Martial Art as a Spiritual Practise (4)

Traditionally, Kung Fu men and women (while China has a long sexist tradition, kung fu does not; top masters and warriors were frequently women) were expected to study the wisdom and skills of a wide variety of professions including scholarship, alchemy, weaponry, art, practical philosophy (i.e. Taoism and Buddhism), and Chinese medicine. Many masters were frequently priests, monks, nuns or hermits as only they had the leisure time to study all the required skills (Minick, 1974).

During the fifth century AD, Chinese martial arts took an evolutionary step forward under the influence of the eccentric, ragged old monk from India named Bodhidharma, whom the Chinese call Ta Mo. Known as the founder of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, he gave up his wealth and title as an Indian prince and followed a visionary impulse to cross the barren plateau of Tibet on foot into southern China. Legend has it that after visiting Chinese monasteries he meditated for nine years in front of a wall at the ancient Shaolin temple having cut his eyelids off in order to avoid sleep. When he rose he wrote the two remarkable classics which have become the seminal texts for Chinese martial artists - Tendon Changing Classic (Yi Jin Jing) and Marrow Cleansing Classic (Hsi Sui Jing). These two manuals lead the adept from the most basic stretching exercises up to the most advanced techniques of internal energy (chi). (Reid, 1993, pp. 176-177).

This talk of the "spirit of the dragon" and techniques of internal energy that can knock a man off his feet without touching him are carefully dealt with so as not to lead the practitioner into desperately seeking "spiritual" practice that leads nowhere else but further and further into mystery and abstraction (Lee, 1975). Training is very real and grounded, and provides for a tremendous amount of inner conflict, frustration and struggle as can be seen in the following evocation by Si-Gung Lee Jun Fan, better known as Bruce Lee, in which he talks about his struggle with the principle of gentleness in Kung Fu:

The principle of gentleness - the art of neutralising the effect of the opponents effort and minimising the expenditure of one's own energy. All this must be done in calmness and without striving. It sounded simple but in actual application it was difficult. The moment I engaged in combat with an opponent, my mind was completely perturbed and unstable. Especially after a series of exchanging blows and kicks, all my theory of gentleness was gone. My only thought was somehow or another I must beat him and win.

My instructor Professor Yip, head of Win Chun School, would come to me and say, "Loong , relax and calm your mind. Forget about yourself and follow the opponent's movement. Let your mind do the counter-movement without any interfering deliberation. Above all, learn the art of detachment."

     That was it! I MUST relax. However, right there I had already done something contradictory against my will. That was when I said I must relax, the demand for effort in "must" was already inconsistent with the effortlessness in "relax". When my acute self-consciousness grew to what the psychologists call "double-bind" type, my instructor again approached me and said, "Loong, preserve yourself by following the natural bends of things and don't interfere. Remember never to assert yourself against nature; never be in frontal opposition to any problem, but control it by swinging with it. Don't practise this week. Go home and think about it."
     The following week I stayed home. After spending many hours of meditation and practise, I gave up and went sailing along in a junk. On the sea I thought of all my past training and got mad at myself and punched at the water. Right then at that moment a thought suddenly struck me. Wasn't this water, the very basic stuff, the essence of Gung Fu? Didn't the common water just illustrate to me the essence of Gung Fu? I struck it but it did not suffer hurt. Again I stabbed it with all my might but it was not wounded. I then tried to grasp a handful of it but it was impossible. This water, the softest substance in the world, could fit itself into any container. Although it seemed weak it could penetrate the hardest substance. That was it! I wanted to be like the nature of water.
    

Suddenly a bird flew past and cast its reflection on the water. Right then as I was absorbing myself, another mystic sense of hidden meaning started upon me. Shouldn't it be the same then that the thoughts and emotions I had in front of an opponent past like the reflection of the bird over the water? This was exactly what Professor Yip meant by being detached - not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling was not sticky or blocked. Therefore in order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.
     I lay on the boat and felt that I had united with Tao; I had become one with nature. I just lay there and let the boat drift freely and irresistibly according to its own will. For at that moment I had achieved a state of inner feeling in which opposition had become mutually co-operative instead of mutually exclusive, in which there was no longer any conflict in my mind. The whole world to me was unitary.
(Lee, 1976, pp. 35-36)

This illustration embodies much of the growth process in Kung Fu. Si-Gung Lee's experience of unitary consciousness was not a result of the resolution of conflict in as much as it was the result of the destruction of conflict itself. It was when he came to know, as apposed to understand the illusion of conflict under which he lived that it disappeared and was replaced with an experience of universal balance and harmony.

This illusionary struggle manifests itself in all aspects of being, however through the practice of martial arts one moves toward destroying the illusion thereby attaining a higher state of unitary awareness which results in a richer and more healthy experience of life.

This process is more easily understood when situated within the paradigm of the ancient Chinese philosophy known as Taoism (often pronounced Daoism).

Although Kung Fu is influenced by the intermingling of the three great strands of Eastern thought - Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism (Reid, 1988), Taoist thought is most suited to an explanation of Kung Fu for the Western mind because it is easily understood in Western scientific terminology.

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