Warriors, Artists and Technicians #2

What is the difference between warriors, martial artists, and skilled fighters? (Continued)

The time when Confucius lived and taught in China was just before the Warring States Era. It seems likely that his codes of conduct and visions of social order were inspired by an earlier era when wars were fought by a class of warriors. The story goes that Confucius was born into a warrior class but his group or lineage was defeated before he came of age. So he had the warrior training (he was the greatest archer of his time), and the warriorcode (extraordinary discipline), but he no longer had the status of a warrior. The warrior era was waning.

During the Warring States Era, hundreds of thousands of people were brought on to the fields of battle. These were not warriors; they were farmers, artisans, and convicts given weapons and conscripted to fight for generals, princes and kings.

At the end of the Warring States Era the first Emperor of the Qin (Qinshihuangdi), mostly finished off the warrior class. By the time of Han Wudi, there was none left in China.

In Ancient Greece warriors invented democracy. The recent movie "300" is about a last stand of a group of warriors against a conscript army. Alexander the Great and later the Romans, fielded huge well-disciplined armies, but when not at war, men were considered "citizens" not warriors.

In Europe around 1000 years ago, various kings called together every man who had a horse and sent them into battle. They carved up the land in to kingdoms. Those men, whose contribution was their horse and their bravado, were made noble. They became "gentlemen" "landlords," and "knights." They developed a very strict warrior code, which we have come to think of as Honor. With in this code, if someone called you a liar, or insulted someone beneath you in the hierarchy, you had to fight them. If the offender was also a gentleman, you had to duel with them. In this world, people were not free to disagree. The expression "I beg to differ," is a holdover from these times. If you opened a shop and started selling stuff, you lost your status as a gentleman.

Fortunately this code of honor is mostly gone today. But it does linger. This aristocracy was very weak at the beginning of the 20th Century, and they died in disproportionate numbers during WWI.

A very tough form of Warrior Honor developed on the border between England and Scotland. These two countries were at war for 1000 years, so long that the landlords in the borderlands collected their taxes by something they called Blackmail. They lived in small rough houses, abducted their wives, and sharpened their thumbs for plucking out eyes. In 1650 or so, when England and Scotland made peace, better-organized landlords came in and slaughtered the boarder people. The survivors fled briefly to Northern Ireland and then came to America. They are known formally as the Scots-Irish, but they have always called themselves 'rednecks.'

So it is fair to say that tiny hints of Warrior Honor exist in the US Military today, but it is a volunteer army most citizens (and some non-citizens) can qualify to join.

In Japan, to be a warrior, you had to be born into the Samurai class. (I believe a Samurai could also adopt you at any age.) Only Samurai were allowed to own swords, on penalty of death. Before Musashi, there was some training, mostly match fighting, grappling, throwing and wrestling. The code of a Samurai was very strict. It emphasized fearlessness and a willingness to die with out hesitation. Musashi was a real man, but as a myth he is credited with destroying the Warrior Code by using and teaching technique to win. Like the Europeans who considered it a violation of the code to practice shooting or fencing before a duel, the Samurai code valued pure fearlessness, pure willingness to die, not skill.

Part 3: Art vs. Skill

Interesting Historical Document

Here is a link to an ebook about an Australian man's journey through China in the 1890's:
AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA, BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A QUIET JOURNEY ACROSS CHINA TO BURMA, by GEORGE ERNEST MORRISON M.B., C.M. Edin., F.R.G. First published in 1895.

Warriors, Artists, and Technicians #1

What is the difference between a warrior, a martial artist, and a skilled expert?

A warrior is a member of a class, generally it is a privilege of birth. The warrior is not a universal concept but variants of it exist world wide. The first warriors could also be called shaman-kings. Most likely they developed from hunter-gather groups that occupied mountains, jungles or dry plains. These hunter-groups, often at war with each other, were in the habit of raiding the first agricultural settlements. At some point, these settlements probably got the idea that they could offer the hunter-groups ruler-ship in exchange for protection. They thus became the first warrior classes.

These warrior shaman's most powerful weapon was inspiring fear. Chinese historians record this kind of shaman-commander charging off into battle with a poisonous snake in each hand, wild hair, animal skins, horns and a terrifying mask. After countless generations, these shaman-warriors morphed into warriors with a strict code. The warriors of neighboring kingdoms fought each other on designatied fields of battle, with codes of conduct and rules about how to kill, whom to kill, and what to do with captured enemies.

In China, this was the time when the Zhouyi was written. The Zhouyi eventual developed into the Yijing (I Ching) or the book of changes. Richard Rutt's translation and commentary sheds really interesting light on this era of warrior inspired codes that used divination and both mass animal and human sacrifice as a tools for staying in power.

This is not just history. The warrior-shaman-kings are still around in isolated parts of Indonesia. (See Don F. Draeger's beautiful book the The Weapons & Fighting Arts of Indonesia.) The Lords Army in the Congo, would also qualify. As would The Terror Twins in the Burma-Thai boarder region.

Part two: Warrior Codes

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.

Nei Jia Quan

Jess O'Brien edited together a bunch of interviews with internal martial artists called Nei Jia Quan Internal Martial Arts, Teachers of Tai Ji Quan, Xing Yi Quan, and Ba Gua Zhang.
What I like about the book is I can really imagine these various teachers are talking to me. In fact, it's pretty funny, because a lot of the time I have this sense that the teachers are shouting at me. I'm willing to bet Paul Gale likes to shout. Here is a nice excerpt:

"'The bottom of the foot is the back.' There's a physical reality of it that the bottom of the foot is the back, meaning that the bottom of your foot is pulling your back forward. You have to learn to move that way, otherwise there's no foundation. You'll always get swept and knocked down because you'll be top-heavy."

I think my favorite section was the interview with Luo Dexiu where he talks about the cultural barriers he had to get around in order to learn from very traditional teachers. In that traditional setting a direct question would have been perceived as a challenge to the status of his teacher, and his teacher would have gotten very angry. He and his fellow students came up with all sorts of ingenious ways to get questions answered with out actually ever asking a question.  At one point he and another student stage angry huff and puff arguments and then ask the teacher to settle them.   This technique got some their questions answered.
I noticed a theme that many of the teachers brought up.  They said qi is given too much attention and that yi (intentionality?)  is not given enough.  I guess that's true with some teachers, but it wasn't true with any of mine.

It's impossible to generalize about all the student teacher relationships out there, but in my opinion once you've internalized about 300 martial applications of various sorts, yi in the application sense of the word becomes less important.  One can continue using the word yi by tweaking it's meaning but there are other terms for this "higher level" yi such as jingshen. 

It's a good book and I had fun arguing with the various teachers.  I would have shortened most of the interviews if I was editing it, but I'm planning to buy volume 2 if there is one.
The book includes interviews with these teachers: Gabriel Chin, Tim Cartmell, Paul Gale, Fong Ha, Luo De Xiu, Allen Pittman, William Lewis, Tony Yang, Zhao Da Yuan, Bruce Frantzis. Check it out.

Nam Singh's cooking with Chinese Herbs

Nam Singh, is a teacher of mine, a fellow student, and a friend. He is a fantastic and creative cook.

A good cooking class should do the following:

1. Really get you familiar with the ingredients. In this case the qi qualities of the ingredients-- What they do, how they are nutritious, and where and when to find the best quality. But all cooking classes should teach you how to know the best ingredients, what they do and how to use them.

2. Teach cooking methods. Deep knowledge of the basic methods is essential for experimentation.

3. Teach preparation and presentation.

4. Teach you great classic recipes, and how to vary them according to ingredients, taste, and appetite.

Probably the most important thing about learning to cook is that it refines your appetite. Being able to really trust your personal appetite to tell you what and how to eat is the definition of health!

Nam Singh teaches through these organizations:

CCD Innovation, Pacific School of Herbal Medicine, The Academy of Healing Nutrition.

Since practicing internal martial arts and qigong will likely improve your digestion, you will have to learn to eat less. At first it won't make much difference but if you are over 35 and have been practicing for 10 years you will likely balloon up unless you learn to eat less.  The best way to do that is to really learn the qi qualities of the foods you are eating.

In this context, we could drop the term qi because any good traditional cooking class will teach you detailed information about the qi qualities of food.  In depth traditions of cooking all over the world are storehouses of knowledge about how to combine and bring out the best nutrients from local ingredients.  And since nearly everything is local now we have a lot of choices.

100% Qi Free?

I took the following quote from Joanna Zorya at Martial Tai Chi:

100% Qi-Free

Our own teaching completely rejects the concept of qi, also known as chi, ch'i or ki. Other instructors coming to the MTA [Martial Tai Chi] should also reject the idea completely. However, on this website there are a couple of articles which specifically deal with the issue. Qi is also dealt with briefly on our "Taiji Concepts" DVD - the clip (in "3 internal harmonies excerpts") is shown on our "Techniques" video clips page. We have found it necessary to address the issue of qi, because most people in the Tai Chi mainstream are utterly obsessed with it, and we wanted to make our position on it absolutely clear. The concept is at best obsolete and at worst dangerous. Significantly, the notion of qi is simply not true.

The way I see it the word Qi is polysemous. It has many different meanings depending on context. So if the teachers at Martial Tai Chi want to ban the word, they aren't necessarily banning the concepts that come with it.

The word qi might in a particular context mean the totality of everything you can feel. Or it might mean the feeling of blood or lymph pulsing through your body. But in another context it means the bubbles in a glass of soda pop. If the term qi is not clearly defined in context, it can be used to create intensional vagueness. Such vagueness is often used by Charismatics to create a feeling of authority among witnesses to a performance of healing or other subordinating demonstrations of power.

However, we really aren't sure what it is we are feeling inside and even outside our bodies. The term qi can be used in conjunction with other words to communicate the density, directionality, size, or relative temperature of something we feel. I'm not going to argue that it is a necessity, just that it can be used appropriately.

Here is my LONG definition of Qi. I wrote this 10 years ago, so it may need some updating, but perhaps readers will have suggestions.

UPDATE: I've had some interesting exchanges with Joanna Zorya in the comments for a previous post on Lineage. I mention these books:

Thinking Through Cultures, On Beauty and Being Just, The Trouble with Principle.

Balance

It is a standard of Chinese martial arts that one should cultivate balance. When I learned my first broad sword form (wuhudao) my teacher, Bing Gong, had me learn it with the sword in the left hand because I am left handed. This meant that I had to learn a mirror image of the form he did. Being the precocious kid that I was, I taught myself the right hand too.Later a second teacher, George Xu, taught me another sword form (baxianjian). At the beginning I suggested that perhaps I should learn it left handed. His response was memorable, and classic gongfu-teacher-speak, "You don't have any idea how to use either hand...yet." (I learned it right handed.)

Balance can be measured or assessed in a number of different ways. Here is a short list which I will elaborate on in a future post:

TYPES OF BALANCE

• What is Comfortable to use: One's preference for left or right can be balanced by using the "good side" less

• Body shape and size (including balancing muscles on the left with muscles on the right). Think losing muscle to get to balance, instead of building muscle to get there.

• Weight distribution (front to back and side to side)

• Range of motion (functional range of motion and optimal range of motion.)

• Muscle strength or weakness as distinct from size

• Ability to move qi, fluids, micro-articulation of circles (or other shapes)

• Since the internal organs are never balanced in terms of weight and size they can be balanced in the sense that they can all be felt with equal clarity.

• Multiple layers of qi. Starting a Weiqi (the feeling of the surface of the body) and then going inward layer by layer, sensing left to right, front to back or top and bottom.

• Balance is also part of complete embodiment. What feels balanced?

• Lack of balance in range of motion lower down in the body effects the verticalness of the spine and all angles above the hips? The levelness of the hips dramatically effects the verticalness of the spine.

• Fighters know that you can have a 'blind spot,' a place in your preception where you don't sense things very well. For instance punches that come from a certain angle are more likely to hit you. These can and should be 're-embodied.

Do you own your legs?

Readers can comment on this provocative idea:
George Xu claims to be the source behind Chi Running. One of the things he said is that most people let their legs carry their bodies, they don't use their bodies to carry their legs. By this I understand him to mean that most people lack both integration between their legs and their torso, and they also lack a kind of mind or embodiment.

This integration of the legs and torso, once gained, can be measured as a smaller, more efficient range of motion.  Xu refers to this type of embodiment as the predator mind. It is a kind of fearless self-possession. It is a predatory way of seeing and moving.  It is relaxed yet ready to pounce. It is drawn in toward the center but not closed, not  contracted.

Shen (Spirit?): What does it mean?

Elisabeth Hsu wrote an article in Culture Medicine and Psychiatry, in 2000, called Spirit (SHEN), Styles or Knowing , and Authority in Contemporary Chinese Medicine. The article is a summary of her book from 1999, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine, (Cambridge University Press.) I got the article free through Interlibrary Loan if you are just interested in ideas, but I recommend the book too.

The book tells a cool story. In Kunming, in the late 1980's Hsu signed up to study three different forms of Chinese medicine and compared how they were transmitted. She did this as a medical anthropologist, in other words, she was always looking beyond the subject she was studying to a larger field of knowledge. This is how good social thought gets produced.

First she signed up to study TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) at a government college which taught clinical medicine in a TCM Hospital. Then she found a qigong master, who did treatments on difficult cases. Finally, she found a teacher of the Neijing (Inner Classic of Medicine), really a "doctor's doctor", who had completed his studies before the two big changes in Chinese Medicine took place; the first being the invention of Clinical TCM and the other being the Cultural Revolution.

What she found is that each style of transmission uses the Term SHEN very differently. These differences have profound implications for how these various types of practitioners assert authority and make claims about what is real.

1. Clinical TCM: Shen is a list of observations that correspond closely with what we call functions of the brain in Bio-medicine (you know regular modern medicine.)

2. Qigong Master: Shen is a very vague idea, no one seems to be able to define it, yet people agree that it is what improves (or doesn't improve) with a series of qigong treatment performances.

3. The Neijing expert: Shen means different things in different parts of the text. The teachers uses the text which is often metaphorical or obscure, to impart his traditional knowledge and extensive experience about medicine. Thus the teacher asserts some authority about what Shen means at any one time, or in a particular context. Hsu calls this quality of having multiple meanings polysemous.

In my teaching I falls in to category 3. I use terms like qi, shen, jin, yi, to mean different things in different contexts.