Philosophers or fighters?
Published: Mon, 04/14/14
When I was in my late teens and early twenties I seemed to get
involved in various youth organisations and councils. We are
talking late 1970s here and it was quite an exiting and idealistic
time. I recall being at some event and a speaker was talking about
encouraging young people to get the most out of life through being
involved in suitable activities. I think this man was a youth
leader and probably not more than thirty himself. I can't
remember anything he said expect that he told us that he had
discovered Martial Arts and he thought that these were very good
activities for young people. He also said that it was important to
find a Martial Art with a philosophy. At that point I remember
being rather amused because I had already been into my own training
for probably 3 or 4 years by that stage and I suspected that this
earnest young man had fallen for the glamor of the Taoist or Zen
wisdom which a lot of people seemed to believe was inherent in
Martial Arts of Chinese and Japanese origin respectively. The
opening scenes in film Enter the Dragon and the flash back to the
monastery scenes in popular Kung Fu series on TV had certainly
helped to promote this impression.
So are all Martial Arts teachers beings of great wisdom and fonts
of profound knowledge and (when the student is ready of course)
able to explain all the mysteries of the universe? Yes, of course
we are, but the world is not ready yet to hear the ultimate truth
about reality so we focus on teaching physical activities and keep
the secrets to ourselves until the time is right. Or maybe not.
Or just sometimes.
Is philosophy key to understanding Martial Arts? Depends what you
mean by philosophy of course. Phd as an academic qualification
stands for 'Doctor of Philosophy' which is why in certain
social circles in Oxford or Cambridge there isn't much point in
shouting 'Is there a Doctor in the house?' when someone
collapses unexpectedly. There may be a dozen 'doctors'
within earshot but not a single one of them will be more useful
than a chocolate teapot in a medical emergency. In the same way a
profound knowledge of Zen or Taoist wisdom will have little benefit
in dealing with a violent encounter unless there is some practical
knowledge of fighting skills to back it up. In the case of
Japanese Martial Arts there was one book particular published in
the 1930's called 'Zen and the Art of Archery' by a
German called Eugene Herrigel which combined with the rapid spread
of Eastern Martial Arts to the West in the post war period created
the impression that Zen and Japanese Martial Arts were synonymous.
Traditionally they were not. Dave Lowery explains the relationship
between Budo and Zen in more detail in his book
'Traditions' . Which I recommend reading if you want to
understand Martial Arts more deeply.
Stav has a philosophy and the five principles are a key to
understanding Stav. However Ivar has always said that physical
training comes first and intellectual understanding develops from
doing. There is no sense in just sitting around talking about
grandiose ideas, what matters is action, testing and thus gaining
real knowledge. Ivar usually only teaches once a year these days,
at the Summer Camp, you could be there too. http://www.stavcamp.org
regards
Graham
PS Essential to learning and understanding is observing and
thinking about what you have seen and heard. My booklet
'Peacock Kung Fu' explains what I learned about
self-defence from observing a Peahen a couple of years back. (What
I learned from Geoff Thompson and Marc McYoung helped too). It is
available as an ebook at http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/elit.html or
on paper at http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/lit.html