Some instructors of martial art favor forms, the more complex and fancy the better. Some, on the other hand, are obsessed with super mental power (like Captain Marvel or Superman). Still some favor deformed hands and legs, and devote their time on fighting bricks, stones, boards, etc., etc.

To me the extraordinary aspect of Gung Fu lies in its simplicity. Gung Fu is simply the direct expression of one's feeling with the minimum of movements and energy. Every movement is being so of itself without the artificiality's which people tend to complicate it. The easy way is always the right way, and Gung Fu is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of Gung Fu, the less wastage of expression there is.

Instead of facing combat in its such ness, quite a few systems of martial art accumulate 'fanciness' that distort and cramp their practitioners and distract them from the actual reality of combat, which is 'simple' and 'direct' and 'non-classical'. Instead of going immediately to the heart of things, flowery forms and artificial techniques (organized despair!) are 'ritually practiced' to simulate actual combat. Thus, instead of 'being' in combat, these practitioners are idealistically 'doing' something about combat. Worse still, super mental this and spiritual that are ignorantly incorporated until these practitioners are drifting further and further into the distance of abstraction and mystery that what they do resembles anything from acrobatics to modern dancing but the actual reality of combat.

All these complex nesses are actually futile attempts to 'arrest' and 'fix' the ever-changing movements in combat and to dissect and analyze them like a corpse. Real combat is not fixed and is very much "alive". Such means of practice (a form of paralysis) will only 'solidify' and 'condition' what was once fluid and alive. When you get off sophistication and what not to look at it 'realistically', these robots (practitioners that is) are blindly devoting to the systematic uselessness of practicing 'routines' or 'stunts' that lead to nowhere.

Gung Fu is to be looked through without fancy suits and matching ties, and it will remain a secret when we anxiously look for sophistication and deadly techniques. If there are really any secrets at all, they must have been missed by the seeking and striving of its practitioners (after all, how many ways there are to come in on an opponent without 'deviating too much from the natural course'?). True Gung Fu values the wonder of the ordinary and the cultivation of Gung Fu is not daily increase, but daily decrease. Being wise in Gung Fu does not mean adding more, but to be able to get off with ornamentation and be simply simple----like a sculptor building a statue not by adding but by hacking away the unessential so that the truth will be revealed unobstructed. In short, Gung Fu is satisfied with one's bare hand without the fancy decoration of colorful gloves which tend to hinder the natural of the hand.

Art is the expression of the self. The more complicated and restrictive a method is, the lesser the opportunity for the expression of one's original sense of freedom! The techniques, though they play an important role in the early stage, should not be too restrictive, complex or mechanical. If we cling to them we will become bound by their limitation. Remember, you are 'expressing' the technique and not 'doing' the technique. When someone attacks you it is not technique number one (or is it technique number two, stance two, section four?) that you are doing, but the moment you 'aware' his attack you simply move in like sound and echo without any deliberation. It is as though when I call you, you answer me or, when I throw something to you, you catch it, that's all.