What is Wu Shu?

What is Wu Shu?

                                Tai Ji Quan?

                                                      Chinese Calisthenics?

Self-Defence? Kung Fu? Martial arts?

Chen Kang wrote:

“ A time-honoured cultural legacy of the Chinese people, Wu Shu has been considerably enriched and popularized in recent years. The first Wu Shu skills in ancient times included a kind of boxing and the use of cudgels, spears and other weapons. Such skills have in due course developed into a form of physical fitness and cultivating will power. It has also become an art form because of the beauty of its varied postures and movements.

“Take Tai Ji Quan known for its perfect harmony of movement, balancing forcefulness and suppleness, well-balanced and graceful movement that fuse into a flowing continuity. Its routine carefully designed to exercise all parts of the body … It is helpful for improving the health of people suffering from chronic ailments, of old folk, and of people with weak constitutions. It has now been adopted for use by hospitals and sanatoriums.”

Recently, I have been frequently asked about the difference between Kung Fu and Wu Shu.

Wu Shu has nothing whatsoever to do with the uncanny magical power of Kung Fu as the films depict, nor has it any link with the “Kung Fu” generally taught in the West, which is a sort of free-for-all street-fighting style! 

Sparring in Wu Shu is only demonstrating the techniques, we treat it as a sport. (People criticize this, and say it is “wishy-washy”. What is not wishy-washy? Violence? Really killing?) One may learn Wu Shu and reach its highest proficiency without doing any sparring at all.

Those who exploit Wu Shu have used all sorts of publicity full of self-gratifying, boasting, and even lying in order to serve their own ends, and have done much harm to Wu Shu. These people have no love, genuine interest or appreciation of Wu Shu, only using it and abusing it to gain notice from the public, especially those who have a sincere interest in this art.

My teaching of Wu Shu is an act of Sharing, an act of promoting East-West Cultural Exchange. Especially Tai Ji with its rich therapeutic nature, I think, is very much in need. If it is properly introduced, a great service will be given to the public.

We all know no mastership of any kind of Art can be obtained within a short period of time. Can you become a pianist overnight? Or a ballerina after a few lessons?

I know some people, after having visited the Orient for a few weeks or months, return to the West and claim to be the Master of such and such. Meanwhile I recall, many years ago, once after I watched an excellent Wu Shu demonstration, I made a remark to the artist about his unsurpassed proficiency in the Art. He modestly admitted his many years of practice but said, “I’m only a beginner of this Great Art-Treasure”. Was this merely Chinese etiquette? Or was the Truth spoken?

Unmoving wisdom (part two)

PASSAGES FROM TAISEN DESHIMARU "THE ZEN WAY TO THE MARTIAL ARTS"

Human beings are not like lions and tigers, so the way of Budo [Wu Shu] must not be like them either. The tiger and lion are strong, and their instinct and desire make them want to win. It never occurs to them to abandon their ego. But human beings can go beyond the ego and death. In Budo, they must become even stronger than the lion or the tiger, and discard the animal instinct that clings to the human spirit.

Two hundred years ago in Japan there was a kendo [sword] master named Shoken, whose home was infested by a huge rat. Every night this big rat came to Shoken’s house and kept him awake. He had to do his sleeping by day. He consulted a friend of his who kept cats, a sort of cat trainer. Shoken said, “Lend me your best cat.”

The cat trainer lent him an alley cat, extremely quick and adept at rat-catching, with stout claws and far-springing muscles. But when he came face to face with the rat in the room, the rat stood his ground and the cat had to turn tail and run. There was decidedly something very special about that rat.

Shoken then borrowed a second cat, a ginger one, with a terrific ki [qi] and an aggressive personality. This second cat stood his ground, so it and the rat fought; but the rat got the best of it and the cat beat a hasty retreat.

A third cat was procured and pitted against the rat – this one was black and white – but it could no more overcome the rat than the other two.

Shoken then borrowed yet another cat, the fourth; it was black, and old, and not stupid, but not so strong as the alley cat or the ginger cat. It walked into the room. The rat stared at it awhile, then moved forward. The black cat sat down, very collected, and remained utterly motionless. A tiny doubt flitted through the rat. He edged a little closer and a little closer; he was just a little bit afraid. Suddenly the cat caught him by the neck and killed him and dragged him away.

Then Shoken went to see his cat-training friend and said to him, “How many times have I chased that rat with my wooden sword, but instead of my hitting him he would scratch me; why was your black cat able to get the best of him?”

The friend said, “What we should do is call a meeting and ask the cats themselves. You’re a kendo master, so you ask the questions; I’m pretty certain they understand all about martial arts.”

So there was an assembly of cats, presided over by the black cat which was the oldest of them all. The alley cat took the floor and said, “I am very strong.”

The black cat asked, “Then why didn’t you win?”

The alley cat answered, “Really, I am very strong; I know hundreds of different techniques for catching rats. My claws are stout and my muscles far-springing. But this rat was no ordinary rat.”

The black cat said, “So your strength and your techniques aren’t equal to those of the rat. Maybe you do have a lot of muscles and a lot of wasa [technique], but skill alone was not enough. No way!”

Then the ginger cat spoke: “I am enormously strong, I am constantly exercising my ki and my breathing through zazen [sitting meditation]. I live on vegetables and rice soup and that’s why I have so much energy. But I too was unable to overcome that rat. Why?”

The old black cat answered, “Your activity and energy are great indeed, but that rat was beyond your energy; you are weaker than that big rat. If you are attached to your ki, proud of it, it becomes like so much flab. Your ki is just a sudden surge, it cannot last, and all that is left is a furious cat. Your ki could be compared to water flowing from a faucet; but that of the rat is like a great geyser. That’s why the rat is stronger than you. Even if you have a strong ki, in reality it is weak because you have too much confidence in yourself.”

Next came the turn of the black-and-white cat, which had also been defeated. He was not so very strong, but he was intelligent. He had satori [awakening], he had finished with wasa and spent all his time practising zazen. But he was not mushotoku (that is, without any goal or desire for profit), and so he too had to run for his life.

The black cat told him, “You’re extremely intelligent, and strong, too. But you couldn’t beat the rat because you had an object, so the rat’s intuition was more effective than yours. The instant you walked into the room it understood your attitude and state of mind, and that’s why you could not overcome it. You were unable to harmonize your strength, your technique, and your active consciousness; they remained separate instead of blending into one.

"Whereas I, in a single moment, used all three faculties unconsciously, naturally and automatically, and that is how I was able to kill the rat.

"But I know a cat, in a village not far from here, that is even stronger than I am. He is very, very old and his whiskers are all gray. I met him once, and there’s certainly nothing strong-looking about him! He sleeps all day. He never eats meat or even fish, nothing but rice soup, although sometimes he does take a drop of sake. And he has never caught a single rat because they’re all scared to death of him and scatter like leaves in the wind. They keep so far away that he has never had a chance to catch even one. One day he went into a house that was positively overrun with rats; well, every rat decamped on the instant and went to live in some other house. He could chase them away in his sleep. This old graybeard cat really is mysterious and impressive. You must become like him: beyond posture, beyond breathing, beyond consciousness.”

For Shoken, the kendo master, this was a great lesson.

In zazen, you are already beyond posture, beyond breathing, beyond consciousness …

… In zazen, our energy and mind harmonize with the energy of the cosmos, and that infinite energy governs and directs our own energy.

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 …

Teaching, learning and growth

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


1.       … The Japanese pupil brings with him three things:

good education,

                passionate love for his chosen art, and

                                uncritical veneration of his teacher …

2.       … Shunning long-winded instructions and explanations, the latter contents himself with perfunctory commands and does not reckon on any questions from the pupil. Impassively he looks on at the blundering efforts, not even hoping for independence or initiative, and waits patiently for growth and ripeness. Both have time: the teacher does not harass, and the pupil does not overtax himself …

3.       … Far from wishing to waken the artist in the pupil prematurely, the teacher considers it his first task to make him a skilled artisan with sovereign control of his craft … He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs them give him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers …

4.       … There is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery. Not the danger of wasting himself in idle self-gratification – for the East has no aptitude for this cult of the ego – but rather the danger of getting stuck in his achievement, which is confirmed by his success and magnified by his renown … Thus the teacher lets his pupil voyage onward through himself. But the pupil, with growing receptiveness, lets the teacher bring to view something of which he has often heard but whose reality is only now beginning to become tangible on the basis of his own experiences …

5.       … It is immaterial what name the teacher gives it, whether indeed he names it at all. The pupil understands him even when he keeps silent … “Just as one uses a burning candle to light others with”, so the teacher transfers the spirit of the right art from heart to heart, that it may be illumined … the pupil remembers that more important that all outward works, however attractive, is the inward work which he has to accomplish if he is to fulfil his vocation as an artist …

6.       … For mastery proves its validity as a form of life only when it dwells in the boundless Truth and, sustained by it, becomes the art of the origin. 

The Master no longer seeks, but finds …

7.       … Wherever his way may take him, the pupil, though he may lose sight of his teacher, can never forget him. With a gratitude as great as the uncritical veneration of the beginner, as strong as the saving faith of the artist, he now takes his Master’s place, ready for any sacrifice. Countless examples down to the recent past testify that this gratitude far exceeds the measure of what is customary among mankind …