“How can I avoid the deception of my opponent?”
“You should observe his life.”
In
Taekwondo there is a correct direction your attack should follow in which you
are in harmony with your opponent. As your opponent’s center refers to the
center of both his motion and his life, by disrupting it you can cut the flow
of his changes, by oppressing it you can suppress his motions, and by
penetrating it you can kill him at will.
So
mysterious is the human body that you can subdue it merely by controlling one
of its fingers and you can fell it merely by striking one of its small parts.
Though it may not always be simple to attack his center it is always possible
to link your attack on one of his lesser and more vulnerable parts to his
center. When facing your opponent in TAEKWONDO, his center is always the
closest to you. If you can spot it you will also realize that it is closer than
any of his other parts.
There
are some spots that link a person’s core to almost every other part of his
body, so that by controlling them one can effectively control him. We call such
spots “vital points” (Geupso)[1].
These vital points are spread throughout a man’s body and follow the way of Yin
and Yang. As such, they can paradoxically render a man's body extremely weak
and vulnerable, on the one hand, though it may be extremely strong, on the
other. This mysterious harmony finds its origins in the fact that the entirety
can be found in every element, however seemingly insignificant, of the life of
man.
As
has been often repeated, life is above all else a self-intending process. In
the apparent end that we ultimately reach after various trials and processes we
discover not completion but a new beginning, the entirety of which comprises life’s
ultimate nature. There can be no completion in life. In this sort of life there
is neither mystery, on the one hand, nor even any distinction between mystery
and non-mystery, on the other; thus there is no discerning between life and no
life. The essence of such life is continuous change, which is why the
sixty-fourth, and final, kwae[2],
rather than reading Su Hwa Ki Jae (수화기제[水火旣濟]),
reads Hwa Su Mi Jae (화수미제[火水未濟]).[3]
In
the same manner, life is a process of continuous change and this change may
also be called “Growth”. A seed grows to a large tree, bears flowers and fruit,
and creates the seeds of new life only because that life is continuous growth.
The entirety of this process reveals the full nature of life. Therefore, a seed
is not the nature of life, nor again is the big tree, nor the flower. The true
nature of life is the change that occurs from form to form, and also what is
maintained within that change, in other words, continuous change towards
itself, this is all.
Everything
that changes, thus all life - whether a small seed or giant tree - contains all
potential change within it. Therefore, we can say that every life contains each
part in its entirety and its entirety in every part. This is the figure of life
itself. Since the nature of TAEKWONDO is essentially the same as life, each
part of Taekwondo also contains its entirety and its entirety contains each of
its parts. The nature of living itself cannot but be the same with the nature
of life. In Taekwondo the entirety and its parts are the same and different at
once. These facts remain the same for a moment as for all time.
Since
TAEKWONDO has the same nature as life its motion of attacking the opponent’s
center should also be continuously transformed. Repeated motion with no change
makes Taekwondo unable to harmonize with life, which changes and grows moment
to moment, and with the world, which is also in continuous flux through time.
The result of such repetition would be revealing your blind spots to your
opponent. This will result in your ultimate defeat.
Therefore,
living Taekwondo attacks the opponent’s center with its boundless change. Water
flows downward because it never sticks to a fixed shape, never ceases its
endless change, as it passes various obstacles. A life can survive because it
too has evolved over a very long history. Taekwondo in eternal time also grows
with life, and thus no man can define the true nature of TAEKWONDO in his shape
no matter what figure he may attain. TAEKWONDO is hidden within the continuous
change of man’s appearance. It breathes with life.
[1] The “Geup” of Geupso means risky or
dangerous, while the “so” means place or spot.
[2] ‘Kwae’ may be taken as a Korean
reading of the English “hexagram”. The total number of hexagrams in the I Ching is sixty-four.
[3] “Su Hwa Ki Jae” means “finished
already with water over fire.” However, it is important to note that despite
its misleading “finished already”, this is the name not of the last but of the
penultimate sixty-third Kwae (hexagram) of the I Ching. What then is the
sixty-fourth (and ‘final’) Kwae? This is the “Hwa Su Mi Jae”, meaning “not yet
finished with fire over water”. Though the last, it is not finished because it
begins anew, eternal like every change. My text suggests this same point.
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