Martial arts philosophy

Better sweat in practice than bleed in battle (Wǔ Shù wisdom)

The combats and strategies were a constant topic through the human history. In China only there are seven important military texts. First is from worldwide well-known Sun Zǐ, (The Art of War), the next are from general Wèi Liáozi (The Art of War), Wú Qǐ (The Art of War), Sīmǎ Fǎ (The Marshal's Art of War or The Methods of the Sīmǎ Fǎ), the legendary figure Jiāng Zǐyá (Six Secret Teachings), general Zhang Liang (The Three Strategies of Huáng Shígōng), and finally: Questions and Replies between emperor Táng Tàizōng and general Lǐ Wèi Gōng. The texts were practically canonized under the name “The Seven Military Classics” already in 11^th century, and were later on included in most military encyclopedias. In military spheres it was as important as Confucius’s work is for the bureaucrats.

Better spend three years looking for a good master than ten years training with a bad one (Wǔ Shù wisdom)

In China a philosophy does not come only from the country’s rich culture but also from martial arts. The keystone in Chinese philosophy is a strong humanism that became a focus of numerous Chinese philosophers throughout the ages. This humanism does not imply exclusion or indifference to a supreme powers and the nature. Instead, the general conclusion goes towards the unity of human and ‘heaven.’ This spirit of synthesis has characterized the entire history of Chinese philosophy.

A range of similarly motivated philosophical doctrines is covered by Daoism. Two great philosophical systems of China stand alongside: Daoism and Confucianism. Somehow less influential and less important to the development of Chinese culture are ‘the School of Mo’ and ‘the School of law’. The latter was a utilitarian political philosophy that did not address higher questions like the nature and the purpose of life. Both of them evolved at about the same time as Confucianism and Daoism during the ‘Spring and Autumn Period’ (770–476 before our era), and ‘Warring States Period.’

Leadership catch: Adjustment and listening

Imagine walking through the woods. You carefully move and step slowly on the uneven ground where even the exposed tree roots are all covered by leaves. We adapt to environment. Although trees might seem static and unmovable they are still flexible and adaptive. They adjust to the surrounding environment and therefore become even more stable. They do not consume extra energy to rise straight up. It is natural for them to adapt to the floor declination when they grow.

We all have to adjust to our environment, or in martial arts to opponent, and to the mistakes you make during the fight. You can do this only by being flexible. In everyday life there is an abundance of events and issues that require our adaptation. But are we able to adapt quickly? How do we know what to do? When someone trips and is just about to fall, his brain starts to function at high speed. When we are very young or very drunk, we just let it go and fall down. Kids roll with it or just fall loosely, and because of this reaction, they are not severely injured most of the time. What about the rest of us? Our first reaction is violent; we start to gesticulate wildly with our hands. We start to contradict the obvious that happens all the same. Most of the time, instead of bending our knees, we stop our fall with our arms and quite a lot of times break our wrists. We forget how to fall and do not know how to adjust to this event that has happened to us many times before in our lives. We react in panic.

Steering and leadership

In live situations, and similarly in martial arts, we learn by repetition and mileage, repeating the task again and again. Try to recall how difficult the first attempt to ride a bicycle was. 

More than a decade ago I was introduced to Tai Chi. How difficult it was to understand the concepts that are so far away from our (Western) ones. On top of it my body coordination ability was proving difficult, remembering the sequences was even harder. Grasping the idea took some time, and so on. But, just like the process of learning to drive a car, where at the beginning simultaneously completing the tasks seems so difficult, patience is the key. The improvement is gradual and within time the steps are deeply ingrained in you. With no effort you drive a car, ride a bike or perform Tai Chi with calm and relaxed mind.

The beginner of one of five major styles of Tai Chi, the Yang style, was Yang Lu Chan (end of the 18th century - 1872). In his youth he had learned another Tai Chi style still in use today from the Chen family. At those times, the knowledge of the art was kept in the families not to be revealed to others and carefully transferred only within family. Yang was an outside apprentice, for which he was treated unfairly. But, being persistent he stayed and persevered in his practice. A story tells that one night, he was awakened by the sounds of hen and ha in the distance. He got up and traced the sound to an ancient house. Peeking through the broken wall, he saw his master Chen teaching the techniques of grasp, control, and emitting jīng to his sons in coordination with the sounds hen and ha. This knowledge gave young Yang a new perspective to control and to steer the opponent with great success.

Intuition and martial arts

Intuition and/or instinct? One thing two names? Significant for all living beings or only human? The animals definitely have instinct. But do they have an intuition as well?

There is a big difference between intuition and instinct! The latter is embedded in genetic code and therefore an inborn complex pattern of behavior existing in every species. It should be distinguished from a reflex - a simple reaction to a specific impulse composed of learned lessons that are wired in brains and based on chemistry and electrical signals through synapses - connections that fire when an impulse comes. And it fires unconsciously.

Intuition fires the same way as instinct but supposedly only in human brain. If it is based on the previous knowledge how come everybody agrees that even a very small child has an intuition? Okay, you can have a different understanding of the intuition as I do, as there are at least two avenues of pursuit when dealing with intuition. One is psychological and the other is spiritual. The spiritual one starts with beliefs, and we are not going to discuss about those issues here. The other avenue is on the psychological level. And this one is, in my opinion, more productive. Research suggest that part of the intuition is that one quickly forms a context using one’s ‘base of experience’ to draw parallels and turn that nonverbal or tacit evidence knowledge into decision-making knowledge.

Organizational culture and martial arts

Organizations are made for employees to work there and not opposite: employee should fit the organization. As the organization grows larger and more complex, management at the top lead and decide less by firsthand experience, but rather more and more on heavily processed data. From their standpoint they rarely see business flowing in the same way as do people down in production or on the sales floor. To understand huge amounts of data and information that is streaming toward them, after a throughout long training, they finally achieve to see the reality through the distorting glasses they've had to put on. Decisions they make and the responsibility they shoulder relies on tangible data. But these glasses somehow filter out emotions, feelings, sentiments, moods, and almost all the nuances of human situations that are part of everyday organizational culture consequently filtering or better losing all the tacit knowledge that drives business processes.

Organizational culture is the sum of values and rituals defined by rules. It is also a part of a “bigger picture” that surrounds an organization. This poses some problems if organization shock-wave through different cultures.

Four decades ago IBM tried to unify corporate culture in its subsidiaries all over the world. Geert Hofstede carried out a world-wide survey on employee values. The result was very informative and demonstrative. There were other researchers of the same topic too. A common conclusion of all those studies is that “we are definitely different”.

External and internal control

“Please contact my secretary to find the time in my schedule, I’m over booked…”  Have you ever heard a similar from an important CEO or other top manager? He/she is obviously under the time pressure, a stress situation or … If this happens frequently it is normally understood that such people don’t have free time.

In my post Cause and consequence / Urgent and important the pressure because of mainly dealing with urgent instead of important issues was already discussed. To further it, concentrate on the next problem, well described by Zhuāng Zǐ proverb: “If you cannot even govern your own self, how can you govern the world”.

How true and how often we do ignore it? When under the stress a basic martial arts skill is to control and not to fight emotions that are piling up. First try to ascertain what you sense or feel. Then do some concealed relaxation breathing to relax the tension.

Nonverbal – body language and Leadership

There are two types of people—those who come into a room and say, “Well, here I am!” and those who come in and say, “Ah, there you are.”(Frederick L. Collins)

Communications are verbal but, equally, if not more important, are those that are non-verbal. This accounts to between 50 to 70 percent of all communication – facial expression, eye gaze, gestures, and tone of voice. The way you listen, look, move and react lets other people know whether or not you pay attention, if you are being truthful, and how well you are listening.

Martial arts are based predominately on non-verbal communications. Once I asked my teacher: “Shifu, when two great martial arts masters meet how do they recognize who is better?”

Martial arts are a value-driven system

In the past, the main objective of martial arts was effective and efficient combat that regularly resulted in mortality or caused some degree of injury, often very severe, while today, martial arts are being used in more than one way. The first would be in the direct usage of martial arts that serves the original purpose. It is only used in extreme situations by military, police, and such organizations.Nowadays, the term is usually associated with various unarmed Asian martial arts, such as Wing Chun, karate do, judo, taekwondo, aikido, and others, and martial arts using mostly cold weaponry, such as kendo, ninjutsu, battojutsu. In reality, it encompasses a whole plethora of martial arts from around the world, like boxing, savate, capoeira, jeet kune do, krav maga, fencing, and much more. But here we need to be aware of the differences in the ways of thinking coming from the environments influenced by Confucianism, Daoism, or Buddhism on one side, and the West on the other. This is all reflected in those martial arts. While the Chinese martial arts are predominantly rhythmic in movement, the Western tend to be more dynamic and tense.

New @

Almost three years ago (April 2010) I have made a real lengthy dream of mine to come thru – to write a book. But not any book. A book about my two passions: Leadership and Martial arts. It was the time of my visiting exchange to the Xi’an Technological University as a professor.  Both professors at the Economic & Management College of Xi’an: Chunqing and Gang during my teaching and researching at first did not understood but later on grasped my thoughts and research intentions. The aim was to use Martial Arts doctrines based on two fundamental Chinese philosophies Daoism and Confucianism for Leadership. They helped me in grasping through long talks the ideas behind those two philosophies. At that time I didn’t know yet what would follow … Ok, I’ll tell this in ensuing blogs.