Trust in Me: Mindfulness and Madness in Martial Arts Philosophy

Trust in me:

Mindfulness and Madness in Martial Arts Philosophy

 

Paul Bowman

Cardiff University

 

Note: This is a talk for a public festival of philosophy. Accordingly, I have endeavoured to make it as accessible and thought provoking as possible, rather than worrying too much about academic protocols.

A PDF version is available here.

 

 

Ignorant Preamble

 

Hello. I am very happy to be here. I was delighted to be invited to this festival of philosophy, in a city that I have long wanted to visit – not least because Leuven is the place in which the wonderfully subversive educator Joseph Jacotot (1770-1840) famously came up with his conviction that people can teach what they don't actually know, and that learners do not really need teachers (Rancière 1991).

 

This is helpful for me because my invitation was to speak at this festival of philosophy on the subject of the relations between Eastern philosophy and martial arts in terms of the Dutch word 'rust'. But, the thing is: I'm not a philosopher; my knowledge of Eastern philosophy is woefully general; and, I don't speak Dutch. In fact, the first time I heard about the Dutch word 'rust' when I was invited to come here to speak about it.

 

So, make of that what you will. There's the door.

 

In any case, I came – as seems appropriate for someone who likes to explore Jacotot's contention that teachers can teach things they don't actually know – even if, according to the rest of that same argument, no one really needs me here.

 

But, seeing as I am here, let's find out whether I can, if not teach, at least point anyone – including myself– to any things that I don't actually know.

 

Rust

 

To begin: as I said, one of the first things relevant to today that I didn't know was the Dutch word rust. So I needed to look it up.[1] So I duly turned to the OED, and it presented me with a phenomenal amount of etymological information.[2] Most of which I could do absolutely nothing with.

 

So next I just Googled the word, using search terms like 'Dutch word rust' and 'meaning of Dutch word rust', and I was immediately pointed to a couple of good sites, which proved much more useful than the OED.

 

For instance, the first site I found told me this:

 

English words for the Dutch word rust

calmness dead ease half time hush imperturbability intermission let-up

lie-off pause peace placidity quiescence quiescency quiet quietness quietude recess reposal repose rest silence tranquility tranquillity wait at ease[3]

 

Another site concurred with all of this, saying that 'rust' means 'break; calm; ease; half‐time; pause; peace; placidity; quiescence; quiescency; quiet; quietness; quietude; recumbency; repose; respite; rest; surcease; tranquillity'.[4]

 

And it also told me how to use the word, in the imperative, as a command: rust!, which means 'stand at ease!'

 

So now you can rest easy (or rust easy), safe in the knowledge that I am now a bit of an expert on the Dutch word rust, even though I didn't even have a teacher, and can't otherwise speak Dutch.

 

Rust and Flow

 

But what has this got to do with Eastern or Western philosophy, or Eastern or Western martial arts, or their relationship? I'm sure that some will see an immediate or obviously potential connection. There has long been a connection made between East Asian martial arts and sometimes Taoist, sometimes Zen Buddhist ideas of calmness and tranquillity.

 

But, in the face of this connection, one thing I do know is that most of these connections are mainly based on myths (and mainly media myths, at that).

 

Moreover, I also know that 'rust' in martial arts is not exclusive to either Taoism or Zen. Anyone who has ever done any wrestling or groundfighting learns quickly not to panic or tense up when rolling around on the ground with an opponent who is trying to choke or lock or pin or hold or strangle you out. Beginners tense up to high heaven and panic and expend enormous amounts of energy. The more advanced you become, the more you stay calm, relaxed, tranquil, and the more you can (ultimately) flow.

 

The ability to flow is the objective: not to get knotted up wherever the opponent is trying to take control or issue force; but rather to flow (or crash) around it and turn the tables from behind.

 

If we are face to face and you push forward into me and I push forward into you, then whoever is stronger will prevail. But if you push forward and I flow around that, then you end up pushing nothing and I should be able to capitalize on that – to the extent that I can flow. And the extent to which I can flow is the extent to which I am relaxed and calm in a very particular way.

 

As Bruce Lee famously put it, 'be like water', because water can flow and it can crash, it can push and it can pull, but you can't grab it with your fist and if you try to punch it you won't hurt it; it fills any space and passes through any gap, but try to wrestle it and you end up wrestling nothing.[5]

 

Perhaps in all martial arts, relaxation is the thing. Calmness of mind. Acuity of consciousness. Clarity of intent. Fluidity of body. Each martial art has a different way of being relaxed and in flow, a different ideal that practitioners aspire to.

 

The boxer, kickboxer, Thai boxer, karateka, escrimador or kung fu hard stylist have certain kinds of ways of flowing – combining striking techniques fluidly, rolling with the punches, capitalising on the gaps and opportunities provided by the other, smashing their way through. The judoka, wrestler and jujitsuka rely on the same principle, although it is very differently actualised.

 

But the premise, aim and ideal is always calm relaxation, if not simply tranquillity.

 

Tranquillity is normally associated with the most internal of what they call the internal martial arts. The ultimate example is tai chi ch'üan [taijiquan], of course. But many anecdotes from many different martial arts styles convey a sense that the highest level practitioners of almost any martial art can convey an air of tranquillity when fighting.

 

Training Rust

 

Still, tai chi is certainly a notable case. For, all of its training is designed to train relaxation, calmness and a great deal of what is conveyed by the Dutch word rust. Advanced-level tai chi practitioners fight like they are strolling, not running, charging or dancing. It's like they are simply carrying out a task that they have done countless times and it's simply second nature. So watching them deal with opponents is like watching someone steering a boat or flying a kite or mowing a lawn, folding laundry, or rolling up a cable; or someone in a warehouse folding or unfolding cardboard boxes; or a fisherman casting and reeling, casting and reeling. It's a very simple, very unglamorous, very relaxed, very natural, yet very skilful thing.

 

I have occasionally had the pleasure of being the one who is folding and felling opponents like a laundry worker folding and flattening out sheets. And when you are in that zone, that state of flow, it is very much like that – just something that you are doing; pleasurable, but natural – no real effort; no real striving, planning, pursuing: just feeling and doing.

 

Of course, I have much more often been on the receiving end, against someone who wants to treat me like some laundry that needs to be straightened and folded and flattened out. A popular martial arts saying is 'you either win or you learn'. And I have done a lot of learning.

 

And not just in tai chi. I have been folded and flattened in many different martial arts styles over many years. Occasionally it has been me doing the folding and flattening, and that is always a very nice occasional treat. But none of the other kinds of sparring that I know involve activities that are as necessarily calm and tranquil as tai chi.

 

Doubtless, this is connected with the unique and uniquely philosophical way that tai chi training is approached. In it, all of the attention is put on teaching relaxation. But this is not quite as simple as it may sound.

 

It is actually surprisingly hard to teach relaxation in tai chi, and the type of relaxation that is the ultimate goal is not simple relaxation. It takes different forms, from mental relaxation, to the hyper-awareness of tension and looseness in the body to enable higher levels of sensitivity and responsiveness, to the ability to be relaxed in otherwise difficult postures or transitions, and through to the cultivation of what they call 'sung jin' or relaxed force in the application of techniques.

 

There are other dimensions to tai chi relaxation or restfulness too. But the point is: learning it all is no simple matter. It takes a great deal of patience, commitment, and trust – trust in your teacher, trust in the investment of time and energy, faith that it will all pay off or yield dividends.

 

In many respects, rather than being anything like lying down and relaxing; training for this kind of relaxation is actually analogous to weight training, strength training, or bodybuilding.

 

Progressive Res[t]istance

 

In weight training for strength or bodybuilding, a key principle is 'progressive resistance'. Over time you put more and more weight on the bar so that the resistance placed on the muscles progressively increases. In response to increasing demands, followed by adequate rest and nutrition, the muscles, tendons and ligaments, etc., respond – by growing stronger, often larger, more dense, and so on.

 

Despite appearances, training in and around tai chi is similar. However instead of external resistance, there is more a kind of progressive intensification of 'rust' – a 'progressive res[t]istance', so to speak. This progressive intensification is centred on awareness of posture and breath. More refined awareness of posture goes hand in hand with more intensified relaxation. More refined and intensified awareness and control of breath leads to all sorts of unexpected health and skill consequences. (On this level, I would recommend it to anyone: Tai chi and chi gung can become quite a remarkable combination for producing a sense of healthiness.)

 

But the idea that tai chi and qigong are 'simply' all about rest or relaxation is misleading. As with any martial art, tai chi requires really devoted and focused training. You have to learn how to be relaxed. You have to work hard to take control of your mind and relax it. This is not simple. It is not simple or easy to make yourself train every day when a lot of that training involves standing stock still for half an hour or more in a relatively awkward position, focusing on your breathing and posture and sensations – especially when you have jobs to do, the clock is ticking, there is work to do, and so many other demands. You have to believe in it and trust in it.

 

So, when it comes to the relaxation required in successfully mastering tai chi, or maybe any physically and mentally demanding skill-set, to speak of 'rest' is kind of correct, yet also not quite right.

 

I guess calmness would be the best term to apply across the board. When you're not calm, you're probably not going to be functioning at your best.

 

This is so even though some approaches to combat training insist on forcing practitioners into extremes of adrenaline, fear and beyond sustainable states of exhaustion. But, again, the reason for this is to get used to it, so as to learn how to manage panic and terror and exhaustion – in short, once again, so that you become, in a very particular way, calm even when operating at high levels of stress.

 

Zen Again

 

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, many East Asian martial arts are associated with lofty philosophical and cultural ideas and ideals, such as those associated with Zen Buddhism or Taoism.

 

Now, I always hesitate before accepting associations like these. This is for two reasons. The first is because such associations to come from dubious media myths and have little historical basis. The second is because there is rarely to never any observable Zen (or Chan) or Taoist dimension to them – at least no more than there is in anything else.

 

Despite all of this, on the other hand, I do think that it is easy (and justifiable) to see how and why something like tai chi could be called Taoist.

 

Even though it is possible to refute most fantasy histories of tai chi, it is undoubtedly the case that everything in its logic of training and application can be (and normally is) expressed in terms of yin and yang plus a range of other terms deriving from Taoist cosmology and principles.

 

But other than for tai chi – possibly also aikido – I really don't know how far it is possible to claim that other martial arts are 'philosophical' in the same way.

 

This is so even though the most popular story of the origins of all kung fu states that kung fu originated as a consequence of Zen Buddhist training in the Shaolin Temple in China. Of course, this is a myth – indeed, perhaps it is an almost perfect myth. It has a grain of truth: self-defence was required at the Temple, as it was everywhere, and over time the temple gained a fearsome reputation. But as an origin myth, it is easy to refute.

 

But even though the myth is easy to debunk it keeps coming back. Like a phoenix or Terminator 2, the myth of Shaolin Temple Zen training as the origin of kung fu keeps coming back, no matter how well you think you have killed it.

 

This is why people seem compelled to associate East Asian martial arts with pacifism in general and Buddhism in particular. But my claim here is that all of this is just a bolt-on to bolster the myth.

 

The reason I want to make such a claim here is so as to suggest that mythic narratives and claims about moral or ethical codes are not what we should be looking at or thinking about when we enquire about the 'philosophy' of this or that martial art. All ethics or moralities or mores are optional extras.

 

Rather than looking for philosophy in the 'blah blah blah' that so often surrounds martial arts, what I want to suggest is that the philosophy of a martial art is embodied, in particular ways.

 

All martial arts and approaches to fighting are the manifestation of a kind of theory, or philosophy, or ideology, or fantasy. The moves, the training, the sparring, all imply either a conscious or an unconscious 'theory' or 'philosophy' of all sorts of things: what violence is, what combat is, what works best, how bodies work and interact, what teaching and learning should be like, what society is like, what the place of the individual is within society, and so on.

 

All martial arts, from the most supposedly ancient to the most avowedly modern are based on tacit, implicit or explicit premises, hypotheses, arguments, theories, fantasies or philosophies about the world, society, and our place and responsibilities within it.[6]

 

Philosophize-a-babble

 

A friend of mine once told me that her kung fu instructor would often sit them all down and give them lectures about the philosophy of their kung fu style. Did that make that kung fu style itself philosophical? I would suggest not.

 

We could sit down and philosophize anything – everything – that we do. But in what way does that mean that it 'is' philosophical?

 

As I have said, I think that tai chi is philosophical because it actualizes Taoist principles. It is a physical expression of them (among other things). In a similar way, I think that many other martial arts are based on implicit or explicit theories about the particular kind of toughness and calmness that need to be cultivated.

 

Consider this. In karate they 'kiai'. Tai chi has no 'kiai'. This could be said to be an embodied dimension of the 'philosophy' underpinning each practice.

 

In some martial arts training, what is valued and what is trained is speed, or flow, or power, or sensitivity, or athleticism, and so on. I've never made a noise in tai chi – apart from maybe a yelp of pain here or there. But almost every punch I have ever thrown at a pad in escrima training has been accompanied by some kind of guttural shout or grunt or hiss – expressing and intensifying the intent to smash the target as hard as possible. So there's something there – whether you call it a philosophy or a theory or psychological attitude to be trained and developed.[7]

 

There are also principles that could or arguably should be trained across all martial arts, which could be called philosophical. One is 'go weak for technique'. As in: when you are training, always train as if you are weaker than your opponent. That way, you have to develop superior technique. For if it's just strength against strength, then the stronger will always win.

 

Maybe this kind of attitude could be called almost Taoist. Or maybe it could just be called universal. Or maybe Taoist principles are indeed universal. Certainly tai chi advocates such an approach to the most refined degree.

 

Yet I still see no necessary Zen Buddhism in kung fu or karate or judo or jujitsu. And I certainly cannot comprehend why something like taekwondo even ever makes any reference to the yin yang symbol.

 

For, even though many martial arts make connections to the yin yang, I firmly believe that this is principally because the yin yang is a cool looking symbol. But it often has next to no functional connection with what they do.

 

In other words I am suggesting that the connections that are often assumed to exist between supposedly 'Eastern' martial arts and so called 'Eastern philosophy' are both not essential and often garbled and convoluted. In fact, I will go further and state that these connections often owe more to mass media myths and fantasies than anything specific to the practices themselves.

 

But does that mean that I am saying that there are some 'truly' philosophical arts like tai chi, that are therefore 'good' (because they are philosophical in my apparently preferred sense), while there are other, maybe modern, corporate and profit-focused arts like MMA or taekwondo, that are somehow therefore 'bad' (because they are not philosophical in my apparently preferred sense)?

 

I'm going to say 'no'. I'm not saying that. For lots of reasons. More reasons than there is time or space even to gesture to here and now.

 

Everything can be philosophised. Everything we do is the manifestation of some kind of implicit or explicit theory or outlook or philosophy. But even if something is strongly connected with a philosophy that you or I may personally prefer, this does not necessarily make such practices 'good'.

 

Madfulness Meditation

 

Consider this. What is it that makes so many people think that things like yoga and tai chi and qigong are somehow simply or necessarily good?

 

I would propose that one of the main things that leads to this conclusion relates to the many regular associations made between these kinds of practices and the idea of positive mental health: Mental health, mind-body awareness, mindfulness, work/life balance, and so on.

 

Now, as I've already confessed, as a practitioner of tai chi and qigong, on some level I really do believe in the 'positive mental health' narrative that surrounds internal martial arts and yoga. But as a practitioner of other martial arts, and also as someone who sometimes has a philosophical bent, and certainly as someone who watches YouTube and explores many media, I also wonder whether sometimes such positive mental health and supposed awareness comes at a cost of positive self-delusion and a particular lack of awareness.

 

For instance, many (most?) tai chi practitioners believe in magic. Some martial artists believe you can hit someone without actually making physical contact with them, like some kind of Jedi Knight. The magic conduit for this and many other things is called chi (qi) – which is an eminently magic proposition. Nonetheless, many people believe in chi. But for what reasons, on what evidence, and to what ends?

 

Much of this may be harmless. But, at the same time, videos abound on YouTube of hapless chi and ki masters who have done things like challenging MMA and other full contact martial artists to a fight only to be battered black and blue by them.

 

There are embarrassing videos aplenty in which poor deluded students bounce and leap about in response to their master's touch, or gesture.

 

Similarly, many people spend long hours and days and weeks and months and years and decades engaged in practices ranging from qigong to push hands to point sparring and so on believing that they are preparing themselves for the reality of combat.

 

There are many kinds of martial arts self-delusion, all of which I'm sure are also accompanied by many kinds of awareness and insight.

 

In the wider cultural ideological realm, what are we really to make of overworked and stressed out employees being offered free tai chi or mindfulness meditation classes by their employers. Do firms lay on such services out of the goodness of their hearts? Or might there be other agendas?

 

We might ask the same of the state advocation of martial arts in schools across Asia: are these motivated by philosophical ideals any loftier than nationalism?

 

And how many financial traders, speculators, yuppies and bankers have believed that they are most in touch with their own fundamental truth and reality when they are engaged in their early morning yoga or meditation, and not when they are speculating on futures?

 

But perhaps at the most extreme end of things: how many sociopaths or psychopaths or misanthropes have either prepared for or dealt with their atrocious acts by meditating? Anders Behring Breivik prepared himself for 'one of the most devastating acts of mass murder by an individual in history' on July 22^nd 2011, by undertaking a long period of training in what he called 'Bushido meditation'.

 

Or, at another extreme: consider the fact that many martial artists of the late nineteenth century anti-foreigner Boxer Uprising in China believed that their 'iron shirt' kung fu training would make them impervious to bullets.

 

In all different kinds of cases, what seems to sustain and nourish people in many martial arts activities are fantasies about tapping into or communing or connecting with something. Very often, this involves fantasies about an ancient mystical truth. The fantasy is a fantasy of something that may well never have existed. Chi and chakras and meridians may well be tenets of faith, and the internal martial arts training which focuses on moving chi through meridians may well be an exemplary exercise in supreme self-delusion.

 

Or it may not.

 

Maybe you can never know something unless you try it. Or, maybe more than 'trying': maybe you can never truly know something unless you've mastered it.

 

But maybe trying to master something like this will be the very thing that pulls you into a world of self-delusion. Maybe this is particularly so because to try to master anything like this will always require having some kind of faith and some kind of belief.

 

You cannot maintain qigong meditation or tai chi slowness training without some element of belief, some element of faith, some element of trust in something – whether that be a teacher, or a promise of health or invincibility or longevity.

 

Philosophers from Kierkegaard to Derrida have reflected on the decision – the decision to do something, to try something, to make a certain move, to reach a certain conclusion – and called it 'a moment of madness', a leap of faith, a step into the unknown, the abyss, the void.

 

Take the blue pill or take the red pill; have faith in an idea or an argument or theory or a philosophy. Persuade yourself to stand in static meditation every day for half an hour or more. Practice forms over and over again for the rest of your life. Maybe this is the path.

 

Or maybe you're swimming on dry land, believing it will help you to swim up a strong river; or maybe you're just playing air guitar, believing that you are turning yourself into the new Jimmy Hendrix.

 

What is sensible and what is not? Listening to someone or walking away? What if they claim to have all the answers, to be the experts, to know the truth?

 

We know we should eye such people with suspicion.

 

But what if someone told you at the outset that they were going to talk about something they might not actually know nothing about – like how a word from a language they can't speak relates to a world of philosophy they only know in the most woefully general ways?

 

What would you do in that situation? This is a rhetorical question. I already know: maybe you would trust; but mainly you would just rust. And for that I thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Of course, looking for off-the-peg, one-size-fits-all definitions is fraught with dangers. The meanings of words change over time and place, and there is rarely a reliable one size fits all definition, especially when a word is subtle, complex, rich, or significant to a time, place, or problem; and especially when the word in question is to be translated from one language to another by someone who doesn't speak the origin language or know much about the origin culture. That is why scholars have often tended to prefer etymological dictionaries, like the OED. Etymological histories show us the rich sense of complex communication, transfer, translation and transformation across languages and contexts.

[2] Brit. /rʌst/

U.S. /rəst/

Forms: 

α. OE–15 rost, OE– rust, ME roste, ME–15 ruste.

Frequency (in current use):  

Origin: A word inherited from Germanic.

Etymology: Cognate with West Frisian rust , roast , Middle Dutch roest , rost (Dutch roest ), Old Saxon rost (Middle Low German rost , rust ), Old High German rost (Middle High German rost , German Rost ), Faroese rustur , Norwegian rust , Old Swedish rost , rust , ruste , roster (Swedish rost ), early modern Danish rost , rust , røst (Danish rust ), probably < a suffixed (or perhaps compounded) form of an ablaut variant of the same Indo-European base as red adj. and n. (compare rud n.¹ probably showing the same ablaut grade), hence with reference originally to the red colour of rust. Use in sense A. 6 is also widespread among the other Germanic languages.

 

Different formations also probably ultimately < the same Indo-European base as red adj. and n. and also with the meaning 'rust' are shown by Old Icelandic ryð, ryðr, Old High German rosomo, and, outside the Germanic languages, by Lithuanian rūdys, Old Church Slavonic rŭžda (Old Russian r′′ža, rža, Russian rža), classical Latin rōbīgō, rūbīgō.

 

In Old English a strong masculine or neuter a -stem. The Old Saxon and Old High German forms (and likewise Middle Dutch rost ) show the expected West Germanic lowering of *u > *o in an a -stem formation *rusta- , which is probably also shown by the (rare) early Old English form rost . The β. forms suggest the existence of a by-form with a long vowel in Old English, although both the date and the mechanism by which such a form arose are unclear. The modern form rust with short vowel could then result from this by-form, with shortening in late Old English before a consonant cluster. However, a form with short u could also have existed earlier, since exceptions to the West Germanic lowering of *u > *o before a back vowel are not uncommon in Old English. The vowel of Middle Dutch, Dutch roest is not satisfactorily explained. (The modern West Frisian form roast shows the expected development from West Germanic short *u in this position; the West Frisian form rust probably also ultimately reflects a development from *rusta-, rather than from a form with a long vowel.)

 

For evidence of currency of forms showing the (diphthongal) reflex of a long vowel in English regional (northern) use in the 20th cent. see H. Orton Phonology of a South Durham Dialect (1933) §133.

[3] http://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/dutch-word-rust.html

[4] http://www.majstro.com/Web/Majstro/bdict.php?gebrTaal=eng&bronTaal=dut&doelTaal=eng&teVertalen=rust

 

[5] It's a wonderful image. But I would add that even water can only be like water when it is not too hot and not too cold. If it's too hot it becomes vapour or steam, and loses something; and when it's too cold it becomes frozen, tense, rigid and brittle.

[6] Is it philosophical to say that a person has the right to defend themselves? You may say yes or no or maybe. You may even begin to wonder what it is that makes something a philosophical question at all. And that's all good. Jacques Derrida regularly suggested that the question of what is and what is not a philosophical question is actually a question that is always at the heart of philosophy. So Derrida saw everything as philosophical. (And, of course, we may add, therefore nothing as uniquely or specifically or only philosophical.)

[7] The type of escrima that I train in speaks of 'concepts', 'theories' and 'principles': Theory of face (always face your opponent); Forward thinking (always be aggressively going forward, even if going backwards); Theory of the box (the area to keep your arms within); Various statements about triangles, elbows and the curvature of the spine. And my favourite of all, the 'theory of so what': As in, so you've hit me? So what? You're not stopping me. I'm still going forward. (I love that one. It makes me laugh with delight, every time. Theory of So What!)