Praises from a master cut both ways
By John Chow of Tao of Tai Chi Chuan Institute,
I have often heard from certain teachers or read from articles in the internet that they have been praised by certain highly acclaimed masters. This invokes more than a smile and upraised eyebrow from me.
Being a traditionalist, I really doubt what happened really happed, and even though if it did, the meaning of the words or the intention behind them is disputable.
In Asian culture, it is very common to deal a double edged meaning in ones’s words. Calling some “big strong guy” may mean the person is strong, but also has some other undesirable qualities, such as “being stupid in the head”. When a master praises some “You are so clever now that you may even teach me”, it usually does not carry the literal meaning, but rather, “You are so proud and conceited. You think you know a lot”. When the master praises that “All my Kung Fu is now yours and you, of all the students, are the only one who has obtained the transmission”, he could have meant “You think you have it, and you are the top guy, but you are such a fool. You are deceiving yourself. You try to deceive me into telling others that you are the best guy. Two can play the same game. Let my words deceive you, you are a fool!”. When the master declares that “There is no real Tai Chi Chuan anywhere else. Yours is the only true Tai Chi Chuan”, he could be possibly hiding his joke that you are so conceited that you think your Tai Chi Chuan is the best and true Tai Chi Chuan in existence. (Just think about it - will any genuine master not realise that there are hundreds of genuine Tai Chi Chuan masters in the world at the present moment? How about his own Tai Chi Chuan school and his own students? To outlandishly assert yours is the only true Tai Chi Chuan in the world would be really suspicious for any reasonable person in the street, except for a conceited person).
It was just 2 nights ago (24 April 2005) that I “bumped” into Master Phillip Lin, a Taiwanese master of Tai Chi Chuan from Taiwan (student of Master Hu Yee Chung who was a student of Cheng Man Ching). I told him “Do go away later. I want to talk to you”. He immediately responded with a smile “Why? You want to teach me some Kung Fu?”. The truth was I wanted to learn some Nei Gong from him, and he is saying that! This shows the double edged meaning that Asian masters use. If you are conceited, you would interpret that he thought you are capable and have something valuable that you can teach him. This is the wrong interpretation! Master Lin was only kidding me! He does not need to learn any Tai Chi Chuan from me.
Please read my other on my Arnis/Eskrima page entitle “Conferral of Titles in Kalis Ilustrisimo”.
Yours sincerely,
John Chow
26 April 2005
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Copyright:- John Chow,
a practitioner of Chinese medicine, acupuncturist, masseur, healer and
teacher of martial arts and spiritual paths.
No part of this article can be
used, quoted, copied in any form without the permission from the author.
For further information on this
article, please contact John Chow at
vajra_master@yahoo.com.
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