Imitating form is a start, but do you listen to your body and understand what the form is telling you? In other words a form is useless if you don't give it practical meaning that you know with your body and with your mind. The problem with most silat and taiji people is that they think inner power means something spiritual or esoteric. It's not. It's understanding comes from sweating it out. The path to understanding how you move efficiently and express energy efficiently is through a physical route ... there is no mumbo jumbo ... that just keeps you blind. Cheers P.S. Sanskrit is just the language to access Indo-European wisdom ... the Chinese had their own wisdom long before Daruma ever made it to China ... to assume otherwise is just cultural arrogance.
I can't believe your replying to him seriously. There are no people in the world who speak sanskrit as their spoken language... not to mention there are no people in the world who travel by levitation. At best he is poking fun but unfortunately it's also distinctly possible he actually believes his fantasies and if that is the case then he is beyond sensible conversation. Either way sensible replies aren't going to get very far... On a side note... Buddhism was introduced and translations were being carried out in China LONG before Damo/Daruma/Bodhidharma is ever supposed to have arrived.
Hello El Medico, I have started a new thread "What is Qi? Nei Gong" in the General Martial Arts Discussions forum. Thanks
OK, I do expect imitating outer forms alone to mean not much. It is this reason that I expect teachers don't pass the real everything to everybody.
Maybe that's looking at it the wrong way. There are people who hold back stuff, or maybe don't teach as well as they could. But, most of the "knowledge" of martial arts that's presented to us now is twisted so far back on itself, that the reverse of truth is now presented to us as the facts. Real skill, is in you. Real knowledge, is in you. It is all already, there, waiting and ready to be accessed. You know all of it already - and I mean ALL of it. How can anyone hold that back from you? You know all of it, but the journey is the process of understanding what we know. I can't say it enough times - and this is one of those things I'm talking about when I say it - we probably only need a handfull of authentically profound martial arts ideas, and they're all simple. They're all things, probably, that we've heard a thousand times. People say to me "you've told me nothing new" and I shale my head because that's my faliure. I've failed to make them see that it's not what you know, it's how deeply you can see the implications of those few, authentically prfound ideas. The same, true idea, can be seen on a number of levels - from shallow, to incredibly profound. In many cases, peopel take ideas and choose to see the reverse meaning - the mirror world version of what they mean. Forms are literally a mirror world creation when seen from that failed persepctive. A form doesn't put the skill in you. A taiji form teaches movement quality, whole body integration, and some basic postures, pertinent to certain types of fighters, particularly stand up grapplers, but applicable to all martial arts, when the depth of the principle is expanded. YOU expand the principle. No one can hold that back from you, if you choose to "map" it. If a person sees taiji only as for fighting, that's it - they wake up and try to find yet another application for silk reeling - well, it might mean grab this arm, and swing down, or it might mean lift a knife like this - then they've failed. They've totally failed. The principle was simple - movement quality. Fromt he movement quality infinite applications arise - not from the shape of the movement, but from the movement quality and body integration. The ten thousand applications that person came up with were complex, but wrong, and never open on to any more profound principle. Understanding the movement quality principle is simple - a simple idea; but its implications are profound, and never ending - literally infinite in expression. If a teacher held back five hundred applications of a silk reeling move - well that doesn't mean anything - meaningless. If you can find the correct movement quality, then train application similarly fluidly, all of those hundreds of applications are in there any way, waiting to happen. In the end, a person who sees taiji only as a box of fighting techniques, well, if everyone in the world died, then their taiji would no longer exist - it's only meaning is judged by how many people you can beat; the most superficial means of judging it possible, sadly thought by some to be the PRIMARY means of judging what is real taiji - talk about mirror world distortion. But if you have the correct method, it's always in you - you are the expression of your art; your level is about you, and your great achievement.
Very true FQ, totally cool post. CKava, yes I know what you mean ... but I guess I'm just masochistic lol. BTW, thnx for history clarification. History is not my strong point. Cheers,
lol... well it's just I see very decent obviously well thought out replies and then I see slowwins posts and just think it's a bit of a waste for the posters replying but I guess you must have greater patience than me! As for the history, no problem, I'm a bit of a geek about this stuff and had to write a long essay a year or so back about how Buddhism first entered China so it's a pet interest too!
And Sanskrit's moot,anyhoo. The ancient knowledge and wisdom of the Indo-Europeans has been saved and "handed" down only in certain ogham of the Brythonic speaking peoples. just thought someone should clue slowwins into this.
FQ, you would be shocked to your very core if you uncovered any of our Cymric secrets.....lol..:jester:
Cymric secrets my ar... eye. The amount of people who can read Ogham in Wales is about the same amount who cheerily welcome Elnglish tourists - despite our money propping up your econony. And as for what we get for our tourist pound - the Welsh price index must be linked to Germany's post war inflation rate. Still, most of the most beautiful girls I've ever met have been in Wales. On holiday from England.
There again, he could be talking about your Brythonic language cousins in Brittany - and they really CAN talk about being linked to wartime Germany! Witha great deal of authority - and guilt.
Perhaps-but certainly none played quite so formative roles in the proliferation of racial theories later espoused by Nazi Germany as the many Anglo-Norman types belonging to such societies as the Thule Group,Theosophical Society, and their ilk. Fq-"Cymric secrets my ar... eye. The amount of people who can read Ogham in Wales is about the same amount who cheerily welcome Elnglish tourists -" That's what they'd like you to think.Seems to have worked fairly well in keeping the hidden knowledge from the Anglo-Saxons and Normans-(the REAL wealas!). Which ogham,btw?Did you miss my key? No.This is not about the harp string ogham read off a harp tuned to Bb.(Uh oh,I think I've said too much).
Theories my eye. There's no such thing as cultural "guilt" just as there's no such thing as cultural wisdom. There are wise people, and nasty people, in every group. Many nationalists in Brittany readily accepted Nazi ideology as harmonious with their pre-existant Cultural "wisdom". After all, once you start wanting your country just for your group, it's only a step away, isn't it? Or, in your case, once you start saying your culture has secret wisdom that other cultures don't have... Maybe some Yanks might buy it, with a rose tinted view of Celtic countries... there again, they didn't have their town blown up by the IRA. Gee, where did all those Brittany fascists go and hide, by the by? Oh, Ireland of course. Many French people still consider Brittany to have been collaborators as a general whole, with only a few heroes resisting - and being killed off by other nationalists for their efforts. Do some research on it - it's really fascinating, especially if anyone previously thought all of France resisted the Nazis. Yeah, well, I ploughed my way through "The White Goddess" too, only, just how Robert Grave's modern theories are now authentic cultural wisdom of the Celts passed down to through the unbroken line of Taliesin, I don't know... Oh yeah I do - the power of bs, lol.
Disagree with you on this one. I think that some ideas become very strong within some cultural groups, and the mores of the culture act on those ideas, shaping them a certain way. For example, my grandmother was a faith healer and herbalist, her 'skills' and outlook being tempered by her culture. It is irelevant in this case whether or not her 'wisdom' had merit by other standards ... by her standards and the standards of her supporting culture, her way was an example of 'cultural' wisdom of which she considered herself merely an expression, a vessel. Cheers!
WOW,man!Take yourself so seriously if you wish,but I did not realize the oghamic references etc would be taken so. I must remember not to jest where such weighty matters are concerned. Btw,some of Graves work is based on theories postulated by previous scholars,and weren't rejected as historical until later.Of course he ,uh,made his own muse/goddess structure,too. So Brittany had a far greater per capita ratio of collaboration than other provinces?Learn something new everyday. What's the IRA have to do with anything?Oh right.To point out the fallacy of my rose colored glasses I have on after reading history all these years.Sure.I live where a bunch of one side of my ancestry-(and guess what?They were Anglo-Norman and P and Q Celts!)- killed and drove out the other side.And much more recent than the 5th century or 1066.Thanks for the wake up call.
It's interesting how world view creates history ... and how 'history' then influences world view. Very learned you all are and awesome, I'm too lazy to keep up, my level is still "Kungfu Panda" . Cheers,
