Interloper wrote:But, I feel that in these times, secrecy doesn't make much sense. As has been said frequently by one great teacher and master who openly teaches his art, "The secrets guard themselves." You can teach the principles, and even the exercises and processes to master them, but only a relative few will really do the work and gain anything of substance. That's why I find it puzzling that so many are so unwilling to talk about their arts that way, other than to withhold the teachings, and mete them out in small doses for large amounts of money, to make a very good living.
Exactly. Also, most people have their own preconcieved ideas about “secrets”. They wouldn’t recognize a secret if one hit them in the face. Often, you need to work with certain principles, start to grow the seeds yourself and get a taste for it before you can start to appreciate it. But there again, correct instruction is important. If you aim slightly wrong, you’ll miss the goal with miles.
But also, there is something in traditional Chinese/Asian teaching that could be mistaken for secrecy but really is not so. There’s a way of revealing things without revealing and a way to reveal parts of something whie leaving things unsaid for the student fill in by himself. I don’t believe that this is about trying to keep things secret, but a way to activate a student, demanding the student to think by him or herself and find the answers within and by practice. Many people are lazy, I suspect it was very much the same in earlier days. People want their teachers to serve everything, make the them good by doing the least amount of work possible. But to internalize the art and the knowledge is something a student must do by himself and this way of teaching is a push in that direction, to get the student to become more active, become a bigger part of his own learning process and teach the student how to process knowledge by himself.
I had a teacher that said that in the first fifteen years he didn’t learn anything from his teacher. After a long time of frustration, he started to understand how to ask the right kind of questions and stopped being shy about pulling information from his teacher. He didn’t like his teacher’s teaching method and still believe that he could have learned much faster if his teacher was better in teaching. But I suspect that much of the flaws were inside of my teacher and had very little to do with his. My teacher started to develop and grow as he assumed a much more active part in his own learning process, started to take more responsibility and learned how to learn by himself. Many people are in the same situation. They won’t learn because their own attitude lacks and they blame everyone else when they don’t get better faster. A common phenomena IMO.