The Path of Wisdom - Part 6 - Martial Art of Awareness

Discerning Power Takes Practice To Develop

In the beginning, for students sometimes it’s very hard because at first they can’t get any information there. They don’t know what…Alright. Don’t give up. If you give up from here that means you fall back to your experience of what you like or don’t like. You need to put that aside. To go from this end. This end is from knowing the moment. You have to have enough attention to hold until it turns clear. See, when you hold your attention can be there enough to let things speak for themselves—that means things start to get clear. The clear comes from the center. The center is a cross. The cross is a junction that separates things. That means to see the difference. If you see the difference that means seeing the separation: the outlines, the lines [points to all the body lines, etc.] the features are a separation, yes? How do the features come? Because they have different controls—there is a separation. A curve, why do you call it a curve—because there’s a separation and a curve. How you see it, then you know the difference from here.

But that needs concentration. How high your concentration is and how well can you keep your concentration to connect one center with another center—how many centers can you connect? How many centers can you stretch? The more centers you can stretch the more past, present future inside this one present. Understand? I see the center here—this past, present, future is one present. How well can you directly connect? The further I connect, I see more. Like I said before when just you drive a car and only see the car in front of you and emergency light comes on, if they hit the brake, you have a sudden reaction. But if you see ahead another 3 or 4 cars ahead of you, if that car makes a brake, you’ll already be ready here because you see more centers. So you are prepared, you can prepare, you can be ready—then there’s no more sudden. So close so sudden. If I can see longer—then I’m waiting for you to come. This is how your attention stretches and spreads. This is what we call discerning power. In Zen, this is what you call attention, awareness, being mindful. This is what we keep on looking at.

Back to training this concept physically:
Go up and down feeling the joints, stretching the joints, feeling from point-to-point: Feet pressure to crown pressure–two ends of the pressure—should be the same in order to be connected. Or else they can’t be connected. This is the philosophy and concepts that connect the training approach to the exercises.

Ex: Horizontal Plane – For more senior students, it’s not only the horizontal quality. Horizontal quality has what? [Side-to-side Forward backward] Side-to-side, yes, but it holds the horizontal. You hold the plane. The action is not only this way…actually, you hold the plane—that means try to see. The movement is this but the energy is up and down. Because it’s the grinding energy: that means I’m holding this horizontal plane. This holding of the horizontal press. If I press, he can go down; if I don’t hold, you can come in.

“The more centers you can stretch the more past, present future inside this one present.”
~GM Sam Chin

Understanding Three Dimensions & Six Direction Energy

There’s a plane you need to hold. This is the energy of holding. The training of the grinding/wiping is left right forward backward but you wipe this plane. There’s a frontal plane and a sagittal plane. All planes have grinding. The misunderstanding is used by other southern martial arts, like Praying Mantis. Other martial arts talk about grinding energy. But how can you do it? Grinding energy means it’s not press to grind. You must have 2 energies to grind and it must be equal energy. You must have enough energy to go down and to go forward—to hold. But then to be right there must be 3 energies: forward backward up and down energy (already has left right). All direction energy. If you press too hard you can’t grind; if too light, you can’t grind. For the beginning student it’s okay just to get the movement; but we train to get structure, then relaxation (to see the yin yang), then the energy. Point of Contact—then, with this directional energy, on this point of contact you call this a balance point: constant changing, constant maintaining, that’s the balance point. (minimum 2 direction energy: down and up).
That means the balance point doesn’t change; you’re using 2-direction or 4-direction energy to maintain NOT to change. At least remember the concepts and the theory first! Remember the theory of HOW to get into this quality, right. You need to have this theory to understand what to look for in order to get the right energy. Because as you go higher, you need to put in the qualities.

Two energies at the same time (down and up) is from rotation. Keep on rotating: rotation, rotation! That’s why I call it skimming—but skimming on the point. Try to rotate as centered as possible on the point. The more centered on the point, then the splitting of the directional energy will be more clear! See, this rotation, if you push forward too much, you lose the direction. You hold and pivot/rotate on the point. With that energy first, then directional movement comes from there. Understand what I said? See now: That’s why we say circle-with-a center first: one that goes down here to rotation, equally—then you can move. 90 has 2 first. 90 is the quality. A lot of people can’t understand the skim—and go just forward or just backward—it’s not the right action and it’s not really precise. See, it needs to be 90° here! That means equal—rotating equally here, I can have one energy forward and one back, see? Like layers: first 90°, then 2 equal. Another layer, I’m going left and right, but to do that I’m doing this down up 90 first: center with yin, center with yang. That’s why I say you never leave the center!

-FIN-