Div.1 Chapter 5

There is no Difference Between TAEKWONDO and Life

“It is too difficult for me.”

“This is because you cling to words.”

TAEKWONDO, which is a manifestation of the truth of Life, is essentially simple despite its various techniques and features. Just as a seed contains within it all that it requires to grow into a great tree, so just one technique of Taekwondo, if performed perfectly, contains everything of TAEKWONDO. Just as the extenuated life cycle of a tree ends in the production of a single seed, so is the long and arduous training of Taekwondo only for the perfection of a basic skill.

Therefore, Taekwondo is alive. It does not rest nor maintain a fixed shape, and yet it is simple, just like life. To be alive is simple. Therefore, it can be recognized simply and easily only as something with no fixed shape. It would be infinitely difficult to understand life when you consider it in the perspective of a fixed scheme, which is only appropriate for the dead. This implies that it is infinitely complicated and difficult to conceive the mechanically typical aspect of TAEKWONDO.

Because Taekwondo and life are One, organized in harmony, each part of Taekwondo is equal to its entirety. It is so because the form of perfection is such that each part contains the entirety while the entirety can stand only with every part complete. Nevertheless, each part is also different from the entirety.

You can feel what is simple. Are you alive? Then you should be able to grasp your being alive just as it is. Is your world dead? If so, then every living thing would remain difficult, beyond your understanding, because the living are essentially different from the dead. A tiny insect cannot be as huge as a mountain nor as hard as a rock, so it cannot understand them, while the enormous mountain and the hard rock cannot understand the brilliant mystery of how a creeping larva becomes a graceful butterfly, nor the cycle of life that takes a seed to a tree which again bears fruit and seeds anew.

Taekwondo is the same way. If you are alive to meet Taekwondo as a living thing you will come to know that TAEKWONDO is very simple; whereas if not, you will come to regard it as infinitely difficult. To practice Taekwondo is to make your actions truly alive.

To live is to exist in a continuous process and state of tension, confrontation and contradiction. Life can neither be abandoned nor completed. Therefore, Taekwondo is to the Taekwondo-Een something which he can neither give up nor complete. Completion implies an end. When life is completed it ends. The right completion in life is a never-ending process. You can manage your life when you want completion. You can be happy at last when you know all of this. The completed Taekwondo is to be broken. But Taekwondo in the continuous pursuit and confrontation of threat is TAEKWONDO as a true way of life. Therefore, there is no completion in Taekwondo. Rather, there can only be a momentary completion of Taekwondo whenever you realize it. Only then can the Taekwondo-Een be content.