Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was once a Mas­ter who trav­eled to all of the mar­tial arts schools in Korea chal­leng­ing the Head Mas­ters of the schools. He came to a small school where the stu­dents were very cour­te­ous. He told them he was there to chal­lenge their Head Mas­ter. The Head Mas­ter arrived and the Mas­ter could not believe how old and weak he looked. He asked the Head Mas­ter what kind of style do you teach here. The Head Mas­ter told him they had no style. He told the Head Mas­ter he wanted to fight. The Head Mas­ter had just had a death in his fam­ily and was prepar­ing for the funeral that night so he did not wish to engage in any fight­ing.

The trav­el­ing Mas­ter insisted and started attack­ing the Head Mas­ter but the Head Mas­ter kept run­ning away. The trav­el­ing Mas­ter couldn’t believe that the Head Mas­ter kept run­ning away every time he attacked. He finally got so frus­trated that he told the Head Mas­ter that he had won the fight because the Head Mas­ter would not fight and he left.

Later when he was away from the school he noticed that he had “do not fight with me” writ­ten on his back in his own blood. He returned to the school and begged the Head Mas­ter to teach him. The Head Mas­ter said he would not because the trav­el­ing Mas­ter did not show any respect or humil­ity. He con­tin­ued to beg and finally the Head Mas­ter said OK. You can train here but you must clean the toi­lets out every day for your train­ing.After doing this for one month the trav­el­ing Mas­ter was frus­trated and asked the Head Mas­ter to really teach him. The Head Mas­ter said, “OK, punch me”. The trav­el­ing Mas­ter did and the Head Mas­ter blocked the punch and threw him into the toi­let. The trav­el­ing Mas­ter was cov­ered in dung. The Head Mas­ter said your name will now be Dung because your atti­tude, respect, and integrity is dung. The trav­el­ing Mas­ter was so mad he couldn’t under­stand why the Head Mas­ter wouldn’t fight him then asked him to punch him later. He thought and went to the Head Mas­ter and apol­o­gized for being dis­re­spect­ful.

Then one day the Head Mas­ter asked the trav­el­ing Mas­ter to spar. The Trav­el­ing Mas­ter had not learned any tech­niques but was able to spar very well against the Head Mas­ter. The trav­el­ing Mas­ter asked what hap­pened to me, before I couldn’t do any­thing against you and now?

The Head Mas­ter told him that before he was only wor­ried about punch­ing and kick­ing and did not show respect or con­cen­tra­tion. He told the trav­el­ing Mas­ter that he was like a Samu­rai try­ing to use a kitchen knife. A true mar­tial artist must know what his poten­tial is to use. Not just kick­ing and punch­ing, also the impor­tant thing is the men­tal atti­tude. Power is less than intel­li­gence and intel­li­gence is less than wis­dom. Now he had learned humil­ity which would give him a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the mar­tial arts.


(tell me what you think of this story and what sort of stories have your masters told you and what kinda impact have they had on you as a human being.)