Originally Posted by Graham H
For what it's worth, Moy Yat never spoke about the specifics of any of his private lessons with Yip Man - at least not to me. He did, however, say three things about private lessons with Yip Man in general (probably more than three, but this is what pops into my head right now):
- Some would take private lessons, then exaggerate (or flat out lie about) what they learned to the younger students who had no frame of reference to be able to discern what was bullsh1t.
- Some would take advantage of Yip Man and "remind" him they were up to a certain level when they were, in actuality, not in order to get Yip Man to teach them what they thought were more "advanced" techniques. Specifically mentioned was the MukYanJong in this context to explain an observation about a few of Yip Man's students performing sections and techniques out of order from the generally accepted sequence amongst his SiHings.
- If you are not emotionally mature enough to separate method from result, you can get confused easily as to what is a specific motivational tool for you and the actual lesson. That is, when you learn something, you also tend to remember the context in which you learned it. For instance: if someone tells you: "come back when no one is around", then when you do, they pull the blinds closed and tell you to keep to yourself what you just learned, you could find yourself thinking that is just as or even more important than the actual lesson. If you then actually keep it to yourself, then you are not practicing what you learned with your peers and, therefore, you learned nothing. But if you do practice it with your peers, the alledged "secret" is out.
The above reasons are why I find parts of this thread amusing and why I choose to respond to it.
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