Is Shaolin-Do for real?

[kwaichang]

As I said before it is Truth I seek, nothing is as it was all things change. I personally wish to train in the most Original Chinese MA I can with out current dogma and influence, I doubt that exists but we can all dream cant we? Shaolin as it used to be is probably not as we think it was anyway. KC

[RenDaHai]

I frankly think the search for the "real shaolin" is a larpers farce.

Well, no. There IS an actual Shaolin temple. In the surrounding Song mountains there are literally hundreds of villages, a great many of which have old KungFu masters living there, all training styles that have come from the shaolin temple at some point in history. You can even see the evolution of its famous forms like XiaoHongQuan through the way they are performed in different villages, frozen in time from when they left the shaolin temple. This stuff is unquestionably Shaolin. If you speak Chinese, its easy to find.

I've seen some Shaolin Do. Although this guy may have made up the forms I doubt he changed the individual techniques. So even if the form is new (and the sequence does matter, it teaches strategy and combination where as individual moves are technique) the individual techniques would still be good stuff.

When you teach someone something you give it to them. Especially when they have paid a lot for it. The fact this guy is trying to copyright forms is really disgusting and is a reflection on his character. The actual technique is not his. It all seems pretty shady... If I were you guys I would accept I learned some good technique and realise it should be easy to transition into any other sect.

[Judge Pen]

Well, no. There IS an actual Shaolin temple. In the surrounding Song mountains there are literally hundreds of villages, a great many of which have old KungFu masters living there, all training styles that have come from the shaolin temple at some point in history. You can even see the evolution of its famous forms like XiaoHongQuan through the way they are performed in different villages, frozen in time from when they left the shaolin temple. This stuff is unquestionably Shaolin. If you speak Chinese, its easy to find.

I've seen some Shaolin Do. Although this guy may have made up the forms I doubt he changed the individual techniques. So even if the form is new (and the sequence does matter, it teaches strategy and combination where as individual moves are technique) the individual techniques would still be good stuff.

When you teach someone something you give it to them. Especially when they have paid a lot for it. The fact this guy is trying to copyright forms is really disgusting and is a reflection on his character. The actual technique is not his. It all seems pretty shady... If I were you guys I would accept I learned some good technique and realise it should be easy to transition into any other sect.

It is easy to transition. I've been lucky to have had the opportunity to train with a few non Sd martial artists and had no problem picking up a form or some technique from them. One of the largest obstacles is opportunity. Many Sders live in areas here their choice of style or teacher is limited. That can be true even in more populated areas. I came to grips that SD isn't exactly what was advertised a while ago but it did not diminish its value because I still received good martial training. I think these facts coming to light is a good thing and hopefully the elders in SD will realize that they have to adapt and embrace the truth of the origins and stop telling tall tales that sound good for marketing.

[Songshan]

Glad to see some of you are still at it, I hope all are well and training hard Traditional or not. Well it seems Bawang does not feel we are honoring the Shaolin name. What else is new. So I pose a question, is it better to train "traditional" and belittle others for what they do or to Train with the right spirit what ever you do and praise and accept others as Martial Artists with qualities and abilities ? Which is more traditional? also what of wing chun isnt its History questionable yet it is considered Traditional although very new in a MA sense. KC

I really like this post. Very well said

[Old Noob]

You can even see the evolution of its famous forms like XiaoHongQuan through the way they are performed in different villages, frozen in time from when they left the shaolin temple.

Not to get involved in a semantic debate but I think your quote actually illustrates my point. Something cannot be both an evolution and frozen in time. Even with the best of effort and intention, things will change from generation to generation; from teacher to student. We know that current Shaolin Temple MA is wu shu infused and, though I agree that village kung fu is unquestionably Shaolin derived, I submit that it is impossible that it is frozen in time and identical to that as was practiced in the temple. Heck, the temple itself was, to a degree, an evolving martial university. That's why I said you can't find the "real Shaolin.". The best you can do if that's what you want is to find the guys who wanted to innovate the least.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not defending the misrepresentations at all. I just think evolution in any martial system is a good thing as long as the innovator has a solid base from which to innovate.

[bodhi warrior]

I've said it before, I like all the material I've learned. I have no problem with the forms themselves. I have a problem being lied to. Once this gets out to more people, sin will not be able to draw the big numbers to his seminars. I mean how many forms do we need him to make up.
Some things he didn't create. Taichi, bagua, hsing ie, and probably hua quan. We'll never know how he obtained this material. But I'd sure like to know. This guys making six figures easy off hard working people because they think they're learning authentic shaolin.

[RenDaHai]

. Heck, the temple itself was, to a degree, an evolving martial university. That's why I said you can't find the "real Shaolin.". The best you can do if that's what you want is to find the guys who wanted to innovate the least.
.

But you really can. True it is evolving but that is Shaolin; It is still evolving. The latest stuff is evolving in a less desirable way... But you can still get the older stuff.

For example after it burned down in 1928 some famous masters who continued teaching in nearby villages were ShiZhenXu, ShiDeGen and LiGenShen (to name a few of many). Although they are all now dead, some of their direct disciples still live (they are old, but still practice and teach). They taught to their disciples what they learned at shaolin before 1928 and you can learn that today just as it was, taught through someone who trained directly with them. They have not changed the form but their explanation and deep understanding of the technique is itself their innovation. That is the real Shaolin.... True you can never know exactly what shaolin was at its Martial Peak in the 16th century....But what is around now is the direct evolution of that material, as evolved inside the Shaolin Temple itself... Thats as Shaolin as possible.

[Old Noob]

But you really can. True it is evolving but that is Shaolin; It is still evolving. The latest stuff is evolving in a less desirable way... But you can still get the older stuff.

For example after it burned down in 1928 some famous masters who continued teaching in nearby villages were ShiZhenXu, ShiDeGen and LiGenShen (to name a few of many). Although they are all now dead, some of their direct disciples still live (they are old, but still practice and teach). They taught to their disciples what they learned at shaolin before 1928 and you can learn that today just as it was, taught through someone who trained directly with them. They have not changed the form but their explanation and deep understanding of the technique is itself their innovation. That is the real Shaolin.... True you can never know exactly what shaolin was at its Martial Peak in the 16th century....But what is around now is the direct evolution of that material, as evolved inside the Shaolin Temple itself... Thats as Shaolin as possible.

I don't think we're disagreeing.

[Old Noob]

I've said it before, I like all the material I've learned. I have no problem with the forms themselves. I have a problem being lied to. Once this gets out to more people, sin will not be able to draw the big numbers to his seminars. I mean how many forms do we need him to make up.
Some things he didn't create. Taichi, bagua, hsing ie, and probably hua quan. We'll never know how he obtained this material. But I'd sure like to know. This guys making six figures easy off hard working people because they think they're learning authentic shaolin.

I think you're right. Those who were buying the "straight from the temple" stuff will be super miffed. As a person who wasn't necessarily shopping for that I'm less angry, especially since the whole story was so doubtful any way. Still, it is a pretty crappy thing to market a lie like that.

Do you really think he's pulling down six figures on seminars and testing fees?

Oh, and he did claim that all his seminar stuff was old stuff if you believe he wouldn't lie under oath.

[bodhi warrior]

I think you're right. Those who were buying the "straight from the temple" stuff will be super miffed. As a person who wasn't necessarily shopping for that I'm less angry, especially since the whole story was so doubtful any way. Still, it is a pretty crappy thing to market a lie like that.

Do you really think he's pulling down six figures on seminars and testing fees?

Oh, and he did claim that all his seminar stuff was old stuff if you believe he wouldn't lie under oath.

Well, he said he was averaging $8000-$9000 a year from that one small school. I know there's more than 13 schools under sin the'.

[Leto]

I'm sure he's getting three figures from the seminars and testing. I'm not really upset at that, good for him for setting up such a successfull organization. I just wish he hadn't lied or alllowed his students to lie about the ancient origins of the material.
Ren Da Hai: I agree, it is obvious he did not invent the individual techniques, for the most part, and it is easy to transition to any traditional style. He was lying or misunderstanding the question when he said under oath that he invented all the forms from scratch. There is clearly influence there from whatever tradition he learned, he just rearranged the pattern and order of moves. In some cases, he used the same name as forms found in other systems, and those forms bear some similarity to those of the same name (jie quan and lian wu zhang at least). I am curious what Ie Chang Ming actually taught.
I also like what I learned there, for the most part. I just felt my instruction was not in-depth enough, too much too fast. And I wasn't fond of the business practices, and found a lack of accurate knowledge of history and martial arts in general being perpetuated from the highest levels. But that is true of many many martial arts institutions, not a lot of people spend time researching martial arts history and exploring accurate information various styles.

Personally, I have been out of the system for 7 years now so there is not a real soul searching moment for me. I have taken what I learned there and supplemented it with teaching from other sources where the material overlaps (internal styles mostly), and continue to evolve those Sin The original forms based on my growing understanding.

[Old Noob]

Well, he said he was averaging $8000-$9000 a year from that one small school. I know there's more than 13 schools under sin the'.

I took that to mean that that's what he made off of the Soards' schools and not just Rydbergs.

[kungfujunky]

he makes well over that from the David soard and Sharon soard. and it was the soards who pushed him to sue Jake. Idiot move on their part.

IMO they (David soard and sharon soard) are terrible martial artists and poor teachers.

[One student]

So who was it who said this thread was over?

I feel compelled though to post my take on all this, and from my perspectives. It is cathartic for me, maybe it will be for others, too.

Like JP, I have done hundreds of depositions, and read that many more. That gives me some kind of insight on some of that transcript, that JP might appreciate, too.

The typos and complete misunderstanding of what was being said is evident. Maybe partly GMT's speech (those who have personally spoken to him know what I mean), some being the court reporter evidently having no idea what he was saying, does taint it some. What is "brick" form? I've heard him use the word "swamp" for saliva; "chop" and "hand" for each other and for "elbow," "knee" and "leg" and "foot" interchangeably, etc. This has to be considered in reading it.

And, there is definitely a disconnect between the attorney and GMT. I think the attorney was asking one question, and GMT was answering something completely different, and they each didn't figure that out. And not knowing the questioner, I wonder what MA experience he has, although it could be vast for all I know. I don't think the attorney ever figured out the difference between levels and degrees.

And there are language barriers that are evident in the questions and answers that tell me, or at least in my opinion, they were not always on the same page. And that does make a difference (see below).

And I'm not sure I'm impressed with the thoroughness of the questioning either. From a legal perspective, or from a SD perspective, we are all questioning that the attorney never got down to the bottom of exactly what came from where, what was the "29," how much and what exactly is his original product and how much came from his teachers (and there were apparently more than one). Does "my material" mean it came completely from scratch, was it a rearranging or breaking up into parts of somethign else?

And particularly curious to me, is how his brother came to teach the same exact things for so long -- and those who were in class with both GMT and his brother MH know, they had quirks in hand positions and stances that varied, particularly in the pre-black material. What, did ST teach HT all that stuff, too? And HT just tweaked it a little himself?

I'm not sure I'm not impressed by being able to make that much stuff up, and keep it for all that time.

And we would all like to have known the answer to the rumors re: pulling material from available books or recordings that had nothing to do with his own actual training. Or the process of recovering material from his old resources (notes or whatever), and how that effects the end result he now teaches.

And it is always distasteful to hear someone openly discuss the business aspects of martial arts, particularly when one has to make a living doing it. Not too many homeless beggar hermit priest teachers these days, are there? And I just don't fault someone for being unhappy, if not angry, after teaching something you were trusted with, that you have dedicated your life to, to someone else, which yes is a trust relationship, and something that apparently is valuable enough for that someone to decide the money he can make from it is more important than honor and loyalty, to use what was taught to them to compete against them. Maybe I am too naive to appreciate what honor and loyalty, "martial honor" or not, means.

So a lot of unaswered questions.

But, look at the presentation. GMT was not, in my opinion, being evasive or particularly clever (or "Clintonesque," as I sometimes say). He answered the questions. There wasn't a lot of excessive and unnecessary "I don't recall" or "I don't remember that at this time," or "To the best of my recollection," etc. And he has done this enough by now, and has to know the internet will carry all this, that he had to know what questions would be asked of him, and that his answers would become public. So if he had the choice of fudging his answers to suit the lawsuit, or the bigger picture of the impact on every student and school under him, which did he pick?

It seemed to me he answered what was asked as candidlly as he could, language differences considered, and I don't perceive he considered that he was contradicting that much of what he has said, or others have said in his name, although I suspect he was uncomfortable with the wording others have used, and is now used against him. But he didn't throw them under the bus, so to speak. And I don't perceive he thought he was telling anything entirely inconsistent with anything he has said before.

And I am not prepared to judge the real cultural differences that might be showing, as far as what is legitimate embellishment of legends or even rumors. As many others have said, a lot of TCMA schools do that.

As I've said in court many a time, if he wanted to lie, he could have easily done a much better job than that. He's been trying to protect what he does from piracy for a long time. I don't see anything wrong with that part. I atttempted to write contracts for a teacher once, to protect his teachings (and did it for free out of loyalty to the sifu). Between GMT and his lawyers (assuming they know IP law better than I do), I suspect they had to know the limits of what can be done to protect what he wanted protected, if he could, and that choices were made when filing these suits.

And the language does make a difference. For example, at recent seminars he presented some things named, "Tiger Pa Kua" this and that. But it wasn't actually in any way connected to Pa Kua Chang or Ba Gua Zhang, it just happened that the characters in the name included the characters for "eight trigrams," and there you go. Without that undestanding, a lot of misunderstanding from the words used.

That is my legal/professional perspective.

[One student]

Which leads me to my SD perspective.

Did he, or instead did those under him promoting him and his (actually their own) schools, say: Short kata/form 1-30 are the original short forms taught at the Shaolin Temple? Or that every form or technique was all and each, pure 100% direct from the Temple? Or as I recall, from when I first took a SD class in 1977 or 1978 or so, I was told, directly (as I recall), the material "comes from" or is "based on" or is "derived from" the material taught at the Shaolin Temple. I used to tell my own students, "You know that TV show, "Kung Fu"? That's where our material came from." I'm not sure that is different than what he said in the deposition. And I can't say I ever thought any particular form was or was not THE Shaolin form. I thought I was learning Shaolin martial arts from someone who knew more martial arts and more about Shaolin than I did. I still think that.

Like someone else said, at the time I took my first martial arts class, which was TKD, I didn't know Shaolin from Shotokan or Shorin-Ryu or whatever, other than what I saw on the TV show. My uncle, an advanced black belt in a very traditional Shotokan (or Shorin-Ryu, not sure now which) school, very hard core, asked me about what I did when I turned first black in SD, and I used the word "karate" more than once in describing "Shaolin-Do." I remember now (but didn't catch it then) his quizzical look when I said that, and my lack of understanding when he said, "But that's Chinese." "Yeah, so?"

I never thought I was getting training like I would have had if I had been a Shaolin monk. Anyone who thought that I think was lying to themselves. I've thought more than once that it would be insulting to Shaolin to start wearing robes or shaving our head: we were not "Shaolin." But we did mayflower posts carrying water buckets. And iron hand/bone training. And breathing mediation and chi kung. And very hard conditioning training. He make all that up, too? Where did the detailed meditation, chi kung, and internal methods I have from GMT come from? Where did Liu Hsing come from? Why have I seen things he teaches, with variations though, repeated in books and texts -- published after he taught it -- that are identical or similar to his teachings, and then the non-SD author also connect it to Shaolin tradition? I've seen that many a time.

Think about this: When GMT first started teaching at UK in the 60's, what in the world did anyone know about a "Shaolin Temple"? Or noticed gi's instead of sammi's? Or knew the difference between a kata and a form, a dojo and a kwoon, a sensei or a sifu? A "do" or a "tao"? Not a thing. And those people saw something in Sin Kwang The that made them follow him, some for decades. And not just words made that happen, but deeds, actions, performance, skills. I myself have seen GMT do things, in the 80's mostly, and I've seen his elder students do things, that in my 30+ years of trying I still can't do. He can do things now, at his age, I'd like to do at mine. Those people didn't follow him then, or now, and learn to do that, because of "lineage" and propaganda and legends, but by being shown it, and by doing it.

And like others have said, when many have decided, "I'm going to start training in martial arts, what was there to choose from?" I started in Tae Kwon Do, and my TKD teacher was a 1st Black SD, too. I heard from him about SD, and went to a SD class, and figured, I can do more than punch, block, kick, I can learn about animal styles, weapons, and internal practice. Didn't care what uniforms were what or anything else, I would have still gone with SD.

And I've been to and trained, in addition to TKD, many other schools since then, including Ninjitusu (a Stephen Hayes school), judo, and more recently, Tien Shien Pai. I've gone to non-SD training in kung fu weapons, aki-jujitsu, judo, and Hsing Ie. And they didn't give me anything any better than the SD material.

So, what happened when stories started and then snowballed into what many people think they've been told; but directly, by who? So many of the people who have been taught by GMT, or by his students, or their students, have made their own speeches, and spread their own propaganda. And most of us know, and sometimes to our regret, GMT exerted a lot less control over his various schools than maybe he could have or should have. I was personally offended when students of his, contemporaries with me at the time, decided they thought their schools should be called something different, and wear different uniforms, than GMT and everyone else; and GMT allowed that. Does not that lack of honor and loyalty reflect worse on a martial artist, than exaggerating a lineage? But I digress.

So how does it effect my practice? To be continued . . . .