Truth is like a jewel you find in the mud, you might not be looking for it, you might not have known what it would look like, but when you find it, it stands out for what it is.
Much of what we do at Kung Fu Living is based around our philosophical approach, so it seems appropriate to share a thought or two about that.
It is our belief that Kung Fu should never be reduced to something as trivial as fighting skills.
Kung Fu really means achieving excellence through hard work or discipline. It is about becoming a master of the art of living.
For some, from many different martial arts backgrounds, this blog may appear to be out of place. There are many martial arts in which the fighting skills are preeminent or indeed all they learn. For many, training in Kung Fu is a way to get fitter, stronger and more supple, a way to develop confidence by having the ability to defend themselves in dangerous situations, or just a fun skill to learn. Obviously, it is all of those things, but if that is all you get from Kung Fu, it would be like thinking of a meal with friends as merely an opportunity to eat. You would, I believe, be missing the heart of it.
For us and many others, martial arts training is so much more; it becomes an integral part of your way of life, an aspect of your identity. For some, it becomes a spiritual discipline, a journey of self-development and self-realisation.
Kung Fu Living is for those people who want to discover The Way of The Warrior as a spiritual journey; a path to self-fulfilment.
The Contemplations in every day of the program are intended to be axiomatic. An axiom is a truth that I may not be able to prove, but if I share it with you, you’ll be able to see that it must be the case; it is self-evident. We often use such a way of thinking when it comes to rights. I can’t prove that we should have, or grant others with, any particular right; I can only state that it seems to me that people should have this or that right, and if you can’t see it, I have nothing to fall back on. We are all stumped when someone asks ‘why?’ to what we consider obvious; ‘Why should we try to be fair?’ ‘Why can’t I kill him?’ We can gape like a fish and bluster ‘are you serious?’ but if someone holds out, pretending that they can’t ‘just see it’ we struggle to know where to start. If they really can’t see it, we will tend to conclude that they are psychopathic, that there is something wrong with their brain. Indeed, such a person would be dangerous and probably will be locked up eventually.
In eastern philosophy the skill of the sage or Sifu is not so much in seeing the meaning of life, but in being able to show it to someone else in a way that enables them to say ‘oh yes, it’s obvious now you’ve put it like that.’
My hope is that as you follow this program you will often think, ‘well yes, I think I always knew that.’
