Shoot first. Ask Questions Later.
/This is pretty much my approach to teaching martial arts.
"Shoot first. Ask Questions later." It is description of American pragmatism. We get the job done, and then we figure out how to explain it.
I've been listening to woefully inadequate explanations of the origins of Chinese Martial Arts all of my life. I started this blog largely to express what half a lifetime of study has revealed about those origins, so I'm not surprised that I've got people saying I'm wrong.
The first question that has to be answered is a tough one and will probably take me at least 10 postings: Why did Chinese culture create Martial Arts, when no other culture did this? (I plan to stand by this outrageous statement and I will deal with the exceptions in in a future posting--they are Indonesia, Cochin-India, Muay-Thai, Korea and Japan. I've already dealt with Africa in my videos.)
The term "cultivate qi" is used in Daoism a lot, to some extent in martial arts, less so in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), and for practically everything in qigong.
I asked my future wife(?) who is an Acupuncturist, what she thought "cultivating qi" meant? Her answer, "Live Free, or Die Hard!" Which we both saw and loved.
To 'cultivate qi' means to do experiments which reveal your true nature (de). This of course can be contrasted with experiments which obscure your true nature.
But this poses the question, what is your true nature? The Chinese term 'true nature' is de, which has many different translations because it actually means a whole bunch of really different things. For instance, in Confucius Analect's, it is usually translated "virtue." It was on the basis of this translation that European Enlightenment thinkers were able to argue that a non-Christian could be virtuous, and thus fully human.
"Shoot first. Ask Questions later." It is description of American pragmatism. We get the job done, and then we figure out how to explain it.
I've been listening to woefully inadequate explanations of the origins of Chinese Martial Arts all of my life. I started this blog largely to express what half a lifetime of study has revealed about those origins, so I'm not surprised that I've got people saying I'm wrong.
The first question that has to be answered is a tough one and will probably take me at least 10 postings: Why did Chinese culture create Martial Arts, when no other culture did this? (I plan to stand by this outrageous statement and I will deal with the exceptions in in a future posting--they are Indonesia, Cochin-India, Muay-Thai, Korea and Japan. I've already dealt with Africa in my videos.)
The term "cultivate qi" is used in Daoism a lot, to some extent in martial arts, less so in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), and for practically everything in qigong.
I asked my future wife(?) who is an Acupuncturist, what she thought "cultivating qi" meant? Her answer, "Live Free, or Die Hard!" Which we both saw and loved.
To 'cultivate qi' means to do experiments which reveal your true nature (de). This of course can be contrasted with experiments which obscure your true nature.
But this poses the question, what is your true nature? The Chinese term 'true nature' is de, which has many different translations because it actually means a whole bunch of really different things. For instance, in Confucius Analect's, it is usually translated "virtue." It was on the basis of this translation that European Enlightenment thinkers were able to argue that a non-Christian could be virtuous, and thus fully human.
