The monks do not have it ( traditional kungfu)

[onefocus]

thanks for your thoughts, everyone. I myself think that if a master teaches you one form, how to use it, and how to train to be expert in it, you have learned a complete system. You haven't learned all of kungfu, or whatever it is you are learning, but you have learned a complete system.

peace

onefocus

[shaolinstylee]

You may have learned a style.. but as far as a system goes, I don't know I'd go that far.

[LeiYunFat]

A system is they way the teacher teaches, right? The mothods in which the lesson is taught. So in a sense, if you learn a form, you have learned the system.

Or, if it were, like...a belt system, then you can immediately tell from the belts, so one glace and you would be able to determine the system.

I think Onefocus was talking about stlye, though. I don't think that if you learned one form of say, TKD, you would know all of TKD.

[blooming tianshi lotus]

, but there was a time when one person knew all of the shaolin curriculum. It was a time when all the other Shaolin monks were too lame to meditate for weeks on end.

YOu had me purring right up til then! What freaking time ( post damo himself did any one person know the whole spectrum of shaolin forms ?????!!!! . ) ............ and whotf is too lame ( like you know what gwailo look like from the other end ) for what exactly??? Tread carefully here Lei Yun , I'd hate to loose friends for generalising about things I know nothing of . Read a few books and take a meditation on it and we'll all forgive your offence.

Tianshi

[pazman]

But you could learn TKD without forms, just like you could learn kung fu without forms. Forms are just another training tool amongst many.

[doc]

( post damo himself did any one person know the whole spectrum of shaolin forms ?????!!!!

Damo didn't know any of the forms.
They were created long after his time.

[LeiYunFat]

Damo had the seeds, but wasn't around long enough to see them grow. But he was the first and only with seeds in his hand so everything was gravy.

Also, BL, I had you purring? I will, from this point forward, try to keep you purring until my dying day.

But as for being too lame, the 5 animals were created to help relieve the tensions and extend the body's durability for the monks, correct? This is because the monks could not withstand the long hours of Chan Buddhism.

And for paz, sure it can. But I think onefocus was talking about learning the system by learning the form.

[doc]

Don't be too hung up on the whole Damo thing. He's just a figure in the whole passage of gong fu. If that. The various martial arts that ended up in Shaolin came from many other figures, both before and after Damo.

[LeiYunFat]

I am talkin bout Shaolin gong fu and it's curriculum, right? Damo was the OG.

[doc]

Nah, he wasn't the OG. If he's real, he didn't do much with respect to traditional gong fu.

I wrote about this somewhere. Maybe in the FAQ section. You can surf through there more easily now, I revamped the navigation system.

[LeiYunFat]

Alright, sounds good.

[blooming tianshi lotus]

Ditto that but how a seed doesn't qualify as the ............... lol.......forget it............ I'm just going to go have a read and keep my thoughts to myself.

cheers


Lotus