Tres Espadas Influences

Tres Espadas does not actually have "lineage" per say, because no professional instructors ever gave us permission or endorsement to start the club. Instead we have influences. Here are those influences, giving credit even though it may not be wanted...

1. Cold Steel - No living Tres Espadas members have had correspondence with Lynn Thompson, and no member has ever met him (least bit trained with him) in person, but his instructional videos are easily the most influential influence on technique in our club. HOWEVER, we don't endorse all of his material, a lot of the strategy to us seems like it is based on fencing style stop and go sparring, and since that is heresy to Tres Espadas, we spar continuously, and so that makes which, how and when techniques are applied different. To be clear, Thompson has studied numerous martial arts, but the ones he is most vocal about are Filipino Martial Arts (FMA):

2. Dog Brothers - showed us that Gatherings (what we at Tres Espadas call "Tipons" because of the local Warrior Tipon Tipon North West gathering) were possible. Get together and really fight without it being a competition, as safely as possible, with different martial arts schools, continuously without the stop and go fencing nonsense? That inspired this Tres Espadas to form in the first place. More recently at the local Tipon we have seen people who train to participate in Dog Brothers, and that has influenced us as well. To be clear, most people participating in Dog Brothers study FMA explicitly. We do NOT consider ourselves to be a serious as most of the people participating in Tipons, as we are more fans than participants:

3. Doc Fai Wong - or more specifically his first student to be endorsed to start his own branch of Doc Fai Wong's Tai Chi & Choy Lay Fut system, Vern Miller, is the guy that really taught the original Tres Espadas members to brawl back in the day. We learned various staff, dagger and Tai Chi forms from him, but his Sanda-derived Duch-style kickboxing system changed how we saw martial arts forever. He is why we can never return to stop-and-go sparring. You know those long range knife swipes we catch people with when they are retreating? Very Choy Lay Fut there. With that said, no Tres Espadas members ever did weapon sparring of any kind when studying Doc Fai Wong's system, though we have been able to apply some of the moves in sparring since:

4. Dave Bird - mostly by way of Dave Coplan, was the older Tres Espadas members first martial arts master. Known for his FMA and kickboxing, he gave us our first experiences with Arnis and contact sparring in the late 80's:

5. SCA - Or more specifically the now deceased martial arts master Jess Roe who had studied everything from FMA to Budo to Chinese Martial Arts to US Naval Cutlass fighting. He would have been the first to tell you that the serious side of SCA martial arts was originally founded on FMA, which they adapted to western weapon simulations. I recently had a well respected FMA instructor and HEMA (European weapon martial arts) participant comment that as HEMA adopts continuous sparring they should not become WEKAF (a sport form of FMA stick fighting.) But I have to wonder how far removed HEMA is from FMA if SCA of 40 years ago was closely related to FMA:

5. Esgrima Criolla - South American Knife Fighting, which involves a lot more than knives. If I had to classify Tres Espadas as a Martial Art (which I don't), I might classify it as an Esgrima Criolla club. FMA practitioners in South America have resurrected this nearly lost art form, and we have had some direct correspondence with them over the years on Facebook:

6. Aikido (Honolulu Hombu Dojo) - by way of Bruce Baumann, he was focused on teaching us self-defense, bokenjitsu and Samurai strategy. Our "never stop moving" footwork strategy and dive rolling for weapons goes back to our Aikido from early 90's high school. Our swift overhead counters really go back to Aikido style bokenjitsu as much as they do Choy Lay Fut. Also our tendency to look at Tai Chi as a martial art rather than a yoga style is rooted back to our earlier Aikido days.

7. MMA - more recently various Tres Espadas members have taken to studying boxing, wrestling, BJJ and MMA generally and have started to incorporate that knowledge into the Tres Esapadas repertoire of techniques.

So a final note on FMA: when FMA was codified, they drew on Martial Arts from all over the Philippines. That is an ethnically diverse place, meaning they were drawing from martial arts from all over Asia and parts of Europe. FMA is one of the first weapon MMAs to incorporate martial arts from around the globe. As a result, FMA has 99% of all the weapon techniques from all other martial arts.

Because of the fighting and sparring traditions in FMA, many FMA schools have a truly deep and vast understanding of weapon martial arts. As a result FMA has become a shared language for talking about weapon martial arts (for example almost everyone exposed to FMA can tell you what the 12 angles of attack are) and it has been used as a basis to bring back mostly lost western arts such as SCA fighting, Esgrima Criolla, and probably somewhere along the line even HEMA.

Tres Espadas has been known to irreverently mock lineage. However we appreciate the fact that as recently as the 1900's people in East Asia were getting chased out of their homes and killed over the Martial Arts knowledge they possessed, and that in each generation teachers of the martial arts sacrifice vast amounts of time and other resources in order to pass their knowledge on. Though the nature of our club leads us to eschew lineage, we have great respect for the masters who exposed any of their knowledge to us.

Scriptural Historicity is Sacrilege

Not into religion? You are done reading this post now, see you next time.

The purpose of scripture is to help us be better people, not to teach us history and science. According to Christianity God actually visited us in the flesh, and actually had a ministry here on Earth. During that time, in spite having access to all knowledge regarding history and science, God did not preach religion and science, but instead lectured at length on how to improve our spirituality and behavior. Certainly this is also God's purpose in scriptures from other religions.

Let us take the story of the Good Samaritan for example. It has a clear and intended meaning. The point of the story is not "Jesus is a good Samaritan, we are all wounded Jews, stand by and wait for him to help you." The point of the story is also not "did you know 1% of Samaritans were God fearing people that would even help their enemies on the road? Start looking for archaeological evidence of this near where the historical Jesus had his ministry, because he spoke of this phenomenon specifically."

No, the point of the story of the Good Samaritan has little information on it about God, and even less information in it about history and science. It has to do with how we should behave; we should help people when they need it, care for our fellow humans. God wants us to be good.

The misuse of scripture is by definition sacrilege. Off the top of your head, do you know what the implications for our ideal behavior would be from the stories of Noah's flood, or Eve's Garden? Or have we been so caught up in scripture being historical evidence that God exists, that we have for generations now completely overlooked the behavioral implications of these stories?

Adam and Eve is a story about sacrificing our own pride in order to keep important relationships together. There's probably a lot of other behavior implications in there as well. Instead of debating where the location of the Garden of Eden was, or instead of arguing over how this compares to DNA evidence, we should be contemplating the implications of this story for our own behavior.

50 years ago critics of the Book of Mormon claimed there was no physical evidence that: 1) anyone from Europe or the Middle East were ancestors of the American Indians. 2) That ancient Central American cultures were not advanced enough to have the kind of warfare described in the Book of Mormon. 3) More recently DNA evidence came out demonstrating all Native Americans had no DNA that could have possibly been from outside of East Asia.

Of course each of these things have been disproved since they came out, but critics continue to move the goal posts. For example National Geographic has since wrote that Native Americans do indeed have the kind of DNA suggested by the Book of Mormon, and that Ancient Central Americans did indeed have advanced roads and walls as described in the Book of Mormon.

But all of this evidence and arguing completely distracts from the Book of Mormon's main fundamental messages about what we should do with our spirituality and behavior. The Book of Mormon itself declares that it is to be taken spiritually, not historically. In 1st Nephi 19 v. 23-24, Nephi describes his own ministry to his people:

"I did read many things unto them which were written in the books of Moses; but that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah; for I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning... I spake unto them, saying... liken them unto yourselves, that ye may have hope as well as your brethren..."

Here Nephi rejects historicity in favor of spirituality, "liken all scriptures unto us." But the Book of Mormon text declares itself insufficient to understand history. When Nephi passes the "small plates"  (that eventually grow into what we now call The Book of Mormon) on to the next prophet, that next prophet explains (in Jacob chapter 1 v. 1-4):

"Nephi gave me, Jacob, a commandment concerning the small plates, upon which these things are engraven.. that I should write upon these plates a few of the things which I considered to be most precious; that I should not touch, save it were lightly, concerning the history of this people which are called the people of Nephi... I should preserve these plates and hand them down unto my seed, from generation to generation... if there were preaching which was sacred, or revelation which was great, or prophesying, that I should engraven the heads of them upon these plates, and touch upon them as much as it were possible..."

Centuries later the prophets in The Book of Mormon elaborate on how much it is NOT a sufficient historical commentary (Helaman Chapter 3 v. 14):

 "...a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people... their wars, and contentions, and dissensions... their shipping and their building of ships, and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms, cannot be contained in this work..."

Is the Doctrine and Covenants supposed to be a complete record of early LDS Church history? Of course not. It is meant to focus on matters of spiritual and behavioral significance, far and beyond any historic or scientific truths that may or may not be contained within.

I suspect this is true of all scripture. Most scripture in most religions have more or less the same message, which is that we are God's creation, he wants us to be happy, so therefore he wants us to be nice to each other. Then scripture examines this form many perspectives in great detail with different strategies for accomplishing that goal. Focusing on scripture as historical evidence is sacrilege, because it entirely misses the point.

Amazon Failure

I have never worked for Amazon (and don't imagine that I ever would based on their reputation for how they treat employees, both warehouse workers and programmers alike), this post is commentary on why I have ditched them almost all together as a customer. And I used to buy a LOT of stuff off of Amazon...

Through 2016 Amazon was holding their seller's feet to the fire and forcing them to give you full refunds if something was wrong with the product as a standard practice. This practice disappeared some time in 2017. The only thing I recommend Amazon for now are things you can't easily get elsewhere because they are relatively rare.

The 4 things that happened that led me to using Amazon-only-for-purchases-that-include-Amazon-gift-card-money:

1. Just for example, I once ordered a bag of 50 earbuds for $50, and half of them were so bad they would fall apart in your ear the first time you used them. I got a full refund. This was standard through 2016, I had to get refunds on about 10% of the stuff I purchased, inconvenient enough to make me think twice about getting stuff on Amazon.
2. n Mid 2017 I purchased $20 blue tooth head phones and went so far at to purchase an additional warranty on them.  When they started crapping out in February 2018 I couldn't find the packaging, so the extra Amazon-endorsed extra warranty should have kicked in (as the manufacturer's warranty required original packaging, which was not much and was easy to throw away on accident). So the extra warranty just kept referring me back to the manufacturer's warranty, even with e-mails with supposedly real people, until it was just no longer worth the $20 to keep trying.
3. In late 2017 I ordered a $40 tablet. When the power button stopped working in January 2017, I tried to contact Amazon and all I got was notices about how items purchased during the Holiday Season of 2017 only had a 30 day warranty. Manufacturer's warranty? Dream on.
4. A $60 tablet was purchased in January 2017 and works great, no problems. But before 2017, 7 inch tablets in the $40 range were easily broken by children, not by failed manufacturing. So good luck on figuring out the sweet-spot for pricing on Amazon. I don't have the time or money for trial and error on $40-$400 purchases on electronics a few times a month. 

As a customer, I am tired of doing free quality control labor for Amazon, and now I am not even getting products as advertised from shopping on their site. I have had similar problems ordering stuff online from Wal*Mart.  Basically, Wal*Mart and Amazon have started to treat their on-line customers as bad as their employees!

Fortunately some of their competition has survived and adapted. I have had really good experiences with electronics from Fred Meyer and Best Buy, and they frequently beat the low price points on Amazon and at Walmart. It is a truly strange future we live in when these giants of industry have failed on this level and stores like Fred Meyer and Best Buy deliver a better customer value.

Faith Vs Works

This is an overtly religious post, so if you aren't into that walk away now, thanks. Everyone else note this represents a personal hypothesis or suspicion I have, not something I am completely sure of.

In Christianity, I think that the argument of "salvation by works" vs. "salvation by grace" is a false dichotomy. This is just another case of some Christians telling other Christians that they are not sufficiently Christian, an all too common activity for Christians.

It appears there is a period of time between death and the resurrection in which people can make spiritual discoveries and progress related to their salvation. Consider 1 Peter Chapter 3 v 18-20:18 :

18 Christ... died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. He suffered physical death, but he was raised to life in the Spirit.19 So he went and preached to the spirits in prison— 20 those who disobeyed God long ago when God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat. Only eight people were saved from drowning in that terrible flood.

Some have tried to say this refers to some form of non-human spirits, but the obvious and clear meaning is that Christ preached to deceased human ghosts who had died long before. See also 1 Peter 4 v 6. Some disagree because this implies you don't have to be Christian in order to be saved by Christ. But as Peter declared in Acts 10 v 34-35, hundreds of years before there was any such thing as a "Christian Nation,":

34 Then Peter replied, “I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism. 35 In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right..."

The only thing that reconciles this with needing faith in Christ to be saved is IF and ONLY IF it is possible to allow Jesus into our hearts AFTER we die, but BEFORE the final judgment! This is obviously the case in 1 Peter chapters 3 and 4.

In most religions it seems that salvation is more or less earned by doing good deeds in this life. But in Christianity, it seems like salvation comes through Faith in Christ. But what does "Faith" mean in this context? In the ultimate debate over Salvation by Faith vs. Salvation by Works, James declared (Chapter 2 v 19-20):

19 You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. 20 How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless?

Part of HOW we are saved is by following the good advice God gives us. We have FAITH that he knows what he's talking about, even if the advice is hard for us to follow. Let's consider the universal religious concept that sex should be between people who are married to each other. If you compare two typical people side by side for any 20 year period of their life, and the only difference between them is one takes this rule to heart, and the other ignores this rule, we see that obedience to the rule itself "saves" the chaste person IN THIS LIFE, not 100% but relatively compared to the non-chaste, from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, two of the most crippling consequences we can have in life. By submitting to God's will, ironically, we have more options.

But doesn't God set the bar so high for entrance to heaven that it is impossible to be saved simply through our own righteousness? Yes, very much so. Consider Mathew Chapter 5 v 48:

48 But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

So then we are only saved by the grace of God, right? But then why the preaching to the spirits, why the declaration of the uselessness of faith without deeds? It is simple, 1 Peter chapters 3 and 4, we will reach perfection before we reach the final judgement, even if not in this life.

Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan. Is the meaning of the parable that we are all wounded Jews and Jesus is the Good Samaritan who is the "other" who saves us each individually? No, of course not. The meaning of that parable is we are supposed to be good to each other. In so far as we are good to each other, our lives are better. Rules let us have nice things. Is it any wonder then that we are supposed to be able to obey the rules before we go through the pearly gates?

The grace of God is that he gives us many opportunities in this life and beyond to repent and eventually become perfect, that quality of behavior standard needed to stand by the throne of the universe. This does NOT excuse our deeds, this is NOT "saved after all we can do." We will actually eventually meet the standard of perfection, and the opportunities needed to reach that standard is Grace. Christ's sacrifice bought us the opportunities we need to improve, and this is the Grace He extends to us.