Page 5 - Robert W. Smith - Pa kua_ Chinese boxing for fitness & self-defense-North Atlantic Books (2003)

This book cannot teach you everything there is to know about
ercise which will enlarge one's physical, mental, and possibly even
Pa-kua. In the absence of a qualified teacher—I know of only a few
psychic horizons. Physically, it will tone and invigorate your
in the U.S.—it can, however, serve as a substitute. Rose S. C. Li
muscles and sharpen and soothe your nerves, teaching you to relax
of the University of Michigan, who has spent a lifetime practicing
and improving your overall health. Mentally, the bodily relaxation
Pa-kua and Hsing-i, wrote me recently that "its delicate technique,
will produce a calm mind, one capable of great concentration. I
theories, and philosophy are not easy for the Western mind to
leave it to someone more competent to enlarge on the psychic
grasp." I more than half agree.
reward; suffice to say I believe there is one. Also, I have avoided
Therefore, this book is but an introduction and basic guide lo
using the word "character," but I insist that the practice of Pa-kua
a highly sophisticated exercise. It is brief because 1 didn't want
requires ever-increasing increments of self-discipline, and this can-
to be like the man who said he knew how to spell banana but
not but have its impact. In the end Pa-kua will let you know and
didn't know where to stop. Over two decades of learning and teach-
conquer yourself (like Mallory and his mountain, we only conquer
ing non-Chinese fighting arts have provided some useful back-
ourselves). Only one with true self-knowledge can master others.
ground for me. Pa-kua, however, is unlike and superior to the
This mastery comes, not from the muscles, but from the mind.
other arts 1 learned, and so, in 1959 when I began to practice it, I
But, paradoxically, seek to master others and it will elude you;
did so from scratch. 1 am still learning. Won't you join me?
seek to know yourself and you will achieve mastery. "If you ask
how I strike the enemy, I cannot tell you: I only do my exercise,"
said Wan Lai-sheng about Master Tu Hsin-wu's natural boxing
Tzu Jan Men, and the same holds for Pa-kua and the other internal
methods, t'ai-chi and hsing-i.
Chinese books on Pa-kua boxing lay great stress on philosoph-
ical aspects which most Westerners would stamp as mysticism.
My eschewing of most of these does not mean I disbelieve them.
It merely means that I do not think a beginning text written for the
Western reader is the place for philosophy—that too much philos-
ophy would obfuscate material which by its very nature is difficult
to present. Germanely, there is the delicious story of a philosopher
in a boat asking the boatman if he knew philosophy. When the
boatman replied in the negative, the philosopher sighed: "Ah,
then you have lost half a life." A storm broke and the boat began
to sink. The boatman asked the sage, "Do you know how to
swim ?" When the philosopher shook his head, the boatman said,
"Ah, then you have lost all of a life!"
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