Saturday 11 July 2015

Standing


不易乎世
Keeping one's integrity through time


It is always better to understand where we stand before starting anything. This blog is mostly about old practices from China, called before martial arts, and more especially about the internal ones. In modern and developed societies, technology has rendered them almost totally obsolete in their previous professional capacities, warfare, security (police...) and protection (of persons or valuables), but, on the other hand, consumerism has dramatically increased their presence as a hobby for self-defense, physical and mental exercices and even spiritual search.
Evolution is a part of existence, and those old practices, which were profoundly influenced by the Book of Changes, 易經, would probably take the same stance as the Hidden Leaves (the Hagakure), 葉隱, from Tsunetomo Yamamoto: 
“It is said that what is called "the spirit of an age" is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.”
To make the best of the present times, one has to realize what has been lost, what may be recovered and what can be developed.

There were numerous sayings in the older generations like "Experience counts for, at least, half of the value of a martial artist" or "Cowardice in battle takes away any and all mastery" or, even more to the point, "Who hasn't killed cannot be named martial artist". Experience didn't mean, of course, competition. But neither did it mean street fighting, the sort of ultimate Graal or proof or effective martialness of any art nowadays. Experience was the one gained on a regular basis in one's profession as in war, policing or protecting people or valuables, using weapons of that time and getting scars for it. This kind of experience has disappeared for a very long time, almost as long as since the time firearms became part of warfare. And even if China's isolation and refusal to evolve kept the old practices from a swift break similar to the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the Boxer Uprising and the modern warlords area finally pushed away old martial arts from their usual related professions. That is why it doesn't seem overstating to conclude that it has been at least three or four generations, if not even more, that almost all of the schools, or styles, haven't been taught by people of real extensive and regular experience in the field. For example, an obvious impact of this lack of experience is the absence of teaching team fighting in what is left of those practices. Any army, policing or protection work is a team work, not one person against one or one against many, but two groups fighting each other. And, as good as are one's skills, apart from very few martial related profession like assassins, most of it was team work, as it has remained nowadays. It is still possible, in very rare cases, to find a set of exercises that teach to chop the head off the opponent while avoiding doing the same to your partners, to learn how to recognize quickly who to strike and who not to, very similar in spirit to some shooting exercises for commandos nowadays. It is even rarer to find a teacher who understands that this way of practicing was meant for this purpose.

So, that is how we have to start today, to realize that what we are practicing is not really martial anymore, but just a practice adapted to the needs of civilians, like the some old sword practice for the mandarins in China, modified so that calligraphy and sword could use the same kind of moves.

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