Sandman2[Wing Chun]
12-04-2003, 11:39 AM
First of all, concering the "WC and Shaolin" thread...that thread remained up as long as it did for one reason: I was busy at work yesterday, and for a whopping 18hrs I didn't look at the forum. As soon as I saw it this morning, it was removed.
I think a few things need to be reiterated:
1.)THIS IS NOT A BUDDHISM DISCUSSION FORUM!!!
Sure, buddhism is inseperable from Wing chun, but in the same way that buddhism is inseperable from baking cookies, painting your garage, or doing anything else that you might choose to do. Which means that Wing Chun can be discussed WITHOUT buddhism ever coming up in the conversation, the same as any other activity. Perhaps your system uses terminology that comes from buddhism, and concepts from that point of view are vital to your system's method of transmitting Wing Chun. Great! No problem there! But why can't you rephrase what you are saying using non-buddhist terms? It seems to me that if you understand what you are talking about you should be able to do this. And even if you wish to preserve the terminology, lengthy discussions of esoteric buddhist mind states is unneccessary. This is a SECULAR forum, and forcing everything into a discussion of esoteric/mystic/buddhist ideas is no more appropriate than someone trying to shoe-horn every discussion into an Islamic frame of reference.
2.) ALL HISTORY IS SOMEONE'S THEORY
I don't just mean this in the Wing Chun sense, I mean ALL history. If you weren't there, you can never prove to 100% certainty that something was a certain way or happened a certain way. And even if 5 people were there, it's been shown over and over that even they won't necessarily agree on what actually happened. Even if the events are filmed (ie: JFK and the Zapruder film), there can still be tremendous amouts of debate as to what occured. Which really is not that big of a deal. So there's no reason to defend your lineage's view of WC history to the death. Did WC come from Shaolin? Did it come from Ermei? Did Bubba Joe Bob Wu of Tulsa, OK come up with it? We'll never know for 100%, wich means any discussion of such is essentially an intellectual exercise at best. Either way, it has little actual bearing on the art that you practice. I do not for one single minute believe that learning good WC is impossible without accurate history lessons.
3.) A LACK OF CIVILITY IS NEVER NECESSARY
Really, there's no reason to be rude to each other. If we're all adults we should be able to all have objective, adult discussions with each other without resorting to obnoxious comments. And just because someone else "started it" doesn't make it acceptable to respond in kind on here. That's what your email and PMs are for. I understand that there is prior history between some people who post on here that still don't like each other. I'm not saying you have to, but don't post it on here. People from all lineages are welcome here. And really it's just not needed. Please stop.
This forum is a wonderful place for people to come together and discuss wing chun. But it's just a discussion forum. As adults, we really should be able to discuss things on here, even things that we feel passionately about, without veins bulging from our forehead and blood pressure shooting through the roof. It really is ok if we don't all agree with each other. In fact, I'll go so far as to guess that we'll never all agree on all the same things. That's normal. So please, let's just try and have reasonable conversations.
I think a few things need to be reiterated:
1.)THIS IS NOT A BUDDHISM DISCUSSION FORUM!!!
Sure, buddhism is inseperable from Wing chun, but in the same way that buddhism is inseperable from baking cookies, painting your garage, or doing anything else that you might choose to do. Which means that Wing Chun can be discussed WITHOUT buddhism ever coming up in the conversation, the same as any other activity. Perhaps your system uses terminology that comes from buddhism, and concepts from that point of view are vital to your system's method of transmitting Wing Chun. Great! No problem there! But why can't you rephrase what you are saying using non-buddhist terms? It seems to me that if you understand what you are talking about you should be able to do this. And even if you wish to preserve the terminology, lengthy discussions of esoteric buddhist mind states is unneccessary. This is a SECULAR forum, and forcing everything into a discussion of esoteric/mystic/buddhist ideas is no more appropriate than someone trying to shoe-horn every discussion into an Islamic frame of reference.
2.) ALL HISTORY IS SOMEONE'S THEORY
I don't just mean this in the Wing Chun sense, I mean ALL history. If you weren't there, you can never prove to 100% certainty that something was a certain way or happened a certain way. And even if 5 people were there, it's been shown over and over that even they won't necessarily agree on what actually happened. Even if the events are filmed (ie: JFK and the Zapruder film), there can still be tremendous amouts of debate as to what occured. Which really is not that big of a deal. So there's no reason to defend your lineage's view of WC history to the death. Did WC come from Shaolin? Did it come from Ermei? Did Bubba Joe Bob Wu of Tulsa, OK come up with it? We'll never know for 100%, wich means any discussion of such is essentially an intellectual exercise at best. Either way, it has little actual bearing on the art that you practice. I do not for one single minute believe that learning good WC is impossible without accurate history lessons.
3.) A LACK OF CIVILITY IS NEVER NECESSARY
Really, there's no reason to be rude to each other. If we're all adults we should be able to all have objective, adult discussions with each other without resorting to obnoxious comments. And just because someone else "started it" doesn't make it acceptable to respond in kind on here. That's what your email and PMs are for. I understand that there is prior history between some people who post on here that still don't like each other. I'm not saying you have to, but don't post it on here. People from all lineages are welcome here. And really it's just not needed. Please stop.
This forum is a wonderful place for people to come together and discuss wing chun. But it's just a discussion forum. As adults, we really should be able to discuss things on here, even things that we feel passionately about, without veins bulging from our forehead and blood pressure shooting through the roof. It really is ok if we don't all agree with each other. In fact, I'll go so far as to guess that we'll never all agree on all the same things. That's normal. So please, let's just try and have reasonable conversations.