Recently there has been a trend in the martial arts practitioners, especially in styles that are classified as “internal” or “soft” to state that they practice for holistic and spiritual reasons but that they don’t believe in fighting and violence . Often times these individuals refuse to learn or teach the combat applications of their respective styles, stating that their personal beliefs (i.e. Buddhism, pacifism, etc.) prohibit them. They will even go so far as to deny that these violent applications are necessary to learning the whole art or reaping the holistic and spiritual benefits of their pursuit. Some even state the belief that internal styles have no martial application and that they never have.
The above paragraph is not to say that practitioners of “soft” or “internal” styles inherently prescribe to doctrines they have not fully investigated, nor does it mean that the majority of internal martial arts practitioners share this view. The point here is that people who hold the discussed beliefs tend to find refuge in internal styles both as students and teachers.
It is infuriating for me to bear witness to someone making claims under the guise of adherence to a specific spiritual or philosophical doctrine (such as Buddhism or Daoism), when it is obvious that they are either confused as to their understanding of the doctrine or have not investigated it in sufficient depth. I have little if any knowledge of pacifism and so will not talk about it further for the purposes of this argument. My understanding and practice of Buddhism is still in its infancy and so I will simply quote some of the Zen patriarchs and their famous students in order to illustrate my interpretation of the problem.
People will argue that they do not practice or teach the combat applications because it is forbidden by Buddhism to harm another living creature. This is truly stupid. Shaolin was considered one of the premier centers for advanced Buddhism as well as martial arts. While they were unique in that most Buddhist temples did not practice combat arts, they were not seen as heretics for their practice of the martial arts. Even at Shaolin their Buddhist studies came first so much so that it informed how they not only practiced but used their martial arts. Nowhere is this more important or evident than the famous shaolin admonition:
“Avoid rather than block, block rather than grab, grab rather than lock, lock rather than strike, strike rather than wound, wound rather than maim, maim rather then kill. For all life is sacred, and once destroyed can never be restored nor replaced this is the way of Shaolin.”
If one were to investigate the above admonition in only a cursory manner then it is entirely possible that they would still interpret it as prohibiting violence and by extension suggesting that learning martial techniques is not recommended. Let us look at some examples to see if this is in fact keeping with Shaolin’s famous decree.
In the first example a student spends many years training under a Tai Chi Chuan (Grand Ultimate Fist) teacher who doesn’t believe in instructing the combat applications. On the way home from practice he decides to take a shortcut and gets attacked by a masked assailant in an alley. The man has no weapon and says nothing. He simply strikes the young student and attempts to steal his wallet and personal valuables. The young student is so shocked and frightened that he doesn’t know whether this is a robbery, an assault, or something worse. Afraid for his life, the student fights back to the best of his untrained ability. The assailant overcompensates for the sudden escalation and kills the student. In this example Buddha would still be displeased. The student did not kill but he died because he did not treat his own life as sacred. If he had learned the techniques and acquired a level of martial proficiency the assailant might have been allowed to escape with a wound and the student would have lived. Buddhism would have prevailed, the student would have lived, and the life or the assailant would have been preserved thus honoring its sacred status. Furthermore, the assailant might have been left so shaken from the exchange that he would have determined that living this way was not worth the risk and thus attempted to change his ways. This would have saved untold others.
Now my critics will most likely state that while I have succeeded in mitigating evil for the time being I have only increased it in the future. The basic thrust of this counterargument is that while some assailants will be discouraged and change after the first encounter many will resort to more violent tactics like killing the intended victim and simply making off with the property. First of all this counterargument is rife with problems. First, the bandit/criminal that finds himself thwarted by a capable martial artist is most likely to never strike again. Theft like crime in general appeals to the individual looking for an easy profit or to the psychologically imbalanced personality, in which case they are not after your money but your life. If the potential marks are no longer easy targets then it is most likely that potential assailants will find a new scheme or get out of the game altogether. Second, the assailant most likely to get a firearm or weapon with the intention killing the next potential victim will fight back much harder and more viciously during the initial encounter than the average criminal. In this case it is highly possible that such an aggressive assailant will end up being wounded, maimed, or killed during the first encounter. Many martial artists hiding behind the skirt of Buddhism will say that this eventuality is unacceptable as killing is prohibited.
In this case there are two answers. First, train harder so that you can simply grab them, lock them, wound them, or maim them. The better you are, the more you can control the situation. As Dr. Yang Jwing Ming said, “In Chin Na it is necessary to be cruel to yourself in order to be kind to someone else.” This means that the practitioner that takes the time to try a more complicated technique like an immobilizing chin na technique rather than simply striking and possibly killing is assuming greater risk for themselves in the hope of saving both themselves and the criminal. The closer you and the assailant are in actual ability the more likely that one of you will have to die or be seriously injured in order to decide the conflict. Second, let us assume that you kill the assailant. In this case Buddha and the bodhisattvas weep for the thief’s death, but they will only weep once. In the event that the assailant kills you and finds that it works, Buddha will weep every time that the thief strikes.
Ultimately, however, the above conversation concerning what will happen after the second encounter is a pointless exercise. In the end you have very little to show for it. Buddhism teaches that one exists under heaven’s will and that the only moment that matters is the present while the past is gone and the future is still unseen. Therefore martial artists cannot make their decisions based on what the assailant might or might not do in the future, but they must ultimately decide what is right in the current moment. In short the right thing to do is to preserve life. This means you do everything you can to save yourself and your assailant. As Yagyu Munenori said, “The question is not about killing men or not killing men, it is about striking down evil.”
I would like to now return to my comment that many practitioners believe that not learning the combat applications of their style is insignificant to reaping the holistic and spiritual rewards offered by the martial arts. This being said, my question is this: If the combat applications and the debate over their use is inconsequential then how do they expect to address the above seeming contradictions and emerge with an unshakeable conviction in what is right. I know that for me my spiritual foundation is much deeper because I meditated on that which seemed to contradict my Buddhist beliefs. I now feel free to act, and understand that compassion and mercy cannot be considered absolute regardless of context. Rather they are absolute within a larger relative context.
:eek: 