TRADITIONAL KARATE IS NOT A SPORT. Someone who chooses to devote themselves to a sport such as basketball, tennis, soccer, or football, which is based on youth, strength, and speed chooses to die twice. When you can no longer do a certain sport, due to the lack of any one of those attributes, waking up in the morning without the activity and purpose that has been the center of your day for twenty-five years is spooky. Karate can and should be practiced for life. It is a "way of life."Many of the greatest karate teachers share a commonly misunderstood teaching methodology. They know the words that could be used to pass their personal experience to their students have little or no meaning. They know that to try "self- discovery" in quantitative or empirical terms is a useless task. A great deal of knowledge and wisdom (the ability to use knowledge in a proper and correct way) comes from what is called the "oral traditions," which the art of karate-do, like every other cultural aspect, has. These oral traditions have been always reserved for a certain kind of student and have been considered "secrets."