On my last trip down under, I read a book by Matthew Polly called American Shaolin. As a young man in the early 1990’s, he went to China for a few years to study under the Shaolin monks. I especially enjoyed the book because of my practice of Seido Karate.
My favorite parts of the book were:
He discusses that Chinese heroes are unlike American ones which always live. Chinese heroes die "because it does not take much courage to fight when you still believe you can win. What takes real courage is to keep fighting when all hope is gone." (p 168)
One of Polly’s trainers believed that "before a fighter could learn how to win, he first had to master losing. He had to experience defeat after defeat until there was nothing new to it and thus nothing left to fear." Just another day on the job regardless as to what happened (p 205)
