The Spirit of Martial Arts???

I am just riding the wave of controversy that keeps getting attracted to the making of this film. It sucks that I am being sued, it sucks that Fall River Black Dragon Fighting Society (BDFS) was not able to find away to ask to go into mediation and decided to make this a high profile federal court case. But…I knew what I was getting into when I started this project and will ride it out to completion. I took on the odds of being involved with the characters of Dante’s past. Mind you, all of them are NOT like this.

The most unfortunate thing is all the insults and bad feelings that are being generated due to pure ego and obstinance. Fall River BDFS has chosen to engage in an online smear campaign, try the case in the court of Bullshido, as it were. Along the way they have said untruths about some of the veteran Black Dragons. They really need to apologize to the old timers for those unfounded statements. But will they???

Discipline in martial arts is everything. But not all adhere to it. Courtesy is everything in martial arts, but not all belive in it. Respect is everything in martial arts and when you don’t show respect to people, you won’t get it.

Some people are not wise enough to understand the power of respect. Some people do not acquire the real spirit of martial arts, all they get is the violence in spirit and behavior.

When John Keehan’s Chinese teacher dropped him it was because he found John to not be of good character, and he had commercialized what he had learned. Fall River adheres to the dark side of John Keehan’s legacy with a lack of the intelligence it takes to walk that road, so they stumble along and merely create chaos in their wake.

The things they have said about Master’s Felkoff and Day are not acceptable. Their disrespect of Mr Van Vuuren when he came to them is horrendous. In their emails they show he approached them with courtesy and respect. They then rebuffed and disrespected him with their claims of rank and entitlement. They accuse of everyone of making money off the legacy of Dante because it is their obsession with getting paid, the easy way.

Why am I getting involved in this part? I was taught to respect my elders. That is part of my upbringing. I can yell scream and disagree all I want with them but I must always respect them. There are places I dare not go, that is part of my dna. It is not fear, it is belief in a moral action to honor those who have come before us, especially while they are alive.

As a former martial artist I was taught respect and humility was everything.

We had a hard task master in my first sensei, Gregory Jaco. We were not paying for our lessons. Jaco believed martial arts were essential to the development of a strong character and essential to our survival as human beings in the hostile environment we inhabited. We paid for our lessons in sweat and sometimes blood(literally). Jaco was only one year older than me. But he carried himself like he was 60 and then became 15 more times than not. He was a character.

He taught us early to not talk bad about other styles, that it was the individual who proved the effectiveness of any style. He was old school in big way. He was big, burly and gentle as a lamb, when he wanted to be. He walked with a warriors heart, he had nothing to prove. This is humility.

How easy is it to have peace? Easy, admit to the people you insulted you were wrong, clean up the damage you did in public. What is it they say about Pride going before a fall? Those words should be heeded. I

Take it back to the Tao:

Those who wish to change the world
According with their desire
cannot succeed.

The world is shaped by the Way;
It cannot be shaped by the self.
Trying to change it, you damage it;
Trying to possess it, you lose it.

Tao te Ching