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Chasing the Dragon
By Bobbe - Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:24:17 GMT
Originally Posted at: FMATalk
====================
This is an edited version of a post I made on another board. I thought it was relevant to this one, so I am reposting here.
As I look around this (and almost every other MA forum) I can see several trends that lend themselves to the fantastic, if not outright unbelievable, and they repeat themselves in various forms.
Which art is better because of what.
Who was the most favored student.
The trustworthiness of any particular teacher.
Language and terminology wars.
The lineage conflicts that sunder empires.
And lastly, who got what secret teaching over whomever else. Especially in light of the founder/head instructor passing away.
It’s this last point I want to address in this article. I find it curious that in this advanced age of communication there is still so much conflict and debate over what a long-dead martial arts instructor taught, trained, or believed in. Since there is no verifiable way of communicating with the dead, I can’t help but wonder what end such speculation is supposed to produce. There is no point that can be proven to the ground, nothing of substance that can be transmitted, especially if all the students who actually touched hands with the founder of the art are long gone as well. All you have is hearsay, second-hand information. For the most part, that wouldn’t be a problem. A valid, useful combat technique can be proven over and over again, with positive results. If the core motion and philosophy of the founder are preserved, then you can indeed get a picture clear enough to continue in the same spirit as the founder intended.
But as to the supposition of what the founder himself said, did, and taught…Difficult, bordering impossible. And the difficulty increases exponentially as time passes, because the supposed “spoken” word of the founder becomes a schoolyard game of gossip, with the story changing ever so slightly as the tale passes between practitioners.
Martial Arts in general are typically wrought with mystique and secrecy, and techniques are jealously guarded. This ailment has not decreased as the decades have passed and new teachers are generated, but the mythos of the all-knowing instructor has. The typical martial artist doesn’t devote his life to his art the way someone in the 60’s or 70’s might have, they normally don’t take it as seriously. This is because of the proliferation of multiple arts exploding across the U.S. until there were about three different schools with several different styles on every street corner, and of course, the internet. Add the wildcard garage schools (such as mine) into the mix, and your typical martial arts enthusiast can cover a wide range of territory without having to give a real commitment to the art or teacher if he doesn’t want to. Because there is so much publicly available, the freedom of choice makes secretive training look silly in this modern age…Who needs it? You can find competent, skilled instructors in your area online nowadays, and probably discover how good or bad they’re technique is by scanning youtube for a bit.
So the age of the master who withholds his art is dying. But what if he is the only one who has the art? What about those who can withhold knowledge because there is no one else who has it?
Advanced understanding and skill in martial arts of any style are attainable for those with the discipline and determination to keep training and learning. However, there are several points in the last 100 years of martial arts history, especially in America, where martial knowledge and growth occurred at a nexus point, and was embodied in a single person. As an example, I could name Dan Inosanto, Bruce Lee, Morehei Ueshiba, Yip Man and Herman Suwanda as cases where the art was solely existent in a single person. Some of these people have lived long enough to successfully transfer the bulk of their knowledge to others, some of them have only given out small tidbits, with suspect motives, others died before they could finish the job.
Since I started teaching 8 years ago, something I learned is that the TEACHER must never be the ART. It places too great a burden of responsibility on the whim and decision of one person. A man (or woman) with great moral character and deep convictions will still make mistakes. A person who is totally untrustworthy can still get it right from time to time. But if one person is the sole purveyor of a martial system, if only one person who knows the secrets of your art, and that person is untrustworthy, secretive, or only teaching partial information, YOUR ART, IN ITS CURRENT ITERATION, IS DOOMED.
That’s not to say the teacher won’t have something to offer your martial education, he does.
That’s not to say what you are learning is worthless, it’s not.
That is not to say you can’t learn some great technique, you can.
But if you are looking to be the kind of practitioner your teacher is, with his or her level of ability and insight, forget it. The odds are so against you, you could bet the farm in Vegas and have a better chance of winning the pot.
The Filipino Martial Arts has, by all accounts, great technique and training devices. But there is so much surrounding the mythos of it, that it causes confusion and conflict among the current practitioners, and it insinuates that some of the training might not be as good as other parts of it, regardless of the effectiveness of it. Was it influenced by Spanish arts? Were there Chinese arts added later? How much was Silat, and how much was Kung Fu? Why all the different terms? What did Grandmaster ------ teach, and to whom? Who got the most training? Who got the best training?
Several FMA teachers died unexpectedly this past decade, (we don’t have to go into the how of it, the point is that they mostly didn’t see it coming) and didn’t leave anyone in clear charge of their art in the event of they’re passing. It is also clear that they taught different people different things at different times. Why they did this is unknown, but some people have different things than others from the exact same teacher. This alone has caused conflict and arguments among students, and his grandstudents don’t have a choice; They must attend for whomever they’re teacher is, and defend his point. There is no shame in this, but it is still monkey-see, monkey-do. If you weren’t there, you don’t know what these teachers said or did. You can only take your teacher’s word for it.
It is also apparent that much of they’re teachings changed as time went on. Honestly, this is to be expected from a teacher who considers outside influences as well, they know that new information will come to light and alter what they thought was reality. In most cases this is a change for the better, so a good teacher will embrace it. Unfortunately, most Grandmasters left nothing behind in terms of where they got what from, or how they changed things to suit the current view of the art. They simply said “Do like this” and that was how it was done.
In the current trend of “who has what” and students of students arguing with other students, a common occurrence is to place blame on practitioners who haven’t trained with the top dogs and are now teaching their version of the system, maybe with some techniques added from system “A” and style “B” to fill in the gaps left. This is still a kind of stop-loss action, because the base argument is the same: Partial information given leads to investigative training after the founder dies. It’s still the founder/head teacher’s fault, the students (who are now teachers themselves) are only trying to find the truth in their movements, the reality of the art they have dedicated years of their lives training in. They should have been correctly instructed AT THE BEGINNING, to avoid any confusion later on. You cannot blame a student, whose time and effort is just as valuable as the teacher’s, for trying to expand his knowledge in the same way his teacher did.
In the event that the teacher doesn’t openly teach his knowledge and dies before he can transfer anything of value to video or an individual, that is simply knowledge postponed until another time. As far as combat and the human body is concerned, what is lost can and will eventually be found again, but how long will it take? Next year? Next generation? Next century? How much effort will it take on the part of the seeker? Will they have as much mental and physical ability as the teacher? Less? More?
The late Pencak Silat master Herman Suwanda died unexpectedly, and he didn’t leave anyone in clear charge of his art. His death caused a rift in the Suwanda family itself, which to this day has not been repaired. I feel particularly blessed to have trained with Pa Herman, but even more so after he died. After several years of continuing my own training with his younger brother and researching Pencak Silat on my own, I have made two vital conclusions:
1: Pa Herman WAS Mande Muda, and none of his students had the whole picture.
It would have been impossible for this to be otherwise, even if Pa had lived another 10 years. Pendekar Herman was unique to the world, his martial education was balanced by his influences traveling abroad, and his deep commitment to his students’ understanding. You would be hard-pressed to find any 10 silat instructors today with Pendekar Herman’s knowledge and skill.
2: Pa Herman taught all of us equally, and had gone to great lengths to show us how to find the whole picture ourselves in the event of his passing.
In this respect, anybody who achieved a certain level in Mande Muda could be counted on to know, without fail, several key elements: Cimande Tengan Jurus, Sabetan, Sapu Luar, Sapu Dalam, Jurus Inti, Rikesan, Paleradan, Harimau, Padundun, Suliwa, etc.
I know these like I know my own name. So does any number of Pa’s former students, many of whom train in other systems now. You will not see any of us get on a forum and argue that Pa Herman taught one guy something different than another. He certainly may have given MORE to certain students, I know of several that he was also close friends with. But nobody learned “secret Cimande Juru #375”, it was always the same training. Ask any Jagabaya how many beats Paleradan breaks down into, and the answer will always be the same. Ask for a demonstration of Jurus Inti, and we will all look the same, perhaps with a minor adjustment here or there.
My point here is that we were shown how to carry the art on within ourselves in case we had to do it alone. The unthinkable event actually happened, and we carried on anyway. We could trust the word of Pa Herman, since we could see he was giving us all the same thing, and none of us thinks he got something more or less than another did. Some of us don’t get along for other reasons, and some of us simply don’t appreciate the company of other Mande Muda practitioners…But that has nothing to do with the information that was given.
I cannot speculate as to whether or not Pa Herman would approve of what I have done with my training, he’s not returning my phone calls. I can only continue doing what I think is correct for myself, and my training. But if anyone ever came up to me and said “That’s not what Pa would have wanted” my first response would be “How the f**k would YOU know?” Some people exist in this world for no other reason than to tear you away from the truth, whether they have it or not. These, you have to learn to ignore. If you are on the path towards knowledge, be prepared to sidestep some brambles along your way. But don’t let anything stop you, because one day they will be coming to you, looking for the same thing. It will then be YOUR responsibility to pass on your art, as best as you can. When that time comes, I can only hope you choose to cultivate knowledgeable practitioners instead of look-alike drones who will fight amongst themselves once you’re gone.
I have largely avoided the obvious ailment of the ‘Teacher as Art” syndrome, or maybe it’s the first: The teacher who willfully withholds information, and dies before he can transfer it. This is an abhorrent attitude for a martial arts teacher to take, but it is rampant among the last generation of teachers. Thankfully, it’s not a disease I see being passed on to many of the next generation. Maybe there’s hope yet.
Not everyone will see it this way. Many people view Martial Arts as something worth giving your life away to for any small return of knowledge in the bargain. A table scrap of information given by the master (easily attained through simple reasoning) becomes the holy grail of martial arts to the right practitioner. Add the mystique of a secret system, the fairy tale of a venerated master from a distant land and a few colorful belts and patches, and what you have is a recipe for a ruined life. A life spent searching for the one true art, when what they need is one simple truth: You can carry on the spirit of the training without the added burden of someone’s name. If they’re not around anymore then you shouldn’t try to second-guess them. Dead people don’t chime in on the ways of the living.
A Chinese saying goes; “It is the height of stupidity to spend your life searching for the donkey you are already riding on”.
How do you like the ride so far?
Read More...
------------------------------------
FMATalk.com Post Bot - FMA Feed
By Bobbe - Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:24:17 GMT
Originally Posted at: FMATalk
====================
This is an edited version of a post I made on another board. I thought it was relevant to this one, so I am reposting here.
Why TEACHER must never be ART
As I look around this (and almost every other MA forum) I can see several trends that lend themselves to the fantastic, if not outright unbelievable, and they repeat themselves in various forms.
Which art is better because of what.
Who was the most favored student.
The trustworthiness of any particular teacher.
Language and terminology wars.
The lineage conflicts that sunder empires.
And lastly, who got what secret teaching over whomever else. Especially in light of the founder/head instructor passing away.
It’s this last point I want to address in this article. I find it curious that in this advanced age of communication there is still so much conflict and debate over what a long-dead martial arts instructor taught, trained, or believed in. Since there is no verifiable way of communicating with the dead, I can’t help but wonder what end such speculation is supposed to produce. There is no point that can be proven to the ground, nothing of substance that can be transmitted, especially if all the students who actually touched hands with the founder of the art are long gone as well. All you have is hearsay, second-hand information. For the most part, that wouldn’t be a problem. A valid, useful combat technique can be proven over and over again, with positive results. If the core motion and philosophy of the founder are preserved, then you can indeed get a picture clear enough to continue in the same spirit as the founder intended.
But as to the supposition of what the founder himself said, did, and taught…Difficult, bordering impossible. And the difficulty increases exponentially as time passes, because the supposed “spoken” word of the founder becomes a schoolyard game of gossip, with the story changing ever so slightly as the tale passes between practitioners.
Martial Arts in general are typically wrought with mystique and secrecy, and techniques are jealously guarded. This ailment has not decreased as the decades have passed and new teachers are generated, but the mythos of the all-knowing instructor has. The typical martial artist doesn’t devote his life to his art the way someone in the 60’s or 70’s might have, they normally don’t take it as seriously. This is because of the proliferation of multiple arts exploding across the U.S. until there were about three different schools with several different styles on every street corner, and of course, the internet. Add the wildcard garage schools (such as mine) into the mix, and your typical martial arts enthusiast can cover a wide range of territory without having to give a real commitment to the art or teacher if he doesn’t want to. Because there is so much publicly available, the freedom of choice makes secretive training look silly in this modern age…Who needs it? You can find competent, skilled instructors in your area online nowadays, and probably discover how good or bad they’re technique is by scanning youtube for a bit.
So the age of the master who withholds his art is dying. But what if he is the only one who has the art? What about those who can withhold knowledge because there is no one else who has it?
Advanced understanding and skill in martial arts of any style are attainable for those with the discipline and determination to keep training and learning. However, there are several points in the last 100 years of martial arts history, especially in America, where martial knowledge and growth occurred at a nexus point, and was embodied in a single person. As an example, I could name Dan Inosanto, Bruce Lee, Morehei Ueshiba, Yip Man and Herman Suwanda as cases where the art was solely existent in a single person. Some of these people have lived long enough to successfully transfer the bulk of their knowledge to others, some of them have only given out small tidbits, with suspect motives, others died before they could finish the job.
Since I started teaching 8 years ago, something I learned is that the TEACHER must never be the ART. It places too great a burden of responsibility on the whim and decision of one person. A man (or woman) with great moral character and deep convictions will still make mistakes. A person who is totally untrustworthy can still get it right from time to time. But if one person is the sole purveyor of a martial system, if only one person who knows the secrets of your art, and that person is untrustworthy, secretive, or only teaching partial information, YOUR ART, IN ITS CURRENT ITERATION, IS DOOMED.
That’s not to say the teacher won’t have something to offer your martial education, he does.
That’s not to say what you are learning is worthless, it’s not.
That is not to say you can’t learn some great technique, you can.
But if you are looking to be the kind of practitioner your teacher is, with his or her level of ability and insight, forget it. The odds are so against you, you could bet the farm in Vegas and have a better chance of winning the pot.
The Filipino Martial Arts has, by all accounts, great technique and training devices. But there is so much surrounding the mythos of it, that it causes confusion and conflict among the current practitioners, and it insinuates that some of the training might not be as good as other parts of it, regardless of the effectiveness of it. Was it influenced by Spanish arts? Were there Chinese arts added later? How much was Silat, and how much was Kung Fu? Why all the different terms? What did Grandmaster ------ teach, and to whom? Who got the most training? Who got the best training?
Several FMA teachers died unexpectedly this past decade, (we don’t have to go into the how of it, the point is that they mostly didn’t see it coming) and didn’t leave anyone in clear charge of their art in the event of they’re passing. It is also clear that they taught different people different things at different times. Why they did this is unknown, but some people have different things than others from the exact same teacher. This alone has caused conflict and arguments among students, and his grandstudents don’t have a choice; They must attend for whomever they’re teacher is, and defend his point. There is no shame in this, but it is still monkey-see, monkey-do. If you weren’t there, you don’t know what these teachers said or did. You can only take your teacher’s word for it.
It is also apparent that much of they’re teachings changed as time went on. Honestly, this is to be expected from a teacher who considers outside influences as well, they know that new information will come to light and alter what they thought was reality. In most cases this is a change for the better, so a good teacher will embrace it. Unfortunately, most Grandmasters left nothing behind in terms of where they got what from, or how they changed things to suit the current view of the art. They simply said “Do like this” and that was how it was done.
In the current trend of “who has what” and students of students arguing with other students, a common occurrence is to place blame on practitioners who haven’t trained with the top dogs and are now teaching their version of the system, maybe with some techniques added from system “A” and style “B” to fill in the gaps left. This is still a kind of stop-loss action, because the base argument is the same: Partial information given leads to investigative training after the founder dies. It’s still the founder/head teacher’s fault, the students (who are now teachers themselves) are only trying to find the truth in their movements, the reality of the art they have dedicated years of their lives training in. They should have been correctly instructed AT THE BEGINNING, to avoid any confusion later on. You cannot blame a student, whose time and effort is just as valuable as the teacher’s, for trying to expand his knowledge in the same way his teacher did.
In the event that the teacher doesn’t openly teach his knowledge and dies before he can transfer anything of value to video or an individual, that is simply knowledge postponed until another time. As far as combat and the human body is concerned, what is lost can and will eventually be found again, but how long will it take? Next year? Next generation? Next century? How much effort will it take on the part of the seeker? Will they have as much mental and physical ability as the teacher? Less? More?
The late Pencak Silat master Herman Suwanda died unexpectedly, and he didn’t leave anyone in clear charge of his art. His death caused a rift in the Suwanda family itself, which to this day has not been repaired. I feel particularly blessed to have trained with Pa Herman, but even more so after he died. After several years of continuing my own training with his younger brother and researching Pencak Silat on my own, I have made two vital conclusions:
1: Pa Herman WAS Mande Muda, and none of his students had the whole picture.
It would have been impossible for this to be otherwise, even if Pa had lived another 10 years. Pendekar Herman was unique to the world, his martial education was balanced by his influences traveling abroad, and his deep commitment to his students’ understanding. You would be hard-pressed to find any 10 silat instructors today with Pendekar Herman’s knowledge and skill.
2: Pa Herman taught all of us equally, and had gone to great lengths to show us how to find the whole picture ourselves in the event of his passing.
In this respect, anybody who achieved a certain level in Mande Muda could be counted on to know, without fail, several key elements: Cimande Tengan Jurus, Sabetan, Sapu Luar, Sapu Dalam, Jurus Inti, Rikesan, Paleradan, Harimau, Padundun, Suliwa, etc.
I know these like I know my own name. So does any number of Pa’s former students, many of whom train in other systems now. You will not see any of us get on a forum and argue that Pa Herman taught one guy something different than another. He certainly may have given MORE to certain students, I know of several that he was also close friends with. But nobody learned “secret Cimande Juru #375”, it was always the same training. Ask any Jagabaya how many beats Paleradan breaks down into, and the answer will always be the same. Ask for a demonstration of Jurus Inti, and we will all look the same, perhaps with a minor adjustment here or there.
My point here is that we were shown how to carry the art on within ourselves in case we had to do it alone. The unthinkable event actually happened, and we carried on anyway. We could trust the word of Pa Herman, since we could see he was giving us all the same thing, and none of us thinks he got something more or less than another did. Some of us don’t get along for other reasons, and some of us simply don’t appreciate the company of other Mande Muda practitioners…But that has nothing to do with the information that was given.
I cannot speculate as to whether or not Pa Herman would approve of what I have done with my training, he’s not returning my phone calls. I can only continue doing what I think is correct for myself, and my training. But if anyone ever came up to me and said “That’s not what Pa would have wanted” my first response would be “How the f**k would YOU know?” Some people exist in this world for no other reason than to tear you away from the truth, whether they have it or not. These, you have to learn to ignore. If you are on the path towards knowledge, be prepared to sidestep some brambles along your way. But don’t let anything stop you, because one day they will be coming to you, looking for the same thing. It will then be YOUR responsibility to pass on your art, as best as you can. When that time comes, I can only hope you choose to cultivate knowledgeable practitioners instead of look-alike drones who will fight amongst themselves once you’re gone.
I have largely avoided the obvious ailment of the ‘Teacher as Art” syndrome, or maybe it’s the first: The teacher who willfully withholds information, and dies before he can transfer it. This is an abhorrent attitude for a martial arts teacher to take, but it is rampant among the last generation of teachers. Thankfully, it’s not a disease I see being passed on to many of the next generation. Maybe there’s hope yet.
Not everyone will see it this way. Many people view Martial Arts as something worth giving your life away to for any small return of knowledge in the bargain. A table scrap of information given by the master (easily attained through simple reasoning) becomes the holy grail of martial arts to the right practitioner. Add the mystique of a secret system, the fairy tale of a venerated master from a distant land and a few colorful belts and patches, and what you have is a recipe for a ruined life. A life spent searching for the one true art, when what they need is one simple truth: You can carry on the spirit of the training without the added burden of someone’s name. If they’re not around anymore then you shouldn’t try to second-guess them. Dead people don’t chime in on the ways of the living.
A Chinese saying goes; “It is the height of stupidity to spend your life searching for the donkey you are already riding on”.
How do you like the ride so far?
Read More...
------------------------------------
FMATalk.com Post Bot - FMA Feed
