Is Shaolin-Do for real?

[tattooedmonk]

tell em i said hello. would love to see them next time around. thanks.

mr BLUFFINATOR........jim jones......who? jim jonesssssssss!

your CLF shaolin five animal form comes from a book. no lyrics or ways to define the different movements?? oh yeah all super secret kung fu sh!t...haahahahah

[Syn7]

I have to thank you all for this thread. This is EXACTLY why there is so little information made public on inner door Pak Mei/White Brow. People grab any little bit they can from any video, book, you name it and then try to pass it off as real. If you really do the system you can see it at first glance.

The next time someone states that putting things up on youtube is the answer to everything I am going to point them to this thread as proof of why many of us like to keep our hard earned training to ourselves and our close students.

Yeah, but in the interest of full disclosure, Bak Mei has it's own wishy washy shaolin history. We don't even know if he was a real person. For me, I go back to CLC then stop right there. I respect CLC and what he accomplished and that is more than enough for me. The man was a force of nature. And most importantly, it's easy to confirm many of the details.

[hskwarrior]

be real goof ball, I have better things to do with my time than come up there to school you in the arts.

but if you wanna pay me a visit I am always ready.....

I read your other posts , you talk a big game on the net....

but your really a big fat p-u-s-s-y.

who obviously cant be open minded or patient or anything reasonable.

its pathetic.

thats right, i'm a big fat sloppy fat phuk with no speed or power. but watch out, my sow choy has a double whammy to it. first my arm strikes you then you get hit a second time with my blubber. and i hope it would be one of those weeks i never took a shower and hit you with all my stinky blubber sweat. all in your jaws.

i bet it felt good to the the word p-u-s-s-y hope your moms doesn't get too upset her little jim jones is turning to the dark side. LMAO BUSTA

your CLF shaolin five animal form comes from a book. no lyrics or ways to define the different movements?? oh yeah all super secret kung fu sh!t...haahahahah

weeeeaaaaak. lame. this is some wanksta sh1t. from king wanksta. a straight busta. the only fame you'd get is being on that milk carton.

[Judge Pen]

There are two different discussions/arguments going on here, for some reason the "haters" aren't getting the position most of us are in, though we have stated it over and over again. Most of us here are not defending Sin The. We are apalled by how he has lied and recognize that a lot of the material he has taught was not learned or taught by him properly, and some of it he invented.
However, we learned the material from his system, that's a fact. We have this material now, wherever it came from, what to do with it? Personally, I want to find out where it came from and how it would be performed as authentic Chinese martial arts, or as "authentic" kun tao, or whatever it really is. Some of the forms are obvious, like the five animal form, tiger crane, four roads of hua, the northern praying mantis material and the internal material. We can find out where those forms are from and find people teaching those styles and learn how they would really be performed, they are clearly Chinese forms.
But there is a whole bunch of other material which is not obvious exactly where it came from. Wanting to find out the origins of the material I learned and to learn a more effective way to perform/use it is not defending shaolin do or Sin The. In fact, it is just the opposite, it means I do not trust anything I was taught by the students/devotees of Sin The. I just feel there is some value in the material, despite the method with which it was passed to me, and will make it work. If it is all "made up sh**", then I will make it the best "made up sh**" I possibly can. For the record, I don't believe it was all made up by Sin The, I think he lied in that deposition in order to justify his copyright claim. I think he made up a few forms in order to flesh out an originally sparse curriculum (what he learned as a teenager before coming to the US), before he started teaching material from books. So far, no judge has felt his copyright claim is enforceable.

On the topic of Praying Mantis, I never liked the "tang lang chien" form that everyone always criticizes (from the gif). It never looked or felt right to me, and I never bothered practicing it after I learned it. After learning Zhai Yao, and a Bi Men Tang Lang two person set (which I think is a version of Beng Bu), I knew it wasn't really mantis, it just didn't fit. This makes me think it likely was invented by Sin The, again trying to flesh out his material in the early days. I think he knew the Lohan Chien form, which might have been made up by one of his teachers as an introduction to PM, and tried to extrapolate from that based on his misperception of what mantis is (poking with the fingers and lots of kicks). He never had time to learn the actual mantis system of his school, but later he found instruction books on various PM forms and taught them as special seminars. It's even possible that he really had notes from his teacher with lyrics for some forms, but I doubt he learned many if any of them (especially since he mistranslated some of the names. He should have known, for example, that it was "Zhai Yao" and not "Zhai Shua". Yao 要 and Shua 耍 characters look very similar, and it was a scribbly hand written document so easy to make the mistake. But this does imply he got it from a hand written document, not a printed book. Or that he isn't terribly literate in Chinese characters. Or that he hand copied the text from a book, and then later couldn't read his own handwriting.)

Very well said. If you ever find yourself in Tennessee, let me know. I will buy you a drink just for this post.

[tattooedmonk]

some more fun....

[hskwarrior]

So SD aside, what about the Shaolin, CLF, Hung Gar guys...ect...I'm sure plenty of you or your shifus/sifus own a book or a video. Would you teach something from this material? Would you give a disclaimer? Would you only teach it if it was from your system?

me, i've learned from video's of material from our system (direct lineage). i've been doing the system long enough to know how the system operates. i've even created my own form and put it on youtube and am very open about my creating it. if i pick up something from a trusted video source and teach it to my students they would know i did so.

but because i know books don't demonstrate a form properly, it is left up to the reader and his or her own comprehension of martial arts to figure it out. but if you have not studied that system before you won't know the proper energies or execution without proper teaching.

[Kellen Bassette]

I'm actually impressed with what Jim Jones pulled off...when you step back and look at it, Cult leaders can be pretty impressive individuals...

[hskwarrior]

I'm actually impressed with what Jim Jones pulled off...when you step back and look at it, Cult leaders can be pretty impressive individuals...

i'm curious. what is it exactly that you find impressive about him? this should be interesting, so i'm looking forward to what you have to say here.

[Lucas]

thats not what I said , but go ahead and roll with it. I / we are not discussing sin the right now , doesnt matter what anyone says around here, everyone has stated their position, ad nauseum.

well since i was responding directly to the few posts before me that brought shorin ryu into the discussion to compare, and i stated you cant really compare shorin ryu to shaolin do as they are very different in several ways. then you called me ignorant out of the blue. then i backed my statement up with history. i wasnt even talking to you about anything.

[Kellen Bassette]

me, i've learned from video's of material from our system (direct lineage). i've been doing the system long enough to know how the system operates. i've even created my own form and put it on youtube and am very open about my creating it. if i pick up something from a trusted video source and teach it to my students they would know i did so.

but because i know books don't demonstrate a form properly, it is left up to the reader and his or her own comprehension of martial arts to figure it out. but if you have not studied that system before you won't know the proper energies or execution without proper teaching.

It seems to me it's nearly impossible to learn a form properly from a book, but they can be useful for seeing how a pose should look at the end of a move...makes me wonder if back in the day some guy in China learned a form from the poems on a scroll then taught it....how far off was he and are some of us doing his version today? We may never know...

[tattooedmonk]

I think you got the right idea. One person I trained with, a phenomenal M.A., fighter and technician...taught me several forms, some he came by honestly...some he took from books and videos. A big difference was he was honest about learning something from a video and didn't see a problem with it since he was a very competent M.A.; who had plenty of legitimate training under various instructors.

So what would you do in that situation if your a teacher?

Teach only the stuff that was handed down under a real lineage, assume you can teach it all because you have the understanding and ability to do so, try to find teachers from the other styles and get them to work on those forms/training methods with you? (The latter could be a very difficult task.)

So SD aside, what about the Shaolin, CLF, Hung Gar guys...ect...I'm sure plenty of you or your shifus/sifus own a book or a video. Would you teach something from this material? Would you give a disclaimer? Would you only teach it if it was from your system? If you've trained 20 years do you feel like there's no problem learning a form this way? Where are the lines? Do you feel guilty about it?

I got no dog in this fight, but I'm curious to your answers...if you can take a quick break from making Sin The famous....

if you have experience and backgroud you can do this , but it has to be honest .

most people are pretty impressed if you are well read and can learn from books.

anyone can add and take away from their own system. we all have created our own systems here, because no one does it exactly the way they we taught and has added things and taken things away for various reason.

we alll have that ability and right.

SD is the product of internet sales campaigns, stories being mistold and blown out of proportion and a great deal of childishness.

do what what you like , dont hate on others for doing what you dont or wont. live and let live.

[hskwarrior]

It seems to me it's nearly impossible to learn a form properly from a book, but they can be useful for seeing how a pose should look at the end of a move...makes me wonder if back in the day some guy in China learned a form from the poems on a scroll then taught it....how far off was he and are some of us doing his version today? We may never know...

a good reference tool but not a good teaching tool

also depends on the area. southern china had many many iliterate people.

most people are pretty impressed if you are well read and can learn from books.

stop fukin lyin. not one person will admit to admiring you for being able to learn from a book. fool

[tattooedmonk]

me, i've learned from video's of material from our system (direct lineage). i've been doing the system long enough to know how the system operates. i've even created my own form and put it on youtube and am very open about my creating it. if i pick up something from a trusted video source and teach it to my students they would know i did so.

but because i know books don't demonstrate a form properly, it is left up to the reader and his or her own comprehension of martial arts to figure it out. but if you have not studied that system before you won't know the proper energies or execution without proper teaching.

once again , this is your problem. just because jake did something you dont like or is different or whatever , doesnt mean you should lump us all together. many of us are just as a complished or even more so than you are.

[hskwarrior]

once again , this is your problem. just because jake did something you dont like or is different or whatever , doesnt mean you should lump us all together. many of us are just as a complished or even more so than you are.

i call your bluff. and claim you are full of sh1t. busta.

[tattooedmonk]

a good reference tool but not a good teaching tool

also depends on the area. southern china had many many iliterate people.



stop fukin lyin. not one person will admit to admiring you for being able to learn from a book. fool

hmm really? so you never learned anything from a book?? is this where you are learning to become literate?