The Advantageous Disadvantage

The Lore Of Paradoxes

With And Without

One of the life lessons Shifu Schmetterling taught me was on the paradox of fullness and emptiness. In one of the lessons of countering weapons, he asked us “what is the problem of having a gun?”

We struggled to meet the answer, and finally, he came with the reply, “we all know the advantage of having a gun, but we forgot, aside the sense of false security, the hands are occupied. The hands are versatile and it is evolved for many things. Having the hands filled means there are less you can do aside from aiming and shooting.”

“Capturing — the training of Qin Na (擒拿)”, the answer hit me. Shifu pointed at me, and the glances followed.

Shifu Schmetterling reminded us that conditions change, and many times, the changes are so swift, we humans don’t even notice it, and we keep missing the windows of observation. His responsibility is to help us capture and comprehend them. Only by understanding the changes, we can leverage the laws to will and weave our ‘design of moments’.

Shifu’s final reminder was — if we have the Midas touch, everything is a weapon. Shifu once said “he slept armed and guarded. Every part of him is a weapon — he is the weapon”.

His lessons are to teach us to `see` through the illusions of life. While others see none, he gave us a new sight.

以弱胜强, 以柔克刚 (yǐ ruò shèng qiáng, yǐ róu kè gāng): Defeat the…