Junior Member
Do you think Practicing Martial Arts is a spiritual activity?
My friend once said that spirituality is a feeling or relationship one has with the universe. It can be based without any religious beliefs. What do you guys think?
Do you guys also think you pick up morals or a sense of duty to society by practicing?
Yin & Yang
Ok, here is my take on it and it might ruffle a few feathers.
Personally, I don't think that MA can give you anything that you haven't got already, it can make certain things better or more apparent.
MA Training is simply a refining/adjustement process of natural skills and abilities you already got.
May it be spiritual or physical, what you put in is what you get out improved.
Just my 2 Cent, spend them any way you wish.
Peace.
Count Zero
No.
Where's the spiral?
I think it can be - I think the constant self-evaluation and assessment that MA requires could be defined as spiritual...
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it
Senior Member
it itself i do not believe is a form of spirituality. but i do believe that many things can help in spirituality
'i have a new found respect for crowbars now'
pause
'atleast it wasn't about sex'
Member
I think it can be, if you want it to be, but it doesn't have to be.
'"4 ounces deflect 1000 pounds" represents a skill potential, if you stand in front of a 1000 pound charging bull and apply four ounces of deflection, well, you get the picture..' - Tai Chi Bob
"My car has a lot of parts in there that I don't know about, don't know what they're called, haven't seen them and wouldn't know what they were if someone pointed them out to me .... doesn't mean they're not in there." - Evolution Fist
Janitor
I find it very spiritual when I stick my fist into some one elses gob, don't you?
What a super guy
Where's the spiral?
that's fighting - not practicing a martial art. Slight difference.
Some martial arts are more spiritual than others - it's just a word anyway, I think we all have different definitions of it.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it
Janitor
Is fighting (sparring) not part of marital arts practice?
What a super guy
Member
Depends what you perceive to be 'spirituality'. I think that (true) martial arts are definately a spiritual endeavour - they are about self improvement, discipline, honesty, integrity and finding a personal sense of calm in a world full of many distractions.
Spirituality, for me, is not about following a dogmatic religion or idolising a deity.
In the worlds before Monkey, primal chaos reigned. Heavens sought order. But the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown. The four worlds formed again and yet again, as endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essence of Heaven, the moisture of the Earth, the powers of the Sun and the Moon all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation. And it became magically fertile. That first egg was named "Thought". Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said, "With our thoughts, we make the World". Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it came a stone monkey.
The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!
Where's the spiral?
sparring isn't fighting though is it? In a fight there's no room for anything other than surviving - in sparring you have the capacity to think and analyse, safe in the knowledge that it is stoppable and 'safe'.
Having said that - I don't think there's spirituality in sparring either- I don't think that spirituality should be in every aspect of martial art and I don't think it's a necessity for most styles. But I do think it's there for some people.
Unfortunately I can't even provide a definition of spirituality so I'm kind of arguing with blanks here
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it
Janitor
Well, I know what I mean and I'M right. So there, ner ner ne ner ner.
It all depends on how and what you define spirituality as. For me, spiritualty is some thing above the mundane, an emotion gained from something other than the 5 senses. Think I'lll go and hug a tree for a while.
What a super guy
AWAY
even doing a dump is a spiritual act if you know how to make it that way. No pun intended.
Chinese Martial Arts has much to do with using mind (yi) to move. Perfection of body becomes perfection of mind and vice versa, Chinese MA does both.
So I am a (singular) minority on this thread, so now we can all go take a dump and be all spiritual about it
WUTANG is 4 the CHILDREN!
Put me in the "anything can be spiritual" camp. My shifu has told me he uses sweeping the floor as an opportunity to meditate, and that most people meditate without even knowing it.
Haven't you ever heard of the Tao of washing dishes?
All my fight strategy is based on deliberately injuring my opponents. -
Crippled Avenger
"It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever get near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propoganda visits...Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecendented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him."
First you get good, then you get fast, then you get good and fast.
WUTANG is 4 the CHILDREN!
Just because you're a murderous lunatic doesn't mean you aren't spiritual. Unfortunately.
All my fight strategy is based on deliberately injuring my opponents. -
Crippled Avenger
"It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever get near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propoganda visits...Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecendented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him."
First you get good, then you get fast, then you get good and fast.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote