Kung fu is more than a martial art, it is a philosophy and a way of life. As such, who can truly differentiate between what is “real” and what is “fake”?
I believe most people can.
In the US, where I am from, the term “keep it real” has established itself within our language, and the meaning has influenced everything from TV shows and web design to music and literature. We find ourselves constantly digging and scraping away at delusions and masks that hide our true selves. It’s an ongoing project and we may never really find a resolution.
Kung Fu in Mainland China is currently engaged in a very similar undertaking. Traditionalists demand utter dedication from their disciples, but, to their dismay, the old masters find that fewer and fewer young people in China want to dedicate themselves to something as materially unrewarding as Kung Fu. Reformers advocate a loosening of old rules, a simplification of classic forms, and above all a sincere outreach program to attract people to the values of Kung Fu as a philosophy. But, like the original reformer Bruce Lee, they face resistance from those who fear dilution of the art if it spreads too far too fast.
One look around the materialistic, dog-eat-dog society of modern China tells the traditional master that he is needed now more than ever. But how to pull the young people away from the pragmatic thinking “school, job, money” and toward a more meaningful life of self-improvement and social responsibility? It’s not easy and many of the traditional masters are finding themselves without students. Kung Fu practitioners are worrying more about how to market themselves than how to master and transmit this ancient art.
What is real Kung Fu in 2012? Is it a simple form that reaches and benefits many? Is it a master who is one-part martial artist and two-parts self-promoting guru? What is happening to the old forms and classic traditions of Kung Fu? Are they dying with the old masters? What will survive into the next century? Who is picking up the torch and carrying it on today, if not Mainland Chinese?
I believe the answer to the question What is Real Kung Fu? is I know it when I see it. But for all the other questions, there is still a blank. And that is what this blog and project are all about: Answering the questions that surround Kung Fu in the modern age.
If I’m standing next to my house, it seems big. But if I’m in an airplane at 30,000 feet and look out the window at my house, it seems but a speck. When our universe first began expanding, if I started moving away from it three or four times as fast as it was expanding, there would come a time when I would be 100 – 200 billion light years away from it.
From that distance, just like looking at my house out the window of the airplane, if I stopped and looked back at our universe, it would also look like a speck. It’s possible to go that far away from our universe because eternity has no boundaries, no limits. It’s hard for us earth-bound humans to conceptualize time and distance on that large scale.
Cosmologist tell us that our universe is 13 – 15 billion light years across. Now, think of the length of my life within the spectrum of the age of the universe — my life itself is nothing but a speck.
So within the spectrum of eternity, our universe is really nothing but a speck. And of equal importants, within the spectrum of our universe, my life is nothing but a speck. So in reality, I am nothing but a speck within a speck.
What’s the importants and relevants of all this?
This article said, ” Traditionalists demand utter dedication from their disciples, but, to their dismay, the old masters find that fewer and fewer young people in China want to dedicate themselves to something as materially unrewarding as Kung Fu.”
I believe that until someone comes to the understanding that the span of our life is nothing but a speck within a speck, they will never really get their priorities straight.
They will live their entire life building kingdoms for this time of our fleshly existence; never fully understanding how they have wasted their life in the pursuit of things that, in a metaphorical blink of time, will have no meaning.
Fantastic. But I fail to get one thing. What’s your point?
Word to God. Thanks for that comment, feels to good to have it up here as the first one on this page.