SIFU’S SYSTEM MESSAGE on 6 JUNE 2024
Dear SHAOLIN GAOCAN MUN NAMPAICHUAN STUDENTS
“ Come with me, we have mountains to climb”
I write to encourage and motivate you in your attempts to study the Martial Art that I have trained in almost all my life and brought to the West with my Teachers’ blessings.
Now that my Teacher is no more, he has passed the mantle and succession on to me to carry together with the responsibility to teach and promote this unique Art, and more importantly to do so with intelligence, logic and morality.
This I have done and continue to seek to do.
What I need from you is an equally sincere commitment and a willingness to learn, acquiring the knowledge at the times appropriate to your aptitude, attitude and understanding.
Those of you who know me better will know that I do not use words without thought, and so every word, every sentence, and every paragraph has arisen with thought and spoken with sincerity.
“Mountains” in the opening phrase refers to all the personal objectives and obstacles that we meet, not only in our study of our Martial Arts but correspondingly in our approach to our individual lives.
We all have our personal difficulties. In Zen it was sometimes said that the more difficulties you had – the more opportunities you had to surmount them and to learn in the process.
And so it must be.
Embrace what the day has to offer, the knowledge, the problems and the learning opportunities and end the day as a better and more moral person.
In your individual journeys, I counsel you against pride, arrogance, ego, complacency and ennui and distractions.
In modern life it is so easy to be bored and distracted.
Know that all these without exception are enemies to your inner self and progress.
You have your own mountains, and I can neither climb it for you nor may I make your journey as only you may.
I can seek to guide you part of the way and that is what I try to do.
So I ask that you keep faith with us and do your utmost to be the best of yourself.
Always in Shaolin Gaocan Mun Nampaichuan
Sifu
6th June 2024
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