Throughout
the history of the martial arts, a time
spanning some 4 to 5 millennia, development
and evolution have been naturally intrinsic
to the arts. Since the end of the second
world war, the martial arts have become
so popular that more and more people
are involved in the arts now than at
any other point in history. With this
popularity, the nature of the arts have
changed from ones which gave their skills
to seekers who first had to prove themselves
worthy to arts that have sold themselves
to whomever has the money. That adaptation
to the open marketplace has produced
several changes.
The
most marked of which are:
- A general lowering of performance
standards to meet the physical abilities
and limitations of the “Joe
Average” student.
- A devolution of the arts with loss
of technique and combat mentality to
suit the requirements of becoming a
martial sport instead of remaining
a martial art.
- Worst of all, the dropping of spirituality
from the practice of the arts.
Many
western martial arts teachers who originally
learned some spiritual principles and
practices in the 1950’s and 60’s
while training in Asia had dropped the
study and application of spirituality
after a while, calling it so much hocus
pocus. Spirituality has also been dropped
to meet the demands of the marketplace.
People are in for what amounts to recreation
and anything that smacks of being religious
may drive away students. Of the non-recreational
students, many are in the arts just to
learn how to “bust heads” and
they want to do that without the principles
meant to guide the use of the skills.
These factors and the commercialism and
hype that became part of the arts caused
the stagnation of technique and guiding
philosophy leading into the devolution
of the arts in the latter half of the
20th century.
We can’t
escape the reality of the martial arts
being taught in the competitive open
market place. Economic theory relates
that as services improve competition
increases. Perhaps the rendering and
the availability of the martial arts
have improved over the last 60 years
but, this has happened at the cost of
the traditional content of the arts.
As caretakers
of traditions hundreds or even thousands
of years old, we need to insure that
the spark of future evolution (true technique
creating and not just style blending)
is brought back into the arts. (To my
eyes only the Wing Chun / JKD and Kali
traditions are evolving forward). We
need to make sure that the guiding “light” of
spirituality is placed back into the
martial arts. In that way, we can ensure
the existence of the arts we love for
the millennia to come. We must not be
blamed by future generations for having
lost so much of our skill movements and
so much of our philosophy that all we
have left to hand to them is a way of
tournament brawling.
What
Has Been Lost?
Whenever
we wish to evaluate a system of beliefs,
and each martial arts is a system of
beliefs, we need to go back in time to
the origins of that system and attempt
to discern what the original intent of
the founders were. Discovering the truth
of original intent is a principle that
is applied to law, philosophy and religion.
Rediscovering the original intent leading
to the development of the martial arts
will begin to point the way towards our
rediscovery and recovery and this leads
to the advancement of our arts in our
today.
Man has
been fighting bare handed and with weapons
for as long as he’s been on the
planet. But, systematized fighting based
on particular principles (i.e. for exercise,
chi circulation, emulating animals and
demi gods etc.), is as best as we can
tell some 5000 years old.
Most
martial arts systems today can trace
their origins back to China and to the
5th century BC Buddhist monk Damo (in
Cantonese, Bodhedarma in Sanskrit). He,
through meditation and revelation gave
the monks of an obscure and hidden monastery
called Si Lum (Shao Lin in Mandarin),
their first pugilistic exercise form.
Being from India, a country then with
a highly evolved martial tradition, Damo
was likely familiar with that countries
highly spiritual fighting forms. From
those origins the monks at Si Lum
and their imitators evolved most of the
nearly 2000 systems of martial arts found
in China. (There are some 1500 known
systems of Gung Fu, internal energy pugilism
and wrestling in China. Add to that number
a conservative estimate of 200 to 500
secret systems of training not yet revealed
to the world outside the small groups,
towns or provinces in the interior and
west of China and you get round about
2000 distinct systems). As the monks
traveled, were exiled or sent abroad,
they taught their arts. This teaching
spawned the empty hand fighting arts
for most of Asia.
Let’s
put things into perspective. To help
understand the time frame better let’s
put a western frame of reference up for
comparison. Around the time of the Greek
philosopher and scientist Pythagorus,
and David the King of Israel is round
about when Damo traveled from India to
China to teach and reform Buddhist practice.
At the temple of Si Lum, Damo found the
monks were so lazy and out of condition
that they could not properly perform
their meditative and prayer duties. Also
since supplies for the remote temple
had to be brought to the temple via road,
the monks were easy prey for bandits
and highway men. These conditions led
peaceful cloistered monks with a philosophy
of non violence to develop the worlds
deadliest martial arts. By the time of
the western middle ages, legend had it
that one Si Lum monk was the equal of
1000 regular troops. This number of legend
is likely very overblown but it serves
to show the reputation of Si Lum.
Each
art developed at the monastery was
meant to fulfill certain criteria.
The art had to:
- Strengthen the body.
- Draw in and circulate chi.
- Be effective and deadly in application
so as not to cause undo or lingering
suffering before the death of an opponent.
- Provide the advanced exponent the
ability to meditate during movement.
There
was a progression from the physical to
spiritual emphasis in the arts which
can be expressed in the graph below.
The physical
is the path to the spiritual and as one
increased the other decreases. In the
shift there is no loss of physical prowess,
but with the application of accumulated
chi power the dependence on pure muscular
strength is diminished greatly.
It is
this progression from physical to the
spiritual; from being purely warrior
to being the warrior / scholar or warrior
/ priest that has been lost. The combination
of the warrior / scholar is still shown
in the hand salute Chinese martial artists
give; but while the form is present for
most who give the salute, the essence
is gone.
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Scholar
controls the Warrior |
Scholar
and Warrior are Equal |
The open
hand is the priest or scholar. the closed
fist is the warrior, the two exist together
as Ying and Yang do completing a whole.
Further it can be seen that the warrior
is sometimes covered by the scholar.
This means that philosophy and spirituality
of the scholar rules the warrior and
guides his use of the arts.
The martial
arts without the accompanying spiritual
philosophy is only the road to empty
machismo and bravado. There will be no
inner fulfillment or revelation from
movement patterns, no discovery of the
inner meanings of life which the masters
locked away in set patterns of action.
Some teachers have said that there is
no truth in set patterns of movement
but those teachers while likely highly “book” educated
did not have enough spiritual attainment
to have come to those realizations. As
good as they might have been in their
skills, as versed as they may have sounded
in philosophy, they were locked into
the physical realm. The ancient masters
did hide philosophical and spiritual
truth in movement and only years of application
and meditation can reveal those secrets.
These are truths that have to be realized,
they cannot be simply taught by mouth
or action and understood.
Many
students will ask of a teacher who has
come to realizations why he does not
teach all that he has discovered. The
answer comes in the saying: “What
I tell you, you will forget. What you
discover for yourself you will always
remember”. With the emphasis on
the purely physical side of the arts,
many never realize they are missing an
entire aspect to their martial arts.
That aspect would make their arts whole.
Some
oriental sounding platitudes are spouted
by most martial arts teachers. Most of
it is weak pap and about as eastern as
chop suei (which was invented by a white
man in San Francisco in the late 1800’s).
What passes for philosophy in most martial
arts schools would shock the ancients
with its shallowness.
What
Else Has Been Lost?
As the
market orientation in the martial arts
became stronger and more and more people
with no martial spirit came into the
arts, the teaching done needed to reflect
the consumer in order to retain him as
a student. Teachers needed to do this
to stay in business. So the martial arts
became a combative sport, a recreational
activity that needed to be safe not unlike
flag football when compared to pro football.
This
reflection of a recreational minded instead
of a serious minded clientele in the
martial arts led to the deletion of crippling
and killing techniques from the arts.
Along with those deletions came rules
to further take away valid techniques
when tournament rules barred: kicking
below the waist (i.e. groin, knee, shin,
instep), techniques to the throat, eyes
temporal / sphenoid area etc. Since these
techniques are barred from competition
most schools don’t even teach them
in class. Most of the black belts now
have NEVER even been taught the techniques
and they don’t know that they don’t
know! These are the skills that are the
most effective in real combat. Many teachers
counter this argument by saying that
they do teach the killing and crippling
techniques. They just don’t allow
their application in competitive fighting.
If you don’t practice a technique
under “game” conditions until
it is an instant response to a given
stimulus then just “knowing” the
technique will not aid in it’s
application because the motor patterns
will not have been ingrained into the
nervous system. It takes a minimum of
3000 correct performances of a technique
against real opposition to create those
motor patterns and instant responses.
Most of the real fighting techniques
are given no where near that degree of
practice today, students won’t
stand for the boredom, the hard work
or really getting hit even with protective
gear on! They’ll quit the school
and go where the techniques and rank
is more easily acquired.
Add to
the lack of killing and crippling techniques
the fact that penalties are given in
contests for excess contact or overly
aggressive behavior, and you’ve
watered down a fighting art into a panty-waist
sport! Can any such thing as overly aggressive
behavior exist in a real fight when your
life is on the line? MA magazines often
carry stories of accomplished sport fighters
who get there heads handed to them during
real street fights in encounters with
untrained muggers.
After
Bruce Lee died stories abounded about
this martial artist or that martial artist
who could have “taken” him
but did not because they were “friends”.
(Given Lee’s well known temper
these “friends” would have
never dared say anything of the like
while he was alive). One close martial
arts “friend” of Lee’s
even told GQ magazine in the 80’s
that we’ll never know how good
Bruce really was because he never entered
competition!!! To this Lee would have
answered that tournament fighting was
like swimming on dry land. His senior
students remember Bruce’s practice
of walking into bars, telling whoever
was with him not to to get involved unless
some pulled a knife or gun. He would
then walk up to the biggest roughest
dude in the place and make disparaging
remarks about the mans ancestors, his
girlfriend, his mother, his personal
looks or sexual habits. When the fight
was over, Bruce would be the only one
left standing and anxious to go to another
bar!. (Bar room brawls with Wing Chun
or JKD run some 30 seconds to 2 minuets
for a multi opponent fights). That was
real life application. Unless a fight
has NO rules, NO limitations, and your
life, limb or property is non the line
it’s not a real fight! With relatively
little training in combatives, if cops
can train under “game” conditions
for encounters like that , why can’t
dedicated martial artists?
Further,
unless a martial art can meet the criterion
of helping you survive and win such a
fight, it’s not a real combat art!
Posing, clean points and dancing do not
help people survive real fights. Proper
technique, cool aggressiveness, and a
guiding marital intent do!
Next
we look to: “Restore the Lost” starting
with Spirituality.
Suggested
Reading:
Principles of Personal Defense, by Col.
Jeff Cooper Paladin Press. 1989 revised
2006.
Movement And Meaning, by Eleanor Methany,
McGraw Hill 1969.
Introduction to Human Movement, Hope
Smith, Addison - Wesley 1968.
The Art of War, martial artists translation
by Hanshi Stephen Kaufman, Tuttle 1996.
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