Div.4 Chapter 27

Suppressing the Whole by Controlling a Part

“What is the principle of Taekwondo?”

“Simply Samjae and Kang-Yu.”

Seeking your opponent’s vital points in Taekwondo you will find them just where you touch him. Thus, your attack, following the flowing movement of your hands or feet, avoids the hard parts and converges on the soft ones, evades fast motions and catches the slow ones, at times striking a prominent part while at other times thrusting a sunken one. Controlled by your will of non-doing, you can reach his center before he even realizes it to catch his vitality.

The Taekwondo attack moves along the ways of Haneul, Tang and Saram, bypassing the opponent’s defenses to attain his center. This is possible because you seek out his center with a mind undistracted by his trivial motions. You reach his center not by striving towards his far center but through his closer vital points. You suppress his vital center by obediently following every change in distance, tide, speed and balance, undistracted by the center in his appearance.

In this way, as the opponent’s center is brought within your reach, even if he were to move fast, his center would move slow. And even if he were to make a quick move with his arms and legs to distance his vital point far from you, his center of vitality, which runs from a vital point to another, would still move slowly as a target of the Taekwondo attack, for the entirety moves slower than its parts.

Therefore, a swift Taekwondo attack can attain the opponent’s center by following its movement with the mind. An attacker should strike with full force. In this way the opponent’s nearest center will be his empty part and his weakest point. The weakest point can still be his effective center though it is located on a branch, for you can destroy the opponent by controlling that single point. The interrelationship and interactions of you and your opponent’s motions will determine each of your centers as well as your strongest and weakest points. Accordingly, the best target of your attack moves and changes from moment to moment. Within the flow of such change you should maintain everything of yours in its proper position.