Obvious fake

 

LOL. Obvious fake. We already know that Shaolin monks can´t fight...

Everything is permissible

 

Actual title of a YouTube video spotted just now: "Should Christians Watch Cage Fights? And Other Controversial Questions".

Some of the responses quoted below!

>>>At the Second Lateran Council in 1139, under the leadership of Pope Innocent II, the Roman Catholic Church set policy that anyone who dies while participating in combat or life threatening sports would be denied a church burial. This policy was again reiterated at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Pope Benedict XIV continued to emphasize the policy in 1752 and added excommunication to those who participate in similar sports. The policy arose from Christian’s participating in jousting, fighting, and dueling. While rarely enforced today, the policy still stands in the church.

>>>Any sport that does not offend the Trinity is permissable imo. If you think boxing/MMA fights dishonor God than same could be said with football for the latter is a violent sport.

>>>Ramsey Dewey is a former cage fighter who currently teaches MMA in China, and a very devout Mormon, who makes videos on both topics. He actually has his own video about Christians and cagefighting, from the perspective of someone who has done both.

>>>I love the people who were more outraged by the female body on display during breaks than the equally naked men and women violently attacking each other during the match.

>>>You could say there is precedence…the Christian watched the Roman spectacles, but the did it from the arena floor...

>>>Calvinists vs Arminians in a cage. Someone should have Grok make an AI picture for that.

  

The martial lineage

 

Some kind of "esoteric Buddhism" I never heard about before, apparently connected to Qigong. Or purported esoteric Buddhism, but never mind. The idea is that you can leave samsara and achieve enlightenment and immortality by identifying with the vital force (prana or qi). Or at least conditional immortality, since in this system, you apparently "die" after a billion years or so. Unless you merge with Brahman before that!

Or you can become some kind of martial arts master in this life...

The first video is the best one. The second is pretty eclectic, with the actual lecture starting at the six minutes mark. 

Also mentions Bodhidharma, Shaolin, and such.

  

The three kinds of qi

 

A short but interesting presentation about qi and various forms of Taoist alchemy.   

The White Sport

 

When I was a kid, I used to think that savate was a joke, taken from "The Adventures of Tintin". I pronounced the word wrong, too. Actually, it´s a real martial art from France. Not only that, all those spectacular kicks we associate with "Japanese" karate are actually from savate! They were introduced to Japan by a French military mission assisting the Meiji regime to modernize the land of the rising sun. 

Seriously, did White people invent *everything*? Modern yoga, modern meditation, and now karate?! 

White Boy Summer all over again!  

Before Xu Xiaodong, there was Steven Morris

In 2017, Chinese MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong defeated "Tai Chi master" Wei Lei, which I believed took about ten seconds. The clip went viral, and even I saw it shortly afterwards. Full disclosure: I´m not *that* interested in martial arts! The Chinese government supports "traditional" martial arts and wasn´t amused. They have harassed Xu, for instance by lowering his social credit rating (in effect, putting him on a kind of national black list). In response, the MMA fighter has become something of a dissident, for instance by supporting the Hong Kong protests. Xu has also fought and defeated other martial arts "masters", strongly suggesting that Chinese martial arts (whatever else they might be) aren´t a serious system for actually *fighting* anyone...

Which brings me to the article linked below, recommend to me by a regular commentator on this blog. Steve Morris seems to have been a "Xu before Xu". In his autobiography (which is *very* unpleasant reading unless you´re a born street fighter), Morris reveals how he defeated essentially every Chinese, Japanese and Okinawan "master" already during the 1960´s and 1970´s. Karate, kung fu, Fujian boxing...nothing could withstand the "no holds barred" of the "Morris method". After watching some YouTube clips of this man in his prime, I´m ready to believe him - he looks like a cross between an animal and a barbarian. Morris is openly contemptuous of "spiritual" approaches to martial arts, and also to martial arts that are too rule-based and de facto coreographed. To him, it´s all about raw fighting. The masochistic attitude of being beaten up by a great East Asian "master" and feeling grateful (something Morris claims is common among Western practitioners), or the constant quasi-military marching drills (popular in Japan) are also alien to his mentality. Morris eventually left the karate world, since almost no leaders within that community want to change their ways, and probably not their trainees either. Personally, I have no particular problem with martial arts that are a form of spiritual training, performance or competition-only, but if you claim that you can take down an MMA fighter and falls short (or trips over), well, aint that just tough! 

An interesting peak into a subculture I usually don´t comment on this blog. 

Pedigree: An incomplete martial arts autobiography

Kung fu dancing

"Path to Shaolin" is a documentary about a Canadian kung fu practitioner, Tim Mrazek, who wants to become a Shaolin monk. On YouTube it´s called "How to Be a Shaolin Monk". The documentary is somewhat peculiar, and there seems to be an entire culture war on the web about how "authentic" Shaolin really is. Although Mrazek´s trainer is a disciple of a Shaolin kung fu master, I have to say that "Path to Shaolin" gives plenty of ammunition to those claiming that the temple isn´t what it used to be. (In case you really don´t know, the Shaolin monastery or temple is a Zen Buddhist center in China famous for its "warrior monks" and martial arts. Not to mention the near-supernatural feats carried out by said monks.) 

At the start, we are told that Mrazek is going to Shaolin "to become a monk" and wonders whether the Chinese warrior-monks will accept him. Yet, he spends most of his time in China at various kung fu schools for children and teenagers. They teach "wushu", here interpreted as the competition form of kung fu, with little or no spiritual content. When Mrazek finally manages to visit the Shaolin Temple, it turns out to be closed...with only a bunch of kids in the temple grounds. In the end, Mrazek and his trainer simply take their picture with the children outside the "sacred" temple doors?! 

At a later point, the team visits the Pagoda Forest, where Mrazek´s trainer pays homage to his dead master, the former abbot of the entire Temple. He finds it difficult to do so, since the entire area is filled with pretty disrespectful tourists. The idea that the Canadian is going to be initiated into the "brotherhood" is quietly dropped somewhere along the way, and we are told that the old traditions died with the former abbot. Finally, the new master (?) gives a speech filled with commonplaces, and finally tells Mrazek that he might as well go back to Canada and spread Shaolin culture there!

I get the impression that the entire Shaolin concept is heavily commercialized these days, and perhaps also politicized. (Just watch what happens every time an MMA fighter beats up a Shaolin monk!) The wushu might be real, what do I know, but it seems Shaolin sensu stricto is just another legend we should lay to rest... 

Red pilled by the Matrix

 

"The Matrix" from 1999 isn´t just the best film in the Matrix saga. It´s arguably also the best film ever made. At least I considered it so for a very long time. In many ways, I still do. I´m fascinated by its peculiar mixture of science fiction, conspiracy thinking, Buddhist-Gnostic allegory and, ahem, kung fu. The Matrix is maya, the illusory world well known from some Hindu and Buddhist teachings. The "agents" and "machines" are the demons or archonts of Gnosticism, evil entities who keep humanity in thrall to the material world. Neo is the siddha, the Tantric superman, who can change the illusory world at will when reaching enlightenment. It´s also interesting to note that "The Matrix", despite the Buddho-Gnosticism, can´t entirely escape the Christian meme. The invention of AI is the "fall" of humanity, and Neo is of course the "Christ" heralding an apocalyptic confrontation with the forces of evil... 

Watching the film again last night, I was also struck by how "1990´s" it feels. This was in the beginning of the Internet, when the web could still be seen as somehow mysterious, both for good and for ill. The same was true of AI. Even the dystopian vision of a world ruled by intelligent machines trapping humanity into one gigantic interactive computer program is really based on the Western idea of progress - those smart robots, after all, were presumably built by clever human scientists. 

Today, cyberpunx dead. Both the film´s techno-pessimism and its implicit techno-optimism look equally utopian, the real future probably being one of gradual decline of all things techno. As for the web, it has turned into a trivial house hold appliance, office aid, and an instrument of the same establishment censorship as the old media (but less efficient). The film´s globalism and implicit libertarianism, Neo telling the machines that he is fighting for a world "without borders", also looks ridiculously optimistic and utopian today. And yes, the Wachowski brothers (who made the film) have "transitioned" and are now known as the Wachowski sisters, simply falling for the latest ridiculous fad...

"The Matrix" was good, is good still, but it seems we have all been "red pilled" by the last two decades. 9/11, the finance crisis, the migrant crisis, the climate protests, Donald Trump, COVID-19...all that stuff was still in the future when the film was released. It struck me that the red pill versus blue pill as described in "The Matrix" might be a false dichotomy. It´s the choice between being enslaved by the globalist-cyber-world and ostensibly controlling the very same globalist-cyber-world. But what if it can only be destroyed? Indeed, what if it self-destructs whether or not we want it to? 

Perhaps "The Matrix" was just another control program built by the Architect... 

Next time, just run

Interesting clip from YouTube about martial arts and why they *don´t* work. In real life, just running away is a far better "technique" in many situations!

Does Steven Seagal´s Aikido Work?

A criticism of Aikido and Steven Seagal. Quite interesting... 

Blasted, James Randi wins again

This Japanese “Kiai Master” claims to have the supernatural ability to fend off physical attacks. Look what happens when he is challenged by a real MMA fighter…

Blasted. James Randi gets to keep his 1 million dollars…again!

Fight Club, 15th century style

“Medieval Fight Book” is an absolutely fascinating, but also slightly bizarre, documentary about Hans Talhoffer, a 15^th century German fencing master. Or rather about his famous “fight book” and how well it reflected its time, the Late Middle Ages. The documentary features a crew of martial arts experts who try to reenact Talhoffer´s descriptions of medieval fighting.

I was surprised to learn that trial by combat still existed during the 15^th century – I assumed the Christian Church had suppressed this barbaric custom centuries earlier! Talhoffer trained people who were supposed to engage in these duels, many of which were fought with shields and other unexpected types of weapons. (Yes, the shields were used for attack.) Some duels were between a man and a woman, with the man being forced to stand in a small pit in order not to give him too much of a fighting advantage!

Another surprise was the agility of medieval knights. Their strong armor was virtually impossible to penetrate (except at certain select points), while also being light enough for the knight to be able to run fast on the battlefield. The re-enactment guy in this documentary looks like the futuristic robot in “Terminator”. In his book, Talhoffer describes a duel between a knight and person without armor. It *was* possible for a normally clad fighter to defeat a knight, using a technique known as half-sword. One form of this is to use the sword “upside down” and attack the opponent with the pommel at the hilt. The demonstration of this in the documentary is wild!

The Fight Book also discusses armored vehicles, siege engines and techniques to storm a castle. The most advanced piece of technology in Talhoffer´s book is a peculiar diving suit unlike no other invented during this period. Nobody knows whether it was really used, or where the oxygen came from. Overall, Talhoffer´s book is a book of secrets only half revealed. Those willing to pay could make the fencing master reveal more in private consultation. This was a time when science and technological know-how were “esoteric”. The first rule of Fight Club...

Funny detail: “Medieval Fight Book” features Terry Jones, who apart from being a comic actor (Monty Python) also writes book on medieval history. 

A man and his sword

John Michael Greer's “The Spirit and the Sword” is a very narrow book. I admit that I didn't find it very interesting or useful. But then, I have no particular plans to take up swordsmanship!

Greer claims to have discovered a secret Western tradition which combines swordsmanship with the Hermetic Kabbalah, a tradition kept alive by certain initiatory lodges. Greer doesn't want to disclose where his information comes from, except that it's from written manuals (rather than an oral transmission from master to disciple) and flourished (albeit in secret) during the 19th and early 20th centuries. He briefly discusses a secret Spanish tradition of swordsmanship and esotericism from the Renaissance, revealed in Gerard Thibaut's book “The Academy of the Sword” (translated by Greer), but the exercises revealed in “The Spirit and the Sword” are apparently from other sources.

The bulk of the book contains various exercises in the actual use of swords and spears, plus other exercises said to strengthen the body or release the flow of “subtle energy”, by which Greer means forces not recognized by modern science, such as the Chinese chi. There are correspondences between some of these exercises and some of the “sefirot” on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Ultimately, the practitioner of this secret martial art will learn to fence blindfolded due to some kind of occult powers. Or so Greer believes. It's not clear whether he has reached this level of skills himself!

I'm not really qualified to judge the contents of this little book, so I'm going to give it three stars. Strangely, there are only two reviews of it so far. I assumed JMG had quite the fan club? But perhaps not in the local fencing club…?

UPDATE 2021-08-11:

Greer recently revealed the source of the secret tradition. It was the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows! The sword training is unknown to modern Odd Fellows, however. They are not odd enough, it seems.

The Matrix has me!

I wrote and posted this in 2006. I still think "The Matrix" is the best film ever made. 

"The Matrix" is literally the BEST movie I've ever seen!! I don't know how many times I've seen it: on cinema, on TV, on VCR. Sorry, I don't have a DVD (must be the last person in the Matrix who doesn't!). So why is the movie just GREAT?

I guess its the combination. There's really heavy philosophy, astounding special effects, intruiging music, a lot of kung-fu and yes, a lot of completely unmotivated VIOLENCE!!! And, there's no sex. Thanks. Can't stand that in a cinema, I mean really...

Best scene: Morpheus is held in custody by the Secret Police. Neo and Trinity has to save him. Catch: the HQ of the Secret Police is guarded by like 1000 cops. Does the rescue mission succeed? Well... Let's just say "we need guns, lots of guns". And that chopper that collides with the skyscraper...Oh MAAAN!

As for the philosophy, being the philosophical type (seriously, I don't take kung fu lessons, not even from Mr. Miyagi), I relished in that too. The Wachowski brothers have succeeded in creating a very clever, almost genial, indeed almost too clever, Gnostic or Hindu-Buddhist allegory. It's all there: the "machines" who keep humanity in thrall are the Archonts or the Asuras, the Matrix is maya or the world of illusion, Neo is a Gnostic or Tibetan Messiah who acquires superhuman strength when realizing that the world is just an illusion. And yes, the humans who don't want to be saved by Morpheus and his commando group, people like Cypher, well...that's us! "Ignorance is bliss".

And in case you missed it, the movie also contains a really bad joke. Cypher is called "Mr.Reagan" and wants to "forget everything" and "be someone important, like a movie star". This is a reference to Ronald Reagan, the former movie actor and US president who eventually turned senile. Although I didn't fancy Reagan, this joke is...well, a bit low.

But despite that, I nevertheless give this movie 5 stars. Indeed, I would give it 10 stars if possible. "Wake up...wake up...wake up"!!!

I took a little souvenir, 57 pretty heads

Well, what can I say? It's a murder orgy signed Quentin Tarantino.

If you love samurai action and spaghetti western music, "Kill Bill, Vol 1" is for you. If not, you will probably consider this to be the worst slapstick-and-slash movie ever made.

I admit I was sceptical at first, but I started loving the movie when O-Ren cut off the head of Mr. Tanaka for questioning her ethnic background (well, what would *you* do, huh?). The best character: Gogo Yubari, a sadistic and severely disturbed 17-year old girl working for the Yakuza. How do people even *come up* with characters like that?!

The plot doesn't stand closer scrutiny. Let's just say that The Bride is a female vigilante who doesn't want to be sexually molested while comatose, and has a real crush on samurai swords...

"Kill Bill, Vol. 1" is definitely worth five stars. But please don't tell anyone about this review. I'm supposed to be an intellectual, for crying out loud!

I took a little souvenir, 57 pretty heads...

Kill the bill

"Kill Bill Vol. 2" was something of a surprise. The first movie was some kind of slapstick-and-slash samurai parody. The second was closer to a serious drama, with a lot more character development. I had expected the comic book splatter to simply continue for another two hours...

Part of me was disappointed, another part actually liked "Volume 2" better. My more serious side, perhaps?

But sure, the concluding part of Tarantino's inimitable epic does have its fair share of mayhem, including murder by black mamba, poisoned fish or kung fu. Best character: Samuel L. Jackson as an obscure jazz player, visible for only two or three minutes. LOL. Fresh out of "True Romance", I imagine.

Otherwise, I admit the complete disconnect between the spaghetti western music and the actual plot was also to my liking...

OK, Kiddo, I give this film five stars.