Bowing to the Teacher: Martial Arts and Meditation

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 5 years before Mar 11, 2017

MiBeloved 5 years ago

The Western Way of Teacher-student Relationship.

I was at a Tae Quan Do student testing session today and I recalled some things which I observed years ago in the Philippines with Arthur Beverford. There were two important rules which he used to stress:

1.     Before you begin bow to the teacher.

2.     Before sparing with a fellow student bow to that person without losing focus.

In Western countries, the idea of bowing to the teacher is really taboo. No one is supposed to bow to anyone for anything. During the session, the teacher had to repeatedly tell students to turn and bow to the master teacher who was there to observe their martial art proficiency.

Even though they had no objections to the bowing procedure, you could see that it was not natural for them to do so. Why bow to a teacher in the first place?

In the West there is this feeling that one should demand an education from the teacher due to one’s civil rights.

The first rule about bowing to the teacher is completely different to the second rule about bowing to a fellow student before sparing.

In the first situation, one bows to the teacher because he is one’s superior and one depends on him to develop the particular discipline and it is assumed that his superiority will hold for your entire life. In other words, you will not be able to advance beyond him because his advancement is accelerating as yours is improving.

In the second situation, one bows to a fellow student because he is a student of one’s teacher, and therefore is a dependent of the teacher and one also bow to him to signal that one will spar by the rules taught by the teacher. In this case one does not take one’s eyes off the fellow student, or in other words one does not bow with the eyes. The eyes remain focused on the fellow student even though the trunk of the body makes the bowing motion. The head remains in an upward face-on position as one bows.

This action of not bowing with the eyes is not to challenge the other person but it is to observe their movement since if one does not observe their movement, that other person might attack when one is inattentive and that is considered to be fair game.

The whole thing about respecting and bowing to a teacher, has to do with having an obligation to the teacher. In the West everything, nearly everything, is based on its commercial value, so that one gets an education from a University if one pays for it financially. Since one has paid, one had no obligation to the professors.

In the East, before, money was not the means of the education transfer. Service to the teacher and fulfillment of the teacher’s wishes were the means. In some cases money played into that but money was not the standard means of exchange.

One would take lessons from a teacher, even if one could not pay a penny to him and still one would learn like that but one would be obligated. Even in the Mahabharata, there is the story of Drona who taught the Pandavas and their rival cousins, and who at their graduation, required that they used the martial skill they achieved, to bring down King Drupad. Drona wanted martial service to seize the kingdom of a king, as his fees for the training.

There is another case with the same crafty Drona, where he required an aborigine to cut off his right thumb as the teacher fees.

The problem with bowing to teachers, with treating them in the Eastern way, is that the student is not free to do what he or she would with the skill achieved, it can only be used in the service of the teacher and in a way that is approved by the teacher, while with a commercial teaching system no such stipulation applies, and the teacher cannot levy a service nor a moral standard for use of the training.

I learnt kundalini yoga practice from Yogi Bhajan some 38 years ago around 1972-1973, and just this morning he came astrally to tell me to put a restriction on someone whom I introduced the practice to and who is now thinking of teaching another person.

If I had learnt it with commercial exchange where I paid Yogi Bhajan, Western style, he would have no way to instruct me to place a restriction on a person who was learning the practice from me and who now is in the process of teaching others.

So the Eastern system is definitely restrictive.

Special Note:

While observing those martial arts students, I realized that they were focused on the opponent, on being able to defeat opponents and that reminded me of a conversation I had with Arthur Beverford over 30 years ago.

When I approached him to get a clue from him about anyone teaching yoga on or off base at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, he told me to wait until the class was over. I sat down and waited. When it was finished, he introduced himself as the disciple of Rishi Singh Gherwal and told me to meet him for half hour sessions of practice at the base gym on certain days.

This was arranged so that there would be the martial arts session and then there would be the yoga teaching. I was the only yoga student and sometimes his son(s) and wife would be there and they would also join in, even though they were not serious about yoga. After the asana postures, we would do a meditation which all of his family did observe.

Originally when Bodhi Dharma (the Buddhist Monk) went to China, there was martial arts training but soon after one had to sit to meditate. There is not much mention about asana postures training in that story.

Anyway after a few sessions, Arthur Beverford asked me to join the martial session also. I was disinclined to it but I took about 2 sessions and then copped out.

When Beverford came back to the US, I got in touch with him and went to his place. He was living then in near Ojai in Ventura County in California. There he had students and was giving lessons at a place in the small town nearby and at his home. His sons were all advanced black belts, even the one who were not even teenagers. About two weeks after I got to his place, I had an astral projection, where my astral body took information from the causal body from some past lives, and then it began to do all the martial arts forms with precision and rapidity.

I discussed this astral experience with Beverford once when he again suggested that I learn the art. He then said, “That is the thing, that the information has to be brought over physically again through practicing again.”

So it means that if one mastered something in the past, if one wants to demonstrate the proficiency in a new body one has to work at it. But for me, and this is something I did not tell Beverford, the proficiency in martial arts was accessed in the causal body and was cancelled out there, because it has absolutely no spiritual value. One does not make any spiritual progress by focusing on an opponent because in the spiritual world, there are no opponents. The only place where one can use such skills is in a world where one will find opponents and in such places, it has all value until the opponents find a means of transcending that skill, as happened in Japan when some samurai masters and their students were mowed down by gunfire and the Meiji period came to an abrupt end.

Bruce Lee, a martial arts champion and screen star was permanently neutralized by a gunshot as well.

Defense has all importance if one plans to keeping on taking birth in a world which is like this one but otherwise it has no value whatsoever. Ultimately one has to see that when all is said and done, advantage outside of one’s psyche is useless. We do need advantage but it is in reference to the psychic organs in the mind which make us into their slaves.

Kriya yoga is the martial arts practice within the psyche, going on between the core-self and the various perception equipments. Bodhi Dharma went to China to teach that because that is what Gautama Buddha mastered; but when Bodhi Dharma got to China, the people were not evolved enough to appreciate Buddha’s achievements outright, and therefore Bodhi Dharma had to go down to their level and teach them martial arts.

Those who became proficient reached the realization that it was a waste of time, and then they took a hard look at the achievements of Gautama Buddha and changed their attitude.

Buddha’s father was told by an astrologer that Buddha would be either a world conquering monarch or the most enlightened person who ever lived. Buddha’s father did everything possible to make his son become a monarch but the effort failed because Buddha noticed that the real problem in life was an introspective one.

So his martial arts practice was between himself and whatever it was in his psyche which chased after impermanent things.