[Tenchu]

You know, something a master told me about martial arts:

He was talking about why he started MA. At first, he thought it was to defend himself. But it was so expensive to learn, like, $100 a month and stuff, not including all equiptment and physical supplements you need to buy.

Then, it takes years to get good enough to defend yourself. Even after 5 years, but, there's no gaurentee you'll have what it takes.

Then he thought, why not just buy a gun? If he wanted to defend himself, he could buy a decent one, register it, pay for a few range lessons to learn to shoot it. By the time he'd done all that, it'd cost less than 3 months of MA lessons and only take one week and he'd be able to defend himself extremely well.

So why did he do MA?

Then he thought, MA is a way of expressing the self. It's who he is, what he does.

But now, the man is a master, a teacher. When new students come, he tells them to stand perfectly still, and then try and express themself physically.

Of course, they all are confused. How can you do this when standing perfectly still? When they ask what he means, he tells them MA is a form of self expression, and how do they think they're going to manage the complex physical motions of MA if they can't even express themself standing still?

Now, before I start every lesson, I meditate for just a minute. I don't stand, I just kneel on the ground and think about that self expression of MA I find in emptiness. After that, I know better where I'm going.

I'm not really interested in what style is best anymore. Of course, I do dislike the arrogant "My style is better than yours" comments. But, at the end of the day, very few people could defend against me if they're asking me to "defend" myself, coz I'll just pull out a foot long bowie knife and it'll be over.

But, in the end, the best real martial artist is going to be the one whos most intuitive and expressive in his motion and work.