The
Combinations:
The combinations are the canon, the bread and butter of the
Karazenpo and Shaolin Kempo arts. It started with 10, then
22, then 26, 30, 41 and so on. Now there are (at least
officially) 108. They are often treated like a treasure to
be hidden, a carefully held secret. Each one contains
principles, and by collecting the techniques and extracting
the principles, the student understands Shaolin Kempo, or
at least that's how it is supposed to work.
I became frustrated when I realized two things. One, that
most Shaolin Kempo 'Masters' and even 6th,
7th and 8th dans did not know all 108
combinations. In fact your average fifth dan knew maybe
half. I thought it was strange, as I had to know all of the
letters before I 'mastered' the alphabet. I felt that to
understand Shaolin Kempo, one really should be able to look
at the whole and see how the principles fit together. If
this was possible without learning the rest, why learn
them. Second, it seemed that the 'next set' always seemed
out of reach, dangled just on the other side of a test fee.
With that in mind, I hoped that there were enough of us out
there to 'open source' kempo. Put sunlight on the
combinaitions, and let the burden fall to those teaching to
raise the bar for quality. Just knowing the 'next one'
wouldn't be enough, and those who put in the effort to do
them well would rise to the top. Exposing the secrets
hasn't killed Shotokan, Brazilian Jiujitsu or any of the
plethora of arts out there whose curricula are transcribed
for the world to see, so I felt it would only make us
stronger. So far it has. Students (and Masters) from nearly
every major splinter of SKK have pulled together to create
this archive - the community has come together.
