Selecting a Master is not hard. Just find someone to whom you'll entrust your future!
Shifu Jen
House of TaiJi




I went to Taiwan some years ago.
A blue-eyed Quai-Lo girl with no language skills and white-white skin. I was unsure about it. But Grand Master had invited me. I asked Master if he'd come along. With his assent, my fears dissolved.

Such a trip requires the ability to confront changes in everything at once, because everything is upside down: Language. Time Zones. Martial Skill. Money. Philosophy. History. Politics. Custom. Gender. Clothing. Food. Social Expectations. Culture.

While things were for the most part upside down, I wasn't concerned. I was safe with my Master: Three of them, actually...

We collaborated on little things like food, practice schedules, transportation, locations, colleagues, coaching sessions, meetings, laundry. Then too, we worked on big stuff: museum tours, monastery visits, chop carving, doctor visits, philosophical discussions -- and the life changing experience of finding my chi...

There is in the highest sense, no more intimate, life-affecting relationship than that with a Master. Such a bond influences everything that you are, and much of what you hope to become.

So choose carefully. Embrace fully. Give yourself completely. And then; be prepared to discover that your Master is just a human being. Flawed, tortured, ill, jealous and cranky -- like any other member of the species. So entrust him with your future, but recognize that though it may be influenced or directed, it can never be given away. In the end, your Master can but point the way. You must get to that higher place on your own two feet.
 

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