I've had three different Taiji teachers. After I had studied with the first for a while, he sent me to study with the second. After a year or so, the second turned his classes over to the third. The third, although not the best of the three, is the one I think of as my sifu. When I talk about "my teacher", I'm talking about him.
I studied with him for seven years. He wasn't large, but he was rather intimidating. While I was studying with him, he would walk up to me occasionally, thrust his face into mine, scowl so that his bushy eyebrows were knotted together, and tell me "You're doing everything wrong." He didn't mean that the technique I was practicing at the moment was wrong, he meant that everything I did in Taiji was wrong. In essence, he was telling me that I was a failure as a Taiji student.
He continued doing this even after I became one of his more advanced students. At the end of the time I studied with him, he was relying on me to teach the less advanced students and to run the class when he wasn't there. But he was still telling me that I was doing everything wrong. He didn't do this with anyone else. It was directed solely at me.
After seven years, I stopped studying with him because I had returned to school and didn't have time for lessons. However, I continued practicing every day. And everyday, when I started practicing, I would see his scowling face and bushy eyebrows in my mind's eye and hear his voice telling me that I was doing everything wrong. Sometimes this happened only at the beginning of practice, and sometimes it happened throughout practice. But it always happened at least once each time I practiced.
After three years of practicing on my own, I came to the realization one day that I was doing everything wrong. After ten years of study, I started learning to do everything all over again. I never saw my teacher's face again, or heard his voice.
I still practice every day, and I'm still doing everything wrong. This was what he taught me; how to practice without being right.
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3 comments:
Reminds me of an old saying, "Practice doesn't make perfect..perfect practice makes perfect" Applies well to objective situations like learning how to knit or hit a golf ball, but not so well to subjective studies.
Martial arts like Taiji are a little like dealing with grabby customers. No one can tell you what to do, but you have to do something and you have to do it now. And no matter what you do, it won't be perfect. :)
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