Nine years service in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, dealing every day with the vicious and the evil, the stupid and the cunning, the sadistic and the psychotic - and those were just my fellow police officers; it gave me, amongst other things, a criminal mind.
That's why. That's why I can read it in your faces. I can see it in your eyes. I know you 're trying to hide it. But it's there in every move you make. You always agree with what I say, with what I write, with what I do. But all the time you are watching. All the time you are waiting for your chance.
You see me in my Armani suit climbing into my Jaguar. You read about my jetset lifestyle, mixing with the cultural and intellectual elites of many lands. That should be you in that suit, that car, that plane; but it's not. Life is unfair to you.
I was first warned about you in Malaysia by one of my Tai Chi uncles, more years ago than I care to remember. He said, "Your students are your enemy."
My teacher warned me too. He told me that, as a Tai Chi instructor, I would have two kinds of enemy; external and internal. Of these the deadlier are the internal ones, because they are close. Some are sleepers and don't surface for years. Others are more obvious, making small incursions at first, but gradually growing in daring.
Students fall generally into one of four groups. There is usually a hard core of loyalists, then we have the ordinary student who attends classes in the same way that he/she might go to the cinema. Thirdly there are the outsiders, people from other schools who, despite your unprepossessing personality, have come to you to learn your specialities or who want to be able to say, "been there, done that". This is just a commercial transaction - at least at first; finally there are the schemers and troublemakers.
I don't accept that all these people are always my enemies, but I do realize that not all of them are always my friends. In the Book of the Way and of Virtue (Tao Te Ching), Lao Tzu advises us:-
"Use truth to rule the state,
Use mystery in deploying troops'
Use no thing to obtain all under Heaven."
and:-
"The more conspicuous laws and edicts are,
The more we have robbers and rebels"
It is most advisable to be truthful with your own students, but that does not mean telling them all about everything. Don't interfere unnecessarily. Don't create rebels by trying to enforce the unenforceable. And yet, even if you follow this excellent advice you will still have enemies.
OK, you are the great master; what can these little people do to hurt you ? They can slander and libel you behind your back, they can rip off your ideas and methods and present them as their own, they can stir up trouble between you and other teachers by their foolish words and deeds, they can hurt or mislead other students (sometimes with the best of intentions) and they can give others the impression that your kung fu is no good because their own standard is so low.
Of all the terrorists and gangsters who have controlled China, Chairman Mao was the most adept at identifying and destroying his enemies. One of his most brilliant coups was the "Hundred Flowers Campaign" which he started with the invitation to "Let one hundred flowers bloom; let one hundred schools of thought contend." Some poor fools fell for it and all their long suppressed desire for freedom came gushing out in essays, paintings and speeches.
This fulfilled Mao's dual purpose. On the one hand he was able to use the masses to attack his known enemies within the party, on the other he was able, by giving people freedom of expression, to identify the 'sleeper' enemies and then use their own words against them.
It is a trait in the Chinese psyche not merely to punish one's enemies, but to make them admit their guilt and by mass criticism followed by self-criticism to 're-educate' them. This trait is not completely foreign to the British martial arts community either.
Sometimes your friends can get you into deeper trouble than your enemies. The idea of a band of sworn brothers acting together for what they perceive as the common good reached its apogee at the the end of the Han dynasty. We can read about it in the classical Chinese novel, "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms".
The book tells the tale of the great warriors Kuan Gung and Chang Fei, who pledged their loyalty to Liu Pei. This unwise decision led to thousands of deaths including their own and years of misery and warfare for the people of China and all to further the misdirected ambition of their master, Liu Pei. In the martial arts also many students expend loyalty uselessly to further the twisted ambitions of their teachers.
The traditional structure of Chinese martial arts groups is well known to many readers. The teacher is called the Sifu or teaching father, this name also has Taoist overtones. The students refer to one another as younger/older brother/sister. This structure is very much in the Confucian tradition and everyone is expected to know his or her place in the hierarchy which becomes for most of them a second family.
Well, that is the ideal. The reality, from my own experience, is that sometimes jealous fellow students are only too willing to inform your teacher of all your sins of omission and commission and to stir up mischief. I well remember one occasion in Hong Kong many years ago when my teacher was showing grappling techniques on the rooftop, some of my fellow students tried to get me to take him on. I refused because neither of us had anything to prove or gain by such an encounter.
If you truly wish to befriend your teacher you must be prepared to advise and even argue with him for what you believe is right. I have had strong arguments with my teacher on many occasions, sometimes he has won the argument, sometimes I have, but everything that was in our hearts was spoken.
As teachers we should judge students more by their deeds than by their words. Secondly people change - for better or worse so continuous assessment is necessary. Thirdly, we should give students as much freedom as possible; for example if they want to train with other teachers or styles let them - if you forbid them they'll do so anyway.
If you treat people right they might even become your friends or at least not be your enemies. If you don't treat people right they'll certainly not become your friends and there is every chance that they will become your enemies.