Q: Sifu, I read recently of some-one saying there was a guy charging a great sum for discipleship. What’s your idea on this?
Sifu Zopa:
For Tibetan Buddhists, avarice is one of the ‘three poisons” - anger, greed and ignorance. I answer you with a mix of sadness and disgust. You draw to my attention that an obviously self-proclaimed “grandmaster” in a self-developed lineage (we’ve seen his material and it’s sad for the art) accepts disciples on payment of an incredible fee! He’s probably not the first. This notion is highly immoral. And it deserves comment and condemnation. I believe it’s quite apparent that while this guy has apparently studied some gung fu from his self marketing, the photographic and published detail of his art illustrates an art other than a legitimate version. He’s obviously mastered marketing, and is “succeeding” in a gullible market, though!
It’s not to the credit of our art, by the way, that, amongst the other gung fu styles, it was always especially known for its excessive fees. I think that there were a few reasons for this. First, the masters teaching it realised how effective their art was relative to others, so charged for the best. Second, those who learnt it were mostly from social classes that were highly focused on materialism and, being wealthy themselves thought in big terms with respect to pricing. Third, these folk erroneously thought that being wealthy meant that a prospective wealthy student was a worthwhile person simply because he was wealthy. Like them, see? Fourth, wealth provided a screen to keep the masses from learning the art. Keep in mind China, actually along with other societies at the time, was highly socially stratified and social mobility was incredibly unusual. Fifth, several Wing Chun masters compared the length of teaching-learning time of Wing Chun with other arts and with Wing Chun taking less time to learn, decided that they were missing out. Other masters could charge students over far longer periods of time but unless a Wing Chun teacher spun out the learning process he was being paid less in total for a superior product. Hence, I think many decided to address this with considerably higher fees for Wing Chun. Even when I was a young guy learning Wing Chun whilst Yip Man was still alive and it was virtually unknown in the West, the fees were considered steep. In fact, I had to stop going to classes at one stage because I couldn’t afford them. (I was quite poor, you see. Not that I saw myself that way - I was mostly very free and happy - but objectively I was. That shouldn’t happen to anyone. I swore then that if I became a teacher that would never be the situation any of my students had to suffer!). Finally, greed came to play a part. Some of the avaricious masters realised that they had a highly sought after product and let the market - with a little encouragement from their estimates, I guess - dictate costs. Different variables accounted for different degrees of influence in different eras of Wing Chun’s development. In the modern era we can add marketing hype to the variables. A number of martial arts teachers in a number of arts devise a lineage and a creation myth then market it and create demand for their product. Wing Chun is no outsider in this respect. You see it in gung fu, aikido, karate, tae kwon do and its spin offs etc. I guess it occurs in arts I’m not very familiar with too - Filipino, Indonesian arts and so on. Once there is interest and demand then pricing can be controlled with a demand having been created.
Q: It seems discriminatory to charge such excessive amounts doesn’t it sifu? Unfair?
Sifu Zopa:
Yes. I have no difficulty with the traditional notion of a master screening and accepting students and disciples rather than openly teaching everything to everyone regardless of their ability and character - you know I believe this way is best. I find it repugnant to discriminate on racial, gender or financial grounds. In other words, aspects of the person (aside from their commitment, physical ability and fitness to learn, character and behaviour) must be irrelevant to acceptance by a genuine master. The notion I have all too regularly encountered with too many Wing Chun teachers - and it could be the same with other gung fu or other arts, I guess - that the prospective Wing Chun student has to be sycophantic, subservient, (to promote the teacher’s ego and fame), wealthy (to fatten the teacher’s wallet), and preferably Chinese or Japanese or Filipino etc (to pander to the teacher’s racism and ethnocentrism), is utterly, utterly obnoxious! “See the students, see the teacher” it is said. If a teacher isn’t careful in accepting the appropriate students and teaching them appropriately then he runs the risk of having them pass down an incomplete, incorrect or even an outright fraudulent art. Even worse in many ways is passing on undesirable personality characteristics and attitudes. At least two arrogant and infamous “grandmasters” in our art seem notorious for producing excessively and unnecessarily aggressive thugs. They consistently seem to attract students who are prone to be aggressive, angry people. Arrogant students have arrogant teachers, aggressive students have aggressive teachers, ignorant students have ignorant teachers, greedy students have greedy teachers. Honest students have honest teachers, humble students have humble teachers, generous students have generous teachers and so on! These students think their teachers are the “best” in Wing Chun - they have not visited the Mainland nor met the right people! There are several way better!
Whilst, rightly so, in some ways, Wing Chun was an exclusive and elitist art in its earlier years, beyond these early days it has become a victim of the rampant commercialism which is slowly polluting and prostituting genuine martial art around the world today. Capitalism and commercialism have captured art! Art has now become populist, sportified and turned into a business commodity. An army of hangers-on have developed - magazine and book publishers, martial arts journalists, sports administrators, regulators, tournament promoters, officials, professional performers, seminar circuit presenters, and martial arts business pundits - many of whom seem to think they themselves are masters. Nowadays it is considered the norm that learning any martial art is everyone’s right and that everything is for sale. Many modern people know the price of everything and the value of nothing it has been said. The genuine traditional martial arts - not just the ones that employ that adjective as a marketing ploy - are under an insidious and often invisible threat. New generations coming to the martial arts know no other way. They unquestioningly assume that this current matrix is simply how things are. If they have even ever heard of the traditional ways they have invariably not experienced them. Even worse, some are taught by their instructors that their way is the traditional way when it is not!
Q: Is this a trend, sifu?
Sifu Zopa:
Claiming their way is traditional?
Q: Sorry, no, I meant the trend to commercialisation - to selling of discipleships
Sifu Zopa:
OK. Is it a trend? Well, maybe yes and maybe no. Trends have come and gone in the commercial martial arts arena. One, for example, which I have issues with - as you know, because it has become exploitive, has been “cross training”. This was embraced by commercial martial arts teachers as a way to teach “a bit” of their art to other teachers’ students they couldn’t convert fully to their system. I have commented on this in an article somewhere, I think. Tragically this trend to popularisation and commercialism is not one which will come and go. It’s a cancer eating at the heart of the traditional arts. Thank goodness there are a handful of genuine instructors - usually “unknowns” in populist martial arts media terms - keeping a number of the real arts alive and away from the avaricious grasp of the army of unscrupulous wanna-bes!
Whilst he taught a rare few others varying degrees of his art, when Yuen Kay San asked Sum Num to become his sole disciple and carry on his art as keeper of the style, Sum Num was quite poor. By contrast Yuen Kay San was very wealthy. A modern parallel would place him well up the socio-economic scale - he could live off his family wealth and never had to work, for example. How many are ever fortunate enough to achieve this state of affairs? Wouldn’t it be nice? Like winning a big lottery prize! What could Yuen Kay San have gained by trying to gouge Sum Num? He taught Sum Num free of charge. Sum Num certainly voluntarily repaid him later. Sum Num was a good disciple in several ways. Once when Yuen Kay San was coming to visit Sum Num knew that good manners dictated he buy his sifu a meal. Yet, he had no spare money to do so. Sum Num told us he solved the problem by selling his doona - thereby having to spend quite a few cold nights I’d imagine. When Yuen found out he was obviously touched! How this contrasts with the scenario of the extracted payment of the “big fee” to buy a discipleship! The reality is that any “discipleship” which can be bought isn’t worth buying! You can’t buy skill! No-one can give you skill! You have to acquire it!
Q: Can you comment on the red envelope tradition, sifu?
Sifu Zopa:
Sure. It is appropriate - respectful and traditional - that a student aspiring to become a disciple, or being asked to become one, offer the teacher the traditional red gift envelope with a money gift in it. It has to be an amount that does not cause the student hardship. Nor should it be dictated as a set fee by the master. The student needs not to be miserly in offering the teacher a reasonable sum as a gift. Nor should the teacher be avaricious. A poor but genuine student will be taught free by any decent true master, for example.
I’m chuckling to myself thinking of the day two of my disciples decided to offer me the red envelope. It was a complete surprise - and I really needed their gift at the time. I had just broken a money tile - one of those you have to bring financial luck and I was going on that I was always so broke now I’d broken my flaming good luck tile! “Oh Good!” sort of thing. They must have been chuckling because unbeknownst to me they had red envelopes! When they later gave them to me I was incredibly touched as they had taken the trouble to find out it was the thing to do. We had a good laugh that maybe you were supposed to break the money tiles! Anyway, I digress - as usual! (Laughs)
For myself, as you know, I don’t accept people who could work but won’t, or people who find excuses to spend their money elsewhere. I refuse to teach the professional con artists or welfare cheats but I do teach the legitimately impoverished student who really wants to learn and has the right attitudes and trains hard. I must confess I get a little annoyed if I think a student is being miserly and begrudging in paying the very modest fees we charged to pay our overheads! I don’t even discuss the red envelope with prospective disciples but in the traditional fashion delegate that to my senior disciples. The only thing I want to see is that there is good will, a red envelope to preserve tradition and because I’m a Tibetan Buddhist I like to ask the offering be a multiple of five in keeping with the Tibetan tradition of dharma teaching. You have to ask for the teachings three times and offer an offering in a multiple of five. In the Tibetan tradition if you were fabulously rich you would know you ought to offer a lot to help spread the dharma. if you are not rich you offer what you can honestly afford. If you are poor you offer a token then offer your skills or labour to helping the lamas spread the dharma. Nobody checks, nobody expects anything but you know what is the right thing to do. I know some folk were wondering what happened to all the money my guru had been offered on one occasion. At the end of the ceremonies and activities he offered it all back to the local group and their lama to spread the dharma. This is the spirit we ought to have in our gwoon - we do have, I trust. I would hope it is a spirit which will develop in other groups too. I have accepted five cents in a red envelope - I suggested I’d accept no more - before today, by the way. The Christians talk about a parable called “The Widow’s Mite” - look it up and you’ll understand.
I have accepted a few disciples who couldn’t afford a discipleship offering - they have shown their respect by assisting me in various ways with their expertise or labour. The disciples who have offered a disciple gift will, I am sure, consider it was well worth the amount which I was grateful to accept. I asked each of them if they were sure they could afford it and were not leaving themselves financially stressed by the gift - and I was very, very touched that not having asked for anything that they offered it. Not that I’m a saint in any way but you can see the different thinking eh? And you have seen and learnt our Wing Chun and have seen others so you know that what you learn is, I believe, as the Yanks say “top dollar”?
Q: It seems this whole thing is just another aspect of your “supermarket” model, sifu?
Sifu Zopa:
Yes, I think so. Money ruling hearts and minds and poisoning them. For the master to dictate how much ought to be paid puts the disciples into the position of being in a commercial transaction - thereby demeaning and destroying any chance of a genuine relationship. It’s no different in some ways to buying an expensive car, paying the demanded price and swearing loyalty to the car salesperson (who could care less - he only wants the money and more money)! No real master would put students in that position - and I guess that’s my point! A high fee - dictated by a pompous teacher who presents the proposition to the general public that his art thereby has a high value - commercial or otherwise - is a poor comment on that teacher’s character. But, he has probably even convinced himself of his own myths. The art has to speak for itself! The quality of the art and teaching has no logical connection to the fee extracted! You can certainly experience that for yourself! Look around!
I pray for the sake of genuine martial arts: May the avarice of the avaricious ripen their karma and may their fortunes, material and spiritual, diminish in proportion to their greed and until they learn generosity! And, may false masters and their arts perish for polluting and prostituting and lying about the true art!