What is Martial Spirit to you?

[Minghequan]

What is Martial Arts Spirit to you?

Some of us do so for the love of the art, the cool buzz we get from doing it, from learning and understanding its many and varied aspects. Yes even for life-protection/self-defence. Some do it to discover more about themselves, to perfect character, to enjoy the "spirit" of the arts. It is not a prerequisite of the arts to go around punching people. The defensive/offensive aspects have there place but need not be the only reason to study it. There is martial arts spirit, there are martial arts fighting, there is martial arts forms, there are many aspects to the martial arts. Simply look at Sword study, the end aim is not to go around cutting people up into bite size pieces, to slice and dice them! If violence is all one seeks then what type of life is that?

After all if your only need or desire is to cause the maximum damage you can to someone then why not use a gun? This is in my view a self-limiting view of the martial arts in its entirety.

[David Jamieson]

The term martial precludes all.

The spirit, is to have the will to go on even when you're hurting or down, especially in a conflict.

the navel gazing part is for people who don't want to do any hurting in my opinion.

[SPJ]

I would say to raise your spirits by practicing the physical aspect of your body.

1. diligence.

2. patience.

3. perservance.

4. dedication.

5. humility, to learn from your defeat and weakness and improve on that.

6. accept loss or defeat and move on or build from there.

--

on and on.

note that we do not really fight with open hand any more, since there is this hot weapon or gun.

--

;)

[sanjuro_ronin]

Tom Petty said it best:

Stand me up by the gates of hell and I won't back down.
:p

[Ray Pina]

I started my practice when I was 4... my family said I was karate chopping things around the house and my dad worked with a sensei. So for me there was no why to it, it's just always been there. I stopped for a while, in high school and college, but couldn't get it out of my system.

Martial arts and surfing have been a treasure in my life. They're the same thing. You find yourself doing things without though. The countless performance of the act itself revealing itself. Likewise, waves don't look like mountains of water that can kill, they are a familiar angle slope... something experienced daily. Likewise, fists aren't instruments of face destruction, they're incoming equations waiting to be solved.

Increasingly I try to turn off my brain and experience all of life like that... natural, thoughtless expression. I think that's as close to God as one can come while living.

[SimonM]

As a truly wise Canadian once said:

"I climb it because it's there".

[MightyB]

As a truly wise Canadian <oxymoron> once said:

"I climb it because it's there".

Nope- it's gotta be martial in intent. Otherwise it's cr@p. Look at health club tai chi. No martial intent whatsoever. No push hands. Pure nonsensical mysticism crap talk'n 'bout internal energy- the universe- longevity. No martial base- it is crap compared to real- legit- Tai Chi that's taught as a martial art. I don't care if it's Chen, Wu, Yang, W'u, Hsu, Sun- real tai chi that's taught as a martial art is so much better , and better for you, than that health club spiritual cr@p.

No martial means cr@p, what you get is supremely suxor.

[MightyB]

I wasn't dissing Simon's thought about MA- just the quote about "a truly-wise Canadian". There's really no such thing as that. His thoughts about MA are good though.