Like many folks who were introduced to the Kung Fu show in 1972 I was enamored with peaceful warrior Kwai Chang Caine, the Taoist monk who spread peace wherever he went by clobbering the bad guys with graceful moves.  We all watched it for one reason, not to see the peaceful harmonizer of the Tao but for those 2 moments in the show when he reigned down justice with his fists and feet on the unrighteous; in a very non-violent and peaceful whooping. I was studying Eastern Philosophy in college at the time and sought to learn how to end conflicts with non-violent resolutions.  I had been the victim of violence before and wanted to find solace. There was a well-believed myth that you could somehow calm the most vicious attack with wonderous flowing moves.  This was a strong theme in Akido which I studied for a short while at that time along with several other martial arts.
Years ago, I had this lovely young mother come to me to train.  She very committed to learning because she was often alone with her young son while her husband traveled. She belonged to a strict religious sect.  She was well trained with a firearm but wanted to be able to fight if she couldn’t get to her side arm. Regardless of all of this she would not do anything that seemed violent. She would not punch at a face or kick the body, even with protective gear.  She would simulate it but not do it.  Even hitting a punching bag hard repulsed her. I could not break this mindset.  I asked what she would do if attacked and her only choice was to hurt the person.  She said she wouldn’t.  And then I asked if her son was being brutally assaulted while she was witnessing it, then what?  The thought traumatized her, made her apoplectic and then she said she didn’t know. She sought answers in her religion.  How could she pull the trigger with this mindset?  She continued her training for quite a while and developed a somewhat aggressive attitude.
Many decades ago, while working out in Chinatown, I mentioned to my training partner that I would never kill someone in a fight.  If it had come to me or him it would be me; I could not bear to take a life.  This fellow, Russell, grew up in the heart of North Philadelphia.  His reality was a lot more dangerous than mine. Unlike what the fictional Kwai Chang would have said he blasted me with a scathing message.  “Wait, let me get this straight man.  You would rather be killed than stop a killer?  You would value the life more of a man that doesn’t care about you or anyone else and let him take your place on this planet?  He deserves to live more than you and continue to hurt others while your wife and family are in forever pain?  He might kill your mom or siblings later? He deserves to live???  Brother, you are a fool!”
I was totally unprepared for this moment of street dharma.  Obviously over 50 years later it still rings in my consciousness. It caused me to think long and hard about the reality of a real fight and the lifelong ramifications.  There’s this great story most people know about the fellow who breaks into a temple/church and is stealing candlesticks.  A monk walks in and catches him in the act. Expecting to meet resistance the burglar steps back but the monk goes up and gathers another candle stick and hands it to him. The idea being that he needed it more than the monk.  Such a peaceful heart-warming story. Now let’s look at this a little deeper.  So, the burglar now has no reason to change his ways, no reason to introspect and no reason to care.  Suppose during his next burglary he rapes a woman or beats a man to death?  Who enabled him to continue his ways?  Stopping him would not only save other people but hopefully also begin to stop his own internal violence. This person could be high on drugs and totally out of control, letting him go is doing no favors for society. Enabling him to continue in his destructive ways is not a way of peace and love but of dangerous ignorance.
Thinking that your display of peace is somehow going to stop a Hitler, Pol Pot, Ted Bundy or any other psychopath is childish thinking. It assumes there is this seed of love in their soul waiting to blossom. I truly understand the desire to believe this but it’s not going to work. Sometimes, if not often, the only way to stop violence is with greater violence.  The wicked seek out and love the weak. They don’t want to engage in violence, they want to take control, instill fear and move unimpeded.  I have been in violent situations where the perpetrator grins with delight when he sees fear in his victims’ eyes.  I’ve also seen fear and confusion in their own eyes when the victim became the victor through violent retribution.
I would love the idea of a ‘defensive art’ to actually work but I’ve never seen it happen in a vicious attack.  I’ve seen demonstrations where huge guys subdue the attacker just by means of their size and strength.  Smaller folks can’t do this.  Oh, and if you think you are going to grapple someone to the ground and submit him; that’s a fantasy.  Why?  Because his friends are going to unleash holy hell on you in the no rules world of the street.  There was a BJJ fellow in my area who was quite accomplished and feared on the mat, a real tough guy.  One day he came into the gym absolutely beat to hell.  He got into a fight in a bar, immediately submitted the fellow and then his friends destroyed him.  The street is unforgiving.
Violence is always ugly, there’s no getting around it. It’s traumatic and dehumanizing, it’s the utter failure of rationalism and grace but it is real.  You don’t win these fights; you survive them and live with the consequences. Absolutely do what you can to avoid violence but if it is unavoidable, you best be prepared to handle it and not rely on hope and fantasy.  You can either learn to swim in a torrent or hope the Coast Guard comes.  Which is more realistic?
          

                                                       I know my push hands technique will settle him down!

   
I know I have addressed this before, but it is incredibly important to know and enact.  I have said many times over the years, ‘there is no such thing as self-defense’ and I am reiterating it here.  Once you start defending yourself you are allowing the opponent to offend, you are behind in the action. The very nature of reaction, re-action, is to act afterwards, and therefore being manipulated by the attack.  Am I saying don’t fight? NO! You must change your state of being, your mind frame from defending against an attack to attacking an attack.  These are two entirely different things with vastly different outcomes.  In the first the opponent controls you and in the second, you immediately make the opponent react, make him respond to you.  This doesn’t mean mindless flailing, but what it does mean that everything you throw back at your attacker is meant to cause damage; to leave no doubt that you intend to do whatever it takes to subdue the attacker.  You shouldn’t be fighting unless you must, and then, you do your best to neutralize the situation.

Something that occurred to me while writing this just now.  The very approach to even studying a martial art has a strange dichotomy.  Martial arts schools all proclaim, ‘learn to defend yourself’ while boxing gyms say ‘learn to box’.  Quite a difference in the approach.  Many martial arts schools talk about the offender and defender; you’re attacked, you’re the victim and now you must defend yourself, instant dichotomy. A boxer does not step into the ring to defend himself but to fight.  This might just seem like semantics but there is a mindset to this. Learning to defend yourself in a dojo is entirely different than learning to fight in MMA. 

Recently I was talking to a young grappler I know.  He’s been wrestling and grappling for several years and competing at it.  He expressed to me that there is this one fellow that regularly submits him and he didn’t know what to do about it.  Just his body language while telling me this gave it all away; he was trying to defend himself from this guy, even moving back on his heels while telling me about it.  I bluntly told him that he was intimidated and mentally pulling himself back from this guy, clearly in a defensive mode.  I told him he had to bring it on faster and harder than this guy, attack his attack.  He admitted that he was intimidated and tended to be defensive when rolling with this guy. Well, a week later I saw him again and this time he was grinning. First thing he said to me was “I beat him”. He was so thrilled.  He said that once he turned the tide offensive at the start, he took the guy down.  He was amazed at the stark difference. This guy was now controlled by him. This brings me to my art, Jook Lum.

For years practitioners say that this is a defensive art, a soft art where you can control the fight and subdue the opponent.  I have received a lot of criticism from others in this art for my intelligently aggressive approach to fighting.  When I was young doing this art our Sifu, Mark Foon, was a beast to deal with.  Always good natured and kind but clearly threw a switch when he fought.  He would shut you down with extreme intent and no escape, no playing. It was clear he meant business. Again, not a bully or mean spirited just letting you know that a fight is a fight.
I did not see many others express the art like this.  There are tons of soft flowing drills that few practice with any real time power or aggression.  I could never see this working in a real situation. Coming from Philadelphia, I am all too familiar with street aggression and its realities. When I first started sparring, I got trounced mightily. I could not reconcile what was happening in the school to real time fighting.  Sifu Mark could but I couldn’t. After a long time, I turned around, stopped trying to be defensive and leaned into the fight.  Immediately things changed for me. You only fight if you must and then it’s a matter of survival, not trophies. Do your absolute best to avoid a fight but if you must, make them sorry for it.  Historically speaking this is what the art is known for; doing the real thing, but after decades in the West it became more of a set of drills and forms, the antithesis of its roots. Sifu once said to me, “you got the eyes to see this”!

Why do I bring this up now?  One of the Philly team went to the Jook Lum school in Hong Kong recently and was introduced to the Sifu there. He was given the opportunity to work out in the class and work with them which was quite an honor since they notoriously don’t teach outsiders.  This is the central school of Jook Lum in China and it is where my SiGong, Lum Wing Fay, left for the West.  So, there’s this disconnect with the root here in the US. The night before this team member was to meet Sifu Dieu I sent him a simple text message, “Be Fierce”.  I was not asking him to be mean or inappropriately aggressive but to be real, alert and strong; don’t acquiesce.  After working with Sifu Dieu for a few minutes Sifu said ‘you are doing good but not aggressive enough, not coming in, too many blocks!”  The team member showed Sifu my text and laughed and told him that this is something I had always stressed to him.  He explained that the Philly school had always emphasized this aspect but not so much other schools and yet it wasn’t enough for the Hong Kong school. Sifu displayed this ‘attack the attack’ attitude the entire time they were together. I always felt that this would be the case if we ever connected with the temple in China and that they would be uncompromising.  This art is known for real time application and efficacy, not forms and drills.  Many might disagree with this, but I wonder how many have actually fought a real fighter/boxer.  The first time I did all I thought was ‘this guys not giving me a chance to attack, all he wants to do is hurt me”, Duh and yes, I ended up on the floor. 
                                                    Good luck out there!  Keep it real.
                                                                                                      

  This is normally a topic that I would cover on my Rational Zen web site, but it is very relevant to martial artists.  As humans we search for meaning and identity.  We join religions, political parties, social groups, and a myriad of other social platforms to express and identify who we are, think we are, or want to be.  We try to hold ourselves to the norms and ethos of those groups.  Generally, there is no strict structure to hang on to.  Many people claim to be Christian, Democrat, Republican or whatever but to others they are not those things at all, they have a different way of defining what it means to be those affiliations.   If you say you belong to a party, what guidelines do you use?  Someone who was a party icon years ago might seem the antithesis of that today.  So trying to base your self-identity on a mental idea or construct is a house built on sand and subject to collapse.
This goes beyond mental constructs. There was a fellow I used to work with on the road.  A gregarious Italian American who always boasted about his Italian upbringing.  Great guy, New York firefighter and hard worker. The catch is that he was adopted so really didn’t know his ethnicity.  One day there’s an email from someone on a DNA web site claiming to be a relative.  It turns out that he has 7 half siblings and that he is 50% Jewish and 50% Scottish, not a drop of Italian in him.  Culturally Italian but not genetically. I have a female friend who is an ardent Zionist, also adopted.  Hello DNA, 100% Italian. Defining who you are is a tricky thing. Neither person stopped identifying who they are culturally.
I fully admit that when I started in Kungfu I wanted to be seen as a Kungfu man.  I wanted to be a true representative of the system and school.  I couldn’t wait to bring it up in conversation about my devotion and identification with Jook Lum.  I also had zero skill or understanding but that didn’t stop me.  As I grew older and hopefully wiser, debatable, I dropped these trappings.  I understand the idea of expressing yourself through different cultural identities like martial arts or music, but they are just the cloth on the person.  Many folks have come to me over the years and told me they want to devote their lives to mantis, it’s consumes them. I gently try to steer them away from this path in an attempt to look deeper into life.  You need more to your life than martial arts.  Many years ago, I was with Sifu Mark Foon at a tournament, and we were observing the crowd.  So many guys were strutting around bragging about their martial skills and proclaiming how deadly they were.  Sifu looked at me and said, “If at the end of a man’s life all he can say is that he is able to kill, that is a wasted life.  It’s sad.  I would rather be remembered for healing and spreading goodwill. “
So many people define themselves by an era long past in their lives.  This is particularly evident in many ex-soldiers who throughout their lives will wear something that expresses that they are/were soldiers. The military was a seminal and profound experience that made them who they are today. I am sure their military experience had the greatest impact on their lives more than anything else so it is truly easy to understand their devotion to the past.  Many cannot shake this self definition and do not live in the present. My father was a UDT specialist in WW2 and he and his friends never referred to their wartime life, they just wanted a good family life. No doubt it was a strong part of their character but it wasn’t the only expression of their lives.
 Some folks carry their school colors, past sports affiliations or some other epoch of their life that they rely on for their self-identity even though these things are long gone.  I was working a job and a crew member introduced me to someone that was a blackbelt and thought we would get along well.  She carried a badge on her jacket with the karate school on it.  I asked how long ago she got her black belt and she said 15 years ago.  I was hesitant because she was clearly young and asked how old she was when she got it. She said 10 years old!  Did she still practice?  Nope, but she’s a blackbelt 25 years later.  I had an HVAC guy come to my house on a 95-degree day.  The unit was in the attic and extremely hot so I suggested that I run the attic fan for a while to help him. He was about 40 years old, 5’7” and 240 lbs., clearly in terrible shape. He said to me, standing there out of breath and sweating while just walking in from his truck, “No need I am a military man!  I can handle this”.  I asked when he left the military.  “15 years ago”.  I wanted to add ‘and 80 lbs. ago’ but I didn’t.  These folks are stuck in a self-identity that is based on when they felt most vital but those conditions no longer apply.  Thinking you can still handle yourself when you are decades from your prime is a dangerous thing.
A friend of mine used to organize the country’s biggest East Coast tournament.  Like anything else in life it is not perfect and some folks will cheat to win that coveted trophy in whatever competition.  Now understand my friend was born into martial arts, competed the world over and had several schools.  If anyone’s self-identity is going to be caught up in Kungfu identity it would have been him. The day after this tournament I was with him when he got a phone call from one of the competitors.  This fellow was distraught that his competition was rigged and he lost by biased judging. In the call he said, “Kungfu is my LIFE! I need this”.  My friend, without any hesitation said, “If Kungfu is your life, you need to get a life”.
I’m trying to convey that martial arts might be an expression of yourself and maybe your greatest passion in life but trying to base your identity solely on it is eventually going to cause great difficulties.  Like men or women who are caught up in their beauty and strength are subject to great anxiety when time takes its toll.  If you are only your body and your looks you are in for a rude awakening.  Now at 53 years into martial arts I am amazed at what I can no longer do even though I never stopped training daily. Just ask my titanium knee about it. Like anything else in nature we go through changes, let them happen. The true source of our identity is not body or belief; it is beyond both. Who is it that seeks self-identification?
The great Zen master Zenkei Shibayama said, “we are the paint brush mistaking itself for the painter”.

                                                                           Who do you see when you look in the mirror?
                                                                            (hopefully your feet are not on backwards!)