What does it take to be a Grand Master?

[Batosai Imora]

All of this grand master stuff is all a gimic for your money a lot of martial arts instructors are nothing more then sleazy con men, if you dont believe me look up on a man named frank dux and you will understand, mastery means perfection nobody is perfect so no one can be a master, all of this belt rank, tests, gis all of it is just to get your money, inmy opinion i like how jeet kune do breaks free of this belt and gi *, you dont need either to know or do martial arts, i know these so called masters get their buts whipped by people who didnt know anything about karate, mc dojos are everywhere guys, with instructors that use and abuse you, find someone who know what they are doing and in this world thats pretty hard.

[Drunken Monkey]

this is an example of how the term 'master' has been overused, misused and abused by western society following it's relatively bad translation from chinese.

 

in chinese, the title of master is 'sifu'.

 

all it means is teacher of martial arts (or martial father to be exact in translation)

 

grand-master only means sifu of your sifu.

 

the title is normally used for people who have their own school

 

OR are the recognised inheritor of a style/school.

 

whether or not they are any good is another matter.

 

it just follows the family title way of refering to people.

 

using this terminology AND translated back into english, bruce lee would be my grand-martial-uncle.

 

look at it this way.

 

what does sifu mean?

 

what does sensei mean?

 

are the translations of those terms anything like the dictionary definition of the word 'master'?

[aefibird]

Good point Monkey, as ever!

[Drunken Monkey]

well, this is one of those things that really bug me.

 

whenever i see someone talking about chinese martial arts and using the term 'master'.

 

it just doesn't work.

 

technically, i can teach wing chun.

 

if i open a school, i can take on the title of 'sifu' (and all of the responsibilty that comes with it (look up the meaning and role of 'sifu' and you'll know what i mean....).

 

that does not mean that i am any sort of 'master'.

 

nor would i like to be called/refered by that title.

 

all it means is that i am teaching wing chun.

 

i can then tell you who my sifu is and from that you can find out who his sifu was etc etc etc and trace the lineage if you so desire

 

if there is something that i cannot answer then you can go to my 'sifu' (your si-gung) or even a si-hing (kung fu brother) of mine (your si-bak: kung fu uncle).

 

notice how none of the terms actual means anything like 'master'.....

[aefibird]

So is a Si-Hing someone who is the same level as you?

[Drunken Monkey]

well, my 'si-hing' is my eder kung fu brother.

 

my 'little brother' would be 'si-dai'.

 

again, just because someone is my little brother doesn't mean he can't whip my *.

 

but yes, my si-hing is one who is at the same level on the family tree as me.

 

the character that jet li/bruce lee played in fist of legend/fury (based on a semi-factual event by the way) was one of the 'youngest' (fifth from top i think) of the senior students.

 

legend has it that he could whoop all of their * which was why he was the one that was chosen to take the little boy away and protect him (not in the film but part of folklore and history/myth.....)