New Year Training advice:  TaeKwon= Do.

Gen. Choi wrote TaeKwon-Do, he taught us that: TaeKwon is the physical ( techniques, conditioning, physical fitness…) Do: the Mind ( training techniques, conditioning, furthering yourself the Do and to the spiritual path through medidtation).  Gen. Choi taught me that: in this life time, he spent most of his time for researches and developments for the perfect techniques.  Furthermore, he had to confront with so many oppositions of the creation of TAEKWON-DO ( when he gave the name TaeKwon-Do on April 11, 1955…

… he continued to say: in his life time, he did not have enough time to teach, to research further the spiritual path through meditation trainings and mind conditioning.  Every martial artist when one reaches in the physical and technical satisfaction and its peak level, one will eventually turn into the mind conditioning and go deep into the spiritual path.  Meditation plays a very important part in the very high level training of a true martial artist.  It will take one’s life time and beyound……

… to achieve it and to understand it.  You might laugh at it.  Confucius, Buddha and all other Saints have to choose different wisdom words to teach their students according to their levels of understanding.  When you read their history books, you can see that it took a very long time for their students to understand their teachings, words.  Eventually some these Saints’ students would reach the enlightenment accordingly.  Think about when you are a white belt, the way you understand a Walking stance, low section block and compared it to your present level, through months, years practices, you now understand it differently with the times.  It took me so many times to understand his meaning of Reaction-force of application into the movement by how to keep the back leg straight, it must apply to both back leg and back hand.  I am very grateful and fortunate to have the golden opportunities to follow Gen. Choi and to learn directly from his different seminars and international instructor courses around the world from 1985 to the last instructor course he conducted in Colorado, USA (organized by SGM Chuck Sereff in April 2002, in this course our beloved Founder did had his operation, he specially flew back from Korea to teach and to keep his promise to his 500 more students, our Founder passed away in June 2002)…

…through many years of the Do conversations with the Legendary Founder, Gen. Choi Hong Hi, i will try to share a little by little wit you, if you are interested in reading it.  He said: just sitting down silently and contemplate is not easy.  It takes a lot of practice, patient and find the joy of this journey.   If you have never sit down for half hour, then try it.  By just sitting the first 5 minutes, you will find yourself felling anxious, uncomfortable, aches and all kinds of wondering thoughts start appear in your mind…. your mind(heart)like a very wild horse, you suddenly try to tie it down and sit, it will take a lot of patient, adjustment, and hours of practice, this is just the experimental stage, nothing about meditation yet!.

The high level of the 1st stage of TaeKwon-Do training is to train and to condition yourself to be a good human being by living in this planet.  Do not contribute any harmful, destructive actions to it.  Try to protect it, treasure it and learn how to enhance the mutual respects, be kind to each others.  Enhance your knowlege in all aspects, so that you know more about life, the universe, about the others and about the Truth.  Condition your body to be healthy to enjoy what life has offered you as well to serve others:  ONE cannot just: take, take and take; one has also in return to give.  In order to give, one must has something good to give, if yone just takes in all the time, one has never learned something valuable to share and to give…. one needs to continue to stay on the same path until one has learned enough the lessons giving in this path, and then one could move on to the next path….. Your friends and others’ actions would provide the secenes and the lessons for you to learn….. So in life, there is no enemies, they are all your teachers.

… Philosophy learning, teaching have to go through the path of meditation practices and experiencing it.  If one just do the physical conditioning, technical training, it is just a sport not a martial art.  Sport is to win over the others, martial art is to see your weakness, self-critism, self-improved and win over the enemy within yourself ( the mind).  A humble thank you for your reading and sharing.  We will exchange more……

Phap Lu, SGM