Lineage - ADDENDUM

It occurs to me that regardless of the lineage issue being important or not really important that all of us, every karate-ka today, can truthfully say they have roots to the core of karate on Okinawa. Okinawa had "Te or Toudi" and that morphed into Naha-te, Shuri-te, and Tomari-te. Then the next gen karate become Goju-ryu, Shorin-ryu, and as it progressed it become various factions of those systems.

So, in realty, all karate-ka today can claim a solid lineage to the masters of "Ti or Te" as the indigenous fighting system of Okinawa is referred to by today's historians.

Now, then there is the matter of perceived importance as to how close you are to what some refer to as "first generation" lineage. First generation student is a phrase I have heard only from Isshinryu. It refers to those who actually trained under Tatsuo's personal guidance. Now this can be iffy because my Sensei actually did this yet he is first to express that Tatsuo Sensei never physically participated in his training. Tatsuo Sensei's second son actually taught most of them and others were under the tutelage of other more senior Americans while Tatsuo Sensei sat and drank tea and smoked cigarettes.

Now, this is not meant to disparage Tatsuo Sensei but then again Tatsuo Sensei merely did what other older masters did, they observed and let Sempai to most of the teaching and intervened only when absolutely necessary, etc. That is just the way it was.

I am merely hashing older posts here but we have to get real in that the only truly important fact is that we are practicing and passing along the knowledge of karate-do. What matters is our current ability and proficiency. What matters is what are we doing right now in the dojo and in life. What we did yesterday and what yesterday's practitioners did or did not do, who they trained with or did not train with, and so forth is not important except for historical purposes, the lessons one had learned and applied to "today's" practice and training.

In a nutshell, your rank, your lineage, your Sensei, your knowledge, etc. means absolutely nothing until you demonstrate it on the dojo floor and more importantly in every day life, the actions and the words and the demeanor and the customs and the manners you do, say, and demonstrate every single moment of ever single day.