"Transparent Power" (Tomei na Chikara)

[Walk the Torque]

Nice reminders, thanks Tom

[shawnsegler]

Yeah, thanks for posting Tom.

Looks like tasty stuff.

Bestl

S

[velalavela]

Thanks for posting Tom.
Looks an interesting book and those are great qoutes.

“Through the process of tempering my body, I realized that in abandoning my quest for power, my true strength emerged. I temporarily named this power the Transparent Power.”

This is pretty much the message my Wu Style teacher tells me ....the same she got from her own teachers. ( apart from the "I temporarily named this power the Transparent Power.” bit....

I don't know what she/they call it, other than maybe Gong Fu.

Cheers

[AllanF]

I saw there site a month or so ago, but was beginning to think that something had happened and they had had to stop publication as it only said "Spring 2009" and there is no contact details.

I have an unofficial version of the book but think i will still buy the new one as i like hardback books and it has some photos etc. I agree with Tom about how it translates directly to having the attitude for gongfu and also that after rereading it several times it never fails to astound me how similar it is to taiji in his comments.

[wiesiek]

I it never fails to astound me how similar it is to taiji in his comments.

Tao is only one
/one is always one/
so
regardles of "style" coments are always similar if done by experienced master
cultural/historical and art/s/ backround of the writter makes difference in coments

anyway
this book will find place on my shelf for shure

[somatai]

looks like a great read.....check the forearms on that dude as he is sitting in repose....serious bone development

[GrahamB]

Thanks Tom. Talking of good quotes I recently discovered this book, which contains an unusual number of incredibly good, and funny, quotes about martial arts.

Previews (which seems to be pretty much the entire book!) here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ytZn8G ... do#PPR3,M1

[Dmitri]

"Ultimately, it boils down to a battle between souls." Indeed!

Thanks Tom.

[GrahamB]

Tom,

Sorry, I was being unclear - when I said 'this book' I meant the Aikido one (I realise that it's a different book). I just referenced it since it also has lots of good quotes in it.

Well, at least I thought they were good.

Yee gads. I seem to be turning into more and more of a chi hugging hippy the older I get

[Doc Stier]

Yee gads. I seem to be turning into more and more of a chi hugging hippy the older I get

Dammit, Graham!

Forget about all that frickin' hippy dippy crap, and start doing some real training, OK?





Sheesh!

Doc

[dtactics]

Looks like a great book. Loved those pics too. Thanks for the heads up.

Graham, your book's good too and CM Shifflett is a great writer, but I've laid hands with him and he's, well... a great writer... and I'll add a very nice man. Period. From my experience, he had no skills to speak of whatsoever and certainly couldn't apply any of his Ki applications in any useful way in spite of his understanding. It's almost as if he'd parrot Koichi Tohei Sensei's wisdom but never learned to do anything.

It's dis-heartened to see great knowledge go un-applied. Makes me wonder why they bother articulating these "truths" if they didn't take the time to master them. I guess it's to help others who can figure it out, but it's still perplexing to see the contradictions real-time.

[GrahamB]

dtactics - I'm not surprised, to be honest. Life is full of contradictions

[WVMark]

Looks like a great book. Loved those pics too. Thanks for the heads up.

Graham, your book's good too and CM Shifflett is a great writer, but I've laid hands with him and he's, well... a great writer... and I'll add a very nice man. Period. From my experience, he had no skills to speak of whatsoever and certainly couldn't apply any of his Ki applications in any useful way in spite of his understanding. It's almost as if he'd parrot Koichi Tohei Sensei's wisdom but never learned to do anything.

It's dis-heartened to see great knowledge go un-applied. Makes me wonder why they bother articulating these "truths" if they didn't take the time to master them. I guess it's to help others who can figure it out, but it's still perplexing to see the contradictions real-time.

Well, you can look at it this way ... Takeda taught Ueshiba. Takeda taught Sagawa. It has been said that Takeda told them not to teach the secrets ... the aiki. If I remember correctly, Sagawa even mentions this somewhere about how he didn't teach people until he was old. Ueshiba, too, didn't really teach the skills. So, the whole Aikido and Daito ryu world sort of suffers under the misguided notion that the whole entirety of their art is in the waza. The secret, the aiki, the "ki skills", as Tohei has spoken about, wasn't passed down. IMO, I don't think that most people in aikido or daito ryu were even given the chance to train in the skills, let alone see if they had what it took to master them.

[GrahamB]

In the book CM Shifflett suggests that the whole idea of actually "teaching" people anything was alien to people like Takeda and Ueshiba anyway, let alone teaching them some things and holding back secrets. It suggests they taught by example - they knocked you down and it was up to you to work out how they did it. It was up to the student to "steal the art", and it was only when people like Kano (influenced by Western teaching methods) appeared who started to actually teach people how they did their stuff (and got results in much less time) that teaching (as we would understand it) became a popular idea.

It's certainly true they could have been told to keep the secrets back, but I think you'd have to evaluate that in the context of the whole teaching culture at the time.

[AllanF]

In the book CM Shifflett suggests that the whole idea of actually "teaching" people anything was alien to people like Takeda and Ueshiba anyway, let alone teaching them some things and holding back secrets. It suggests they taught by example - they knocked you down and it was up to you to work out how they did it. It was up to the student to "steal the art", and it was only when people like Kano (influenced by Western teaching methods) appeared who started to actually teach people how they did their stuff (and got results in much less time) that teaching (as we would understand it) became a popular idea.

It's certainly true they could have been told to keep the secrets back, but I think you'd have to evaluate that in the context of the whole teaching culture at the time.

Sagawa also mentions that 'back in the day' teachers did not spoon feed you but if they showed you something once that meant they had taught you. Which makes it very hard for anyone to get the real goods unless you are exceptionally talented and observant.