On gong-fu

“Gong-fu”: daily, regular practice, with sincerity, concentration and intelligent interpretation; faith in oneself and in the instructor. The result: creative, sincere; the technique has been adequately interpreted and accepted.

Now, I ask you, if I were to ask someone who knows nothing about Wu Shu to come and grade your Wu Shu, and then you pass and receive a “Black Belt” … do you treasure the "title"? or does it mean anything to you? why? what is the “Real Thing”? To use the Art and to love the Art are two different matters.                                           

Use the Art as a means: you receive measure for measure. 

Love the Art as a goal: then enduring wonders unfold ahead without limit.

Wu Shu masters discriminate between these two types of pupil when they teach.

You might say someone’s form and movement look alright to me but they don’t practice daily, regularly. You can’t see, but I can: only external form and skill, but there is no gong-fu. Therefore the unfolding wonders can never be revealed to an unfaithful one, even if I explain the same thing to you all. The more you have, the more you see.

The Chinese ideal Wu Shu founders were either monks or Daoists … why? One explanation is this: because Wu Shu recognises concentration, physically and mentally, in order to reach its highest attainment which is the finest sensitivity of the total person – body, mind and spirit. Anything which hinders this development and growth must be rejected. This rejection does not come under any restriction of law, or moral or religious cult, but by the urge of inner liberation. Therefore this new impulse causes a new character to emerge – body, mind and spirit. This is Transcendental Art.

Finally, let us remember that any Art must aim at Excellence but the Wu Shu Artist lives a well-balanced, ordinary life, according to the Chinese concept. They are neither eccentric nor a superman, but an ordinary person among the crowd. Yet they live a full life, and wonders unfold daily in their Wu Shu pursuit.

Findings (part two)

EXTRACTS FROM EUGEN HERRIGEL “ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY”

1.       … Anyone who subscribes to this art today, therefore, will gain from its historical development the undeniable advantage of not being tempted to obscure his understanding of the “Great Doctrine” by practical aims – even though he hides them from himself – and to make it perhaps altogether impossible. For access to the art – and the masters of all times are agreed in this – is only granted to those who are “pure” in heart, untroubled by subsidiary aims … the exercises are mystical [internal] exercises, and accordingly can in no circumstances mean accomplishing anything outwardly [with the fist], but only inwardly with oneself … Wrapped in impenetrable darkness, Zen [Wu Shu] must seem the strangest riddle which the spiritual life of the East has ever devised: insoluble and yet irresistibly attractive … remember that [Wu Shu] is not meant to strengthen the muscles … Relax! Relax! … not a technical trick, but liberating breath-control with new and far-reaching possibilities … despite all equivocation and sober reserve, the results obtained by the new breathing are far too definite to be denied …

2.       … Since the remotest times its symbol has been the yielding and yet unconquerable water, so that Lao-tzu could say with profound truth that right living is like water, which “of all things the most yielding can overwhelm that which is of all things most hard” … the physical loosening must now be continual in a mental and spiritual loosening, so as to make the mind not only agile but free: agile because of its freedom, and free because of its original agility; and this original agility is essentially different from everything that is usually understood by mental agility. Thus, between these two states of bodily relaxedness on the one hand and spiritual freedom on the other there is a difference of level which cannot be overcome by breath-control alone, but only by withdrawing from all attachment whatsoever, by becoming utterly egoless: so that the soul, sunk within itself, stands in the plenitude of its nameless origin …

3.       … Even if the pupil does not at this stage grasp the true significance of his [movements], he at least understands why [Wu Shu] cannot be a sport, a gymnastic exercise. He understands why the technically learnable part of it must be practised to the point of repletion. If everything depends on the artist’s becoming purposeless and effacing himself in the event, then its outward realization must occur automatically, in no further need of the controlling or reflecting intelligence. It is this mastery of the art that the method of instruction seeks to inculcate. Practice, repetition, and repetition of the repeated with ever increasing intensity are its distinctive features for long stretches of the way. At least this is true of all the traditional arts. Demonstration, example; intuition, imitation – that is the fundamental relationship of instructor to pupil … 

Findings (part one)

EXTRACTS FROM DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI’S FOREWORD TO EUGEN HERRIGEL “ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY”

1.       … One of the most significant features we notice in the practice of archery [and Wu Shu] is that it is not intended for utilitarian purposes only or for purely aesthetic enjoyments, but is meant to train the mind; indeed, to bring it into contact with the ultimate reality. Archery is, therefore, not practiced solely for hitting the target [or self-defence]; the swordsman does not wield the sword just for the sake of outdoing his opponent; the dancer does not dance just to perform certain rhythmical movements of the body …

2.       … If one really wishes to be master of an art [including a martial art], technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique …

3.       … What differentiates Zen most characteristically from all other teachings, religious, philosophical, or mystical, is that while it never goes out of our daily life, yet with all its practicalness and concreteness Zen has something in it which makes it stand aloof from the scene of worldly sordidness and restlessness …

4.       … As soon as we reflect, deliberate, and conceptualise, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought interferes … The arrow is off the string but does not fly straight to the target, nor does the target stand where it is. Calculation which is miscalculation sets in. The whole business of archery goes the wrong way. The archer’s confused mind betrays itself in every direction and every field of activity …

5.       … Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. “Childlikeness” has to be restored after long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness … When a person reaches this stage of “spiritual” development, they are a Zen artist of life. They do not need, like the painter, a canvas, brushes, and paints; nor do they require, like the archer, the bow and arrow and target, and other paraphernalia. They have their limbs, body, head, and other parts. Their Zen-life expresses itself by means of all these “tools” which are important to its manifestation …

6.       …. a strange and somewhat unapproachable Eastern experience …

On wisdom

After I came back from my first day in school (when I was 5 years old) my father pointed to the Four Big Chinese Character-words written by a famous calligrapher who my father highly respected, and the four characters were “Da Zhi Ruo Yu” … it means “Wisdom is Ignorance”. I had always wanted to go to school to know what those four big characters meant. Alas, after he explained them to me, I was just as ignorant as I had been … I did not understand what he said. Now, after more than a half century, I begin to see what he said to me. During the past half century I often wondered … how could a person be smart and stupid? Now, I just begin to see the point … now I reach to this point and say, even if I’m not wise, I do know I’m ignorant ….