Thank you for the encouragement slip. As for it's inapplicability to martial arts, in part yes, in part no. Some bits related specifically to military strategy I fell have no application. Some do. Take this example from a fight I witnessed in high school. Two kids kept having issues with each other until one day it escalated to the point of settling it by "taking it outside." One was a hockey player for the highschool and in a local amateur league, the other was an amateur boxer. Each knew this about the other. The hockey player decided to force the fight to start on the most slippery parking lot of the nearby church [it was winter]. The boxer kept trying to root his stance for his punches and as I watched them fight I noticed his back foot slip a little every time he tried to punch. The hockey player had perfect balance on the well known slippery surface. Take a stab at who won? Now take this bit from the section entitled TERRAIN: In precipitous ground I must take position on the sunny heights and await the enemy. If he first occupies such ground I lure him by marching off; I do not follow him. A passage the boxer could have heeded and possibly not had his face rearranged. On the ice (precipitous ground) the hockey player was at home (occupying the sunny heights). The boxer could have at least had a better chance by leaving and forcing the hockey player to follow. Conformation of the ground is of the greatest assistance in battle. Therefore, to estimate the enemy situation and to calculate distances and the degree of difficulty of the terrain so as to control victory are the virtues of the superior general. He who fights with full knowledge of these factors is certain to win; he who does not will surely be defeated :hat:
That's been my feeling as well. It seems like one of those things martial artists feel obliged to trot out in these conversations. But we're really reaching.
I guess my gut reaction to that is "how much Sunzi do you really need to have read to know that the hockey player had the advantage on ice?"
It always seemed a bit "Cast ne'er a clout til may be out" in it's advice too...although there are several pithy phrases in it which I still use to this day
Of course you were. But that's what I'm wondering. Seems to me that the relation to personal combat would either be 1) obvious enough that you don't really need to read Sunzi or 2) weak enough not to translate very well. But, hey, who am I to tell you that you haven't found it useful.
Dan, thanks. The Inner Path of the Warrior looks pretty intriguing to me. I may just have to order a copy. -Jeff
Since you seem to be sufficiently well versed in the Japanese side of things, I'll address China. The short answer is: sorry, there ain't none. Read on for the long answer. First, let me dismiss Sunzi, Sun Bin, etc. for your purposes. They're not talking about the individual martial artist's practice but rather how a general should lead an army. Even though much of their advice is pertinent to an individual fight, my interpretation of your original post is that you're interested in texts that address the martial artist as an individual fighter, and the military classics don't do that. You won't find anything in the high-Confucian tradition either. A Confucian text which attained immense popularity during the Han period (and thereafter remained a mainstay of Confucianism), the Classic of Filial Piety (the Xiaojing, c. 350-222 BCE), decrees in its first paragraph, "Seeing that our body, with hair and skin, is derived from our parents, we should not allow it to be injured in any way" (this obligation was established previously in the Liji, Book of Rites, one of the five basic Confucian classics). A conscientious Confucian, therefore, could not help but object to the practice of martial arts--even training injuries would fall afoul of the prohibition. Fighting might be necessary at times but should be left to lower-class types, not undertaken by upright imperial Confucian officials. This is why military officers, even generals, were considered lesser members of the imperial hierarchy, and why Confucian philosophers whom we know for sure were martial artists, such as the Ming dynasty's Wang Yang-ming, said almost nothing about their training and never tied it to Confucian ideas in their philosophical treatises. There's also nothing in intellectual Daoism explicitly relating to the martial arts, although it seems fairly clear that martial artists themselves found Daoism attractive and took some of its metaphors literally. For example, the Daoist classic Zhuangzi (the most important Daoist text after the Daodejing), describes the true Daoist adept as able to fly, and indeed opens up with a Daoist cook who is so in tune with the cosmos that when he butchers cows he is able to find the microscopic "holes" between the joints of the bones and thus never needs to actually cut with his knife, which he hasn't had to sharpen for something like 15 years. The author of the Zhuangzi clearly hated Confucianism and most sinologists hold that these descriptions are only intended as metaphors in the service of his larger argument against Confucianism. However, such abilities are the kind of thing which a fighter enculturated to give profound respect to the written word, as all imperial-era Chinese were, but with, say, only half the education of a typical imperial civil-service examinee, might well take literally--and he would be predisposed to take them literally, since such abilities would give their possessor obvious advantages in combat. Ergo, the legends of flying martial artists impervious to sword blows, etc. The Daodejing itself offers some metaphors with rather more practical application to the martial arts, e.g. to "seek the low places like water", in other words to avoid conflict by not vaunting possessions that others might covet. But again, it's not directed at martial arts; a martial artist has to read it and then figure out for themselves how it applies to their training. Religious/alchemical Daoism is a whole different ball game, however. I don't know much about it because there's very little translated into English and I began studying China too late to learn the language--was only able to fit in a single semester of Mandarin--and classical Chinese itself is apparently so different from modern written Chinese (even in Taiwan, where they don't use the mainland's modified characters) as to be akin to English versus Latin. But I do know that there's a whole tradition of mystical religious Daoism closely tied to alchemy, and if you can read classical Chinese, that would be your best bet for theoretical texts that explicitly discuss martial arts, especially since martial artists were also often physicians, and alchemical Daoism was the Chinese theoretical tradition most closely tied to Chinese medical theory. Also, one thing more about Confucianism: by the second quarter of the imperial period (the Tang dynasty, beginning 618 AD/CE), Chinese society had been utterly permeated with basic Confucian tenets from top to bottom. From that point right up until the end of the last era during which martial arts were useful for more than just street-fight self-defense (the warlord period, roughly spanning the 1920s), anything a lower-class martial artist might have written about his/her art would also be inflected with Confucianism simply by default: the writer would have had a hard time thinking in any other terms. And there is a lot in Confucianism that was clearly applied to martial arts (respect for one's teacher, wholehearted dedication to learning, etc.) But again, no such lower-class material will have been translated into English, and it would not even be readable by speakers of modern Chinese. You'd need to be a scholar trained in classical Chinese to read it (and probably even to locate any of it). Same thing with Buddhist texts. Underground imperial-era Chinese Buddhist writings are good candidates for martial-arts theorizing because so many rebellions were started by martial-arts secret societies which explicitly claimed to be Buddhist (White Lotus, etc.). But again, there is no such material translated into English. It's not generally even on the radar of university professors writing historical monographs; they traditionally have only been interested in the high-intellectual Buddhist stuff like the Platform Sutra of the Seventh Patriarch, and in the evolution of Buddhism in terms of proper, formally organized sects that clearly merit the term "religion." That's slowly beginning to change as scholars have begun to look at aspects of imperial popular culture, but then we run into another, less obvious problem: university profs are overwhelmingly anti-gun liberals averse to discussing violence unless they can condemn it--for most of them, violence of any kind is bad with three capital B's. No offense meant to any liberals on this forum, it's just that this political orientation has consequences for the poster's question because the typical university sinologist will feel obligated to either A) treat martial arts negatively, or B) simply ignore them. Since these scholars will also feel guilty for wanting to treat martial arts negatively a priori (since that would be a violation of scholarly fairness), they will almost certainly opt for ignoring the martial arts altogether and instead choose to research some other topic. I am aware of only a single exception to this rule, which every martial artist practicing a traditional East Asian form would do well to read: Sanctioned Violence in Early China, by Mark Edward Lewis (a Stanford prof), 1989. Actually this book is not really an exception to the rule of scholarly condemnation--the sneaky moral of the book, never stated outright but made clear between the lines, is that martial arts were turned into a nasty tool of state oppression--but along the way Lewis provides a lot of good theoretical-philosophical information that gets us much closer to individually practiced martial arts and that you won't find any other scholar touching with a ten-foot pole. You don't have to accept his negative bias to benefit from the data. Unfortunately, the book only deals with pre-imperial China and thus leaves the greater part of Chinese history out. It's too bad that we don't have a similar book for the imperial period, which is when Confucianism, Daoism, and especially Buddhism all really came into their own all the way down to the bottom of society, though in much less well-delineated forms than are found at the top. I know this is probably disappointing--I know it was to me, when I finally pieced it all together--but it should answer the question with regard to Chinese sources.
I just realized that many of you had been kind enough to share your recommendations with me, and so I should probably share some of my favorites with you. Of the old Japanese classics, Takuan's The Unfettered Mind is my favorite. D.T. Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture is a classic, admittedly with faults, but it has a place of honor in my mind because it was my introduction to so much of this material. Taisen Deshimaru's The Zen Way to the Martial Arts is very good. And while it's really hard to find, Budo Perspectives is a collection of some of the best articles I have found on the subject. Happy reading, everyone! -Jeffrey K. Mann
Zen Training by Omori Sogen. The Fighting Spirit of Japan by Harrison. The Japanese Art of War by Thomas Cleary Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines by Y Evans-Wentz. The truth is the connection between the Samurai and zen has been exaggerated.In his younger days Musashi practiced zazen to make himself a better fighter.An example from recent times is Steve Morris,the famous British martial artist,who wrote in his blog that he practiced mindfulness and Buddhist meditation to make himself a better fighter.I don't think either man was interested in becoming a better human being. Oh I nearly forgot,Zen Training by Sekida.Possibly the best book ever written on the subject and he dosen't mention the Samurai at all.
The art of peace-Ueshiba. What about the modern martial artists such as Geoff Thompson. Dead or Alive is an excellent book I believe.
Rory Miler's stuff is good. But I'm not sure how much philosophy or religion you'll find. A friend of mine who knows him indicated that he has little time for such things - at least as they relate to fighting. And I really should look at some more Ueshiba. His thinking was certainly out of the mainstream. Thanks. I've read Zen Training by Omori Sogen Roshi. I also found it quite helpful. And I just finished Sekida quite recently. A colleague had recommended it. It really clarified some things for me. But not a Zen starter-book; it's pretty sophisticated. And I couldn't agree more regarding what you said about the Zen-bushi relationship being exaggerated; and that applies to Japan historically and today. That being said, I find there are some folks today denying any special significance to Zen, which is going too far in the other direction. As you said, it has been exaggerated, but it certainly was there for many people.
