Meeting with Power -Yang Sau Cheung

[wayne hansen]

Three essentials
Right method
Natural talent
Perseverance

I have yet to see anyone who dosent have right method work it out
Because most don’t enough of the second two

[everything]

If you are desperate ask me and I'll try to make a recommendation.

Would your recommendations include introductions to the teachers in the elite Secret Council of Masters whom you referred to recently? Asking for a friend.

[Appledog]

If you are desperate ask me and I'll try to make a recommendation.

Would your recommendations include introductions to the teachers in the elite Secret Council of Masters whom you referred to recently?

What's wrong with Shen Men Tao? If you want to be a successful martial artist and member of the community, certainly it has worked well enough for you. Certainly someone in your position as a teacher and instructor would have ample resources that you wouldn't need to ask a question like this from me.

But, It could also depend what your goals are. Now, I don't know you or your system, but sometimes after a long and successful career we look back and realize we didn't quite get what we were looking for. There was some missing spark in our practice. We must ask ourselves -- is this, really, our own fault? Did we give justice to what we were taught by our teachers? If the answer is yes then I think we can rest easy. If not, then it's time to decide if you want to give up or not. After all this time, and you couldn't find a good teacher? Are you sure? Even so, at least you tried. You stayed the course and were a good student. There is honor in that. Hold that thought.

If you are desperate ask me and I'll try to make a recommendation.

Would your recommendations include introductions to the teachers in the elite Secret Council of Masters whom you referred to recently?

This is essentially in reply to:

If a student has not gone through the museum stage and starts teaching (the presumption being, that teaching incorrectly is akin to making unauthorized or harmful changes to an art) that the person who is being taught is getting a raw deal, and no one wants a raw deal.

I get that. But the topic here is not just about the master but the student. As e. said, "until you (have done) what they did..."". If the student is not ready the master cannot pour in the next level.

So why not ask. Maybe you won't get the answer you expected, but there's no harm in talking with people and sharing knowledge. That's why, I presume, we are here

Asking for a friend.

To the above I will add; A wise and pertinent question. For, asking a question puts one in a position of subservience from which one is compelled to accept an answer or be made a fool. Some people, especially those who have had decades of experience, would rather not place themselves in such a position. George Xu showed his penultimate morality by commenting on this and lamenting that it was a cancer in the community:



Now, when Master Xu gave this interview he was already an old man; to see this morality from the older generation is an incredible source of hope.

Too often people here ask questions and, when spoonfed the answer, ignore it and engage in wild speculation. I've had my fill of that as well. So I guess the question is, what your friend's goals are and how much time and money he has left to invest into learning something new. That greatly depends on what kind of an answer he gets. It's like the old confucian scholar who taught his lectures with band accompaniment, dancers and animals performing tricks. When he would find the one student who was actually paying attention to the lecture through all that noise, he would take him as a disciple.

So after thinking about it for a while tell your friend to just ask. Life is too short for wasting time. As for secrets, if you ask someone for corrections and they don't give them, then surely those corrections have become a sort of secret. It is then up to you to correct your own mistakes. But what can you do if you don't know what your mistakes are? On compassionate grounds I have offered to teach anyone for free, to answer what questions I can. And, this is not a guarantee of quality, but of availability. If your friend is looking for an IMA master maybe you could help him, since although I have been doing CMA for a very long time you have been doing it for twice as long as I have. So to clarify I wasn't offering to teach you, and I wasn't offering to teach your friend either, since he's your friend and I think you are going to have to help him. But if someone had a need, you know, should they need someone, I'd be more than happy to make a new friend

[Doc Stier]

Hahaha! What a hoot! You are definitely very full of yourself.

I would be very surprised if you didn't know that I was teasing you a bit with my question, which of course you once again deliberately avoided answering with your lengthy and seemingly erudite, yet totally condescending reply.

[origami_itto]

Okay so I'm gonna let the rest of the novel just be, no need to get lost in the woods, but this was just too much to let pass without comment.

What jacked up meth infused fortune cookie did you get this little nugget of nonsense from?

For, asking a question puts one in a position of subservience from which one is compelled to accept an answer or be made a fool.

I mean it's just categorically incorrect by any measure. It's a bit superlative that way. Rivals "Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?" In its incoherence.

[Formosa Neijia]

http://www.metnews.com/articles/2018/guen112018.htm

https://casetext.com/case/guen-v-pereira

https://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.php?p=425247&sid=12e726e3274fc740f4d47915ce296ad8

None of what Tom posted here is going to make 1% of a difference because all of taiji is run exactly like this: as a cult.

Look at the constant posts here about learning the secrets to make people hop around and how if you don't have those, you don't have THE REALZ TAIJI!!

This guy in the video may as well be running a cult because "the real Yang family" also run one. They all do. Nearly all kungfu teachers demand and then waste a tremendous amount of their students' life energy showing how dedicated they are and to what end? Their only goal is the furtherance of their lineage. No practical results are to be had from hours a day everyday for decades. People don't learn to fight, they don't get healthy, they don't get fit. It's all "what's good for the lineage is good, period."

We haven't moved an inch away from the Boxer Rebellion. Outside kungfu, the "boxers" lost but inside, they won nearly everything.

[Michael Babin]

I taught group and private classes for decades. I changed teachers/versions of the Yang style several times; the principles remained the same, the variations were tried and discarded or retained. I tried to be honest with myself and with my students; that didn't work out as I had hoped all the time but enough that it made up for never earning much of a living from being a full-time taiji and bagua teacher.

The saddest observation I made over the years and across hundreds of students... people love to feel as if they are in a group that seems special and somehow exclusive of the riff-raff. For many, that feeling and/ort-shirts, uniforms and pieces of paper are what attract -- and keep -- their money and devotion rolling in.

Formosa Neijia just summed it up quite neatly especially when talking about established clubs as opposed to community centre type classes for seniors and those just looking for an evening out away from their normal routine:

"This guy in the video may as well be running a cult because "the real Yang family" also run one. They all do. Nearly all kungfu teachers demand and then waste a tremendous amount of their students' life energy showing how dedicated they are and to what end? Their only goal is the furtherance of their lineage. No practical results are to be had from hours a day everyday for decades. People don't learn to fight, they don't get healthy, they don't get fit. It's all "what's good for the lineage is good, period."

Sadly, this is not a problem that is easily solved as people are people and human nature remains.

[Bhassler]

Meh. The "tai chi should train like MMA" crowd is just as cultish, and often just as ignorant or deluded. It's human nature. Independent thought is much rarer than most would like to believe, and the vast majority of people haven't developed the cognitive tools to even begin.

[Quigga]

'A wise and pertinent question. For, asking a question puts one in a position of subservience from which one is compelled to accept an answer or be made a fool.'

Let's not gang up on them

I'm a big fan of big words and what looked like eloquence at the time... Unfortunately sometimes you get more caught up in creating a wonderful package than making a good product / conveying a message - my experience anyways

Miyamoto Musashi supposedly was locked in a room with Buddhist scrolls. Ah yes, it was Takuhan Soho, IIRC, who was brave enough to capture him. Can recommend the manga Vagabond, loosely based on MMs life, and the book 'The Life Giving Sword' by Mr. Soho.

Would it be appropriate to lock away people and force them to cultivate?... Certainly not, yet such things have been done in the past and I'm pretty sure in some God forsaken hole it still happens.

Free will is very important. Or rather, making choices one deems fit. Yet how free that what we call free will actually is, is still up for debate... IMO it's a combination of one's own willpower with the greatest willpower or driving force there is.

Chinese calls it Heaven, European calls it Heaven too... Some call it Universe, Creator, God... All the same. As in Heaven, so on Earth shall thy will reign supreme.

The big But is, since the other willpower source is much bigger than you - in fact I haven't really began to seriously understand the vastness and significance of it - you're bound by a contract, so to say.

It's the biggest version of fuck around and find out there is... Not complaining though. Peacedog once mentioned circle of powers and that the ultimate responsibility for your own life, wellbeing, happiness , lies within your own hands.

Personal responsibility... Have to be careful how that looks like sometimes. Many terrible crimes were committed by people feeling very just, righteous, upright etc. - thinking they're fullfilling their duties but end up transmuting gold into shit :-D

Whew, got a bit off topic again.

Circle back: power of will; and human isn't isolated or closed off from world around them

[everything]

eh humans are all like this for all kinds of social behaviors. tribal. with teams, religions, countries, neighborhoods, you name it. we treat "strangers" in our tribe differently, e.g., if we know people are our neighbors, in the same fan base, etc. this "tribe" here just knows the tai chi groups well, but within the larger tribe, evidently, people are still super tribal. it's stupid, really, if you stop to think about it as a reasonably intelligent human, but a lot of primates are like this for survival reasons. and we are just another primate with these kinds of behaviors built in.

[Quigga]

Certainly interesting, but I don't want to derail the thread more than I already have

Appropriate place to share and what not. There are many different spaces.

Making your own behavior ultimately responsible for your own suffering sounds like a good strategy. Personal growth isn't linear though, so it can get confusing sometimes. Again IMO.

[everything]

eh, derailing is a good way to go. the original topic ... probably already talked every angle. you can tell when we want to beat the same dead horses of hippie or mma, navel gaze or WWE hulk smash, yang vs. chen, old yang vs. new, public vs. "real", blah blah blah. about to watch "March Madness" in the US which is all about my tribe vs. your tribe, but in a very enjoyable, overt, not passive-aggressive way. MA nerds should get into sports a little.

[Bao]

[
None of what Tom posted here is going to make 1% of a difference because all of taiji is run exactly like this: as a cult.

Look at the constant posts here about learning the secrets to make people hop around and how if you don't have those, you don't have THE REALZ TAIJI!!

Wow, how come no one here even read the witness reports? About a sexual predator who took astronomical sums of money from women who he knew hardly had anything to begin with.

It certainly don’t sound like the Tai chi hippies next door.

What is described is a real cult, not a Tai chi school.

[Bhassler]

He also introduces himself as "Dr.", which he no longer is. That by itself is telling.

[Bob]

Real power or not? Sincerely don't know how to judge these things - if one did not know of his reputation would you infer he has it?

He trained most of the Chen Xiaowang/Chen Zhenglei generation so what, if anything, was lost?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt9qS2Z9ahc

Grand Master Feng Zhiqiang hanging out with a few of his senior disciples near the flats where he lived in Beijing China. Note how he exerts control over his oponent with just the twist of a finger!

This video was taken when Feng Zhiqiang was 85 less than a year before he passed away in spring this year (2012). A tribute to a truely great and inspirational Tai Chi master.

For a more detailed biography of GM Feng Zhiqiang see here:
http://www.chentaiji.com/about/fengbi...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoGIPgvI_5c

Rare footage of grand master Feng Zhiqiang demonstrating the applications of Taiji's Ba Fa (eight methods) and Taiji tuishou on Chinese TV in 1989 with his student Lü Baochun.