Is Tai chi fake?

[awaken]

This man beat a tai chi master in ten seconds.

 

 

 

After this fight, he started to ask more tai chi masters to fight with him.

 

And then he was stopped by someone.

His blog was deleted and he can not publish any vedio again.

 

This Vedio was published in May 6.

 

After may 8, we can't find any new vedios from him.

 

He was stopped by some people.

Edited May 12, 2017 by awaken

[Sublimation]

We have 2 other threads that cover this special topic already I guess a lot of conservative chinese people saw it as an assault to the chinese culture and now they start threatening this MMA guy. This happens quite often if the feelings of a group of people got hurt. After beating this Taiji Master their believe system got cracked. A lot of people that believe in the eastern philosophies and religion have the feeling that the east is superior to the west just because it is old, ancient or whatsoever.

I still have to admit though, that I don't believe a true master of Taiji or whatever wouldn't start a fight like this. I always had the feeling that the chinese martial arts are not that much of a competitive sport like a lot of people use to think.

[awaken]

I have noticed this man for many days.

 

I feel pity about him.

 

He was stopped by some people who want to make a lot of money.

 

In Chinese, we call that as 擋人財路

 

Stop other people's money way

 

I know there are a lot of fake masters in tai chi, but I also saw some real tai chi masters in Taiwan.

 

So I don't think tai chi is fake.

 

But there are many fake tai chi masters.

 

 

This master is very good in tai chi.

 

He teaches in the police college.

 

I visited him last year.

Edited May 12, 2017 by awaken

[awaken]

http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/44151-taiji-master-fighting-mma-guy/#entry753613

 

This is another dusicussion about this topic in the forum.

[thelerner]

The question isn't is Tai Chi fake, its is it beatable?  Yeah, while at its highest level its got plenty of juice and some magic, it is beatable.

 

Take Brazilian Ju-Jitsu the first few Mixed Martial art world wide tournaments the Gracie family ate up the competition.  Its top guys beat multi people and were undefeated in a single tournament.  Then people studied the style, practiced against it, anticipated it, and as in all things, the winning becomes a liability.   People of different arts are beating it, but only because they specifically train against it.

 

Thus its still a very valuable art to know, a veritable must to know in MMA competition.  With its power comes vast weakness of course.  It's penchant for taking things to the ground and turning your back to the crowd and locking into another means its vulnerable on the street where attackers are not one on one. 

 

A good Tai chi teacher has great lessons to teach.  I'm talking the few who are serious martial artists and the many who see it as a holistic art to develop calmness and inner energy.. chi.   I'm an Aikidoist, in my mind the art loses some martial prowess inorder to be true to its philosophy and tradition.

[Spotless]

Great points by TheLerner

 

My teacher was attacked by two with a gun in Oakland and according to the woman he was walking with the next thing the two were thrown half way across the street with the gun laying on the ground. The two picked up the gun and fled - and the Master and the women calmly walked on.

 

Sport is entirely different

 

And some traditions have for a long time now not really been about fighting.

 

It is also not so difficult to learn how not to be influenced by certain energetic capabilities a master may have - so that some of the powers a master may have of throwing energy do not work or are greatly reduced on the the one who knows how to do this.

 

The idea of knowing your opponent and being able to train against it can go beyond just training physically. One could also use the black arts to change the outcome of a fight.

 

With money offered all bets are off in the arena of Eastern Martial arts.

Edited May 18, 2017 by Spotless

[dwai]

The question isn't is Tai Chi fake, its is it beatable?  Yeah, while at its highest level its got plenty of juice and some magic, it is beatable.

 

Take Brazilian Ju-Jitsu the first few Mixed Martial art world wide tournaments the Gracie family ate up the competition.  Its top guys beat multi people and were undefeated in a single tournament.  Then people studied the style, practiced against it, anticipated it, and as in all things, the winning becomes a liability.   People of different arts are beating it, but only because they specifically train against it.

 

Thus its still a very valuable art to know, a veritable must to know in MMA competition.  With its power comes vast weakness of course.  It's penchant for taking things to the ground and turning your back to the crowd and locking into another means its vulnerable on the street where attackers are not one on one. 

 

A good Tai chi teacher has great lessons to teach.  I'm talking the few who are serious martial artists and the many who see it as a holistic art to develop calmness and inner energy.. chi.   I'm an Aikidoist, in my mind the art loses some martial prowess inorder to be true to its philosophy and tradition.

 

Taijiquan is very potent and very powerful. We can't base it's martial viability on the failures of a self-proclaimed, dubious origins "master". 

 

We see it's power in ordinary interactions (just applying a short power punch through padding) with 0 distance between a fist and the body of the recipient leaves us gasping for breath. 

 

I don't know however, why professional taijiquan practitioners (i.e. masters who train students as a full time profession and those taijiquan artists who participate in world push hands and taiji competitions) should NOT participate in a contest such as this just to show that the system is still effective martially.  The old Masters used to do so. Why not now?

 

My Sifu used to be part of a kungfu organization called the Green Dragon Society in the 70s and they had many many fights (underground). When he left that group and started learning Taijiquan from the Grandmaster of our system, many people from GDS used to challenge him and his sifu. These guys would leave in ambulances or get knocked out with a single palm strike to the head etc. Taijiquan power and skills are legit. The problem is most people don't put in enough effort into it to get good at it.

 

First thing to do in order to develop Taijiquan skills is let go of the idea of muscular strength. There are many factors involved in being a good taijiquan fighter. Being present, being empty, etc (all spiritual concepts) is what gives the mysterious power of Taijiquan. If people don't put in the time doing standing meditation, doing single form practice, doing push hands and san shou, it is just slow speed calisthenics and self-deluding ego-pandering...

[Daeluin]

If we are speaking of "masters", and they are "zhen", then we witness a fight that takes place in the mind. The moment one mind telegraphs a movement that is detected by the other, the fight is over. This is with minds of relatively equal development. Remember, superior virtue has no action; inferior virtue acts. As soon as one acts, it reveals how it may be defeated.

 

When two minds are not close in strength, it is likely the weaker mind will crumple if the stronger mind is revealed.

 

Or you may see things like the attacker crumpling to the floor as soon as they make contact with the "master," or bouncing off the "master," and so on.

 

Not easy. Much taiji is practiced outside in peaceful surroundings. If the xing is not trained to be stable when surrounded by the chaotic, ungrounded energy of people shouting around a ring, then you may witness a taiji practitioner who has no root like in this match.

 

As in dao humility gives strength. Having a stronger root and being lower allows one greater stability and more opportunity to upset the opponent's root. This does not mean one is slow. This does not mean one does not evade when attacked. Rooted between heaven and earth, working on refining, over time one comes to move and strike as thunder and lightning. This requires surrendering one's ego and becoming an empty vessel, so it is not likely one will witness such things in fights.

[dwai]

If we are speaking of "masters", and they are "zhen", then we witness a fight that takes place in the mind. The moment one mind telegraphs a movement that is detected by the other, the fight is over. This is with minds of relatively equal development. Remember, superior virtue has no action; inferior virtue acts. As soon as one acts, it reveals how it may be defeated.

 

When two minds are not close in strength, it is likely the weaker mind will crumple if the stronger mind is revealed.

 

Or you may see things like the attacker crumpling to the floor as soon as they make contact with the "master," or bouncing off the "master," and so on.

 

Not easy. Much taiji is practiced outside in peaceful surroundings. If the xing is not trained to be stable when surrounded by the chaotic, ungrounded energy of people shouting around a ring, then you may witness a taiji practitioner who has no root like in this match.

 

As in dao humility gives strength. Having a stronger root and being lower allows one greater stability and more opportunity to upset the opponent's root. This does not mean one is slow. This does not mean one does not evade when attacked. Rooted between heaven and earth, working on refining, over time one comes to move and strike as thunder and lightning. This requires surrendering one's ego and becoming an empty vessel, so it is not likely one will witness such things in fights.

 

Good points. I didn't want to go there (spiritual level/mind level) because people who don't know about the "powers" think it's all "woo woo"...

[Daeluin]

Haha... indeed it is. I recall winning a philisophical argument here when someone gave up after I mentioned Zhuangzi having a conversation with a frog.

 

 I'm an Aikidoist, in my mind the art loses some martial prowess inorder to be true to its philosophy and tradition.

 

Case in point, here is an excellent example of battles of the mind.

http://www.aikidofaq.com/history/story.html

[Aletheia]

Homer says the King is really the beggar on the street everyone passes by and looks at with contempt.

 

In Africa the lowest caste of all are the San Bushmen. They are the lowest of the low in the whole world.

 

However, when the Bushmen talk to anthropologists they talk to them in the same manner they talk to young children. They tease and make fun of them in a friendly way and when you show them the Bible they roll around on the floor laughing.

 

Bradford Keeney says in one of his books that one time a Chinese energy master was taken to meet with the Bushmen and when he felt the power of their energy it put him in a coma!

 

The Bushmen have nothing to prove to anyone so it's pretty unlikely you'll be seeing a Bushmen fighting in MMA anytime soon!

[Zhongyongdaoist]

We see it's power in ordinary interactions (just applying a short power punch through padding) with 0 distance between a fist and the body of the recipient leaves us gasping for breath.

 

Yes, if the Taiji "master" in the video had been capable of using short power, he might have easily beaten this fellow, but either he couldn't, or, much less likely, he could, but was afraid of really harming this guy.

 

I don't know however, why professional taijiquan practitioners (i.e. masters who train students as a full time profession and those taijiquan artists who participate in world push hands and taiji competitions) should NOT participate in a contest such as this just to show that the system is still effective martially.  The old Masters used to do so. Why not now?

 

The people who have genuinely high achievements in this type of thing, really don't care about the people who are attracted to it for martial skill, and not only does it attract the wrong type of people who believe in such things, it also attracts the debunkers who constantly make demands that you prove these things, which is also more trouble than it's worth.

 

My Sifu used to be part of a kungfu organization called the Green Dragon Society in the 70s and they had many many fights (underground). When he left that group and started learning Taijiquan from the Grandmaster of our system, many people from GDS used to challenge him and his sifu. These guys would leave in ambulances or get knocked out with a single palm strike to the head etc. Taijiquan power and skills are legit. The problem is most people don't put in enough effort into it to get good at it.

Ah, the Green Dragon Society, I remember them.  I ordered a  mail order catalog from them in the early seventies, and found them bizarre to say the least.  They practiced spirit boxing in which the animal spirit who corresponds to the system is invited to take full possession of the student to give them more power and accelerate their progress.  Needless to say, this is potentially a very dangerous practice, and not considered a positive one.  Your Sifu was lucky to escape from this group, and I find your description of how woefully they fared in challenging members of Wayson Liao's school both interesting and worth bringing up.

 

Thanks for the post.

[Aletheia]

http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/showthread.php/8758-San-bushmen-have-an-average-IQ-of-54

 

IQ is left-brain print-press quantification i.e. Plato squared! a measure of insanity.

 

Marshall McLuhan talks about this in one of his lectures and its particularly good because it's after he'd slowed down because of his suffering a serious stroke. I once heard a McLuhan scholar say "McLuhan is so fast no one can keep up with him."

Edited May 12, 2017 by Aletheia

[dwai]

 

Yes, if the Taiji "master" in the video had been capable of using short power, he might have easily beaten this fellow, but either he couldn't, or, much less likely, he could, but was afraid of really harming this guy.

 

 

The people who have genuinely high achievements in this type of thing, really don't care about the people who are attracted to it for martial skill, and not only does it attract the wrong type of people who believe in such things, it also attracts the debunkers who constantly make demands that you prove these things, which is also more trouble than it's worth.

 

Ah, the Green Dragon Society, I remember them.  I ordered a  mail order catalog from them in the early seventies, and found them bizarre to say the least.  They practiced spirit boxing in which the animal spirit who corresponds to the system is invited to take full possession of the student to give them more power and accelerate their progress.  Needless to say, this is potentially a very dangerous practice, and not considered a positive one.  Your Sifu was lucky to escape from this group, and I find your description of how woefully they fared in challenging members of Wayson Liao's school both interesting and worth bringing up.

 

Thanks for the post.

 

My Sifu tells us that GDS guys were very powerful martially. And yes their full contact fights were brutal and lethal...they were not ineffective nuts...they were extremely dangerous and martially powerful nuts (most of them).

 

Sifu tells me when he met his Sifu (our GM - ML ) for the first time, he was asked to fight him. He attacked and as his strike hit ML's body, he activated the Golden Bell and my sifu went flying several feet backwards, airborne! 

 

In those days not many people knew taiji as we know it now. It was just another form of Kungfu. My Sifu said he was sold immediately and started learning taiji from that point onward.

Edited May 12, 2017 by dwai

[Purple Gold Qilin]

Hmm this man was no "master" seems like he couldnt handle consecutive punches to the face.....

 

This guy most likely thought he was good because his master was famous his form was good and he was decent at push hands but forgot about that one little thing called fighting...oh well.

 

I wouldnt say taichi doesnt work id say that the guy couldnt apply it. He couldnt even handle punches to the face...pathetic.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

My Sifu tells us that GDS guys were very powerful martially. And yes their full contact fights were brutal and lethal...they were not ineffective nuts...they were extremely dangerous and martially powerful nuts (most of them).

 

Sifu tells me when he met his Sifu (our GM - ML ) for the first time, he was asked to fight him. He attacked and as his strike hit ML's body, he activated the Golden Bell and my sifu went flying several feet backwards, airborne! 

 

In those days not many people knew taiji as we know it now. It was just another form of Kungfu. My Sifu said he was sold immediately and started learning taiji from that point onward.

 

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I thought the Green Dragon Society, was ineffective martial arts wise, they would not have been if they were doing genuine spirit boxing, which their literature gave me ample reason to believe.  They were either a very clever fraud, or a very dangerous group of people, based on their literature I thought that the later much more likely.  The fact that good sound training defeated these people is something that is important to bear in mind, and your mention of Golden Bell also brings up another skill which the Taiji "master" in the video seemed to lack.

[Aletheia]

This was right before McLuhan had his last major stroke which made him unable to speak and bedridden until his death, I think on 31st December 1980 -

 

 

He talks about IQ there so that's how I knew the San would have the lowest recorded IQ scores, because to understand McLuhan you have to know directly what was going on during the last ice age and that comes with the authentic ability to time travel!

 

So the point here is TV reverses everything since the ziggurats went up in Sumer with their mathematically deterministic cosmology understood by the priestly/bureaucratic caste. There can be no civilisation as we know it without filtering thinking through the left-brain, something which was not before the invention of writing, which gives cause for abstract specialisation and disembodied virtual economies.

 

So the formal cause is the media!

 

 

 

Neither Saussure nor Marx had any presentiment of all this: they were still in the golden age of the dialectic of the sign and the real, which is at the same time the ‘classical’ period of capital and value. Their dialectic is in shreds, and the real has died of the shock of value acquiring this fantastic autonomy. Determinacy is dead, indeterminacy holds sway. There has been an extermination (in the literal sense of the word) of the real of production and the real of signification.

 

-- Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death

Edited May 12, 2017 by Aletheia

[Aletheia]

One doesn't like to toot one's own horn (literally or figuratively) but just to say I have a recorded IQ of 34!

 

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?

[Aletheia]

This guy gets it. How to troll insanity -

 

https://www.quora.com/What-would-an-IQ-of-34-look-like

 

LOL.

[windwalker]

This man beat a tai chi master in ten seconds.

 

 

 

After this fight, he started to ask more tai chi masters to fight with him.

 

And then he was stopped by someone.

His blog was deleted and he can not publish any vedio again.

 

This Vedio was published in May 6.

 

After may 8, we can't find any new vedios from him.

 

He was stopped by some people.

Who made him a taiji master?  is he your master or anyone here reading this,  Is he their master?

 

Or was he someone who said he practice taiji, a master to those who followed him?

Do you follow him, is he reflective of other taiji people that you follow or know?

 

On some of the Chinese sites he was very rude, its really not about the content of what he said, but the how and why he said it...

 

In Taiwan there are many taiji teachers, some of them do not agree with the others, they all practice in the same parks many at the same time close to each other in their own area.

 

They know who is who, and what is what,  and allow the students coming to learn from them to select the teachers that best fit their ideas and understanding of what is taiji and what is not...

 

The MMA guy was/is a marketer trying to make some money....Publicly in China he has been silenced can not access the net, all things about him will soon be gone...on the net.

 

Privately ,  there are those who will find him and help him to understand taiji in a different way.....he forgot about the ocean he swam in,,,feeling he was a shark, he now has become shark bait, in time food.

Edited May 12, 2017 by windwalker

[Daeluin]

We see it's power in ordinary interactions (just applying a short power punch through padding) with 0 distance between a fist and the body of the recipient leaves us gasping for breath. 

 

I don't know however, why professional taijiquan practitioners (i.e. masters who train students as a full time profession and those taijiquan artists who participate in world push hands and taiji competitions) should NOT participate in a contest such as this just to show that the system is still effective martially.  The old Masters used to do so. Why not now?

 

In the old days, even when word of mouth would make someone "popular," there were still limitations to how popular they could get. Population is one factor - in 1950s there were ~2.5 Billion people, and in China popularity could spread to how many of them? Spreading via word of mouth is somewhat organic, and the web of influence (and its shen ripples) might be more manageable, than say.... 7 Billion people. Seven Billion people with access to tools that can spread popularity incredibly quickly and that will very often have ideas about the focus of this popularity that are blown way out of proportion.

 

I can only imagine the shen-gong required to successfully navigate being the focus of such energies. An incredibly developed internal martial artist may develop mysterious powers, but I suspect the skill required to deal with these energies goes hand in hand with the skill to be massively invisible, for lack of better words.

 

In these forums there are many stories of the dissonances created when popular teachings and teachers are taken as panacea. What does it feel like to have thousands of people try a method you advocate only to have it fail to work and have blame focused your way? Is this much different than having thousands of viewers watching youtube videos of popular artists projecting energy related to how this guy must be a fake/cheating/in-violation-of-god/heathen/saint/hero/i-want-power-like-them/etc?

 

I'm not really a follower of global spiritual personas, but it seems like one needs to be the caliber of the dalai lama or wang liping or amma, etc to work in this realm without being controlled by it. Does fighting just for the sake of being the best cause any undesired ripples at this level, or create any undesired influence within the celestial mechanism? These are also often figures whom vow, like bodhisattvas, to return again to this realm - begging the question if the trade off here is related to one's spiritual freedom. Wang Liping is an interesting case, and seems to have some skill being hidden in plain sight. I don't have these answers, but it feels like a poignant question to me.

[C T]

 

 

 

"Master, I have no peace of mind."

 

"Let me hear what you know already. After hearing from you an answer to this query, I shall tell you what I can."

Narada opened his book of knowledge and narrated a list of the sciences and the arts in which he was proficient.

 

"Master, I know every science and every art in the world: metaphysics, theory of knowledge, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, psycho-analysis, aesthetics, ethics, sociology, political science, culture, religion, philosophy. There is nothing that I do not know, but I have no peace of mind. I do not know myself."

The great master replied, "All this that you have learned is a bundle of words, with no content inside. You have smeared your personality with a veneer of apparent knowledge, but you are quite different from that which you have gathered on your personality.

The shirt is not the person and, therefore, your learning is not what you are."

 

Love the quote, Windwalker. Thanks! 

[windwalker]

I do too but was not sure it would fit in with this thread. Happy you caught it maybe others can also enjoy it too.

[Taomeow]

 

Yes, if the Taiji "master" in the video had been capable of using short power, he might have easily beaten this fellow, but either he couldn't, or, much less likely, he could, but was afraid of really harming this guy.

 

 

This is a very important point.  Not that the "master" beaten in the video is likely to have anything I would call taiji.  But in the case of a real deal. 

 

I have no clue how I, personally, would use taiji (which is emphatically not a sport) as a "sport" in a "competition" against a sport-by-design that does not have the same rules of engagement.  Real taiji folks (I'm not talking highest level masters here, just people who have the skill, let's say intermediate level -- some 15-20 years of good lineage taiji) know how to do it so as not to harm and how to do it so as to harm.  They have no idea how to do the in-between encouraged by MMA and other sports.  Never learned that.  It's something from sports, and taiji is not a sport.  It's not all things.  It's not a PC, a refrigerator, a walk-in closet, or a sport.  It's not any of these things...  so what does it prove about what it is?.. 

 

If it's a friendly sparring, they won't harm the opponent.  If it's a real-life self-defense situation, a life-and-death situation, they will harm to the extent they know how.  Taiji is (as Gerard rightfully pointed out) devastating, and fully controlling what you can do is a skill that comes later than being able to do it.  So they might use taiji of the mind to avoid a real-life confrontation.  But if it's unavoidable, they have to be mentally prepared that what they can do, they don't know how to stop before it does too much.  See the problem?.. 

[windwalker]

No I don't see the problem. For those seeking validation of what they do through others who compete in the sport venues they may never find it.

 

For those claiming to validate their art through the sports venues there are and should be no excuses.

 

I feel it's incumbent on each person to be clear about what they search for and to understand that what they find really lies within themselves. Being confused as this teacher found out and often be very painful

 

For many they will claim that somehow this either proves or disproves what it said about taiji. And yet many know people whom they feel can make taiji work as they feel that should. One might ask how do they know

Edited May 13, 2017 by windwalker