Good afternoon.

 

I am often asked about level of understanding you need as a master. This is particularly poignant when teaching an art such as Wing Tsun that has its basis in the eastern culture and is, by definition, alien to way of life that surrounds us. The simple answer is you need to understand the art deeply – not just follow the traditions but know why. To give an illustration I will mention the recent talks that took place at the schools.

 

As a rule, I leave the intake of new students to the teachers and assistants. There are a number of reasons why this happens. Firstly, I am pleased to say, those involved are more than capable to do so; they have had a significant amount of personal training by me, and learn quickly from the experiences of meeting different individuals on a weekly (if not daily) basis. Most importantly, however, they understand the principles and morals that are required. This is actually an extremely responsible job - the art lives and dies through its practitioners so it is important to choose who is accepted prudently.

 

The second reason is that it is a Chinese tradition: a master has to be concerned with the development of his personal students and overseeing the art itself (and as I have mentioned before it is very rare that I teach beginners) rather than looking where the next new students will come from. When you transcend to the higher levels of the art you understand more and more about the importance of keeping these old traditions alive, rather than changing for more convenient ‘modern’ ones. However, for those who are perhaps not yet convinced by the importance of the Chinese customs, you will see this particular tradition is perhaps not such an idiosyncratic one if you can look a bit deeper…

 

It is a certain fact that every single person on this planet has the same amount of time in a day and only a limited amount of energy. No person can do everything at once, so if you understand your responsibility, and know what you need to do, then you must choose wisely how to use both of these effectively. In modern jargon this is ‘time-management’ – the same concept but a different approach. However, the Chinese custom has another concept twinned with it – the ability to have patience and humility. I have found throughout my life that if you really want something you can get it; however, you cannot choose the timing at will (and, of course, on a separate point – be very careful of what you wish for…). If a person really wants to learn the highest parts of the art they will – the real question is how much do they really want it? Is it just a whim of their ego, or something deeper? To answer to that is - time will always show which is the real motive. If a person is the right person to learn the art then they will know they have to wait. In fact, my Sifu doesn’t even really speak to anyone that has been training less than two years. Foolish people think this is out of arrogance; nothing could be further from the truth – it is out of understanding…

 

In my opinion one of the problems that the Western culture has at present is the desire to have everything at once and with ‘no commitment’. I’m afraid this is simply not possible, however much you desire it. If anything is that easy or effortless to achieve then the result is exactly that – a quick fix with no permanence that is worth very little in real terms. You just have to study history (let alone the Chinese concepts) to know this – no one person who made a major change to the course of history did it without hard work. And of course, with hard work comes commitment. Commitment teaches you how to be patience. And with patience you can learn humility. Just think what you can do with hard work, patience, commitment and humility… And all this can be learnt from a supposedly ‘defunct’ principle…

 

Sifu