A Friend, Father and True Master

The Ultimate in Unarmed Self-defense.

It seems that as we grow older we start to figure out what is really important. This may be because we grow wiser in our older years but I believe that it is more that we start to face the end of our time in this life. We ask these questions: What gives our lives value? What should be important to us? Why are we here? It is in a way sad that in the early years of our lives we did not place value on these ideas. Sadder still we did not even understand that these ideas of value even existed. It is said that every cloud has a silver lining. It is this lining that we must discover. To understand what this lining represents and why it is important for us to understand the use of this lining to become what we should be.

We all belong to a family or even many families; they are a gift that has been given to us to help us understand the simple lessons that are revealed to us in our lives. To my martial arts family one of our silver linings has come and passed, but the lessons that he has given us not only will be with us for a very long time but it will take us a long time to fully understand them. This is how it should be, complex, yet simply given. They are not self serving but are for the common good of the family. Even within our family the strength of the family is governed by its weakest link. For the family to be strong each member has to grow to understand his place and the need for his strength to be added to the family as a whole.

The term given to us is Sifu, “teacher” or more importantly “father teacher”. It is not male or female because they are not different but parts of the same being. This is a simple statement that is more complex and deeper than most of us want to admit or even understand. The meaning “father teacher” is as the father of a family. His responsibility is limitless. In the warrior class we have a saying that we should live by, “A good leader leads from the front; he is an example too his family. It is one of doing not saying”. In my time in Vietnam we had a saying that is just as important too us today as it was then,” You have to not only be able to talk the talk but you have to also be able to walk the walk”.

My Sifu’s Sifu has passed. His example will be missed as a man, a father, a teacher, and husband. But to us he will be missed most of all as a leader. Ming Lum was and still is all of those things. That such a simple man is/or was such a strong leader. That he understood that true value was not what you place in an object or a person, but what is perceived by your actions as the value that you placed on them; it was not a command as such but a measure of the value you placed on them. That as the head of your family, your actions must speak louder then any words you may use to convey this value you have placed on a person or group of people.

To honor a man of honor; to understand his lessons, these are the value I place on my Sifu’s teaching but most importantly on the value he placed on his Sifu’s. These lessons then will be passed along to those students that I have a duty to teach or advise. I understand some of these lessons as they have been given to me by my Sifu: Honor, respect and someday wisdom shall be mine, not be held onto as mine, but to be passed on to those that travel along the path that has become my life.

It is hard sometimes to see the simple things that surround us. To try to make the lesson hard, over thought and developed to such a point that it is not what it is supposed to be, but a form of your ego. I have always believed that when you need a teacher or a lesson that it will be given to you. And to receive its gift you have to be open to it; the lesson, teacher or guide. One of these guides for me was Great Grand Master Ming Lum.

Understanding that a lesson can come over a long relationship or a flash that happens so fast that is seems to have been only a thought (or what some call an insight). That when you cheat death it is because the master of your life, to some that is God to others that may be the universe has a higher purpose for your life; that it is an interaction with others or events, not just a cluster of events without meaning. For me that came when I was in Vietnam, that night I should have died and that flash thought it was not my time and more importantly that I had a job to do, I need to interact with someone or something.

That Great Grand Master Ming Lum is also part of the grand plan, that there are no accidents in life. This also is part of my lesson.

THOMAS WILLIAM GEORGION, Student.