The following is a short culmination of notes and quotes I've taken the liberty of jotting down for myself and now share with you. [Quality] learning, in anything, requires the student(s) to be engaged, thinking, and ready to both receive information and adapt what they absorb under various conditions and circumstances. Feed the mind, train the body, harness the skills in the direction of mastery.
- Master Chris Malarkey
5th dan
Martial Notes
- Flowing water can never grow stale.
Don’t be stagnant/complicit. Be ever-changing
- Application of intention with flexibility of approach.
- Separate but intertwined pathways.
- Absorption vs. Accumulation
- Learning techniques without inwardly experiencing = superficiality; to discover, not merely imitate
- Enter the mold without being imprisoned/bound by it
- Don’t over develop or overexert - flowing water never grows stale.
- Balance between sensoric (sensing) and motoric (doing)
- The reward is to be found in the work.
- Intense desire creates its own talent and opportunities.
- “There is no weapon more deadly than the will”
- Growth is the aim
- Don’t convert reality into a problem (theorizing and not living via philosophy)
- Bend and survive
- “Empty heads have long tongues.”
-Bruce Lee
- Must possess a sincere desire to do it right
- Die to yesterday.
- Don’t turn “truth” into a tomb - make no claims to possess truth or, prejudiced faith, in exclusion to all the others
- Personal insight————-> solidified knowledge ——————> tomb
- ELIMINATE tension from NOW to THEN
- Wu-hsin or “no mind” = openness to receive or a fluidity of the daily mind
- Stop inwardly to clear the mind
- “Real meditation leads to thought that is not of the physical” and “...puts you in the now”
- “Meditation is a freeing of the mind from all motives”
- Don’t meditate as a means - be internally calm, free from all phenomena
- Calmness = internally unperturbed
- Question/motive: If money didn’t exist would you chase the same dream?
- Don’t let your mind become mechanical - [faithfully] following a(n) imposed pattern; dependent mind vs. independent inquiry
- Be yourself! - don’t look for a successful personality and duplicate
- Know and then be as not knowing =
pinnacle of wisdom
- On matters of engaging the opponent, do no overawe the enemy.
- Do not display all that you have learned.
- Don’t confuse having a job with fulfilling your purpose.
- On matters of your opponent, be faster than a single instance of time.
- A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves as something to aim at.
- Change is from inner to outer - first by dissolving attitude, not by altering outer conditions.
- Don’t let your mind be the result of 1000 yesterdays.
- “Freedom of expression occurs when one is beyond system.” - Bruce Lee
- Try to generate real feeling outside the system; do not become mechanical.
- Addition by subtraction - adding value while taking away superfluous, excess.
- “Motion relieves tension.” - Cus D’Amato
- Your mind is not your friend: you have to fight with your mind, control it, and put it in its place. - Cus
- Fatigue in the ring is 90% psychological. - Cus
- Perpetual state of war in your mind yet calm and relaxed on the outside. Think: warrior in a garden vs. gardener in a war.
- Make 2 punches sound like 1 = knockout/maximum potency
- Hitting hard has nothing to do with physical - it’s all about controlled emotion.
- Make all their causes against you a lie. - Cus D'Amato
- “The way you fight your fights will be the way you live your life.” - Cus D'Amato
- Some people can’t live without enemies, so they create them.
- Turn physics into poetry.
- Master Malarkey