Progressive Martial Art Thinkers/Just The Facts... merged

**It is Fake** · Posted On: 12/26/2008 1:49pm

Originally Posted by Jack Skellington

... remember, it takes ten years to be able to fight with IMA!

I really wish the internet had this info in the beginning. I owuld have saved about 6-7 years of McDojo training.

***DerAuslander*** · Posted On: 12/26/2008 2:07pm

Hwa Rang Do counts as IMA?!?

**It is Fake** · Posted On: 1/26/2009 3:05pm

Omega has too many damn posts:
Kung-fu in MMA....This is how I got here. - No BS Martial Arts

So, here is his thread detailing his art and musings.

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 1/26/2009 3:32pm

Originally Posted by It is Fake

Omega has too many damn posts:
http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=50834

So, here is his thread detailing his art and musings.

Interesting read. That early NHB thing in the warehouse sounds like something Jeremy Horn once described. Have any of you every checked out his MacKwoon? It'd be interesting to see how they train.

**Cynic** · Posted On: 1/28/2009 2:35am

Well, I finally got around to reading this entire thread, and all I can say is that I'm very glad I did. Page after page of good, solid information. Good stuff.

Also, that Jack Dempsey book was amazing. Worth reading several times over.

**It is Fake** · Posted On: 1/28/2009 9:33am

One more Tim Quote until, Jack Gets back.

Originally Posted by Tim Cartmell

Both of my primary Yang style teachers advocated sparring. There were two basic formats. One method was a free method of "push hands" sparring that started at contact and allowed pushes, pulls, sweeps, throws and takedowns and chin na techniques. The other method was regular "sparring," starting from a distance with all of the above techniques allowed including blows (we kept head contact light).

My belief is it is virtually impossible to learn how to apply your techniques for real without non-cooperative sparring (no matter what style you practice).

I found this funny because peoplesoft went off on the Judo recommendations in another thread.
Someone questioning the no sparring contained in their Tai Chi practice.

Hi Tobias,
I would suggest looking into Judo for some practical self defense training (there will be plenty of sparring). The principles of Judo are virtually the same as those of Taijiquan.

**It is Fake** · Posted On: 3/16/2009 12:44pm

Pay Attention Or Get Pounded--Your Choice - No BS Martial Arts

Originally Posted by Vieux Normand

Okay, I'm putting this in JMA, as the subject tends to come up here with painful regularity. Mods can move it to Sociopath or whatever it's called if they see fit.

I'll call it the "BSD Zen Pattern". One of many which show up on this forum--initiated by the usual ignoroids--that maybe one shouldn't give a **** about, but (maybe it's sleep deprivation) this one just pissed me off at the wrong time.

What's the pattern?

1) Ignorrhoid signs up, spouts some ignoroid brilliance (and, really, it could be about anything).

2) Errant, reading aforementioned spouting of genius, replies with a very-justifiable "Shut the **** up" or something similar...and similarly-deserved.

3) Ignorrhoid, reading Errant's tags, responds with a knee-jerk spewing of something like: "How can you call yourself a professional Buddhist and Zen teacher when you've said such mean and hurtful things?"

Why does this pattern manifest itself, time and again?

On every university campus in the Western world, there exists a creature so stereotypical that he's almost a mythic archetype. No name doing this apparition justice, a brief description must suffice:

1) The face is pasty, chinless and unblemished by mark of effort or scar.

2) The expression is a constant, dreamily-beatific gaze into eternity.

3) The pony-tail is a very neat counterbalance to the specs.

4) The neck in front of the pony-tail is much thinner than the pony-tail.

5) Even thinner than the neck are the insect-like arms.

6) They end in smooth, unmarked hands as pasty as the face.

7) The smile is of one who has read all and therefore knows all.

8) He has travelled nowhere, unless there's a nice hotel.

9) He stayed in the hotel, and therefore really didn't travel.

Now this creature has decdided that he understands Zen. He imparts his vast knowledge to any and every undergrad who will listen and worship.

All is quiet and mild in Zen, he says. (Undergrads nod placidly.)

No effort is required, as such would Unbalance Things. (The Assembled nod again).

Gentle loving-kindness means that voice and fists are never raised. (Those Present Feel The Peace).

Blah-blah-buddha-blah-blah-karma-blah-blah-enlightenment. (The audience is Ready to Embark on the Docile Journey).

Fucking idiots, one and all. The seller and the buyers both. As soon as I see you, you're headed for the ER. Not because I'm a Zen teacher (I'm not). Not because I'll impart something to you with my battered and scarred knuckles (I won't). It'll be because there's a remote chance you'll sustain enough neural damage that you'll wake up as somebody else...and I owe it to humanity to improve anything--what the ****, who am I kidding, it'll happen because you pencil-necked little pseudo-Zen hippy-creeps are just asking for it. You know the "protective impulse"? Well, your very presence on this planet triggers the exact opposite. **** you.

Want Zen? Assuming that's not a contradiction, why the **** would you want to learn it from a spaghetti-armed neo-hippy? Go to the source. You'll find, in Japan or anywhere Zen has a history, that what you thought you knew amounts to a steaming pile of matter most vile.

Go. There are lots of temples where you'll get told, served, whacked with sticks, punched, your ass worked to the bone by monks as callous as they are callused. "You want 'Eastern philosophy'? GET TO WORK!" Your job is to pay attention. Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention...and if it takes a right cross to the jaw to get you there, thet's what you'll get.

For those who have been to such a place (my wife's family has me attend the Soto-Shu temple near their residence every time I go to Japan), the link between Zen and MA is obvious. That's why so many temples have MA as part of their training: nothing gets you to pay attention, nothing keeps you mind from wandering of to la-la land, like an adversary who's intent on laying a beating on your sorry ass. If you can't keep focus, you'll be spitting teeth. The military implications are obvious: who would be easier for an attacker to get the jump on: the sentinel who is always focussed on where he is and what he's doing...or the fucking daydreamer? Right. It is transferable to a number of occupations: I can't, for example, afford to let myself be lulled by the hours of ultra-repetitive dance-floor crap that I hear at work. The lighting is poor enough as it is, my eyesight is that of a nearly-fifty-year-old, and the volume of the speakers makes hearing radio-calls dubious enough at the best of times. If I fail to keep focus, something might well get out of hand that I could have prevented with proper vigilance.

As for what Zen teachers are "supposed to do or not do", there are many historical examples of direct-teaching in Zen, if looking things up is what you're into. As Inzan said, centuries ago, about one of his more promising students:

"...there are many gates for her to pass through.
She should receive still more blows from my iron fist".

Why waste time on words if the fist, or the stick, teaches better?

If words are chosen, why waste time being "nice" to a fucking idiot? Just call him a fucking idiot. For the nun Eshun, about to die by her choice on a pyre, the last words to a monk who had asked her if it was hot was to answer: "Only an idiot like you would concern himself with a question like that." When a daimyo--a feudal lord in Japan--visited two Zen teachers, one called him "wise, with an inborn ability to learn Zen". The other said: "Why do you flatter this imbecile? He's a daimyo, all well and good, but he knows nothing about Zen." This latter became the daimyo's teacher.

So, yeah, Zen teachers may well insult you, work you to the bone, hit you with sticks, shout verbal abuse at you, and punch the **** out of you.

And when the ****'s been punched out of you, you might just find that you're far better-off without it.

Besides, when you're "mindful", you do a much more efficient job of scrunching campus-Zen-flake down to suitable size for the compost-mulcher. He might as well be useful for something...

***DerAuslander*** · Posted On: 3/16/2009 1:24pm

How did I miss that?
Oh how I love thee...

**It is Fake** · Posted On: 3/16/2009 1:36pm

It is in the JMA forum. I reported the post so it can become an article.

**M1K3** · Posted On: 3/16/2009 2:49pm

Zen training sounds a lot like the Marine Corps boot camp training I had way back when.

Boot caught looking at DI

Do you like me private? Do you think I am pretty? You know that liking leads to loving and loving leads to fucking. Do you want to **** me private?

Private at this point is screwed and prepares to take his beating.

Several DI's are roaming the squad bay making sure the other privates have the appropriate thousand yard stare and are not eye balling the beating yet are still paying attention to the slightest utterance of any of the drill instructors.

Gung Ho! Gung Ho! Gung Ho!