Song, what does it mean?

[Bao]

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.

[willie]

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 had a teacher that said that in the first fifteen years he didn’t learn anything

I have to disagree. This is the wrong way and the wrong attitude.
If a teacher sent his 1000 students out into the woods to ponder, then they woud come back with 1000 different answers and every one
of those answers would be wrong. The worst part is yet to come though, you want to know what it is?
Now because they filled their head with one wrong answer it allowed them to build another wrong answer on top of it.
Now they are so far off that they wasted their entire life on crap. Then they refuse to acknowledge the real masters and the real answers because that
would confirm it

[Trick]

Woa what! Did a post disappear again?.....well never mind

[Bao]

I have to disagree. This is the wrong way and the wrong attitude.
If a teacher sent his 1000 students out into the woods to ponder, then they woud come back with 1000 different answers and every one
of those answers would be wrong. The worst part is yet to come though, you want to know what it is?
Now because they filled their head with one wrong answer it allowed them to build another wrong answer on top of it.
Now they are so far off that they wasted their entire life on crap. Then they refuse to acknowledge the real masters and the real answers because that
would confirm it

The teacher obviously need to follow the student on the road and confirm if the student is aiming straight to the target. This method of teaching is obviously nothing for a student who wants to pay a certain amount of money to learn a specific technique.

[willie]

I spoke of the riddler's version of fang song which some people seem to cling on to.
I said that in order to know what the riddles meant, they would have to know the answers in the first place or the
riddles would be useless. So I will answer part of this riddles meaning.
"It's like snow on top of a tree branch".

The tree branch sits in it's relaxed state and then it starts to snow outside.
The tree branch starts to bend from the weight of the snow, it is now under tension and NOT relaxed.
The molecules in the top part of the branch are being stretched and the bottom compressed.
This creates Peng. It is also a bow. It also is yin and yang in one limb...
As you can see "relax" is not the correct understanding.

[Trick]

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 had a teacher that said that in the first fifteen years he didn’t learn anything

I have to disagree. This is the wrong way and the wrong attitude.
If a teacher sent his 1000 students out into the woods to ponder, then they woud come back with 1000 different answers and every one
of those answers would be wrong. The worst part is yet to come though, you want to know what it is?
Now because they filled their head with one wrong answer it allowed them to build another wrong answer on top of it.
Now they are so far off that they wasted their entire life on crap. Then they refuse to acknowledge the real masters and the real answers because that
would confirm it

As of the quote of Bao it's not wrong, we are individuals certain things we need to work out and experience on our own, we are being given the very basics then it's up to each and every one of us how far we want to take it. We learn nothing if everything must be served to us..There are no secrets...and no riddles

[Trick]

I spoke of the riddler's version of fang song which some people seem to cling on to.
I said that in order to know what the riddles meant, they would have to know the answers in the first place or the
riddles would be useless. So I will answer part of this riddles meaning.
"It's like snow on top of a tree branch".

The tree branch sits in it's relaxed state and then it starts to snow outside.
The tree branch starts to bend from the weight of the snow, it is now under tension and NOT relaxed.
The molecules in the top part of the branch are being stretched and the bottom compressed.
This creates Peng. It is also a bow. It also is yin and yang in one limb...
As you can see "relax" is not the correct understanding.

It's likenesses, not riddles.......Now your conclusion seem to be that Taiji "Song" should be the same as when lazily sitting in a sofa? ....or Taiji "Song" means meet force with more force?

[Trick]

I spoke of the riddler's version of fang song which some people seem to cling on to.
I said that in order to know what the riddles meant, they would have to know the answers in the first place or the
riddles would be useless. So I will answer part of this riddles meaning.
"It's like snow on top of a tree branch".

The tree branch sits in it's relaxed state and then it starts to snow outside.
The tree branch starts to bend from the weight of the snow, it is now under tension and NOT relaxed.
The molecules in the top part of the branch are being stretched and the bottom compressed.
This creates Peng. It is also a bow. It also is yin and yang in one limb...
As you can see "relax" is not the correct understanding.

It's likenesses, not riddles.......Now your conclusion seem to be that Taiji "Song" should be the same as when lazily sitting in a sofa? ....or Taiji "Song" means meet force with more force?

Or do you agree with the bending tree branch likeness of correct song?

[Bao]

The tree branch sits in it's relaxed state and then it starts to snow outside.
The tree branch starts to bend from the weight of the snow, it is now under tension and NOT relaxed.
This creates Peng. It is also a bow. It also is yin and yang in one limb...
As you can see "relax" is not the correct understanding

Branches don’t have muscles, so if this is a picture of peng according to your understanding, you still need to take away intentional muscle use from the equation.

[origami_itto]

Now because they filled their head with one wrong answer it allowed them to build another wrong answer on top of it.

The danger is real

[charles]

Surely, I'm not the only one who sees the irony in people getting into heated discussion over a term that means "relax".

[origami_itto]

Bro this thread is a comedy GOLDMINE

[willie]

I spoke of the riddler's version of fang song which some people seem to cling on to.
I said that in order to know what the riddles meant, they would have to know the answers in the first place or the
riddles would be useless. So I will answer part of this riddles meaning.
"It's like snow on top of a tree branch".

The tree branch sits in it's relaxed state and then it starts to snow outside.
The tree branch starts to bend from the weight of the snow, it is now under tension and NOT relaxed.
The molecules in the top part of the branch are being stretched and the bottom compressed.
This creates Peng. It is also a bow. It also is yin and yang in one limb...
As you can see "relax" is not the correct understanding.

It's likenesses, not riddles.......Now your conclusion seem to be that Taiji "Song" should be the same as when lazily sitting in a sofa? ....or Taiji "Song" means meet force with more force?

Or do you agree with the bending tree branch likeness of correct song?

No, I don't like riddles. I think that I already stated that. I go along with whj and his version. It's just that I'm using what my teacher taught me to try to solve the riddle That never should have been created in the first place. The correct answer would have been for the teacher to just tell the student directly with no variance.

[charles]

In my time on the planet, I've learned that life really is a Bell curve: there are people who are very good at any particular endeavour, people who are average at that endeavour and people who just aren't very good at it. There are teachers who are very good at teaching, and teachers who are terrible at it, and everything in between: some teachers just can't effectively teach what they know. That can appear as if the teacher is purposely keeping secrets.

I've also observed that there is a wide range of reasons (motivations) for why teachers teach. There are teachers who aren't really interested in teaching, who teach for reasons other than passing on what they know - ego, money, social interaction, etc. - and teachers who teach primarily for the purpose of ensuring their knowledge is not lost and is passed on to others.

I've also observed that there is a wide range of knowledge amongst teachers. There are teachers who know the subject matter they are teaching extremely well and there are teachers who don't really know at all the subject matter they are teaching, and everything in between. Some teachers know that they don't know, but teach what they don't know anyway: some of those make stuff up (i.e. bullshit) to fill in the blanks of what they don't know. One way of doing that is to teach vague platitudes that don't really mean anything (e.g. "riddles"), but sound good or sound plausible. (One well-known teacher I had, focuses on teaching irrelevant details as if they were "inner secrets", thereby making students believe they are getting the goods and that the teacher has the goods.) Other teachers know that they don't know, and only teach to the limits of their knowledge, sending to more knowledgable teachers their students that progress to that limit.

In all of these - teaching ability, motivation and knowledge - the "best of the best" - the upper tail of the curve, if you will - are few and far between. Finding a teacher who is simultaneously at the upper end of each of these three things - the mutual overlap, "ABC", of the three circles in a Venn diagram - is very difficult, with low probability.



I've also learned that most students have some investment of time, effort and ego in their teachers and what their teachers teach. Few students like to admit to themselves that their teacher isn't "special" - i.e "the best of the best", the mutual overlap of the Venn diagram - when the probability of that being true is very low. Few like to admit that if there are relatively few "best of the best" teachers out there, that someone who thinks that they are studying with "the best of the best" might be mistaken, and that someone might be you. Often, people don't know what they don't know, but will argue and assert what they think they know to the death. (This comment isn't aimed at anyone in particular: it is a general observation.)


Then, there are different "styles" of teaching and of learning. Some teachers teach using metaphors and imagery that is intended to provide insight to the student. One potential difficulty with doing so is that metaphors and imagery can often be interpreted in many different ways, not all of which are what the teacher/metaphor had intended. A simple example, from the "Classics", is standing on a spoked wagon wheel with equal weight on opposite sides/spokes of the wheel. This is intended to convey the error of being double-weighted/double-heavy. Many incorrectly interpret that to mean one should never have the same amount of weight on both feet at the same time. Such is the nature of metaphors and imagery. However, if interpreted correctly, they can be powerful and effective teaching tools.

Other teachers teach using traditional language (Chinese, in the case of Taijiquan) using terms that are often metaphorical, historical or allegorical. If one is not well versed in those terms, and their explicit meanings, they will seem like vague riddles. Again, with the right teacher, and the right student, they can be very effective teaching tools.

Other teachers use explicit terminology to instruct their students. That explicit instruction can be "scientific" in nature or it can be anatomical, or both. This approach can also be very effective, depending upon the knowledge of science and/or anatomy of both student and teacher. It also has the potential danger, however, of leaving out things that can't be adequately be captured using science.

In the end, effective teaching is about effective communication between teacher and student. Each teacher, and each student, has his or her strengths and weaknesses and "style" in which they teach and/or learn. Which teaching approach is best depends on the specifics of both student and teacher, with the most effective communication happening when "styles" of teacher and student are closely aligned. The best teachers can change their teaching "style" to match their individual students.

Like Willie, I much prefer an explicit approach where there is little room for interpretation. In my experience relatively few teach that way, for a variety of reasons. As a side note, many "mangle" science, which should provide an explicit teaching methodology for certain things, in such a way that its use is no more explicit than any other approach.

[Giles]

Surely, I'm not the only one who sees the irony in people getting into heated discussion over a term that means "relax".

That's total nonsense!
I, at least, am completely RELAXED !!

And I'm very easygoing, too. So there.