The problem with doing it not the 'best of all worlds'-approach is that there will be even easier to be critical about the project. Actually I expected a lot from you-now-who in this realm, but so far ... nothing
Myself personally Mr simms, I don't have the ability with the Korean or Chinese languages and neither the time or the money, although I am happy to encourage your efforts and wish you the best of luck. My free time is spent taking care of my family and training in order to be a better martial artist
but I am extremely interested in this which is why I asked you before what practical application your research has yielded
no it isn't called that, it is called Muyedobotongji (武藝圖譜通志). The illustrations DO MAKE SENSE (or should I say DID MAKE SENSE) to the people involved at the time of writing.
Basically delete any posts by Isumizu seongIn Elliott D2 Willow and any responses and you'll be left only with the analytical parts of the thread
OK, Elliot..... hold on for a sec, cuz I'm gonna put you on the spot, 'kay? You may be sorta representative of many of the folks who do KMA. Let me ask you something. What would be the most useful way of making this information available to people so that the chances of them actually playing with it might be upped? For instance, I could scan information into my computer and----in about two decades--- I might figure-out how to get it on my website. Would people just look at it and muse, or would they start messing with it? Another (more technical) approach would be to actually identify the "method"---maybe by comparing the various texts, then demo the bit in a clip, then demo a couple of apps. It would be highly involved but could be done. My only concern is that I would feel like I was "spoon-feeding" folks and they still might not do anything with it. Yet another would be to take some simple Form (IE. POOMSE; HYUNG) that everyone knows and break it down in terms of the Methods that can be identified in it. Any thoughts on this----I mean as a typical KMA "consumer", as it were. Best Wishes, Bruce
Well, first someone actually has to have the scholarly and linguistic skills and review by peers etc, I assume that you are familiar with research methods, but there has to ne a way to make it practical for people without the linguistic skills or lacking that unique ability to put something new together and or explain how it will work work or be able to demonstrate how it will work. It seems like a huge undertaking but yet if you could do it, it sounds like it may ne worthwhile
that is why I asked you how this has personally affected your practice of hapkido, has it chased you to change the way you were taught to do things for instance, and the second part would be have you then tried your changes versus another or side by side with something done Tue way it is before you changed it ?
To save bandwidth I would like to address both of your thoughts in a single post because I think they are both extremely important---except I am going to do them in reverse order because I will use myself as an example. You may---or may not know--- that the YON MU KWAN material is based on a set of 10 core techniques (Kor. KEBONSU). My late teacher identified 10 techniques from which the rest of the YMK curriculum is said to proceed. If you take a look at the AIKIDO curriculum, you will find a similar approach. Where things went a little haywire with this approach was in trying to first inter-relate HAPKIYUSOOL material (see: CHOI Yong Sul; about 1969) with HAPKIDO material (see: JI Han Jae; about 1966) with KONGSOODO (about 1952). What put the nail in the coffin for this effort was in not being able to effectively inter-relate unarmed material with armed material. What I sought to do with the "academic approach" (see: Midwest Hapkido) was restructure the Confucian teaching model to the sort of Academic progression most of us are familiar with from our school days. However, the best success came when I approached each INDIVIDUAL practice I have named as separate traditions. Of course, this flies in the face of applying a "MU-DO" system or value (IE: "How one uses the body without a weapon is the same as how one uses the body with the weapon---and vice versa.") to the entire corpus of material. In this way I had been stuck for quite a number of years. When KIM Sang H. published his translation of the MYTBTJ in 2000, I realized that I had a "larger KEBONSU"--- constellation of core methods---32 actually----which can truly be used for both armed and unarmed practice. Of course, where they make the most sense is in the applications of unarmed techniques since, after all, that was the original intent, right? How I imagine one using this approach is pretty much the way that General QI probably saw it. As long as people agree that Chinese-inspired practices have a place in Korean traditions I think there is a good chance of making a fine contribution to how we train. I think this solves the problem of "what to teach". I also think it solves the problem of individual emphasis buy this teacher or that student on this and that. I think it solves the problem of just how basic or how florid one wants their material to be. I think it solves the problem of just how damaging or benign a person wants their practice to be as well. You have 32 methods for using the body for combat and all of the material---both armed and unarmed--proceeds from that. I hope I answered your question. BTW: As far as waiting goes...well, actually, I have no intention of waiting at all. Things go much, much slower when I have to do everything myself, but its not like I have not spent quite a few years working to raise interest in this stuff. Put bluntly, a response I received years ago on DOJANG DIGEST pretty much said it all ---"Who cares!?!" Anyhow, apparently I have answered that question. "I do". So, I won't be waiting for every last little bit to be in place and I certainly don't expect anything other than the responses I have gotten so far. FWIW. Best Wishes, Bruce
I agree with you that there should be no problem with intermingling valid contributions no matter the national or racial origins in a perfect world,lol. As many of these separate national arts seem to have the same root or inspiration. And I truly wish I had the scholastic and linguistic ability in Chinese and Korean, it does sound like a truly interesting endeavor.
great ideas, mr. sims. i will try and find a jxjs online. anywho, we have an instructor who purchased the pricey mydbtj from dr. choi's website. he is a student attemoting to get a master's degree in chinese, so he has actual credibility. good start. i personally dig the snapshot approach to the illustrations. what i am having difficulty with is three things: 1)shaolin's methods are referenced in gweon beop book all the time. who is to say what were the shaolin methods in the 17th century. certainly not today's shaolin... i even hesitate to reference/purchase the shaolin encyclopedia for fear o competition wushu moves 2)when discussing the patterns and permutations of the methods towards the end of gweon beop chapter, the author states that the flow of ACTUAL combat has been lost by the overemphasis of practising the patterns in the current way. what the fugazzi is the point of practising them, then? 3)there has to be a harder style then chem tai chi
also, what is the point with all the people out there ripping stuff off? from an educational perspective, if the movements are simply copied without the teaching, the methods a person works hard to research and preserve loses credibility. from a capitalistic mind, your efforts are putting $$$ in somebody elses hands that is selling your efforts in their name. case in point: walked into a tkd school like 6 years ago and saw the instructor copying (poorly) our first sword form from a vhs in his studio! wtf? this is probably why my teacher loathes indiscriminate use of video!
Hi Bruce, To be honest that seems like a mammoth job, not least because I don't know enough about KSW to pick out the wheat from the chaff. I'd suggest maybe starting afresh in a new thread and I'll lock this one and let it sink into oblivion.
Maybe thats the best way to go. Maybe what I'll do is grab a couple of the posts here towards the end and start a new thread. Just because this is locked, doesn't mean that people still can't reference it for ideas. Best Wishes, Bruce
Now that I know I can stay here to ask a question of Bruce, let me point out that it's actually of a nit-picky nature. I do own a copy of Kim's translation of the MYDBTJ, but I can't access it just now. So when you harped on the distinction about "posture" versus "method" in post #369, I'm curious as to what the hanja depicted might be. I suspect that even back when this text was written, that chuan-fa (拳法; 권법; gwonbeop) meant "boxing" and abbreviating it to just the last character (which literally means "method" but could be used to refer to a posture used in "boxing"), might have been employed, at least by a translator. Sorry to distract you from more pervasive analysis, but I was just wondering...
I have to answer in two ways regarding my reading. The first way is that I am about as ignorant as the guy next to me about MING Dyn Chinese in general and not just its nuances. As a result I have to examine the range of usage and suggestion for BEOP (법) in a resource such as MINJUNG's. What I find is that the overall application is active ("method") rather than passive ("posture"). I see the same thing when I reference "GEOM BEOP" (검법) as "sword method". FWIW. Best Wishes, Bruce
