normal people dont force their religion on their students. i have never seen kung fu teacher force religion on their students, except chinatown bitter old cantonese doods with no wife.
normal people dont force their religion on their students. i have never seen kung fu teacher force religion on their students, except chinatown bitter old cantonese doods with no wife.
Last edited by bawang; 08-15-2014 at 09:58 PM.
Honorary African American
grandmaster instructor of Wombat Combat The Lost Art of Anal Destruction™®LLC .
Senior Business Director at TEAM ASSHAMMER consulting services ™®LLC
The fact that there is Buddhist, Taoist, Muslim Gong Fu, shows you that the religion isn't a necessary component, it's a cultural afterthought.
Original Gong Fu was probably Shamanistic and the other Asian MAs that stem from TCMA have adopted their own local beliefs into their systems.
It is a common human attribute to try to tie your faith into your war making. People have always felt the need for divine justification of their killing.
It was something I did "just for fun", how sad was that? LOL !
On a serious note, when my Mother, Father and older sister converted to being JW's they tried to get me to be one too, which sent me on a mission to truly study the bible and religion, especially the history Christianity of course.
It naturally progressed to actual academic study.
It was really fascinating and I learned a lot ( as you can imagine) and realized that the true flavour of Christianity IS it's distinctiveness and how NATURAL that is in a religion that is about CHOICE and PERSONAL relation/revelation with God.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
I practice astrophysics gongfu.
For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.
Be thou a leader and a companion in battle to those who strive for the Orthodox Faith, so that all who fight against us may know that God and His holy Angels are with us.
Mezhyhira Transfiguration Monastery
This is my teacher
For whoso comes amongst many shall one day find that no one man is by so far the mightiest of all.
The religion justifies the violence. So yes, it is in addition to and not the source of.
Kung fu or making one self strong and able to make violence has less to do with shamanism and more to do with tribal survival and individual survival and it grew from there up through various ways to get skills and keep them to full armies to ritualized training coming in from religious practice or in the seeking of spiritual liberation.
Back in the ancient days, it was about the same thing it's about today. To make violence and to withstand violence. In order to reconcile ourselves with the meaning and purpose of violence we have a tendency to dress it up with honour and righteousness etc. Martial arts are another form of dressing up violence.
It helps us reconcile what is otherwise an ugly necessity of being alive on planet earth.
Kung Fu is good for you.
I agree that spirituality/religion was an after thought in MA.
It seems that perhaps someone figured out that teaching and developing the ability to kill WITHOUT a strong moral sense of WHY one should NOT do it, can lead some people into serious problems and society pays the price ( as we see everyday).
Giving anyone the ability to kill ( be it with bare hands or a weapon) and NOT at least TRYING to instill the very valid reasons NOT to is, IMO, just plain wrong.
I think when a teacher has a strong sense of "right and wrong" that he/she understands the value of VALUES and even more so in regards to a person learning how to kill.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
Yes, we can have order or we can have chaos.
Order is what gives us constructs such as morality and ethics. Chaos is the natural ebb and flow of things.
I am not certain one is better or worse in a big picture sense, but I do feel that order gives me a personal sense of meaning and purpose and direction.
Order isn't found without establishing a moral and ethical framework within it.
Kung Fu is good for you.
Indeed and I think we are getting some very visual examples as of late of what happens when fighting skill is taught without some sort of "moral base" to it.
And it's not just about guys fighting because they like to fight, it is about people viewing fighting as an acceptable answer to their problems and killing as a viable option.
Add to that the mentality of "ends justifies the means" and we have a recipe for disaster.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
yeah, there are a lot of commentaries about blindly killing off vast numbers of people.
Particularly in conversations around the Middle East situation(s)
Very strange to see commentaries from soccer moms and armchair quarterbacks on the local news about how we should just "wipe out" all of Syria or Gaza or what have you with no consideration of the millions of lives that are being spoken of.
I find that somewhat perplexing and all too common these days.
What's worse is that I don't think people actually understand anything until they've had direct visceral experience with it whatever it is.
People can talk hockey all day long, but until they play, they are just gas bagging.
Same goes for anything really.
An opinion is one thing, an informed commentary is another entirely.
Kung Fu is good for you.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
Ethical behavior should be modeled well before MA comes into the picture, IMO. Nowadays, the number of young people who seem unable to deal with conflict in a mature manner seems at an all-time high. Or maybe it's just reported more. Maybe it's a lack of good parental guidance in many cases. But nowadays, the old advice about "stand up to the bully and teach him a lesson and he will leave you alone" seems antiquated. Now, if someone finds he can't handle you face-to-face, he will just go get a gun. The exact same, and probably even more, with those who are allegedly bullied. There is too much seeking a quick fix (guns) and media attention, and not enough resolve to make oneself stronger mentally, emotionally, and physically. And the physical aspect is really the least of the three. Without the first two aspects, the physical means little, regardless how much it may be developed through MA or any other outlet.
As far as cavalier attitudes towards killing, that has always been the case when it comes to "the others". It's easy for people to lump whole groups of people together, especially in countries that most Americans probably couldn't even locate on a world map without the internet. To suggest simply blasting every person in a region into nothingness in the casual manner that many do, is callous and stupid. Such attitudes are nothing new. And there are those in every country who share that, just as there are those everywhere who are more evolved and do not believe that way. And you never know; by suggesting everyone of certain groups be eliminated, you may just be condemning a best friend or friends you never had the chance to meet.
Last edited by Jimbo; 08-25-2014 at 10:20 AM.