All Bottles Are Good

John over at Martial Views has an interesting post up about different styles of martial arts. What is interesting is that in some of the comments, people refer to those who trash talk about other styles of martial arts. Seems there are always those who believe that theirs is the only style that ought to exist--that others are inferior to the point of being worthless. This is not a new thing. Master Shimabuku had to deal with this in some of his first gen Isshinryu students.

As the story goes, students usually stayed after class for a while, talking and drinking. During one of these bull sessions, some of the students began bragging about the superiority of Isshinryu, to the point where they were trashing other styles. Master Shimabuku then indicated several types of beverage bottles and asked which one was the best. Of course, the students had no answer to that, but the master did. He responded, "All bottles are good. They each serve a purpose."

All martial arts styles serve a purpose. No one single style is superior to the others. Each one has its particular weakness and strengths. Later, Sensei Advincula added to it by saying, "Knocking one bottle off does not make the others better." Isshinryu will not improve as a style if we suddenly were to make shotokan or tae kwan do nonexistent. On the contrary, cross training in another style (I generally don't recommend this until one has reached black belt in his own style, though) can actually improve your understanding of your primary style.

I'm normally not into discussing the deep philosophical meanings behind martial arts. But this topic deserved a mention.

All bottles are good--even acrylic ones.

Nice segue into knitting content, don't you think?

A completed sock. Wool blend, though. Not acrylic. But hey, all bottles are good, right?

I've gotten a day behind on my dishcloth rows. Here are yesterday's rows that were done today. I'll do today's rows tomorrow.

and this is my drinking cup that I carry with me at work.

Blog fodder has been lacking of late. I hope to get more interesting soon.

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