Originally Posted by Ferdelance

What about the idea is that the greatest master is the man who never had a fight in his life? You know, I had an experience in high school some years back.I was in a band that was doing well, we were playing dances every weekend. Naturally, at some of these things there were punks and thug wannabes, guys who were punks trying to be thugs and as a result, there were fights and various encounters. The drummer in my band was into Jay Gluck's classic paperback entitled "Zen Combat," especially for the section on Aikido, and when he heard that a genuine Aikido master from Japan was going to give a demonstration in a nearby city, he thought that we should check it out.
We did. I was impressed, especially when that old man took on like nine or ten guys, and those ten guys weren't B.S.ing.I was all psyched up when the time came when we could talk to the master personally, and when it was my turn, I asked him about this one trick that the punks liked to pull to sucker a guy. I figured that if anybody knew an effective counter to it, he would.
And you know what he said to me? He said,"Why are you in that position in the first place?"
I never forgot that. I think that truer words were never spoken to me,
"Why are you in that position in the first place?"
Ninety nine times out of a hundred, you can see trouble coming. These guys have to psyche themselves up to swing at you. They have to provoke an argument by talking trash.Sometimes you can just see them coming.
After what the master said to me, I never had anymore problems. If my band did a gig at a bar and somebody had one too many and wanted to argue over who won the penant in 1997, I'd be like," Oh, sure, man. YOu're right. You are so right. Donald Duck's team won the penant in 1997 ! What in the world was I thinking about. Listen: It's been great talking to you, but I got to get back to the band."