The Essence of Martial Arts Ramakrishna Pillay

from Lift Hands Volume 22 June 2022 - The Multi-Award Winning Martial Arts Magazine

Understanding The Language of Taijiquan Nasser Butt

It’s a lofty title I know, but the longer I practice my art I have found that even the most complicated principles and highest philosophies can be condensed down into the simplest of things. Let's take a human being, the most complex of all living creatures, able to think independently of its instincts, as distinct from other creatures, capable of living into the triple digits but humbly created from a single cell zygote. All the intelligence and information to create us is contained within something of a handful of cells. Planet Earth, able to support the entire human race and we find that the under pining principle for its existence is gravity. Particles that attract other particles to form a solid body in space, which attract other, which in turn form their own gravity. Simplicity in complexity, complexity in simplicity!

When asking what is the essence of Martial Arts, let's first ask, what's in a name? 'Martial' and 'Art'? Let's look at the word 'Art.' The word art refers to refinement of skill over time. Anything can be an art, from making tea to sitting at a computer writing a program to run in the most efficient way. When we traditionally think of art we think of a beautiful painting. There is no 'reason' behind it, yet we hold art in such high esteem, and it creates so much emotion in us. But why? I would say it is life refined down to its finest, most essential expression. There is huge unexplainable value in that. Even living itself can be an art, and a life well lived is a beautiful work of art.

Now for the word ‘Martial'; Martial means associated with war. On a base level Martial Arts keep the body healthy and strong which gives us the ability to fight off disease and external pathogens, but the same could be said for any exercise. The added advantage of a martial art is that it gives us the ability to fight the average person if, god forbid, we ever had to use our skills. However now days if someone really wanted to hurt us a single bullet will suffice and little skill is needed to pull a trigger. Then what gives martial arts its enduring appeal even today?

Look deeper and we find that the whole of life is a struggle, a battle. From the day we are born we struggle to breath. Everything in life, including the human body, follows the path of least resistance. It is called entropy and without constant maintenance all falls into disrepair. As we age, even time itself seems to be our enemy. Although the earth is plentiful, to make cotton into cloth and food from seeds requires a huge amount of resources, effort, care and attention. Even though she provides for us, Mother nature herself is as brutally withholding as she is giving. Animals would eat us given half the chance, fellow humans would exploit or kill us to get our resources. To live is to struggle.

In my opinion, the ‘Martial’ in ‘Martial Arts’ is an acceptance of the inherent struggle of life and its contradictions. Life is a paradox, we know deep down that the odds are stacked against us yet we feel we deserve happiness and never stop seeking it.

The essence of Martial Arts is as a ritual, where we acknowledge, regularly, the difficulties of being, accepting that while working to live artfully; refining our body, mind and soul. We accept that birth includes death and choose to meet that inevitability with compassion, strength and determination. Observe the line from the Great Pole Boxing Theory.

‘If my enemy advances, press in closer.’

As we move forward in life, there will only be more things that come to trouble us. It’s the way we manage these trails and the elegance that we navigate them that gives us a measure of ourselves.