Darn,
Man, Bamboo, you are on a roll!
Okay, I’ll start off.
As a teenager, I began martial arts at a kind of McDojo. At the time it was the best in the area, but maybe not so good. I did all the standard things, like watch Bruce Lee flicks, and read “Zen in the Martial Arts”.
When I found out about Ki, it was very appealing, but completely nebulous. It was only explained to me as this “kind of force”. People would walk around saying “He has strong ki” or “I used my chi to break the board”, so I had a very vague concept of it.
I moved to Japan, and spent some time doing kendo, and the explanations of chi/ki remained very vague. I met all kinds of gaijin Aikido ka who were willing to go on and on about it, but that never really gave me a clue about it.
BUT… I did believe in it.
Now, when I came back from Japan, I met a fellow who was very similar to me in many ways. We were both religious, both arrogant, and both had a passion for Martial Arts, despite him being far better than I was.
He was fixated on learning bagua, and as luck would have it, he met a bagua teacher.
He told me all kinds of crazy things about bagua, stuff about “internal” styles I’d never heard. I wanted to believe what he was telling me was the truth, but believing that Qi is a physical phenomenon is very different from believing in a vague “force”.
So I asked him to show me.
He placed his palm against mine, and didn’t move. We were just standing with our arms extended, palm to palm.
And then, I felt bubbles popping up from his palm. It was like I was being poked, the bubbles were coming out so strong. BUT, his hand and his body never moved.
This was before I learned what fa jing, li, yi or anything related to martial arts was. All I knew was that he wasn’t moving, but my hand was being ‘poked’. If he said it was chi, it was good enough for me.
And so I was off. And I no longer believe in qi. I simply know it exists, the same way I know I breath air or that two plus two is four.
Merciless is Mercy.