The dialectic of yiquan

[Miqi]

One of the most useful concepts from traditional wushu is ‘wu de’, or martial art ethic. Wu de, approached from a dialectical perspective, has no ‘core’ meaning; rather, its meaning is dependent upon its use within a specific context. These days, I most often see it used as a defence, against others – as in “You can’t criticise me! That’s bad wu de!”

Wu de is the ‘driver’ of the dialectical method in yiquan. In this sense, wu de means honesty and integrity. This begins with being honest about your actual training, your commitment, your level, your potential, and your technical understanding. Obviously, for most ‘senior’ CMAists, this level of honesty constitutes a virtually insurmountable obstacle. (If we’re going to be honest, then let’s be honest.) This drives the dialectical method as you try to work out superior ways of doing things. To be clear, in yiquan, much of your most productive training time will come from working without a teacher, as you ‘progress via intuition’, as Wang put it. This, again, is the total opposite of the orthodox ‘wisdom’ that says you need to pay a great deal of money, time, and deference to a teacher. (Only a small amount of insight is required to work out the equation between someone who ‘wants’ martial arts for what it gives to their ego and that person’s consequent insistence that their students must immerse themselves into the personality cult of the school.)

Perhaps in some other, non-dialectical, styles, copying the external form of another (one of the core meanings of ‘external martial arts’), is desirable. For a system whose goal is the exploration and accentuation of inherent ability, the external method must be strongly dialectically conditioned by the ‘internal’, i.e. intuitive, method. Most of that happens from ‘inside’ you. Time on your own, working stuff out, thinking it through, developing it via intuitive exploration, is the only way.

The second level of wu de is being honest about why you ‘want’ yiquan. What you ‘want’ it for. Few people are ever truly honest about this – but it is key because subconsciously, whatever it is that you truly, truly want, in your secret, unspoken psychological need, will steadily guide your training – or rather twist, corrupt it, bully and lie – to get it. If what you secretly want is status, magic powers, an easy way, to be respected, to be feared, money, sex, to bully, glory, then subconsciously you will attune all of your actions towards that. I think in most ways, we all start out with some kind of subconscious ambition like that (probably never truly lose it if we’re honest). And I think beneath these are deeper ego needs, like the need to belong, or not be alone, or to feel important, or to assuage a sense of weakness or powerlessness. Once recognised, then you recognise that what you didn’t want was actual knowledge and understanding. Real understanding and skill was always a 'pretend goal'. Hence, your dialectic was always perverted towards the subconscious goal, and not the pretend goal. Actually shifting your mental awareness to pursue the pretend goal is, with some dark irony, the basis of a healthy dialectical method. This was always implicit in the real traditional wushu – somewhere in the ‘classical mess’ – just like it was implicit somewhere in Master Bruce’s thinking. In Master Wang’s thinking, however, it is fully explicit, if not necessarily in most of his so-called ‘descendants’. One’s yiquan dialectic, therefore, requires a bit of courage; you’re right, but most people won’t understand it. But that’s my secret need - to be the one who understands when no one else does. So, in true dialectic style, I’m not sure which goal I’m following. However, I’m considerably surer than the soulless minions of ego who have thus far virtually eliminated the reputation of yiquan.

[Miqi]

One of the very useful outcomes of a dialectical training method is its elimination of the silly focus on metaphysical ideal types – i.e. the conceit that there is something like “taijiquan” which somehow exists independently of any individual. The idea of an “ultimate achievement” as being, simply, the product of you at a specific time, your training, your coaching, your diet, etc. etc., is dangerous to some people because they parasitise the reputation of arts to bolster their own appalling level. You hear this when people confuse the propaganda surrounding their art with their personal level.

In the dialectical method of yiquan, what matters is principles, not some metaphysical, ideal “yiquan” – although, the lines of frauds claiming to represent this magical yiquan are pretty long. Principles evolve over time to achieve different levels of expression. Actually, this applies to all wushu – and a good example is the funny pseudo-debate over which is better, traditional or modern wushu. Modern wushu takes principles from traditional wushu and trains them to professional levels of excellence. For those principles, modern wushu represents a far higher stage of wushu.

However, contemporary wushu, on the whole, only takes one particular set of principles from traditional wushu. These are the athletic and postural elements. It leaves behind another set of principles – those pertaining to fight application – at their more retarded, traditional level.
Those points where contemporary wushu is a great improvement on traditional wushu can be seen like ‘nodes’ where the principle of a posture or movement has been taken to professional level. When the ridiculous frauds – mostly, frauds in the West – see this kind of wushu, they hone in on these ‘nodes’ and criticise them for ‘moving too far away from traditional fight-based wushu’.

But that isn’t what has happened at all. Ideally, all the principles would have advanced together – form and function. But only one has – form. The traditional Chinese martial artist frauds (i.e. those who are frauds, rather than those exceptional cases who really do have skill) have neither good form nor good function. Embarrassed by their own appalling level they focus in on the points where wushu has massively improved, and criticise these for abandoning fight-based principles. In fact, the fight-based principles haven’t been abandoned at all – they’ve just remained at the retarded, traditional level.

Similarly in yiquan: places where technical skill has become retarded – and of course, I am an example of that: I am middle aged man, a hobby trainer, and I’ve largely become as good as I ever will be, sadly – places where technical skill has become retarded have to push forwards in dialectical manner into new expressions. While, for instance, JKD always goes backwards, either into the same set of techniques, or into simply learning techniques from other sources, yiquan should push forwards, into deeper expressions of principles. It is always yiquan – it always performs the techniques according to yiquan principles of body language, only, at least in theory, at ever higher levels of expression – power, timing, speed, accuracy, professional context, relaxation, and where appropriate, minimalist movement. Compare with JKD which, in one branch shifts ‘platforms’ into different body mechanics (boxing, TKD etc.) and in another, actually has no advanced theory or practice of body mechanics, but is simply a collection of techniques. This is why the old man said that techniques are merely “hits and beats”, and do not in themselves constitute yiquan. One should be wary, however, of the appalling frauds who actually don’t have any techniques at all, and pretend to have magical powers. They are parasites, attracted to yiquan in the way that bad people are often attracted to good things.