My Kung: Spirituality in the Martial Arts
I began my life in the traditional martial arts when I was twelve—but did not truly find my own spirituality within it until much later.
My grandfather earned a black belt in Shotokan Karate in the 1960s, back when the martial arts had first begun spreading throughout the states. His example during my youth influenced me greatly. As a young boy, I remember him grating his fore-knuckles against the low, rough-textured ceiling of the small houseboat he and my grandma owned, where our family would venture during summer months.
“See boys…pain is all in the mind!” he’d gruff, as he paid no attention to the skin of his knuckles tearing away and bloodied while he swung with clasped hands to grate the ceiling in a move that was meant to send a two-handed uppercut to an assailant’s chin. He’d often demonstrate traditional Shotokan techniques to us cousins while he talked to us about the rigors of traditional martial art training and the proper conditioning of body and mind. During those sessions, three young boys stared in awe at their grandfather who they thought was near a god.
The western sensationalizing of the martial arts in the late ’80s into the ’90s sparked my interest in traditional martial art training even more. Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were legends, of course, but back then every kid wanted to be an American Ninja, a Jean-Claude Van Damme, or a Steven Seagal. Unfortunately, Hollywood pretty severely misrepresented the traditional martial arts. Mysterious grandmasters were stereotyped as invincible, capable of near-magic feats, and full of inane philosophical anecdotes. That was bounteous fuel for charlatans, and they flourished running martial arts schools across the country, posing as “masters.”
But the misrepresentation of the East Asian martial arts also had a positive effect. It served to bring young boys like me to legitimate schools that were teaching at least some level of traditional martial practice. Like many other young boys where I grew up, in the urban and suburban jungles of central California and northern Oregon, I’d had a troubled youth. It was filled with running away, vandalism, theft, and general juvenile delinquency. But at twelve years old my stepdad took me to a dojo in a small town in Oregon, south of the capital Portland, where soon a well-humored, middle-aged martial arts expert took me in and trained me in the foundations of a hybrid system of Japanese Kempo.
From then on, the traditional martial arts pulled me out of the wayward path I’d been on. They gave me something to focus on and a passion to pursue. Over the formative years of my teens, I must have practiced thousands of stances, forms, punches, kicks, blocks, drills and sparring sessions. My Kempo teacher also introduced me to the richness of East Asian philosophy. Within the martial teachings of Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, I discovered an ancient and exotic world full of history and wisdom.
As I reached my twenties, I went off to a career in the military, in a job that placed me as a forward warfighter. Over the years to follow, as I served in America’s war on terror on the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, my profession kept my martial training even more invigorated. The traditional martial arts aligned with my life, for their focus on physicality, mental and emotional control and toughness, and the warrior ethos.
Then, as if by fate, my military career took me to East Asia, where I was fortunate enough to meet and train under a true grandmaster. In South Korea, in the mid-2000’s, a kind and weathered Korean man nearing his eighties introduced me to a Chinese martial art that I had never seen and was immediately fascinated by. It was a “Northern” style of Praying Mantis Kung Fu. Grandmaster Pak, a native of what is now North Korea had learned it while growing up near the border of China during the hard years of Japanese occupation. During the Korean War, Grandmaster Pak had then fought against the Communists in one of the northern guerrilla factions aligned with the US and the south. Following the Armistice of 1953, he moved to South Korea and spent the majority of the years afterwards teaching Kung Fu to American service members in a gesture to thank them for what America had done to help the Korean people.
I fell in love with the intricacy and grace of Kung Fu and Praying Mantis in particular. I set myself to training with Grandmaster Pak as much as I possibly could. Over time, I was fortunate enough to become one of the few students over his decades of teaching who inherited the heart of his art. I cherished it—and I do to this day.
Though Grandmaster Pak was incredibly kind and often jovial, he took training extremely seriously. For him, Kung Fu was not an endeavor to train in arbitrarily. It was a fighting art that came from warfare, and he approached his practice and teaching accordingly.
“If you cannot use fighting, you no do Kung Fu…you just dance around and lookie pretty,” he’d say in his broken English as he waved his hand in feigned disgust. He’d often ask if I understood a given technique. Until I understood and could show him the application, he would give me no more. Respect for the art, and demonstration of the hard work and discipline towards developing it, were the only things he rewarded.
Over the years to follow, I dedicated my time to honing the art that my Korean Grandmaster was gracious enough to pass on. I trained intensely and, as with any practice worth something, it took me time to develop my technique to the point that I became competent in actually using it. To test myself, I entered into full-contact matches in various disciplines, from boxing to traditional Chinese platform fighting. I’d spar as often as I could with martial artists of other styles, wrestlers, boxers, and MMA practitioners. I wanted to “perfect” my Kung Fu. And although I definitely failed far more often than I triumphed in any contests, it enriched my martial training.
And while my teacher instilled a deep respect and devotion to our study of Praying Mantis, he was always sure to invoke humility. “Martial arts like flowers.” he would often say, “Different kind flowers lookie different… smell different…but all still flowers.” That was his way of telling me that no art was superior to the other. Just as some people preferred roses to lilacs, it was the same with the martial arts. That simple lesson was a longstanding one, and once I truly grasped it’s meaning and was able to let go of the self-righteousness and ego that so often clutches onto the martial artist, it enabled a far more fulfilling and liberating approach to training. I came to train out of pure love for the art, and the personal cultivation it promotes, rather than an ego-fueled ambition for greatness.
Such jewels of wisdom were far more precious than any set of techniques. And over time, I learned that my time with my grandmaster had given something even more valuable. It wasn’t in anything he said, but in who he was and what he did. In him, I learned the true meaning of Kung Fu.
Roughly translated, Kung Fu refers to a “skill or merit that is achieved through time and dedication to practice.” This applies to equally to cultivation of the mind, body, spirit and character. Although the traditional martial arts of East Asia were born from the battlefield, when modern weaponry changed the face of warfare the martial arts evolved into more than just fighting—they morphed into a whole-life practice. With that, they contributed far more to both the individual and his society than they had as purely combative arts. And today, that is the greatest treasure of the traditional martial arts.
My grandmaster was not perfect by any means, and he would never presume to say he was. He had a temper, and he was surely no pacifist as is so often depicted within our western view of the Asian “grandmaster.” But he had a heart of pure gold that seemed to exist entirely for the benefit others. Even into his late eighties, and with serious physical ailments of his own, he was a selfless benefactor to the poor, sick, disabled, and elderly in his community. His hand was always extended to those in need. He was there for aging Korean War veterans less vigorous than himself, would visit and provide financial and other assistance to the disabled and low-income elderly and terminally ill in his community, and coordinated disaster relief fundraising.
Within my grandmaster was a light that you could feel. For him, going about his life bringing benefit to others was the most important aspect of Kung Fu. He was truly an embodiment of the mantra that, to hone the heart, mind and character to the same degree that one hones martial technique, is the truest practice of Kung Fu.
It took my finding him to realize the highest path that we can take in life. Others may well realize the same—through their own mentor, mother or father figure, religion or otherwise. As a famous Zen saying goes: “There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.”
We can never become those we most look up to and revere. We are different people, of different times, and often of vastly different circumstances. I am certain that no one will ever say that I became a Buddha, Lao Tzu, or Gandhi. And I will never be my grandmaster. But I can take his example, as a human being, and strive to embody it in my own life within my own time and context.
Benevolence, kindness, compassion, strength, wisdom. Such virtues, worth nurturing, can be cultivated and revealed in all manner of ways. My own Kung—my most noble endeavor—is in constant striving toward that cultivation. Most days, I just may fail miserably. But perhaps, as time goes on, those days will become less and less, and I will be able to look back and say that I held a candle to those who walked before me.
