Spring,
Tim Cartmell
http://www.shenwu.com His lineage can be found on my site under the respective arts/styles.
http://www.threeharmonies.com As for the "highest teaching" BS I have no energy to enter into another argument about speculation on everyones part. Tim is no nonsense, and so he also picked his teachers with such attitude. I can only speak of his experiences vicariously obviously, but I can tell you in my limited 17 years of martial experience that indeed there is tons of BS out there, and it is hard to sift through.
As for your comment on any teacher teaching basics for 1-3 years...... again there is lots of shit out there, and lots of teachers who drag out your learning. I cannot speak for your experiences, but with me I have found many like that, and the overwhelming majority of those like minded individuals had little to nothing to offer an aspiring student other than a drained bank account, and time spent that can never be earned back. I trained with many of these type people prior to meeting my current two teachers (Tim and Hu Xi Lin), and when I first met Tim he taught me more about Xing Yi in one hour than I had learned in years of practice with my former instructors! I asked why he was so open, response was "I was taken advantage of both with money and time too often in Asia, why would I want to do that to my students."
Needless to say I have been dedicated to Tim and his teachings for over 6 years now! I hope you can find someone as kind and willing to share as I have.
I think if you look at the translations of Sun's works you will notice some stark differences in what you were taught, and what is originally taught by Sun. This is not to say your teacher is not good, nor did he teach you wrong! Just differently I suppose.
Hope that helps.
Jake
Last edited by JAB on Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:24 am, edited 1 time in total.