started for so many. They found themselves doing antiquated things that hadn’t been proven in generations and came from a time when the whole idea of combat was different in a cultural sense (mostly) and had an ethics and morals system attached to it to prevent its students from actually using it except in the most dire of situations. To not test and test with some frequency the effectiveness of ones practice is in my opinion a huge downfall. Closed system testing is not too effective either. In order to hone your skills, you must put the blade to the stone so to speak. That is Kungfu, not the whole idea that because you read a sutra, sit and meditate and then play a little push hands makes you some sort of idealistic human according to stories you have either propogated in your own mind or that you have had confirmed by the like minded.
Zen shows us that pain is perhaps one of the most effective methods of getting knowledge. It is brilliantly real. So real it can’t be denied, there is no question about whether it hurts or not, pain is. Bitter, is the analogy here. No sweat, no blood, no tears, no pain, no tiredness = no kungfu in my opinion.