Talking to Your Heart

教拳不教步，教步打師傅

Teaching boxing but not stepping, teaching stepping beats the master (the master enables the student to be able to beat him)

教一手，不教一口，教一口不教一走

Teaching a technique but not telling, telling but not teaching how to move

Books and writings are a very good help, especially when doing researches, but they are hardly a way to really learn, and especially at the very beginning, so are videos. This is even more true for old practices which were not a product for the masses but a tool customised for each and every student. Hence, this blog, like any other writing, is totally useless for any person willing to study the arts, it can only be a means of reflexion.
Nowadays, a teacher shows techniques that will be learned by the students through their eyes, and books and videos describe extensively techniques and principles, but in the old days it was a question of teaching orally from and to the heart, 口傳心授. If one wants to go back to the spirit of the old practices, it is more than necessary to understand that the study of internal practices, which aims at understanding the formless and the invisible, cannot be learned by just simple imitation. 




Heart to Heart

口傳心授, teaching orally to one's heart, is the shorter version of what should be 口傳心心授, pouring out one's heart to teach another's heart, but having two times the character heart seems a bit redundant in Chinese. Hence, another expression, 以心傳心, from heart to heart, also exists. Such way to teach goes beyond the usual translation of the idiom: "oral teaching inspires true understanding", it basically describes in a very few words the relation needed between a teacher and his/her student to have any chance to go beyond passing along just a set of moves and a few principles into a deeper understanding of body mechanics and vitality cultivation. As mentioned in Method, that is why one of the preferred ways to study was to be living with one's teacher, almost never leaving his/her sight, literally becoming his/her shadow. In other words, becoming something close to a clone of one's teacher was the best way to study. Once done, and the desired level obtained, the student could then revert to his/her own personality. In a way, the learning process was not far from acting, and more especially what is called method acting.

Hence, studying the arts in internal practices was to go to the heart of the movements, not their expression, which should come then naturally, and such heart were the organs, with the heart as leader. For this, studying with the eyes is external while through the heart internal. Needless to say that a couple of time a week, well, now it is even sometimes a few stages a year, cannot create the proper environment, only total immersion does. 

Still, to understand what is hidden, one had to go through what is not, and the way to do so was the necessary oral guidance given by the teacher.

An Oral Tradition

Martial arts theory in the internal arts has always been a complex one, because it describes internal and invisible processes very hard to comprehend by essence. This complexity was never meant to be a purely theoretical reflexion but, as for applied sciences, a theory to be put to practical use. Such theories were, of course, put to use directly within the person studying, his/her body being the direct receptacle of all the theory, no book being needed. That is why, apart from a very few exceptions, school manuals, 拳譜, are quite a recent phenomenon (slowly starting at the end of Ming Dynasty, roughly around the seventeenth century). One can even consider that the more old practices decline, the more need for writings there is, since the students cannot become and transmit living knowledge nowadays.

In the oral tradition, because people were studying with their hearts, 24/7, and not relying on any support for memory, they could have not been training any routine for a couple of years but still, after only a few tries at most, get it back. That is how their bodies were becoming a living library where they could pick up what they needed when they needed it and not have to very regularly revise everything in order not to forget. It was like riding a bicycle, once the skill acquired, you will not forget it for life.

Because of this oral tradition, most of the Martists were very close to illiterate, knowing only a very few characters, often the ones linked to their practice*, quite far from the ideal coming from the philosophy of the civil and the martial: mastering both the martial and the civil arts, a chariot always needing two wheels. A perfect example is the lesser attendance of martial artists from the Military Imperial Exams during the Song Dynasty, when writing an essay and memorising seven military manuals were made compulsory. The military exams became then more a second chance for scholars unsuccessful at the Civil Imperial Exams than a real recruitment of military talent**. It still remains interesting to notice that, at a certain level, civil and martial studies were part of a whole, like in the school headed by Confucius, where out of six subjects, two were martial, archery, where he was supposed to excel, shooting flying birds, and chariot-riding. According to the famous Chinese historian Si Maqian***, Confucius was tall for those times, around a meter and ninety centimetres, and according to Lie Yukou, the author of Liezi****, powerful way above average. The Chinese version of paladins (knights known for their chivalry and bravery), 俠客, were also supposed to be both scholars and Martists, the famous Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai claiming to be one of them***.

In modern times, where those practices have become more a leisurely product than anything else, there is obviously more needs for writings, even just to keep some kind of record of old practices methods. Still, going beyond describing the basis would most probably be counterproductive, and even more if one wants to stick to the old methods, where discovery is the cornerstone of the study, not memorising dictated rules and principles. It is also interesting to notice that, with the development of modern means of communication, and the internet revolution, gaining general knowledge is quite easy nowadays. One can, then, obtain all kinds of information, training routines, principles... on almost any practice. As for most things in the consumer society, it is not the absence but the profusion that actually becomes an issue. Confronted with too many choices and too little time, one ends up with a lot of knowledge but no real deep understanding, able to quote a lot but only to execute so few.

*Some schools use characters with often a special way to read or interpret them as an help (see 武術 War for Peace), or play with the homophony of certain characters like 手, hands, and techniques by extension, and 守, to protect.

**A hundred years after their coming to power, the Songs (960 to 1279), started to believe that civil affairs were more important, the martial part of the Military Exams becoming even less strict than its writing part, scholars having just to train a basic understanding of horse riding and archery to pass those.

***司馬遷

****列御寇, 列子 

*****Among some of his famous poems, 侠客行, Ode to Gallantry, where he describes the life of a paladin.