The Philosophy of Martial Arts
[Music]
what is martial arts
unlike other sports and physical arts
martial arts is unique in its physical
abilities
say for example we take swimming
swimming helps you develop the core
muscles of your trunk
let’s say for example football or
hawking
they are primarily focused on the
strength of your lower body
building the muscles of your lower body
in martial arts
we do punching kicking
grabbing rolling punching helps develop
the
upper body strength kicking the lower
body strength
and grabbing and rolling that’s part of
wrestling
helps to develop the core or your trunk
muscles
so in effect it causes an all-round
development
it helps to build strength stamina
speed flexibility endurance
coordination so on and so forth
coming to martial’s philosophy again
unlike any other sport or physical
activity martial art has its own unique
what philosophy the philosophy used for
a philosophy is meant
to make your life better to make you
a good human being
martial philosophy helps you to build
self discipline
self-control willpower
these are all aspects of self-discipline
which are very very important
self-discipline is required to
make sure that you handle your work your
workout
and your recreation in equal balance
self-control is required so that you are
able to harness
negative emotions like anger jealousy
etc will power is very important to be
built so that you can push your mind
your body to its extreme and get maximum
performance
so that was the aspect of
self-discipline
second aspect of martial art
philosophy’s benefit
is material logic now materialogy
we will be covering by lao zhu and sanju
where laozi lao zoo also called as lousy
is teaches you the art of getting
success
and sun tzu teaches you how to deal with
adversity and get the better of it
the third aspect of martial philosophy
which is very useful
is spirituality so spirituality is about
the science of being happy how do you
stay happy
so zen teaches you to stay in the
present moment
to stay happy irrespective of the
vagaries of your routine life
so let’s go a little more deeper after
we have covered the
the you know the basis of what’s the
philosophy what’s the introduction we go
to
a little bit about who started all this
who started martial arts
so bodhidharma a monk
he was an indian prince who walked on
foot from
kerala all the way to china and he is
known as the founder of martial
arts and then now what is zen
zen is one of the earliest known
philosophies of martial arts
what does zen teach you zen teaches you
to be
in the present moment to relish the
present moment
there is a very nice quote on
by zen which is called muy mushri which
is
one thought one action no mind
when no mind refers to no rumination
if we take this example and we apply it
in martial arts
in martial arts like for example if
somebody attacks me
so that’s an attack i will defend
and i will attack back that becomes a
counter attack
in this entire instance there is no room
for rumination
it’s thought and action i
okay the attack coming towards me i look
at it i defend
and i act if i sit down to think about
it
i’m gonna get hit so there is no room
for
rumination in martial arts it’s you have
to act
it helps you to build your reflex
immediately
similarly if you apply this concept in
life
it’s one thought one action no mind that
means you don’t ruin it
you don’t ruminate about the past you
don’t ruin it about the present
but you’re living your life in the
present moment
that’s the zen philosophy which is very
very applicable to martial art and to
life the second most influential
philosophy that we are looking at in
martial arts uh is from lao zoo
now laosun was a chinese philosopher he
is very well known
for his concept of teaching you balance
or taoism
it’s it’s written in a book called
etching
you may have heard about this thing
called yin yang
the yin here is a circle with two halves
the circle represents the balance within
you
and in the world around you if we look
at
the application of this yen young
balance in martial arts
it focuses on balance of your inner and
outer
so if you look at outer it’s going to be
strength stamina
endurance and if you look at the inner
aspects we’re looking at calmness
resilience
so ability to balance both these are
extremely important
in martial arts if we
use the same thing in
life so balancing your outer assets and
inner assets becomes essential so outer
assets could be
all the things that drive you towards
getting more money
power status we balance that with your
inner assets
of health fitness family
peace of mind if you’re not able to
balance these two
there’s going to be lot of
this harmony in your life
laozi explained taoism and yin yang in a
very
nice quote he spoke
tau gave birth to the one the one
gave birth to yin yang and yin yang gave
birth to
all things
so that’s lao zoo next most influential
philosophy is by sanzu
now sanju was a chinese general
he is very popular for the art of war
he is the man who teaches you that only
hard work doesn’t work
you also have to use strategy you also
have to overcome adversity by being
smart
so if we apply this example in martial
arts
if you get into a fight with a stronger
man who has
maybe twice or twice your amount of
strength price is right there
your size if you battle your strength
along with his strength if you wanna
fight strength on strength
you’re not going to be able to match it
so you have to use
a strategy or a tactic to overcome this
big obstacle
this big opponent so
it could be something like a hard use
your hardest weapon
on the opponent’s softest target
similarly if you apply this example in
life
you learn to work hard no you learn to
work smart
so you work smart when when many a time
you’re working very hard and you’re not
getting
not eating the results we have to sit
down and think okay how can i go around
this i have to be smart about it
and that’s how you’re going to be
overcoming the adversity or the problem
at hand
sanju had a quote which was very popular
i’ll just speak about
one line about it if you know yourself
and you know your enemy there’s no fear
in 100 battles
so knowing yourself knowing your enemy
no fear in 100 battles
means you are able to understand the
whole picture
the second most influential philosophy
in martial arts has been given to us by
bruce lee
one of the most popular martial artists
of all times he was also a very known
philosopher
the philosophy attributed by bruce lee
being summarizing it in three points
keep it simple keep it direct and be
open minded
simplicity is what what is simply
simplicity means use less resource
you know of the example like too many
cooks spoil the broth
so similarly in martial arts he said
you don’t try to accumulate too many
you techniques few techniques and master
them
here very popular quote to to that
saying i do not fear a man who has
practiced
10 000 kicks once but
i fear the man who has kicked one
kick ten thousand times
so simplicity is you try to use as few
resources as possible
directness directness is the principle
where you go straight
to your target you don’t go in a
roundabout fashion
in martial arts there are many examples
he came up with the concept of an
intercepting fist which is a straight
punch
you stop everything with a straight
punch in life if you look at directness
example
many times we get diverted we are
looking we are working focusing on one
particular task
there may be a phone call there may be
somebody come
and address okay you know you want to
distract here distract there are 100
distractions
so we try not to get distracted and we
focus on to our paths
and we also go to the path directly if i
have to work towards say
studying for an exam i study and i pass
i don’t go around it by
10 different ways the third
concept is of being open-minded
now being open-minded is very important
to be able to
break out of tradition to be able to
come up with out-of-the-box
solutions
we are sometimes led by our past
conditioning our past
experiences or maybe it has been handed
down to us by somebody
so we tend to get influenced by that and
and you know walk on that path but it
may not necessarily be the path designed
for you you may have to find you may be
able to find a better path for yourself
if you’re open-minded
and you keep your past conditioning
and keep an open mind about newer
aspects you may
try new methodologies and see if they
work and maybe
it will actually be better
these are different aspects of
zen above laozi about sun tzu
about bruce lee whose philosophies play
a very very important role in martial
arts
to make you a better human being to help
you to keep focused to help you to
understand that there is
uh you know you have the confidence to
handle your
life to re-handle your issues
i hope this influences you to take up
martial arts
for your journey there’s a very nice
quote by buddha
it’s a long quote i’m just gonna give
you the the gist of it
do not believe in anything simply
because you have heard of it
do not believe in anything simply
because it has
been found written in your religious
books
do not believe merely on authority of
your teachers or others
do not believe in tradition because they
have been handed down
for many generations but after
careful observation analysis
if you find it within reason and
disconducive for the good of
all then you should accept it
and live up to it with that
i end my talk