My perspective Part 3
So reading the transcript, I ask myself, what does it mean to my practice? Did not this thread start with someone, essentially, questioning the benefits of SD? So we are right back to the same question, and the same answer, asked so many times before: What do you get from SD? Anything? Then, good, keep at it. If not, do something else. Are you going to get so much more from something else? Practicing SD has given me fitness levels (varying with the consistency of my practice) I never had; along with a practical benefit I would not have by mere running or weight training. I credit the Tai Chi Chuan GMT taught me with fixing a knee ailment I had. I've embarrassed much bigger and stronger people than I, with minimal techniques learned in SD. And I am nothing compared to some of the people who have done SD longer, and shorter, time than I have.
And does this transcript really mean it is all a fake? Bruce Lee made up JKD from something. Would it not be honest for him to say it "came from" what he learned before inventing JKD? I know more than one Master, "Black Belt" Hall of Fame and everything, who made up entire systems from the hodge podge of stuff they grew up learning -- "eclectic" it is called. Penn & Teller did a show debunking martial arts, and had much more tradional, nationally known, respected by the "martial arts community," teachers/schools doing the same thing: promoting their art as "the best" or "the original," making people, kids, think they can fight, by flailing around in sparring class that would more likely get them killed in a real fight. Isn't that worse?
What about the famous teacher who claimed he could strike pressure points to disable an opponent, and it only worked (on film) on his students? Or the guy who demonstrated on his students the ability to physically manipulate them without touching them -- but it strangely didn't work on someone else who kicked his a--?
And lets face it: someone made up everything at one point or another. And I know, the first person who ever taught Tai Chi, or Pa Kua, or Hsing Ie, or a tiger or crane or whatever, wouldn't recognize it today. I am not convinced that modifying material, or even making up forms, although it had to come from what he learned, is that bad or that different. He didn't invent a bow stance, or a head block, or a side kick, or a tiger claw, or a pressure point. Is it that much different to put those things in a different order or sequence? If the ingredients are the same, even if not in the same sequence, isn't it the same meal? Or taste the same? Is not pieces of Shaolin, put togther 4-2-3-0-1, that different from 0-1-2-3-4? Is it worse? Or is it better?
And so we question GMT for telling us his material is from, or is, Shaolin. If he was taught by Chinese elders (no one has really ever said that wasn't true), who said they were taught from Shaolin material, did he not learn Shaolin kung fu? Did he not learn from the world of Shaolin? Does anyone think they taught him, the same way and methods and exact forms, they were taught?
And therefore, did not he teach, even what he made up, from Shaolin? If he showed us how to punch, is that not a Shaolin punch, if that is how he was taught to punch? What else could it be, if that is where he got it? Even if he also added temple blocks, sweeps, or other techniques to it? Is it less Shaolin kung fu, if it is rearranged to suit Western patience, Western tastes, Western understanding? Does anyone fault him for not starting his first classes, with a language handicap and time contraints he didn't have with GGM. Ie, with the same methods and materials that he started with? Would he be any less of a teacher, if he did not tailor what he taught to his students?
As for varying the material, I've seen people who took the same classes I did, do the same material, and I hardly recognize it. Many of GMT's outlying schools are well known for putting their own spins on the material GMT taught them.
Sometimes that is for benign reasons; sometimes it is just sloppiness. But why is what GMT admitted doing so wrong -- tailoring his material, what he knew, which had to be based on what he learned from Chinese kung fu/Shaolin based teachers -- for his students, even if it included making something up based on his Shaolin basics?
So I frame the question as the accuracy of what I was told. And I'm not prepared, yet, to say that because I was told the martial arts I was taught came from Shaolin, that I was lied to because it is not the Shaolin taught at the Temples in the 1600's. We all know that what is taught (or demo'd, more accurately) at the Temples now is closer to Peking Opera than Shaolin. Don't tell me that every one who teaches a form or a kata outside of SD, in other schools, teaches it the same way it was taught to them. Or the same thing, with no changes. How much of a "master" are they, if all they can do is regurgitate what they were shown?
And therefore I am not prepared to say that because he learned Shaolin methods and techiques and material and forms, from Shaolin based teachers and from Shaolin based methods and techiques and forms, and taught me what he said -- what I've always thought, and I don't think his deposition says otherwise -- was Shaolin based methods and techiques and forms, and that because they were not all the same forms he was taught or that were taught at the Temple, that what I have learned is worthless and I have been deceived. Or, that he knowingly or intentionally deceived.
My bottom line might be, he has probably forgotten more martial arts than I'll ever know (maybe figuratively and literally); but regardless, he knew then, and knows now, more martial arts than I knew then or know now. And that's what a teacher should be. Even if it is not as pure as something else might be. I'm just not so sure he ever said everything he taught was 100% exact Shaolin forms, and that is what he is being criticized for admitting is not true in his deposition.
So bring on the "you are rationalizing," "you are a SD/GMT apologist," etc. I'm not sure I am going to deny it. So what?
Just One Student
"I seek, not to know all the answers, but to understand the questions." --- Kwai Chang Caine
(I'd really like to know all the answers, too, but understanding the questions, like most of my martial arts practice, is a more realistically attainable goal)