Science Vs Pseudoscience {Can you prove it?}
Science Vs Pseudoscience {Can you prove it?}
Every once in a while I will meet a new instructor here for one reason or another. This time it was to learn a set of techniques from this under thirty year old Shaolin {Monk}? This teacher travels the world teaching. Ok so we [my wife and I} travel to his home town three hour bus ride, then with the teacher and his father another two hours in the car. As usual he spent most of the time telling me how everything I learned up to this point is all wrong and how he knows all the secrets. Me being the humble guy I am nod my head and add the occasional “yeah o really”.
Now this has happened about twenty times since I have lived in the Songshan Shaolin Mountains. Every teacher swearing they have the secrets and all other know nothing. Some of these teachers are well known. Few are humble unfortunately almost none are real Buddhist in my opinion.
Ok back to the story. I go to bed in a bad mood after listing to a guy almost half my age with a decade less of MA experience rant about how I know nothing even though he doesn’t know my Shifu and never saw me do so much as a single technique. At one point he says, when you meditate do you walk for thirty minutes first, I begin to answer he cuts me off midsentence to say “no all wrong”. I once had a teacher from Tagou do this to me when he asked me my teacher’s name and I open my mouth to answer before I say his name he cuts me off and says” he doesn’t know real kung fu”. Interesting maybe he can read minds.
The next day we are out at five am hoping I can learn the set and be on my way, when the games begin. I knew they were coming but with a slight twist. I thought he would do the old {let me see you do a form} stop me mid-way and then tell me how the qi wasn’t in my toe and it’s all wrong. Instead he wants me to show him a qin na technique. He says { you said you studied qin na, do a technique and grabs my lapel. At this point in a split second I have to decide feed his ego some more or put up or shut. So instead of going along with his game, counter my technique he knows is coming and then go on about how great he is and I know nothing. I tested him. Instead of grabbing the gripping hand I knocked it off with a forearm block, stepped in with a forearm strike to the side of his neck following up with an elbow to his chin. The forearm block I used power, the forearm to the neck I made contact but didn’t use a lot of power. The elbow I placed in front of his jaw.
Now he tells me no wrong [this is in Chinese of course he doesn’t speak English]. I say{ I hit you how is that wrong;] He says if I fell down it would be right. I say Yeah because I didn’t use power;} I then start to loss it when he insist I let him grab me again to prove his point. I step back gain distance and begin to lose my temper shouting I am here to learn….. not play your games. I walked away and left, let him loss face.
My point in all this is can you prove it? He ranted for maybe three hours in the day and a half I knew him about all these secret qi points how everything I learned was wrong. How great he was bla blab la, yet when I didn’t react to his grab as expected he was taken by surprise he did nothing to defend it. Will a bad guy in the street attack you the way you tell him to? He should have been able to counter maybe even levitate with all the mystical theories and knowledge he has. There are two ways to prove all the mystical theories work. One their teacher and teacher’s teacher lived to be 150, or they are out winning ufc/mma or other fighting competitions. If not it is Pseudoscience. If you like it and it makes you happy fine, just don’t be a ***** about it or you might have to one day prove what you say is real.
scripture of no scripture
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wiz cool c
I know a girl that studies Buddhism in Taiwan and trains at Shaolin from time to time. She mentioned the Chan Buddhism isn't so much about studying scriptures as it is about meditation and experiencing a kind of emptiness or evenness. This evenness is very apparent in my Shifu in his day to day life. .
That's such a slippery slope. Sure Tamo preached enlightenment through chan, not necessarily derived from the sutras, but this easily falls into the same mindtrap as Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do and the denial of the 'classical mess'. Without that historical foundation, you can just make up anything and call it 'Buddhism'. It becomes more shamanic in nature, more like Daoism actually. It's also a rookie mistake as any serious practitioner knows.
