THE SPIRIT OF INVESTIGATION
The article below is written by
Gregory Fong, an experienced practitioner of Yiquan. You can find more
information on him here. His
detailed explanation on the amount of focus and mental work that goes into the
practice of Yiquan is very illuminating. Hopefully, it will assist you in the
furthering your practice of Zhan Zhuang and Yiquan.
***
I have written before about the
importance of a student’s willingness to think carefully and critically about
what he is taught. Blind obedience to the teacher’s authority tends to inhibit
learning. One must always be prepared to ask why he is being told to do or not
to do something in training. More specifically, one must understand whether,
and if so, how something being taught will contribute to his health and to the development
of his power.
That is to say, both the means
and the ends of training must be understood clearly. Furthermore, answering
such questions is an on-going process in the sense that one’s understanding of
the training should deepen over time. A student’s understanding can deepen in
this way only if he recognizes that no one can do the work of inquiry for him.
This is a lesson I have had to
learn for myself both as a student and as a teacher. I had been training
seriously for over 25 years when I first met my teacher, Dr. Yu (Yong Nian), in Beijing, China many years
ago. With all the hard work I had put in over the years, I figured that while I
might not be a great martial artist, at least I wasn’t terrible. I was in for a
shock.
My first mistake was to tell to
Dr. Yu that I could sit in a big, low stance for five hours. In response, he
asked me to stand in a high combat stance with about 70% of my weight on my
back foot. This seemed like no big deal compared with the deep stance I had
bragged about. Then Dr. Yu asked me to do a few simple things while in the combat
stance: stand up and sit down, move to the left and to the right, and move
forward and backward. I was to do all these things simultaneously and without
moving my skeleton.
At the time, none of this made
any sense to me. How could I move without moving my skeleton? I thought perhaps
he was asking me to visualize something or that maybe he was simply joking.
With one finger, he adjusted my posture, poking my hip, knee, chin, chest, and
so on. Then he took out his watch. The pain was so great that I had to stop aft
r one minute and 40 seconds, and I hadn’t actually done anything that he’d
asked me to do.
At that point, I had a choice:
either I could quit, go home, tell no one about my trip to Beijing, and start
promoting myself as a master (after all, I had all that experience and had won
some important tournaments!) or I could stay with Dr. Yu and start over. It wasn’t
easy, but I chose the latter course, signed a blank check to Dr. Yu, told him
to fill in the amount he thought appropriate and then asked him to teach me
from the beginning.
The only good news I got was
that, in his view, I at least knew what I looking for from training. Then he
pointed his finger at my head and said, “too weak,” then at my chest and said,
“too tight,” and then at my legs and said, “too weak.” At that point, he smiled
and said, “other than that, it’s all right.” In other words, I had mastered all
the wrong things! I felt at that moment both very sad and very happy. On the
one hand, someone had just made clear to me in a very direct way just how much
time I had wasted working hard in the wrong direction.
It would have been perfectly
understandable to have grabbed my blank check and quickly made for the exit. On
the other hand, it was equally clear that I’d found a teacher who was willing
to speak the truth and possibly lose a student (and his checkbook!) as a
consequence.
To a large extent, however, the
posture, the adjustment, and the remark, “too weak, too tight, too weak,” was
all the instruction Dr. Yu gave me during those first lessons. I was left alone
to figure out for myself the meaning of it all.
So, did I learn all the secrets
of I-chuan after paying a small fortune for those first lessons? Not at all. I
have had to go back to Beijing a number of times (each time to learn more or
less the same thing), work hard at home, make many mistakes, and learn from a
few other good I-chuan teachers. Indeed, all I can truly say at this point is
that while I’m not good at this art, I believe I’m finally headed in the right
direction.
This may not seem like much to
say when compared with championships, honors, certification, and so on, but it
is really the only “progress” of any consequence. My experience as a teacher as
well as as a student has taught me much about people’s resistance to the fact
that there is, as the saying goes, no free lunch in this sort of training.
Over the years, I have had some
very accomplished students come to learn from me. They were eager to
demonstrate the different stances they had learned and to show me that they
could stand comfortably for an hour or more. Many of them were as proud of
their achievements as I had been of mine. They had learned from this or that
master and could show me their teacher’s lineage. But they also wanted to know
what I thought of their standing. So, I showed them how to stand in a high
health stance with their hands in whatever position they choose. Like Dr. Yu
did with me, I then used my finger to adjust their posture. In ten to fifteen
minutes, they always begin to tremble and sweat, and their faces tell me they
are in great pain. Only very rarely do any of these students return for further
instruction.
Sometimes they say that they’re
sure their own teachers will introduce them to this sort of training when
they’re ready, but they don’t stick around long enough to learn that this is
the first lesson for all of my students, regardless of their sex, age, or prior
training. I see no point in waiting until one is “ready” to begin training in
this way, and there is no way to explain it before the student has begun to
work it out for himself. The student who puts off this training until he’s
“ready” will, as I did, likely only master all the wrong things and have to
start over in the end.
The problem, of course, is that
the more time one puts in putting off this sort of training, the harder it will
be to take it up. There are two sources of this difficulty. First, no one wants
to admit that his or her long hours of training are basically worthless, and that
sort of attachment to one’s training only grows stronger with time. This much
is human nature. Second, hard as it is to say, no one really wants to do the
hard work of investigation that I-chuan training demands. We’d all much prefer
to be told exactly what to do and have our hands held (and, if at all possible,
be lavished with praise) as we do it. Moreover, we’d like to be provided with
definite measures of success and to be given new practices as we “master” the
old ones. If possible, we’d like to be able to say that we have learned this or
that secret and have been certified by such and such a master, as though
somehow we’d become good merely by association with a teacher.
As I understand it, however, it
is simply impossible to learn I-chuan with this sort of approach. One learns
nothing merely by associating with a teacher, and one’s progress is not measured
by how many different stances one knows or by how long or low one can stand.
Certainly, an impressive looking certificate alone does not make one either healthy
or a good fighter.
Very few students invest their
time and energy to understand the basic elements of I-chuan training. Most
think that mastering the basics can be accomplished quickly and without much
effort, even if they have been told that in the old days people spent their
entire lives to work on and refine them. Of the many sorts of confusion with
which students tend to comfort themselves in this regard, perhaps the most
common is the thought that one must be relaxed when standing.
The word “relaxation” causes
much mischief in the martial arts and especially in I-chuan training. Many
teachers emphasize only “sung” in training – a word badly translated as “relaxation”
– telling their students to “do nothing, and achieve everything,” or to “stand
until you can feel the chi,” or that “the soft will turn into the solid,” and
so on. But the founder of I-chuan was very clear that “sung” (letting go of
tension) and “gunn” (work) must go together. One must learn to let go of
tension while remaining at work.
I have discussed the importance
of work in other papers and will have more to say about it below, but it is
worth recalling to mind in this context a couple of anecdotes about Wang’s own
training and teaching. First, we should remember that Wang’s own teacher used
to check the floor under Wang’s feet when he was standing in the winter to
check how long Wang had been standing. The point of the anecdote is not hard to
see: whatever Wang meant by “sung,” it had very little to do with what most of
us understand by the word “relaxation.”
Second, Wang once took a group of
his best students – all accomplished martial artists who had already been
through very tough training with Wang himself – back to his hometown to train.
They were all looking forward to hard work, but what they found was so
overwhelming that they all began to contemplate giving up and going home.
Again, the point is not hard to see: Wang was no more willing than was his own
teacher to have his students stop standing when they didn’t feel up to it, or
were in great pain, or were tired, or when their minds weren’t focused on it.
They simply had to work through all that; they had no thought of “relaxation”
as we commonly understand the term.
Although the point of the
anecdotes is not hard to see, it is easily misunderstood. I am not suggesting
that the only thing that matters in training is how much pain one can endure.
The point is rather that sweat, discomfort and fatigue are natural consequences
of the sort of work training demands and that one should be wary of teachers
who suggest one should avoid them. A good student must, therefore, investigate
the meaning of such stories.
If Wang and his students worked
this hard, what is the meaning of “sung” (“letting go”)? Pretty clearly, it has
nothing to do with standing only when it feels good to do so and nothing to do
with relaxing and “feeling the chi.” The question is, how can one let go while
working hard enough that pools of sweat form beneath one’s feet in the winter?
This is the basic question of I-chuan training, and there is no way to pay someone
else can ask it for you.
Remember that the main reason
for standing is to store energy in the body and then to transfer that energy to
the hands and feet so that you can, in turn, transfer it to your opponent. If
you don’t work (“gunn”), you won’t build energy. If you don’t let go (“sung”),
you won’t be able to transfer that energy. But you cannot first do the one
thing and then the other. As Wang insisted, “sung” and “gunn” must be done
together. If what you’re doing when you stand does not contribute to this end, you’re
wasting your time. Learning new standing postures and all the fancy techniques in
the world will not help at all.
So you need to examine your
training and ask yourself whether you know what, how and why you’re doing what
what you’re doing. You must ask, for example, how “holding the ball, not
letting it fly away but not crushing it,” or “hugging a tree,” or “standing
like a giant,” or “looking for the sung within the sung” can help you build and
store power and learn to transfer it to your opponent. If you cannot say how
these instructions can help you do that, it is better to set them aside. Let us
examine in a little more detail how a student with the spirit of investigation
might proceed in his training.
In
general, it is no harder to find teachers willing to tell students what to do
than it is to find students eager to be told what to do. But training, I have
argued, cannot proceed in such a context. The student simply must inquire into
the meaning of what he is asked to do. Consider, once again, the use of
pictures in training.
Suppose
the teacher tells his student to draw a bow. What is the student to do? He has
no archery equipment to work with, so he must imitate pulling the bowstring.
How will he proceed? He may, for example, hold his arms as though one hand were
holding a bow and the other pulling its string. Suppose he is then reminded
that the instructions were actually to pull the string. Here the student may
initially be at a loss, because he cannot see the difference between what he’s
doing (i. e., holding his arms as though drawing a bow) and what his teacher is
asking him to do.
The
teacher might eschew further explanation and ask the student to investigate the
picture himself: why would drawing a bow be a helpful instruction? What is the
aim of drawing a bow? How does working with this picture contribute to either
his health or to the development of his power?
Let
us suppose the student has enough experience to understand that simply holding
his arms in a static position will do little to enhance his health or to
develop his martial arts skills. Let us suppose, moreover, that he has some
understanding of the idea of work in the context of I-chuan training. He may
conclude that instead of simply holding his arms in such-and-such a position,
he must put his muscles to work – in this case, doing the work of holding the
bow with one hand and pulling the string with the other. So far, so good.
Perhaps, though, he is inclined to look into the matter more closely. He may
reflect that when drawing a bow, an archer typically takes aim at a target.
Doing so will require him to position his body in such a way that the target
can indeed be sited. He sets himself up accordingly. Again, so far, so good. Is
there more?
The
student reflects further that by telling him to draw a bow, the teacher intends
for him to do so continuously, as though waiting to let the arrow fly. Unless
he does so, he will not be “drawing a bow.” He will have drawn a bow instead.
With this realization, the student’s understanding of the picture goes a step
deeper. There is, however, more. The student needs to ask himself more deeply
why this particular picture is supposed to be helpful to his training. His
training aims to enhance his health and to develop his power. How does pulling
the bow do so? As for his health, a student with a certain amount of experience
will understand that continuously drawing a bow will build both his mental and
his physical endurance. Mentally, it takes effort not to let the mind wander
from the intention to pull the bowstring. And physically, it takes effort
continually to express that intention in action. (Again, the student should understand
why this is so.
It
does no good to take his teacher’s word for it. How, for example, would he
respond to someone who told him that simply holding the static posture will do
everything for him?) As for developing his power in the context of the martial
arts, the student may reflect that he’s never going to win a fight simply by pretending
to aim a drawn bow at his opponent. He must ask himself how he will incorporate
this picture into the actual activity of push-hands and free sparring. We are
imagining our student investigating the meaning of the instruction, “draw a
bow.”
Note,
investigating this picture is not meant to be an analytical inquiry into the mechanics
of how to draw a bow, as though the student had to learn just how high to lift his
hands, how much to bend his elbows, how to position his torso, how far to turn
his neck, and so on. The picture is chosen because it expresses something quite
natural, something the student already knows how to do. (If the student has
never drawn a bow or anything like that, the teacher will pick a different
picture. He is not searching for techniques, but rather to reawaken a natural
sense of bodily usage.) As I indicated above, the basic questions to ask about
such instructions are “what?,” “how?,” and “why?”
Thus,
there is nothing for it: the student must actually do the work of drawing a
bow. He must feel how his mind and body in fact go to work to do that. And he
must understand what the point of doing it is supposed to be (i. e., how it
contributes to his health or fighting abilities)
Standing in I-chuan training demands
just this sort of investigation. Otherwise, it becomes the meaningless
perfection of a meaningless form. The whole mind and body must be active while
standing, and the activity must have a point. This is the meaning of the
instruction, “stand like you move; move like you stand.” In other words, when
you move (when doing forms, pushing hands, or when free sparring), you must
incorporate all the elements of standing. To stick with our example, you must
be able to draw a bow while you move – not just now and then, but the whole
time. But when you stand, you must work all the same muscles you do when you
move.
Here is another picture to
consider. A teacher might tell his student to move “like a snake.” If the
student does not consider carefully the meaning of this instruction – that is,
if he does not ask himself how doing what he’s asked will contribute to his
building and transferring power – he will perhaps interpret it as encouraging
him to twist and turn his body in such a way as to imitate a snake. But if he
reflects more deeply about the aim of such instruction, he may understand that
the point of the simile is that all the parts of a snakes body are connected to
each other in such a way that when one part moves, so do all the others. The
point is not to writhe like a snake but to make sure that the whole body
supports the movement of any of its parts.
This was the meaning of Dr. Yu’s
instruction to me to move in six directions without moving the skeleton.
Because standing does not express itself in gross physical movement, it is said
to be an aspect of the “internal” martial arts. But because training in the way
Wang taught Dr. Yu entails sweat, pain, and fatigue people figure it cannot be
truly internal. Wang himself, however was skeptical about the whole distinction
of internal and external martial arts, and as I have tried to indicate in this
paper and others, without hard mental and physical work, no
amount of passive standing or
repetitive movement will contribute either to health or to fighting ability.
When standing, you are not
allowed to move. Consequently, your muscles must work against one another as
they respond to the instructions to “pull the bow” and so on. In time, as the
student better learns to let go into the work, more and more muscle groups are
brought to bear on the various tasks they are asked to do. In the end, the
student must learn the meaning of the following lesson: the more “sung,” the more
work.
When a beginning student first
starts to stand, he will sweat, shake, and be uncomfortable. This is
inevitable, because his mind and body are weak. There is no choice in such
circumstances; one simply has to build up one’s strength. Later on, when the
student is no longer a beginner, he has begun to learn how to let go of tension
as he works in the standing postures. And when the student is truly “sung” yet
firmly at work, his training becomes “movement without a movement.” In this
way, the student learns the difference between using his skeleton to move his
muscles and using his muscles to move his skeleton. I urge the reader to
investigate the meaning of this sentence.
-- Gregory Fong (August, 2005)