Breaking Down the Walls
Mekong
Martial arts have always been about much more than fighting to me. I started seriously training after reading the Tao of Jeet Kune Do. The ideas expressed there were immensely appealing to me, as a person who never quite fit in the boxes society builds for us. And, coming from a relatively dangerous city, my interest in what really worked in a no rules environment, where there are no limitations, also helped me avoid getting stuck in the cult like groups that so many styles produce. Finding the best material for self defense was more important to me than loyalty to any particular instructor or style.
Many martial arts claim to draw from “eastern philosophy”. They talk about the concepts of Zen, having an empty mind (mushin in Japanese martial arts), etc., etc. But most of this is just talk. It’s leaving one box to enter another. Rather than becoming awake, they end up more like this:
Buddha?
It’s really a shame, because martial arts have so much more to offer than fighting skills…or worse, becoming another box for practitioners. Matt Thorton says it best in two excellent posts that go into far greater detail than I will here: The Sacred and the Superstitious and Carving Nature at the Joints. Honest, unlimited martial arts practice breaks down walls. It puts truth right in your face. What you’re doing either works or it doesn’t, and it’s plain to see. Dishonest training and thinking, along stylized lines, doesn’t do this.
And the same is true in life. You can live within the walls of social expectations, or you can choose not to. They’re not real. And even if you do break down the walls, you can still live within their former borders. But you don’t have to. Open and honest thinking, never just believing, leads to freedom.
A Path
There’s no single path. Martial arts will teach you this better than most pursuits, through experience. And that’s a great lesson to learn. To be good at martial arts you need to become an explorer. You need to see through the walls that were never really there in the first place. When you apply the same free thinking to life, you’ll inevitably find happiness. As Bruce Lee once said, “ultimately, martial art is self knowledge“. You can only do what you need to do if you know what you need to do. You need to know yourself.
Vasco and I
Really, the same can be said for playing the piano, painting, dancing, or even running a business. Honest thinking and exploring will make you a far better martial artist, a better person, and a lot happier.
