Hiding from the News

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Next time someone gets a bee in their bonnet about Chinese martial arts being all about real fighting, and not theatrical, make them watch this:

One of the hardest things for YMCA Consensus people, also known as pure-martial-artists, to accept is the comedic nature of Chinese martial arts. Yes, there has always been a snuff-out-your-enemy part of martial arts. And yes, there has always been a blood-sport-honor element. And also a deep spiritual transformative element, that’s what Kung Fu means by the way. But 80% of all Chinese martial arts for the last 500 years has been comic. If you think about it, all comic theatrical martial arts have an element of magic-invulnerability in them. And both Buddhism (Diamond Body) and Daoism (Immortal Body) are partially built around this comic form of religious expression. To make martial arts pure, Buddhism and Daoism had to be gutted in the first half of the 20th Century.
Comic religion is nearly incomprehensible to the modern mind, YMCA filterist, Atheist, whatever. But Comic religion is still a possibility.
Why do I say this? Well, there is a concept in Judaism called Pashat. It means: the plain meaning. When you are in a Jewish community, around a table, you do not debate Pashat. Why? Because Pashat is the basis of debate. It is what makes it possible. It is the anchor. Once you have an anchor, you can have ten good men debating 30 different positions. And that is what makes Judaism work. There is no literalism. There is no singular interpretation. Judaism is both a tragic and a comic religion. It is tragic because people do insist on understanding the future, the present and the past through a single filter. And it is comic because people will insist on viewing even time itself through mutually incoherent filters simultaneously.

If we are going to make progress in Chinese Martial Arts studies, we are going to have to find Pashat. I have argued that the Pashat of Chinese Martial Arts is the practice I do, the movement itself. (Of course I did not call it Pashat, but I did try to make it the anchor of debate.) I hope this helps.

Now check out these links about Jews learning to fight. Boxing Rabbi, and Fighting Yeshiva

This is unrelated, but interesting to contemplate in terms of costuming, dragon religion (discussed in my book), deeper questions of Chinese theatrical insider-outsider motifs (see the work of Daphne Lei), and quite beautiful. (hat tip: Maija)

This is actually related but takes about 40 minutes to get into, still super interesting and troubling. It is a debate between two Jewish brothers about the idiocy of peer review.