A Good Master - FlowingZen.com - a Florida school of Cosmos Chi Kung, Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi Chuan, and Zen

A good master must be a living example of what he or she teaches. A Kung Fu master must be able to defend himself, and a qigong master must exhibit radiant health. These are the basic qualities these arts are meant to develop.

A master of kung fu of chi kung does not enjoy the luxury of many coaches in modern sports like basketball who often cannot dribble a ball or run a race half as well as the students they teach. There are also some Kung Fu and Chi Kung instructors today who cannot perform half as well as their average students. These are certainly not masters, although as a form of courtesy they may be addressed as such by their students or the general public.

Besides being skillful, a good master should be knowledgeable. He should have a sound understanding of the dimension and depth of the art he is teaching, and be able to answer basic questions his students may have concerning the "what, why and how" of their practice. Without this knowledge, a master will be limited in helping his students derive the greatest potential benefits in their training.

However, especially in the East, some masters may be very skillful but may not be knowledgeable. This is acceptable if we take the term 'master' to mean someone who has attained a very high level in his art, but who may not be a teacher.

The reverse is unacceptable, i.e. someone who is very knowledgeable but not skillful, a situation quite common in the West. A person may have read a lot about Kung Fu or Chi KUng and may even have written a few books on it, but has no skills. We may call him a scholar, but certainly not a master.

The third quality of a master as a good teacher is that he must be both systematic and generous in his teaching. Someone who is very skillful and knowledgeable, but teaches haphazardly or withholds much of his advanced art, is an expert or scholar but not a good master.

On the other hand, it is significant to note that a good master teaches according to the needs and attainment of his students. If his students have not attained the required standard, he would not teach them beyond their ability (although secretly he might long to), for doing so is usually not to the students' best interest. In such a situation he may often be mistaken as withholding secrets.

The fourth quality, a quality that transforms a good master into a great master, is that he radiates inspiration. It is a joy to learn from a great master even though his training is tough.

He makes complicated concepts easy to understand, implicitly provides assurance that should anything goes wrong he is able and ready to rectify it, and spurs his students to do their best, even beyond the level that he himself has attained.

The most important quality of a great master is that he teaches and exhibits in his daily living high moral values. Hence, the world's best fighter who brutally wounds his opponents, or the best teacher of any art who does not practice what he preaches, cannot qualify to be called a great master.

A great master is tolerant and compassionate, courageous and righteous, and shows a great love and respect for life. Great masters are understandably rare; they are worth more than their weight in gold.

If you cannot find a master, then look for a competent instructor, who must qualify in the following two conditions. One, he must be professional, i.e. he knows what he is teaching. Someone who teaches a profound art like chi kung or kung fu, after having learnt it for a few months, literally does not know what he is teaching. He does not know, for instance, that he is teaching chi-kung-like or kung-fu-like dance or gymnastics and not real chi kung or kung fu. The second condition is that he must be ethical, i.e. he ensures what he teaches is beneficial, and if his students run into any problems, then he knows about them and is capable of rectifying them.