Where's the sense in that?

Some joker in the mental health field once commented to me that I write and act like somebody suffering from severe PTSD. I told him listen up champ, every single soul that ever took the dare to jump down into the cauldron of earth-life chimpspace should be up for a PTSD disability check once they bungee back up to the astral, out of the meat. Yeah, that's how bad ass the Time-Space Illusion can be.

Anyway not just me, we're obviously all nutty as fruitcakes. Otherwise why would we be paying our taxes to fund all manner of assholes and clowns in their eternal pursuit of yet further Doomsday weaponry?

OK this is supposed to be a "Combative Training" entry so what about it... mmm... As far as I'm concerned, despite all the crazy whatall I've trained in - underwater fighting, Yiquan, boxing, Shaolin, on and on, but the real shit was put out there by one person: Zheng Manqing. Why speaketh I thusly?

First, his energy model is the simplest, best, and most correct. He basically said that by training, energy accumulates in the dantian and from there can be re-deployed outward again by the mind, for various purposes. That's the shit. Just a sentence, don't need to say much more on it. Second,  his philosophical model appeals to me. Yi rou ke gang. Soft overcoming the hard.

I could have met him. I was like 13 or 14 years old, had just started learning taiji in Robert Smith's free Saturday morning class at the YMCA. I didn't know from taiji. My Taekwando buddy dragged me to it, saying its a kind of kung fu (oooh!) so I went and joined in, just for fellowship. My third Saturday or so, Mr. Smith announced after class: "Next week no class here. We are going to New York to meet Professor Zheng. If you want to come along in the van, just sign  your name up here. If not, just remember no class next week." I'd never heard of this Professor Zheng. I hadn't read Smith's book. I was as dumb as an empty beer can. I just thought "Fine no class next week, I'll sleep in". They went to NYC. I didn't. Professor Zheng died back in Taiwan a few months later.

The time to take tarts is when tarts are passed.

Comments

[Tom]

Nutty as a fruitcake? I happen to like fruitcake, so I guess that can't be all that bad.

You missed meeting Prof. Zheng in person, but I wonder how much you would have gotten from the encounter? I'm amazed that at 13 or 14 you even attended Bob Smith's class . . . your attention span was seriously longer than the typical adolescent male's then (at least in American culture).

In any event, one thing led to another and you eventually did connect up with a teacher in the ZMQ line whose character and teaching methods really resonated with you . . . I suppose that would be the topic for another blog entry. :- )

[Carl]

"...by training, energy accumulates in the dantian..."

What does he say to do with it once it's there?