A Winner's Guide to Life, Meditation, and Martial Arts

We will briefly go through the history of Chinese martial arts in this Chapter.  The First War in China is used as an example to illustrate how offense and defense works.  The physics, philosophy, and principles of martial arts are briefly mentioned, and they will be thoroughly discussed in the following Chapters.   The reader will have a brief overview of the book from this example.  The rationale is given that thinking about defense is how you may approach and create martial arts.  As matter of fact, all Chinese martial arts start with thinking about defense.  At the end of the Chapter, the nature of martial arts is explained.

Let us start with some definitions.

I.  Definitions

1.  Wushu is a Chinese word for fighting arts.  The principles and applications of fighting moves (offense vs. defense) are based on physics, kinetics, human anatomy, physiology, observation, reasoning, strategy, timing, and, most important of all, philosophies about life.  The study of Wushu was a must for a scholar in Ancient China.  For instance, Confucius, Lao Tzu and Zhuang Tzu, they all studied martial arts and documented their learning in their books.  However, during the last century, the study of Wushu was abandoned, largely due to invasions of foreign powers and the fact that bullets are faster than fists.  The opportunity to study Wushu becomes even rarer at the present time.  This book is therefore written to document principles and applications of Chinese martial arts that the author learned and expanded, so as to preserve Wushu as a human art.  

2.  A Wuzher is a martial artist or a fighter in Chinese.  A Wuzher is also required to study history, geography, science, medicine, politics, military strategy and tactics, and everything about fighting and warfare.  A Wuzher is almost equivalent to a knight and a sorcerer put together in the west.  With the advancement of modern weaponry, Wushu is now limited to study of open hand fighting and use of old weapons other than guns.  A Wuzher is now defined as a practitioner of old open hand fighting methods.

3.  Chuan is a fist or boxing in Chinese.  A certain method of open hand combat is also called Chuan.  For instance, Tai Ji (the limits, the very beginning of everything) Chuan, Chan Chuan (Extended Arm Boxing), Ba Ji Chuan (Eight-Ultimate Boxing), Shaolin Chuan, etc

4.  Chan or Zen is a meditation method introduced by Dharma over 1500 years ago.  Shaolin Buddhist monks practice Chan.  Chan is used to mean questions, analytical processes, and answers for the topic chosen.  It is a life long process to find answers to questions for one’s life; therefore, Chan is a life long study of one’s life.  I used Chan analytic methods to study Wushu.  On the other hand, studying Wushu also helped me to practice Chan.  “ Use Chan to enter the world of Wushu, so that Chan and Wushu may become one and the same.“  It is a tradition for Shaolin Chan monks to study Wushu.

5.  Wu Ji (limitless, space, Nature) gave rise to Tai Ji (limits, the very beginning).  It is a Daoist theory about the existence of Nature.  Wu Ji is everything.  Wu Ji is Nature itself.  Wu Ji is all-inclusive.  Since one is also part of the universe and Nature, one has to relate oneself to events in the universe and follow the way of Nature.