Here at the frontier, the leaves fall like rain. Although my neighbors are all barbarians, and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are still two cups at my table.
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.
At Plum Publications, Ted Mancuso wrote an article comparing hard and soft martial arts, specifically Taijiquan and Hung Gar. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.
It’s important to start this right. We have to distinguish between soft
and hard, and internal or external. Let’s be honest, all styles of Kung
Fu start as ”External styles”. But styles may be hard or soft and still
be external or internal. Another way to say this is that all kung fu
aims at occupying the center of the map. If you start in the north you
will move southward. If you start in east you will traverse to the west.
The point is that we often call this or that style external or hard or
soft without understanding that even in the most extreme cases, a proper
style covers all four of these corners.
I want to compare two styles that most people might consider to be
extremely opposed to one another. But Tai Chi and Hung Gar kung fu are
not really that antithetical. In fact, as we will see, they share a
great deal in common though that might not be as obvious as we would
like.
Of course people who study Tai Chi assume it is a soft, slow and
internal style as if these things were all the same. But as we said
earlier, all training starts externally because that is the only way you
can start. However, in some cases the training starts with the hard
external and in some cases with the soft external. At which point the
training starts to reverse its direction and go toward the opposite
direction is very dependent not only on the style, but on efforts of the
student and intelligence of the instructor.
There is also the issue of completeness. For instance, in Tai Chi, few
practitioners wish to master the entire system. Therefore those aspects
of Tai Chi in which you develop strength, create power, or condition the
body are rarely seen by the majority of students. It may be a shock to
say, but Tai Chi has body conditioning and other means of strengthening
it to withstand blows. Though it rarely engages in exercise like iron
palm training, there are equivalent exercises to develop strength and
power in the limbs. Most people who study Tai Chi for at least a few
years know that there are times when power and force issuance are
clearly shown. Sometimes they may only see this when their instructor’s
demonstrate, or give a private lesson; but it is there.
Let’s compare Tai Chi with Hung Gar. The first clue that the so-called
“external style” of hung gar is really something a little more
sophisticated that it first appears, comes with the one thing which Hung
shares with Tai Chi; something so obvious it is overlooked. Both of
these styles have sections at least, of very slow motion action. Many
parts of the Hung style move very slowly, relative to the speed possible
by a reputable martial artist. Why, you should ask yourself, are the
Hung Gar styles moving so slowly? Surely it cannot be for combat
purposes. There are a number of aspects to the answer but at least some
of these are because Hung players are focusing their attention and their
actions internally, that is to say, at the appropriate pace and amount
of strength linked with their intent. By the same token, Hung uses its
famous Shaolin Temple five animals—especially the Dragon and the
snake—to practice a more relaxed and fluid motion. The percentage of
this type of motion increases as does the skill level of the Hung
practitioner. You can actually see, If you’re exposed to enough of the
Hung style, the transformation from early sets, such as Gong Chi Fuk Fu,
to the Advanced sets such as iron wire, a very clear progression from
hard towards soft and external toward internal. This does not even count
such internal but hard training as the golden Bell or iron body.
I think that every tool has it's use. There are places for one step, three step and free sparring. There is a place for sports competition. None of this is actual combat, but there are lessons to be learned and skills to be honed. Dan Djurdjevic at The Way of Least Resistance had a post on the role of free sparring in martial arts. Below is an excerpt. The whole post may be read here.
The role of free sparring
Here is a post by reknowned internal martial artist and researcher, and BJJ practitioner and practitioner, Tim Cartmell on his discussion board from a decade ago. It concerns the role of free sparring in the development of martial skill. I think it deserves reposting, so I'm setting it out here (and hope Tim doesn't mind me doing so!):
This is a very interesting topic, the sparring vs. too deadly to spar dichotomy. My students also get into this discussion with practitioners of other arts that believe they are too lethal to spar.
I suppose their is no 'answer' short of no holds barred death matches, but it is important to look at the evidence we do have so that students can make an informed decision, especially students that want to prepare themselves for a real and violent confrontation.
I'll preface my comments by saying I have trained all different ways. I've studied traditional styles of martial arts in which all techniques were supposed to be potentially lethal, and which forbade sparring, as well as traditional arts which allowed contact sparring. I've also practiced several combat 'sports.'
One of the most, if not the most important aspect of success in a fight is mindset, next is experience, then physicality, finally specific technique. Without the will to fight, the greatest fighter in the world will lose to the most mediocre fighter. This is a common sense observation. It is extremely difficult (although probably not impossible) to develop a fighting mindset without some experience approximating a real fight. Like the boxers say, everyone has a plan until they get hit. If you have never been hit hard, crushed under someone's weight or been on the receiving end of a painful and unrelenting attack, how do you know how you will react? You may imagine you will respond appropriately and fight back, but you will never know for sure. Sparring will never be as intense as a real fight, but it is the closest approximation you will find within the bounds of relative safety (although you will be injured on occasion, it's an inevitability of learning to fight).
“Come to the edge.' 'We can't. We're afraid.' 'Come to the edge.'
'We can't. We will fall!' 'Come to the edge.' And they came. And he
pushed them. And they flew.”
Anyone who has done much reading on the history of
the traditional Chinese martial arts will be very familiar with the idea
of “lineage politics.” Even the average practitioner, on either side
of the Pacific, usually has more than a passing acquaintance with this
unpleasant phenomenon. Disputes typically arise within styles as
different students of the same teacher vie for seniority and
legitimacy.
This competition can take many forms, ranging from the
subtle exclusion of individuals from high profile projects to occasional
outbursts of interpersonal violence. Very often this competition is
carried out through competing “folk histories”
in which different sides attempt to promote narratives that shape how
the past is remembered. This use of rhetoric and memory as a tool to
secure social dominance coincides closely with James C. Scott’s findings
on the use of folklore as a “weapon of the weak” in South East Asia.
One purpose of a “lineage” is to create the image
of unwavering historical continuity over time. It denotes who inherits
the family legacy as well as the responsibility for preserving the
memory of the ancestors through the execution of certain rites. Few
institutions seem more static and non-negotiable. Yet as generations of
anthropologists have warned us, few social structures turn out to be
quite as plastic and open to continual renegotiation as lineage
genealogies.
I think that many students, when faced with a
lineage dispute, simply want to “get to the bottom of it.” They would
like to know which side is “right” and which is a historical pretender
or fraud. In the following essay I would like to encourage readers to
take a step back and consider the structure of the actual social
disputes that they are witnessing. These processes reveal a veritable
goldmine of information about the nature of the traditional Chinese
martial arts and how they are evolving over time.
Academically speaking, who is “right” is often much
less interesting than how they go about framing and promoting their
argument. The first question only tells us something about the history
of an individual style, but the second points to a larger set of
fundamental truths about culture. Actually appreciating what is at
stake, and grasping how these issues are understood and debated, can be
even more difficult for the average student than resolving the purely
historical issues.
As the term “lineage politics” implies, these
disputes are usually “political” in nature. By definition this sort of
conflict is often subtle and hard to observe. The challenge is all the
more insurmountable when the drama is being played out in a language and
cultural system that are very different from one’s own.
This is precisely what we see in the Chinese
martial arts. A few lineage disputes are loud affairs that make the
pages of popular magazines. But most are much more subtle attempts at
appropriating a group’s legitimacy. These attempts are sometimes highly
symbolic and hence opaque to foreign observers. Western students can
often sense some tension, or they might guess that something odd is
happening, but we need a much more finely ground lens to actually see
the structure of the dispute.
In 2003 Jeff Takacs published an intriguing study
of the artificial kinship systems seen in the traditional Chinese
martial arts which was intended to serve just such a purpose. His
article, titled “A Case of Contagious Legitimacy: Kinship, Ritual and
Manipulation in Chinese Martial Arts Societies” (Modern Asian Studies
37:4 885-917) begins by noting that most traditional hand combat
schools organize themselves as an artificially created family unit. He
asserts that while the bonds between members of the school are
technically fictive, they can be as strong as those seen in any other
kinship group.
This artificial structure is supported and
reinforced through the adoption of certain simple, but socially
powerful, rituals. While the correspondence between the ideal ancient
Chinese family and most modern martial arts associations is not exact
(an important point that we will return to later), they are close enough
for these rituals to be easily transported. By creating a clear set of
expectations about who has the responsibility for insuring that the
proper rites are observed, these guidelines also denote who is entitled
to inherit the master’s martial reputation and legitimacy.
This is the actual difference between a “disciple”
and a “student” in the traditional Chinese martial arts. I suspect that
many readers might profit by going back and reviewing Takacs very clear
discussion of this point. While a disciple may or may not inherit any
special secret knowledge, he or she actually gains their status from
where they stands within a larger ritual process. Once that process is
done away with (say in modern theater schools or some of the more
progressive hand combat styles to arise in the Republic period), the
term quickly loses its theoretical moorings.
Takacs argues that while it might appear that a
strict lineage structure creates transparency and limits the number of
individuals who can “inherit the system,” the very rituals that it is
based on actually create opportunities for opposing factions within the
clan to creatively nudge (or sometimes shove) history in one direction
or another.
He illustrates these points by reviewing a
seemingly innocuous stele raising ceremony held in honor of an important
Bagua teacher in Northern Taiwan. While on the surface this ceremony
looked entirely uncontroversial, and even somewhat bland, subtle
manipulations of the language of ritual revealed that it was actually a
successful attempt by an outside teacher to appropriate the martial
legitimacy of an important regional master.
The entire case is fascinating and well worth
reading. This article is easy to follow and relatively free of jargon.
It’s a nice example of traditional British Social Anthropology (in the
tradition of Victor Turner) and the clarity that it can bring to our
understanding of social structures. While his research focused on
Taiwan’s Bagua community, the article’s conclusions are actually fairly
portable and may help to illuminate puzzles in a great many arts. In
the remainder of this essay I outline, and briefly discuss, five of the
broader implications of this approach to understanding lineages for
Chinese martial studies.
Pat Parker, over at Mokuren Dojo found a very good article that dispels some of the myths surrounding the "10,000 hour rule" and and provides some guidance towards how to make the best use of your training time. An excerpt is below. The full article may be read here.
How top-down attention, feedback loops, and daydreaming play into the science of success.
The question of what it takes to excel — to reach genius-level acumen
at a chosen endeavor — has occupied psychologists for decades and
philosophers for centuries. Groundbreaking research has pointed to “grit” as a better predictor of success than IQ, while psychologists have admonished against the dangers of slipping into autopilot
in the quest for skill improvement. In recent years, one of the most
persistent pop-psychology claims has been the myth of the “10,000-hour
rule” — the idea that this is the amount of time one must invest in
practice in order to reach meaningful success in any field. But in Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (public library), celebrated psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman, best-known for his influential 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, debunks the 10,000-hour mythology to reveal the more complex truth beneath the popular rule of thumb:
The “10,000-hour rule” — that this level of practice
holds the secret to great success in any field — has become sacrosanct
gospel, echoed on websites and recited as litany in high-performance
workshops. The problem: it’s only half true. If you are a duffer at
golf, say, and make the same mistakes every time you try a certain swing
or putt, 10,000 hours of practicing that error will not improve your
game. You’ll still be a duffer, albeit an older one.
No less an expert than Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University
psychologist whose research on expertise spawned the 10,000-hour rule of
thumb, told me, “You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but
by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.”
“You have to tweak the system by pushing,” he adds, “allowing for more errors at first as you increase your limits.”
The secret to continued improvement, it turns out, isn’t the amount of time invested but the quality
of that time. It sounds simple and obvious enough, and yet so much of
both our formal education and the informal ways in which we go about
pursuing success in skill-based fields is built around the premise of
sheer time investment. Instead, the factor Ericsson and other
psychologists have identified as the main predictor of success is deliberate practice
— persistent training to which you give your full concentration rather
than just your time, often guided by a skilled expert, coach, or mentor.
It’s a qualitative difference in how you pay attention, not a
quantitative measure of clocking in the hours. Goleman writes:
Hours and hours of practice are necessary for great
performance, but not sufficient. How experts in any domain pay attention
while practicing makes a crucial difference. For instance, in his much-cited study of violinists
— the one that showed the top tier had practiced more than 10,000 hours
— Ericsson found the experts did so with full concentration on
improving a particular aspect of their performance that a master teacher
identified.
The Dao De Jing is not only one of the world's great classics, it is one
of the foundations of Philosophical Daoism. A free online version of
the Dao De Jing may be found here.Below is verse #51, Nurture.
Below is an excerpt from an article at Kung Fu Tea regarding animal styles in Chinese Martial Arts in general and Southern Mantis in particular. The full article may be read here.
Acquiring “Dark Powers” in the Southern Mantis Tradition: D. S. Farrer Examines the role of animals in the Chinese martial arts.
Introduction: Becoming Invulnerable in Southern Mantis Kung Fu
The traditional Chinese martial arts are rich in
animal symbolism. Tigers, dragons, cranes, snakes and monkeys are
common fixtures in the legends and folklore of these systems. Some
styles are imitative in nature, while others invoke animal powers in
more abstract and psychological ways. Nor is this a recent innovation.
Animal symbolism has been a feature of both Chinese martial and medical
practices since the Bronze Age. There is even a bit of a literature on
this subject. See for instance Ma Lianzhen’s 2010 article “From Ape
Worship in Ancient China to Animal Imitation in Modern Competition
Wushu” in the Journal of Chinese Martial Studies (Issue 2, 20-28).
Interpreting these stories, and tracing the ways in
which they are borrowed, evolve and change can be a challenge. Rarely
is there a single correct reading. Still, these legends hint at some of
the issues that concerned martial artists in the late Qing dynasty, as
well as illustrating the avenues by which this type of folklore was
transmitted.
Recently I resolved to do a little research on the
motif of the “crane fighting the snake.” This image appears in a variety
of arts stretched from Northern China to the islands of Indonesia.
While there is an abundance of historically interesting sources, I felt
that this project was lacking something. Why would martial artists of
diverse geographic, linguistic and social backgrounds go to such lengths
of spread these specific stories? Why did the same motifs appear so
often? Were these stories simply a marker of cultural legitimacy, or
did they convey something more to their intended audience?
The question is even more puzzling when one
considers that a number of the southern Chinese schools that seem to
have been most eager to adopt this motif do not really have much
“imitative content.” Wing Chun has traditionally drawn on the image of
the crane, possibly borrowed from Fujianese White Crane Boxing. After
the introduction of the Taiji legend of the “crane fighting a snake” to
Guangdong Province in the early 20th century, the Wing Chun community quickly absorbed this new story into its ethos as well.
Yet compared to their more northern neighbors Wing
Chun players do not spend much time “imitating,” or even consciously
invoking, the crane. That would be contradictory to the philosophical
basis of the art. So what does it mean to “become like a crane” in this
context? How can we understand this as either a training strategy or a
cultural process?
As luck would have it D. S. Farrer has recently
advanced his own framework for thinking about these very issues. This
chapter, “Becoming-animal in the Chinese Martial Arts” (in Living Beings: Perspectives on Interspecies Engagements
by Penelope Dransart (ed.) Bloomsbury 2013) provides us with exactly
the tools that we need to start thinking about these questions in a more
constructive way.
Farrer is no stranger to martial arts studies. In 2007 he earned his doctorate from the National University of Singapore.
His research fits naturally within the emerging field of performance
ethnography, and he currently teaches at the University of Guam where he
is an associate professor.
In the current article Farrer draws on his
extensive experience within the Southern Mantis (Chow Gar) clan to delve
more deeply into the relationship between the Chinese martial arts and
their seemingly totemic animals. Again, this is interesting precisely
because Southern Mantis is not generally considered to be an “imitative”
style, such as “drunken boxing” or any of the various schools of Monkey
Kung Fu.
Instead he argues that martial artists seek to push
the boundaries of the normal human body by engaging in a process of
“becoming-animal” through their ascetic and mystical practices. Here
“animals” are understood not as static objects but as verbs. They are
agents of change and transformation. The process of “becoming” that he
outlines mirrors some aspects of shamanistic practice.
Farrer draws from Eliade’s seminal 1974 volume Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. His thoughts on the subject of “becoming” are heavily informed by the writings of Deleuze and Guattari (2002).
This leads him to the somewhat controversial conclusion that the
“traditional Chinese martial arts are embodied Daoist practices, with tangki,
Buddhist and Confucian influences, passed down from the ancestral
masters and brought to life in the practice of current and future
generations” (Farrer 2013, 146).
I myself am hesitant to totally agree with this
statement if only because the Chinese martial arts have been many things
to many people. In my own review of the subject I have come to suspect
that popular ideas about Confucianism have probably played much more of
a role in the formation of the southern styles than most people
realize. Still, by the end of his chapter I found myself agreeing that
this may be an accurate characterization of the quest to transcend that
which is” merely human” within the Southern Mantis system. After going
back and reviewing Eliade and few other sources on Shamanism, it does
not take a great deal of imagination to see many of the parallels in
mental and physical training that Farrer described.
Of course that makes one wonder how widely spread
this pattern actually is. As Eliade himself pointed out in the opening
pages of his 1974 work, Shamanism is a minority player in the religious
landscapes of many of the societies in which it is found. It is a
technical art drawn on by those with specific problems at an appropriate
moment of crisis. Most of the time it coexists with other much larger
religious and spiritual systems of practice.
As I have thought about Farrer’s argument I have
found myself wondering if there might not be a similar process at work
in the world of the traditional martial arts. Do the various styles
represent or attach themselves to different aspects of society? Are the
students who voluntarily seek out this type of training and community
in East London and Mongkok basically the same sorts of individuals who
might seek a Shaman in other settings? In their personal struggles, do
they perceive a “sickness of the soul?” Is this what drives them to
“become-animal” in an attempt to restore a sense of balance and security
in their own lives?
Again, it is very interesting to see this sort of a
conversation unfolding around the beliefs and practices of Chow Gar
students. This is not a branch of the martial arts that is generally
thought of as being overly “internal” or “new age” in its cultural
orientation. Rather Southern Mantis boxers are among the most dedicated
proponents of “real world self-defense” that one is likely to find in
the Chinese martial arts. It is fascinating to realize that these
issues of “being” and “becoming” can exist not just in the more occult
aspects of the “internal arts” (where most of us would look for them),
but even in the most “practical” areas of the Chinese hand combat
community.
If one can see the Shamanistic impulse here it
might be worth taking another look at the question more generally.
Further, students of the southern Chinese martial arts will appreciate
this chapter for its clear and concise summary of the Chow Gar sect,
including its history, training methods and goals. When read together
with the works of Daniel Amos [1983, Marginality and the hero's art: Martial artists in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Canton) [Dissertation]; 1997 “A Hong Kong Southern Praying Mantis Cult.” Journal of Asian Martial Arts
6(4): 31-61; 1999. “Spirit Boxers in Hong Kong: Two Observers, Native
and Foreign.” Journal of Asian Martial Arts. 8 (4) pp.8-27] readers
can begin to construct a much more accurate view of this area of Chinese
martial culture.
Today we have another guest post by Jonathan Bluestein. Jonathan's guest posts have a habit of ending up on the all time favorite list.
This one is about the topic of transmission in the martial arts.
Hidden Transmission in the Martial Arts
There is
a coach, and there is a teacher. A coach provides you with tools to success. A
teacher passes unto you a system of thinking and doing for personal growth.
A teacher
teaches, but his shadow also speaks. Have you ever heard the whisper of a
teacher’s shadow? It is thick, and resonates through your core with the might
of an earthquake, though so elusive you may not notice.
A future
You carries on a movement long ago taught, and then it strikes the unsuspecting
onlooker, that your shadow is not truly yours. It fluctuates to the rhythm of
another, and others that came before.
The
Japanese call this Isshin Denshin (以心伝心) – a
heart-to-heart transmission. A way shown without being described, a path drawn
without being illustrated; a book of knowledge that contains not a single word.
Thus, the
technique of martial teaching is Shamanic, unwieldy. Growing another’s skin on
top of yours. Such is the traditional method of apprenticeship.
It is
often pondered why a lot may bend a knee to a master, yet few if any reach his
status. Many a time, the answer is that skill is only absorbed by him who had
been observant.
For how
many a things can be verbally elucidated? There is a limit to what can be
willfully given; and the rest, stolen property it ought to become, as have
noted the clever T.T. Liang.
Then it
remains, that by being the thief of another’s spirit, we can borrow a pair of
eyes with a vision of a thousand things which are beyond the colour spectrum of
most men.
Unbeknownst
to us, our progress is also an evolution in the assimilation of the mindset,
mannerisms and character of he who shares the wisdom. For an intangible
presence is manifested in every moment, and our ability to contain it largely
affects long-term understandings.
A tone of
voice, an expression of one’s face, a trait of gait or the calmness of bearing.
These and others are more than mere aspects of the personality. They are
seamless stitches in the fabric of martial expression. To give heed by these
attributes is the making of an astute investment. To embody them, truthfully
and sincerely, is to be able to accept a full transmission.
___________________________________
Jonathan Bluestein is best-selling author, martial arts teacher, and head of Blue Jade Martial Arts International. For more articles by shifu Bluestein, his books and classes offered by his organization, visit his website at: www.bluejadesociety.com
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