Development of Western Martial Arts Culture

Robert Barton, Head Abbott Shinjimasu International Martial Arts Association.

Development of Western Martial Arts Culture: a comparative examination.


Much ado has been made in recent generations across the western world about the martial systems of the Far East and the mental and spiritual training methods often associated with those martial methods. It is believed by many that the West does not have true martial arts because the fighting methods of the European cultures are devoid of mental and spiritual aspects of training. There is an idea that these Eastern methods must be better because they are superior in their mental and spiritual training. These beliefs, though dearly held, are simply not true; the allure of the Eastern Arts is that they are exotic with strange words for their spiritual and mental concepts. If one looks at a side by side comparison of the cultures that produced Eastern and Western methods one will find that the cultures of both hemispheres have spiritual and mental training methods, with accompanying terms for the states of mind etc. The differences are cultural in how these skills were taught and practiced with neither this culture or that culture being devoid of mental and spiritual education and both sides providing their own culturally appropriate spiritual and mental training. In this brief essay I will examine the mental and spiritual aspects of the martial education of the youth in Western culture and I will compare the various aspects of that education to its corollary in general Eastern martial education. Included here will be methods, principles and states of mind. Due to the nature of a broad comparative survey I am not afforded the space to go into great detail. I am attempting only to provide a basic introduction to the subject to serve as a starting point for research. I am neither claiming that the Western methods have any innate superiority to Eastern methods nor do I accept claims that Eastern methods have an innate superiority to Western schools of thought.
The first large difference between the cultures of East and West that we must understand goes to the heart of the issue and it is simply how these cultures variantly view wisdom and how wisdom and knowledge are gained. Where the Eastern cultures tend toward a more passive view of wisdom and knowledge in which the aspirant awaits enlightenment the Western cultures seek knowledge and wisdom very actively where the aspirant through active study and the pursuit of knowledge achieves it in a direct manner. We must recognize that techniques for gaining philosophical knowledge and wisdom exist in the Western world and have well over two thousand years of written history available for study. So the most basic view for the gaining of knowledge and wisdom and for understanding the world differs in these very different cultures. The ability of each of these cultures to understand their world must be judged in context to itself and so the ability of each of these cultures to educate its members and to produce well educated, fully trained martial specialists needs also to be assessed in context.
In a Western educational system the student received a broad spectrum of instruction and went to the gymnasium to be trained in physical culture and defense and a bit about etiquette. It was to a class room that the student was sent to study philosophy and the skills of the mind. It was in religious training that the student was taught spiritual practices. A student of European schools studied ancient and effective Martial Arts and also received an education in spiritual and mental practices but each of these sets of skills were taught in a culturally contextualized place. When we compare the study and training of Eastern and Western martial Artists we must account for the differing educational models, we have a concept that Eastern schools combined martial training, physical culture, philosophy and spiritual education into one total training system, we should recognize that Western educational practice placed physical culture, martial training, spiritual training and philosophical training into compartments and under the guidance of specialists into a comprehensive program in which they were used together to create a total training system. So we see that though the approaches to the education were different, both systems were designed to produce a person who was fully trained, physically, mentally and spiritually.
First we examine physical culture and observe that the Western world has had formal places for exercise and strengthening the body for well over two millennia and that these gymnasia have served as places where specialists have helped others to exercise and develop personal strength, flexibility and over all vigor. The specialists who taught in the gymnasia oversaw and continue to oversee the development of good physical habits including dietary advice and methods of therapeutic message. These experts dedicate themselves to the study of techniques for creating good physical health and vigor in the human body. Western methods of physical culture are certainly the equal of Eastern methods with both approaches helping people to develop good health and strength with people reaching high levels of development. It is also interesting to note that physical conditioning methods in the West extended to strengthening and toughening the hands so that they could punch through boards and destroy an opponent with a single blow.
The creation of good health brings us to an Eastern concept which is often purported to have no parallel concept in the Western world but this opinion is based on a lack of knowledge of these concepts in one or both cultural contexts. Chi or Ki is often described as a 'vital energy' which can be built up and used. If we look at the function of the word Ki in the Japanese language we see that it as a concept transliterates to what we would call vigor or vitality in the English language, it is literally the aliveness of something. In Japanese a person who is ill is described as have a lowered or weak Ki while in English we would say that they feel a lack of vigor. Eastern schools abound in methods for building Ki, and these methods involve, sufficient rest, stretching, regular exercise, good diet and breathing good clean fresh air which are funny enough exactly the things recommended since the ancient Greeks in Western culture in order to build one's vigor and vitality. Here we find the cultural differences coming into play where both cultural poles would include the above details to the building of vitality or KI, the Eastern schools may prescribe repetitive moderate exercises designed to get the blood and body fluids circulating and the lungs working well while the Western schools of though prescribe moderate sports and the well known daily constitutional, which is an, often, quiet, steady walk outdoors designed to get the blood and body fluids circulating and to open up the lungs and fill them with fresh air. Here we have a concept present in similar forms in both Eastern and Western schools of thought though it is known by various names according to the languages discussing it and with many of the same guidelines for developing it with the differences being cultural.
Turn now to mental states and a plethora of cultural differences but yet some incredibly similar results. The primary difference in mental development methods is in the way the mind is focused with Western methods best being described as reliant on directed organized thinking while Eastern methods are reliant on the goal of not actively thinking. It is here where the two schools differ the most in that the mental approaches are diametrically opposite and this is very cultural. The Westerner is trained to apply the mind to solving a problem while the Easterner is trained to get the mind out of the way of the solution. Volumes could be written on the differences in approach and the result of these differences but we should rather direct our attention to results. Among ancient Philosophers there were two states of mind seen as superior with differences between the philosophical schools often being simply which state was considered to be the best. The Epicureans would propose that the state of Ataraxia is the preferred state of mind being one of a serene, calm completely focused mind in a state of pleasure while the Stoics would certainly argue that the preferred state is Apathia literally translating as not suffering and representing a state in which the mind is serene, calm, completely focused and detached. How like the Japanese state of Mushin or no mind in which the mind is detached, relaxed and so completely able to flow and respond. Both Apathia and Mushin are described by their respective schools as being calm states in which the mind has no specific attachment and can therefore function most effectively by responding instantly without becoming attached. There is in Spanish schools of dance, music and defense a concept known as Duende which very much exemplifies these European concepts in that the practitioner is in a state of total mental calm and is completely experiencing the activity at hand moving through the activity without becoming attached and going from one action to the next with perfectly trained and unhindered flow.
Meditation also has very different denotation and connotation where Western and Eastern approaches are concerned. The denotation of the word meditation is to think directly and intently about a specific subject examining it in a rational logical manner in order to better understand it and that is how the word is used in Western contexts. When a student of a western school is told to meditate on something he or she is being directed to apply reasoned thought to the issue. It is a difficulty of communication that as Eastern methods of mental and spiritual training have been introduced to the West the lack of an acceptable Western word for 'not thinking' has led the term meditation to be applied in a directly opposite meaning from it's own definition and with a new connotation relative to Eastern training methods which strive to disable conscious thought and deals with an issue by specifically avoiding logic and reason and with a mind that endeavors to do nothing for a time. It is in this word that we see the largest gulf of miscommunication between the schools of thought of the two cultural hemispheres in question in this paper. Students of Eastern schools are simply not taught to use a defined approach based on logic and reason and this is often seen by the Easterner as a strength and the Westerner as a weakness, the corollary of course if that Westerners are not taught to let the mind go and to arrest reason and thought when examining an issue and would rather use the mind as a precise instrument and tool and this is often seen by the Westerner as a strength and viewed by the Easterner as a weakness. But this is a very basic difference in worldview; a polarized set of approaches to how we see the world and manage our understanding of that world.
Trance states are also to be seen as present in both Eastern and Western schools. The historical spiritual practices of both Eastern and Western cultures contain mystic practices which bring one into deep states of trance or an altered consciousness. While I will not go into a deep discussion of these states and methods for altering the mind I would like to examine a recent study done in this area relative to both sides of this cultural divide. We are often shown examples of Eastern mystics who reach deep states on trance and we forget that Europe also has a long history of mystics in deep states of trance. A Tibetan monk may sit for a long time with a wooden disk in his hand balancing beads on it and using this to facilitate sleep deprivation in the same way that an ancient Irish poet may lay with a stone balanced on his chest to insure that the mind shall not sleep but will slip into an altered state. It was once a very common practice for people to be given repetitive prayers in Western culture and for these prayers to be chanted until one reached a deep state of spiritual ecstasy in which the concept of self broke down and the individual was able to experience the totality of the sacred in creation and feel atonement with the sacred. This was considered by Western mystics to be an important goal and atonement means at-one-ment. The Eastern mystic can be seen using repetitive chants to facilitate the exact type of breakdown of the concept of the self and to reach a state of oneness. Recent studies of the human brain have found that Tibetan monks in their deepest states of trance have exactly the same brain scans and brain wave patterns as Franciscan nuns in their deepest states of ecstatic prayer. Both groups reach a state where a specific brain wave halts and the associated area of the brain goes into a nearly inactive state, that area of the brain is the area which enables us to differentiate ourselves from our surroundings and literally provides us with edges to our concept of self. A French knight of a thousand years ago will stay up all night alone in a chapel chanting the same prayer just as a monk in China will sit all night on his mountain chanting his prayer, each will fall into the deepest states of trance the knight will describe his experience as an at-one-ment in which he experienced the love of his god while the monk will describe an experience of oneness in which he was completely part of the world and his god.
In summary I would like to say that while I have not found an innate superiority of one school over the other or one method over the other, yet I do feel that an individual is more likely to find a culturally contextualized approach that fits with his or her own worldview to be more personally productive in that the concepts are easier to grasp as presented. Both Western and Eastern currents provided very effective and advanced education in, physical culture, martial skills, mental training, ethics and spirituality. And for those who still insist on adherence to a tired dogma that only the Eastern world created advanced martial systems of training and that somehow the far Eastern methods of fighting and thinking represent the most ancient and somehow superior methods, I will note that the oldest known writing on the training and competition of Martial Artists in specific methods is to be found in a European language, that of the Greeks who represent one of the foundations of Western culture. I will also note that the greatest volume of ancient philosophical writings is found relative to the philosophies of those Greeks then Romans and then the proceeding European schools of philosophy. I will also note that many Eastern schools of martial training traditionally trace their heritage to ancient India and though India is geographically part of Asia it was in ancient times culturally and linguistically far more closely related to Europe speaking an Indo-European language and following a European cultural model.