Suffering is the
origin of consciousness. – Dostoyevsky
The future is war. According to scientists, think-tank
predictions, and the 2003
Pentagon Report , abrupt climate changes and a severely depleted world will
cause ever fiercer global resource wars over oil, water, timber, and arable
land in the coming decades. This may either be a grim reality or a dangerous
military legitimization by the U.S.
army, but whether or not these wars are inevitable, if viewed optimistically they
may be a key factor towards catalyzing the next phase of human consciousness
and birthing a new global society.
This article will attempt to trace the history
of Kung Fu from our hunter-gatherer past to the coming Space
Wars and suggest how the martial art sciences could be an important
antidote to the secular materialist traps of our age that in turn fuel the
scarcities of the future. At the same time that modern artillery has rendered
traditional hand-to-hand combat seemingly obsolete, martial arts and yoga
attendance worldwide is skyrocketing. Perhaps by embracing, and not shunning,
the warrior archetype we can ultimately reduce the need for mass
armed conflict and survive this coming age where — as the conclusion of the
above mentioned Pentagon report states — “disruption and conflict will be endemic features of
life.”
Kung Fu, which, by definition is any skill or
technique perfected to its highest level, is a slang or colloquialism that
encompasses the prowess of soldier and chef, doctor and painter alike. Kung Fu
is by itself an interesting phrase, paradoxically combining idealistic values,
supreme skills, and invincible technique with pragmatic, back-breaking, and
tireless hard work.
Although Kung Fu is a Chinese term in
China
its use extends comprehensively to Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and the indigenous
martial arts of any country or culture. Kung Fu is a powerful philosophy and
psychophysical technology forged in the crucible of humankind’s struggle for
survival. Kung Fu is by its very nature an antidote to materialistic
misconceptions about the nature of reality.
Let's take a moment to clear up
some of the differences between three popular spiritual techniques- Shamanism, Yoga,
and Kung fu. According to legend, Kung Fu was founded by the famous Yogi
Bodhidharma, who stopped by Shaolin Temple after spreading Buddhism from India into China. He noticed the monks there
were too weak to meditate and practice his teachings. After many years of
solitary meditation in a cave Bodhidharma returned to teach the monks his Yoga
or Qi Gung, which became foundational in Shaolin Kung Fu. Kung Fu, Yoga, or Qi
Gung are a part of a system in which martial arts and dance all share similar animistic,
zoomorphic, and magical-scientific ontologies. Through complex physical and
verbal languages Shamanism, Yoga, and Kung Fu all express and substantiate
their results through trial- proof of a physical universe wholly different than
the one which our language claims exists.
Kung fu has a history of fortifying
the underdogs against imperial powers out to enslave them. For centuries the
Han people of China
were unified by Kung Fu in their resistance against foreign invaders. Revolutionaries hid on boats in opera troops
and in temples secretly honing their forbidden fighting skills. In the history
of African slavery it was Batuque, a
family of African martial arts, which gave the slaves strength in their plight
and revolts and gave birth to the martial art of Capoeira and other similar new
world fighting arts. These are not merely systems of combat but the
concretization of all the higher ideals of a people such as freedom, bravery,
maturity, wisdom, discipline and self-rule. As it is sometime said, “Without
Zen there would be no Kung Fu, and without Kung Fu, Zen could not be seen.”
The most
extensive surviving variety of styles and forms arrive to us from China,
including a bewildering assortment of long and short range tactics, soft and
hard energetic principles, and panoply of weapons from hidden sleeve darts to
cavalry weapons for battlefield decapitation. Thanks to a turbulent history and
such infamous epochs as the warring states period (5th century B.C.
to 221 B.C.), wherein Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War, China’s legacy of martial
arts and sciences is unparalleled and has given rise to the false sinocentric
view that all martial arts originated in China.
On the contrary, the whole world
seems to have been rich in martial arts.
We are only now discovering the diverse traditions of Africa, India, Indonesia,
Russia, Mongolia and
elsewhere. From prehistoric hunting and tribal conflicts to the ancient Olympic
games where the best Greek fighters boxed, wrestled, and sparred in the nude in
an effort to be awarded the coveted olive branch and a permanent front row seat
at the theater, the natural defensive and offensive movements of humans made
long strides early on towards codification and study.
Unfortunately much of the world’s martial arts
were lost since the development of the gun, especially in the West (although
efforts are underway to recreate them), so much so that they still possess an
aura of exoticism and the mystique of something foreign, although nothing could be farther
than the truth. Since the U.S.
military occupations in China,
Japan, and Korea, and
popularized by movie stars like Bruce Lee, a more complete vision of the
martial arts were reintroduced to the West. Currently martial arts are growing
more popular every day, with Afro-Brazilian arts like Capoeira challenging the
notion of the Asiatic origins of martial arts, and syncretic martial arts Jeet
Kune Do and MMA attempting to blend the best of all styles. In Hollywood,
Hong Kong veteran Yuen Woo Ping has become the gold standard for post-Matrix action
sequences, and this summer’s releases are buzzing with Kung fu: Kung Fu Panda, Forbidden Kingdom,
Mummy 3, and many more are filling box offices with Kung Fu fever.
As a science, Kung Fu is the
product of a long line of human warrior traditions. Warrior traditions usually
are founded in religious rites or visionary experiences, and include medicinal
as well as fighting knowledge and dances. In India
and China
it is recorded how the greatest warriors became doctors and charted the points
of the body that allowed entry to harm or heal the body’s energy. The martial
arts in their most enlightened form have the capacity to channel the
aggressive, violent impulses of humans into a sublime and beautiful spiritual
aesthetic that can maintain health and mobility well into old age.
When a traditional kung fu master
or yogi works out, most likely it will involve several hours of prayer,
meditation, and intense exercises and purifications that challenge the mind as
intensely as the body, and tune the practitioner in to the vibrations of the
spirit world, making he or she whole again. As in dance and Yoga, Kung Fu is
rooted in animal and elemental mimicry. A skilled martial artist moves with the
grace and relaxed power of the animals and there are styles devoted to every
kind from praying mantis to monkey and elephant. The martial artist trains
themselves day and night to embody the explosiveness of fire or fluidity and
water. Martial artists even incorporate and emulate the different states of
intoxication and enlightenment as in Drunken Kung Fu, or Kung Fu which imitates
the way arhats, bodhisattvas, and immortals would fight. In order to shuffle
off our Cartesian dualism we must realize that the mind is as instrumental in
shaping the body as is the body in shaping the mind.
In its ability to make the spirit
world palpable and judging by its popularity, Kung fu is here to stay. We
should not be fooled into thinking that firearms have rendered martial arts
obsolete forever. A new equilibrium may arrive in a post-technological state or
when technologies such as advanced armor, anti-projectile defenses, new
weaponry or augmented human physical abilities–such as those showcased in the
movie, The Iron Man, will level the playing field between man and machine-based
projectiles and promote a new practical martial arts applicable to the coming
global conflicts, some of which may take place in urban environments where
guerilla tactics and a lack of clear sight lines upsets the benefits of
firearms in favor of the hand-to-hand
close combat skills of the individual warrior. In other words, one person with
technology and skill could come to equal an army in might.
A revaluation and re-envisioning of
war to take into account the positive potentials would benefit us. Enabling a
whole range of extreme experiences, war cascades the brain with adrenalin and
other powerful mind altering substances and produces long lasting psychic
changes. War is a close cultural relative of the hunt–many cultures envision
the afterlife as a Great Hunt. Everyday
in the Norse heaven Valhalla, one wages the
apocalyptic Ragnarok against the Jotuns giants and monsters. Every night the shaman Odin, and Freya the
shamaness, and their valkyries resurrect the souls of the slain in the hall of
Odin where they drink the mead of the gods.
There are some profound
philosophical questions that need to be answered in this time of detested
military and corporate warfare: on the one hand most people seem to envision an
enlightened being pacifistic like the Christ in the Gospels, with a
spirituality like that of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. On the other hand
people persistently pursue warlike measures, and aristeia, the virtue of the
agon or conflict, is extolled in songs and epic traditions immortalizing the
violent and heroic labors of humans and gods. During the civil rights movement
in America
Malcolm X came to
realize that even though his rhetoric of self-defense by “any means necessary”
was diametrically opposed to the ahimsa gospel of Martin Luther King, Jr., their
ideals were still aligned and their activist strategies worked complementarily.
As we enter a pan or trans-cultural
era, the re-proliferation of yoga and martial arts across nations and cultures
is a powerful liberating and defensive force against oppression and
disempowerment. The global martial arts and yoga phenomenon is a movement of
tremendous potential for human advancement, cultural restoration, and an
important anti-totalitarian institution. With improvement in social networking
and virtual reality there is no limit for the inception of virtual training
halls, where like the ancient kalaris and mo gwoons of yore, warriors, teachers,
and healers can exchange techniques, philosophies, and train some Kung Fu.
