<<Division 8. The Basics>>

Chapter 61.
 
Beginning Training Following Patterns  

 

A good beginning is half done.
But once begun, a good ending is half left.


Everyone is different from one another. Each one has different body, different habit, and different motion. And he keeps different living and his life is different from another's. But basic process of training Taekwondo is same for all. Why is it that all different people begin their training of Taekwondo in same process? Generally speacking, there is man in the world at first who distinguishes everything along what he intends while the nondistinguishing one is the way how the world exists by itself, and man's discerning mind works on its end. Man knows that everything is different from one another knowing then that everything is same while everything has its sameness at first, then followed by its difference.

It is natural that the right training of Taekwondo is not contrary to the principle of everything. Thus, jus as babies when born right now are same but become more and more different as they get older, all men begin from their sameness in Taekwondo training, and then they train themselves along the differences. In this entire process, to train Taekwondo is not to learn from beginning to end how another moves but to seek TAEKWONDO "following" the formality. Therefore, learning Taekwondo is not imitating another but creating my own. I imitate my senior's motion yet not everything of his. In every motion, and in the entire flow of motions do I think with my brain, with my action and with my whole. Therefore, though I learn from my master and seniors, it is no more than to borrow the antecedent experiences and wisdom to broaden my thought. Since I know both that I am same as others and that I'm different from them I also knows what I can learn and what I have to learn. And I do it. This is the following.

This process of training begins in Taekwondo dojang at first and then spreads out to all over the life. And I follow those who are better than me at first and then also learn from those who are worse than me. Taekwondo never loses its essence in the creation of following while it is always alive as concrete. It is not that I accept Taekwondo completely but that I change myself to a figure of Taekwondo deleting all my wrongness to stand in my perfect figure. Every change can be a change because it contains what does not change.