Newsletter 938
Martial Arts Rules to Live By
We are born and we don’t know the rules.
the result is that for the history of man
we have been making up rules
Over 4,000 years ago
Hammurabi set down his rules.
280 rules on 12 stone tablets.
These rules dealt with everything,
from contracts to murder.
Then there was Moses,
10 rules on two tablets.
And throughout history everybody has made up rules,
rules to trade,
rules for criminals and punishment,
rules for marriage.
In your martial art there are doubtless rules.
Funakoshi wrote that there were six rules.
then only gave us five.
My theory is that the missing third rule had to do with matrixing.
But maybe that’s just me.
Grin.
In the school I am currently teaching
we have rules.
The head sensei came across these rules somewhere,
and printed them up and posted them
on the front door of the school.
Just to let you know,
before I reveal the rules,
his school specializes in kids.
He has no problem with specialized needs.
We even have a girl who is blind.
Every kid in there gets to help her,
and they all love it.
And she is actually learning some good martial arts.
Anyway,
here are the rules he posted.
In this studio…
We do second chances
We apologize
We forgive
We respect each other
We keep our promises
We never give up
We encourage one another
We laugh often
We belong…
I find it interesting to compare these rules
with the rules of other schools,
with rules posted by Funakoshi,
Hammurabi,
or whoever.
Obviously,
these rules were crafted by somebody
who wanted to reassure parents,
maybe was a social justice warrior,
maybe not,
and that’s okay.
My rules are pretty simple,
I write about them occasionally,
especially in my books on Neutronics.
They include such things as…
‘Be polite.’
and…
‘For something to be true,
the opposite must also be true.’
There are lots of rules in the world,
but they usually come back to such things as these.
I believe in simplicity.
Life is simple,
there is right…or wrong.
A simple choice,
that doesn’t need a lot of explanation.
The thing is this…
if you want to know the rules,
work out harder.
The rules of life are self-evident.
Simple truths.
Only crooks make them difficult.
Anyway,
I recommend ‘Chiang Nan’ this week.
This book holds my thoughts on the original karate form,
how to translate karate to Tai Chi,
and the techniques deliberately hidden by the old masters.
The reason is simple…
if the old masters really hid the real techniques,
they were likely breaking their own rules.
Either that,
or they hadn’t worked out hard enough
to understand the real rules of living
and of the martial arts.
Have a great work out!
Al
WIN!
Here’s a couple of wins I received. What makes them interesting is that two different people came across my ‘Buddha Crane’ book, and they reached similar conclusions, and had a heck of a lot of fun doing it.
The Buddha Crane book is bundled into ‘how to create your own art,’ and also as a book on Amazon.
Hello sir.
It’s going well. Really well. Once I was able to connect Buddha crane with shuri ryu, the pieces began to fall into place all by themselves.
The Buddha crane is the foundation of the kihon waza, ippons waza and came into their own flow drills(taezus naru waza).
Making changes to the Kata isn’t as easy, but I have done the first few Kata. Even crazier, I found someone who has already blended shuri ryu with something. So, it came rather easy.
Upon showing him how I’ve made changes opened his eyes and he’s asking me to give him pointers on how to make his karate be more ‘alive’.
My shuri ryu master is dead and I never got the chance to get my black belt. So, I’ve gone thru these people I’ve run into and just from what I showed them they are willing to bring me to the black belt in shuri ryu.
I’m not sure if that’s even important now, being that I matrixed the whole art, but I do hope to bring this understanding of shuri ryu to the table. Thus, starting a new (sub) ryu to the family.
I couldn’t have done it without you. Osu ~ Timothy G
Master founder,
How are you doing. I hope all is well. Happy belated fourth. Been busy with creating the art to make it my own. Honestly, I’ve been working on some things with the arts. Oh yeah, I found a way to matrix the shuri ryu style. Quite interesting to see an existing art turn into something really workable.
Thanks to you sir, I’ve gained an understanding of true art. What turned it to be a great help was Buddha Crane Karate. Some fine points in that book. ~ John L
