Reclaiming ‘internal’; The Intuitive Method Interpretation
Article Summary:
1. Most previous interpretations of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ are not true, and evolved only as a series of deceits to support the status, incomes, egos, reputations and low skill of a falsely elevated elite. In some cases, however, wrong interpretations have emerged due to lack of insight. The real meaning of these terms is a threat to the status and incomes of this elite, hence their resistance to it.
2. The intuitive method interpretation (IMI) reclaims, or rather rediscovers and reasserts, the true meaning of ‘internal’ and ‘external’, and in doing so overthrows that elite, and returns these concepts to all people, for the benefit of all people, at all stages of practice. IMI enhances the training of all, while most other interpretations enhance the bank balances of frauds.
3. IMI asserts that ‘internal’ and ‘external’ do not refer to any physical movements, or movement methods, or movement styles whatsoever, nor to any physical outcomes. As a logical consequence:
A: ‘Soft’ and ‘hard’ movements do not define what is internal or external martial art.
B: ‘Whole body movement’ (or more usually whole body weight power), because it is a physical movement practice, cannot be the ‘true’ meaning of internal and external, nor can it be the replacement, or superior re-statement, of these concepts.
C: Internal and external do not refer to any method of ‘energy release’ etc., and so ‘internal’ cannot be claimed as an achieved skill. The real method of wushu is an evolving process of personal development.
4. Internal and external refer solely to active approaches to training – ‘internal’ meaning intuitive insight and development, ‘external’ meaning the use of other people’s knowledge: i.e. coaching, copying movements, learning set-skills and movements, sports science. Both are asserted within IMI as equally important.
5. IMI explains and resolves almost all debates surrounding this subject, and many others within Chinese martial arts, and as such is superior to all other interpretations. Similarly, IMI is true for all people at all times, at all stages of development, and so by definition is a superior interpretation than interpretations that posit the existence of things that can only ‘exist’ or be understood within one cultural, or elite, perspective.
6. If IMI is true (and only if it is true) then criticising it through personal attack, or calling it wrong ‘just because it is’, by definition means that an individual has no experience and/or understanding of the deeper meaning of the true wushu method. Such criticisms would therefore self-negate.
7. IMI cannot be dismissed on the grounds of being ‘just talk’ or ‘meaningless philosophy/psychobabble’ etc. because its core principle is that the intuitive method works and has meaning only insofar as someone is prepared to invest in real, serious, physical training.
8. If IMI is true (and only if it is true) then the idea that the internal/external concept is meaningless is, by definition, an indication of lack of insight into the higher level training philosophy of Chinese wushu.
Introduction.
Arguments over what ‘internal’ and ‘external’ mean in relation to Chinese martial arts (CMA) have been going on for some considerable time. The advent of the internet has seen an explosion of such discussions. As these discussions almost always end in acrimonious disagreement, with nothing proved, nothing demonstrated and nothing learned, many people have simply decided that the ideas are meaningless. Others have clung to mystical interpretations, or interpretations that refer to internal and external as different movement, or ‘energy release’ ‘platforms’.
Part of the problem is that there is no agreed criteria via which real meanings can be decided upon. As a consequence, most people simply cling to what they already believe, arguing from the perspective that what they say is axiomatically true, for no real reason, and the basis on which other interpretations must be judged is therefore whether it is the same as theirs. Hence the endless, circular, and ultimately pointless discussions.
Others, more cynically, manipulate meanings to serve their own ends – ends which vary from outright financial fraud, through to deceitfully parading as the bearer of special skills. All of which is to the detriment of CMA as a whole, whose reputation has been damaged by the significant skills-drift, at best away from the real CMA method, and at worst away from actual ability and towards increasingly defensive posturing over arcana. As the economist Maurice Dobb once said, untestable claims are the last, cowardly refuge of bankrupt philosophies – and this is never truer than for the many ‘internal’ so-called experts of the CMA world.
In this article I will suggest meaningful criteria for assessing the meanings of internal and external, and then demonstrate how most previous interpretations fail to fulfil these criteria. IMI, by contrast, will be shown fully fulfil them. I will then explain in more detail what IMI is, and what it is not. In conclusion, I will argue that IMI is not only true, it is practically useful, represents a deeper insight into CMA than other interpretations, and proves itself truer than other interpretations by the sheer scope and breadth of its applications and implications.
Meaningful Criteria
What do ‘internal’ and ‘external’ really mean? And how would we assess this? Some information – isolated quotes – has come to us from the past. Most of our understanding of these terms, however, comes from discussions over time with the wider community of CMAists who in turn have garnered some idea from the ‘folk’ traditions of the past. Most of those traditions had oral histories, and so it is difficult to know precisely what people thought about the matter in the past, and whether our interpretations correspond with theirs. However, it is feasible that there were many interpretations in the past, based on different levels of understanding and insight. Unfortunately, we cannot know whether an isolated quote, or a particular interpretation, represents the most profound understanding, or the most glib.
I am going to use something called the Principle of Scientific Exegesis to argue that we can in fact ‘decode’ the real meaning of internal and external, just by assuming that the best, past practitioners understood something that all good human artists come to realise: that an art is a fusion of method and idiosyncrasy, and that only by encouraging this yin/yang of methods can real skill and/or understanding come about. In fact, most people in CMA already fully understand this idea; they just have yet to link it to ‘internal’ and ‘external’, because this real meaning has been overlooked in the pursuit of arcana.
The ‘Principle of Scientific Exegesis’ (PSE) suggests, in simplest terms, that an explanation which explains more of an interconnected set of ideas is truer than one which explains less. In other words, if an interpretation of something makes more aspects of it make sense, then it is superior to an interpretation that makes less aspects interconnect and make sense in relation to one another. Another principle of PSE is that the meaning of ambiguous terms within a set of ideas should, where possible and where this makes sense, be interpreted in the way that conforms to the overall conclusions of the set of ideas - because it makes more sense that arguments in favour of the conclusion were the real, intended meaning than arguments against the conclusion. (This, by the way, dismisses arguments based on Chinese language interpretations – these cannot possibly represent the intended technical meanings of words within a complex idea set held by deeply thoughtful individuals, such as that surrounding Chinese wushu).
Following PSE, I firstly assert that CMA should be seen as a practical skill development system. Without this, CMA becomes meaningless, so this statement must, by definition, be true. As a consequence, definitions of terms or ideas that come to us from the past, or during our training, must, by definition, make more sense when interpreted in a way that furthers skill development than when interpreted in a way that does not. Useless ideas are obviously bolted on, unnecessary additions, to a practical system.
Applied to the internal/external (I/E) concept, this means that an interpretation that aids further skill development should be viewed as superior to those that do not. An idea that does not aid skill development is ‘dead’ – it may ‘make sense’ on its own in some sense, but if it does not make sense when connected to the whole, and to the intended outcome of that whole (higher skill), it has no point within that whole, and should be rejected.
Does this mean that if there is such a skill-developing interpretation of I/E that we can then comfortably assume that it is superior to other interpretations? One could argue contrarily that the view that the I/E concept is meaningless leads to superior skill by preventing time wasting. In itself, however, this would not lead directly to further skill-development – it just would not lead you anywhere at all. In fact, if there is an interpretation that does, actively, lead to further skill-development, then ignoring it would retard potential development, rather than enhance it, and so in such a case, this criticism would have to be dismissed. Below I will argue we are dealing with such a case (one where there is an interpretation that aids skill development), and so I dismiss it.