Fist+Law+Extreme+Meaning

The ken-po Goku-i or the law of the fist where the eight precepts are those extreme meanings of that law which equates, to me, to the connection with the ancient texts.

Bushi Tatsuo Sensei and other masters of Okinawa Fighting Arts pulled these precepts from the complexities of the ancient texts from China. Okinawa was under China's influences most of their history and the history of Okinawa Ti is derived from that melding to local practices to the practices locals acquired from the study of Chinese boxing and the classics.

Extreme meaning alludes to the way they condensed many aspects of the I Ching and other mysteries of the past-present-future to provide a set of "keys" to open many doors to much more.

I believe that these keys were created in this fashion to provide the doorway to enlightenment but also to confuse the minds of those who were not serious about their training which I find evident in many of today's practitioners. A serious view of learning and practice means that we find equilibrium which in turn means study of both the Yang and the Yin of karate-do or the way of the empty hand.

After all, if they didn't want us to dig deeper then why call it the ken-po goku-i? If it were meant to teach us about the physical aspects of the way then they could have called it simply "ken-po" or "law of the fist."

When we take a look at the meanings behind the character we find that "goku" means "extreme" but also means utmost or exceedingly great, ultimate, ultra-, and hyper-. When you take a look at the character "i" we find both "MIND and MEANING" along with heart, thoughts, feelings, opinion and take something to heart. I am sure if you are a Isshinryu practitioner who has been exposed to the ken-po goku-i and its deeper meaning then all those adjectives will connect your thoughts to the many direct words in the eight precepts and more so in such books as the I Ching.

As an aside to this posting I can tell you finding the characters that represent the aspects of our karate tell us a deeper and more meaningful story. Why I devote a section in my web site to the meanings of the kanji characters (see picture on right side of this page).

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