"Grandmaster Kim and the lecture worth one million dollars" by Antti Junikka

[HAEDONG]

Grandmaster Kim and 

the lecture worth one million dollars

Written down by Antti Junikka

Haedong Kumdo Jyvaskyla

Here are some of my thoughts about the discussions I had with grandmaster Kim Jeong Seong at the Finnish Haedong Kumdo Seminar and Kummu competition held in the Helsinki region and Jyvaskyla at 27.7.-6.8.2015. 

As I was staying in Helsinki almost the whole set and hosting the HK family in Jyvaskyla for the first time I had a lot of time discussing with grandmaster Kim personally. He asked me to summarize my thoughts of the discussions we had so here they are. 

He wanted me to emphasize the philosophical side of conversation instead of overall feedback of the martial art seminar. There was also this little spur why I accepted to write a small feedback as he gave me a lecture of one million dollars I would not have to pay him unless I forget the context. 

So I guess it is just safer to write it down. Hopefully in a way that people reading this will not start selling this information, but to prove I still got it and don’t need to pay the price, hahaha.

As I had my 3^rd dan graduation I had to write an essay about certain things. Grandmaster was pleased with the essay but was interested in one part especially, the subject of angle and direction I mentioned. 

As I was trying to explain that when I’m teaching martial arts I try to read the motives of individuals attending my class and to use this information to choose the right angle of approach in the teaching according to the person. 

For example when somebody is not interested in the fighting side of a martial art I will not start by forcing the student to get interested in fighting skill, but to discover the main motivation and feed that one in order to help him/her develop comprehensively in the art. Development takes time and we have our own paths.  

I had this mostly in mind when I was writing the essay and grandmaster Kim was not so pleased anymore. He expected more of my written words. So we discussed more. He emphasized that the angle and direction are very important in life overall, in explaining the universe.

He described an example of universe as a sphere which has a middle point. That is where it all begins. You start your way from the center to some direction and the line away from the center grows as you grow. For certain reasons the angles change during the life span and your line wanders three dimensionally inside the sphere. There are a whole lot of directions and the path of a single living creature is unique. 

Now add one line more inside the sphere starting from the center. This is for example your mother’s line. Is it similar than yours? Of course not, she had her own directions and own changes of angles in her life. 

Now add a line for every living creature on earth inside that sphere and they all have their own line wandering inside bumping to each other. Some lines never meet but some do. That is why we must aim for harmony. 

It is not possible to push through all.

Like the trees trying to reach the sun. They all are different. The branches grow to certain directions for a reason. An angle changes, the direction changes. So I started to reflect the angle and direction explanation to my own training and life. It seems that many times in the past the angles have not changed by a conscious choice made in the moment. 

Maybe I have changed my angle many times because I have felt that this road ends here and I am forced to take another like I had no choice at all. Maybe sometimes I had, easier or a harder, conscious choice to make. 

Now that I have seen and become conscious of the different choices (angles) and phases (directions) made in the past I have noticed the importance and possibility of active changing of angle in my life leading to a new direction.

The benefit of understanding the angles and directions of the past and of this moment is that I can accept different phases as completely normal and unique steps of life. There are reasons behind all things. 

I had reasons to live that way, now I have reasons to live this way. Now I do not need to worry about the situation where I am now even though I have not been doing everything important to me very efficiently at the same time. I would like to do many things but now I am doing this very much and that one not so much, I accept it. 

It is my choice at this moment. One day the focus will change again and I will accept that too. The choice is probably not so hard anymore and I am able to change the angle and the direction more actively and not only by the powers of the environment. I have influence for the things to come.

I bet everybody has the experience that some kind of period of life has ended dramatically and the angle of approach in personal life has changed all the sudden. As struggling in high waves they just take you somewhere and a new direction or chapter in life begins. 

Maybe you did not have a choice or maybe you were confused by your emotions so that you felt completely powerless in the change of the chapters. I hope that many people have also experience of a conscious change of angle in their lives, making a big decision about something even though it is scary, takes a lot of work or takes to a totally unknown direction. 

I believe that when you become more conscious about the angles and directions of your life you become more able to make active changes of angle too and this empowerment brings happiness with it. You stop being a victim of the world and start being more like the world itself, the same with all the other living things.

How to make the right choice? There is wisdom and there is knowledge. Grandmaster Kim explains knowledge as something that can be seen, observed, measured and to be explained in accurate formulas. It is only a partial truth but yet it seems to be the whole truth in many cases. 

Even though it is obvious that the human observation capabilities are limited it is many times hard to believe things that cannot be proved by means of science. But then there is wisdom. Grandmaster Kim explains wisdom as things that can be felt but cannot be observed and measured like the items of knowledge. So it makes me wonder, what kinds of choices does a truly happy person make? 

Based on knowledge, or wisdom? Probably both, but as I was discussing with grandmaster Kim I would not underestimate the importance of intuition. That maybe we do not know that we know and the reasoning will only mislead us.

There is some fine mystery about the intuition. It is like some natural energy inside us guiding our life, but only a sound so faint it can be distracted by our feelings and thoughts. 

It is like a primal alarm left inside us to prove our interconnectedness with the nature, pulling us back to the right track, when our feelings and thoughts distract us as being something separate. So could there be a ‘natural way’ for all of us to discover and is this ‘natural way’ the same as the happy way? 

According to a better consciousness to follow the intuition to make better decisions for the right angles towards the right directions during the span of life?

Hmmm… The lecture of one million dollars? I if you find it in the text above don’t forget it or else you have to pay me one million dollars! J

Antti Junikka

Haedong Kumdo Jyvaskyla