Having Softness
and Hardness Be One
“Who do you think will be the winner?”
“The one who humbly lowers his pose.”
Everything
possesses Do, and everything reveals itself in its figure as a change of Yin
and Yang. Thus when we speak of Yin-Yang as a sort of abstraction we can also
speak of hardness and softness as sort of concrete manifestations of it. Old
people have termed this hardness and softness “Kang-Yu (강유[剛柔])”[1].
This is a very useful concept for explaining the movements of Taekwondo; thus
every motion of Taekwondo should possess in its correct form both hardness and
softness in Sool, Yae and Do. A true Taekwondo-Een must learn both. Hardness
and softness can assist or resist each other in the changes of Taekwondo, thus
the soft capably suppresses the hard while the hard effectively cuts off the
soft. The soft also capably keeps the hard alive, making it changeful, while
the hard capably keeps the soft strong, lending it structure.
How
is it possible that the hard can at times overcome the soft, while at others
the soft can defeat the hard? This is so because winning and losing begins with
what you aspire towards and proceeds by way of the force in your movements, and
then it returns to your will. You can see only motions and feel only force.
Force follows the will. The hard is based on force and bones while the soft is
based on will and vitality. When the wills of two people struggle they cannot
but rely on their force and motion. Force and motion under the control of will
can be seen in unison or separated, that is, containing both firmness and
weakness together and both hardness and softness together. Therefore, since the
hard can overcome the soft it is easy to subdue an opponent attacking his weak
and soft point with your firm and hard part. On the other hand, the soft can
suppress the hard because the soft does not run against the hard but wraps
around it and leads it. After all, the subject who controls himself and an
opponent is a man who uses hardness and softness yet is not the hardness or the
softness itself. The ways in which the hard and the soft defeat each other are
like the following: the soft can wrap and lead the hard only when each of its parts
cooperates with all the others as a single motion. Cutting down this entirety,
the hard can subdue the soft. On the other hand, the hard should adapt itself
according to what the will intends. Controlling the direction, the soft can
keep the hard opposed to the world.
No
matter how strong and firm your technique, no attack that does not contain
softness can succeed; and no matter how soft your technique, it should also
include hardness so as to capture and break your opponent’s will. Only with its
firm body and sharp edge can a thrown knife pierce a target. However, were the
knife’s sheath similarly firm the knife would only rub against it and become
dull as a result. On the other hand, if the knife was wrapped in soft cloth its
sharpness would not lose its edge. A sheath as strong and hard as its knife
would be rather useless, and so it is made smooth and soft. In the same manner
is the bowstring pliable so as to effectively fire its arrows.
It
is only proper that life is soft. Therefore, a motion of Taekwondo, which
intends to subdue the opponent’s life, should by necessity include both
hardness and softness. It is because the strength and hardness are also
manifest in your own life, which is soft at the same time. This may be compared
to a bowl containing stones. If we place hard stones in a bowl that is also
hard the two would rub against each another, both being eventually weakened and
broken. To keep them protected, hard stones should be placed on a soft cloth.
In the same manner, you ought to keep your body not strong and hard but soft
and flexible. This is how you can possess strength and hardness within softness
in your Taekwondo movements.
Just
as life is supported by the twin legs of hardness and softness, the two legs
supporting personality are the Mun (Literary or cultural, 문[文]) and
the Mu (Martial, 무[武])[2].
Since the Mun (Literary) is soft, through the study of literary or cultural
knowledge one builds such character as to foster reconciliation and peace with
one’s fellows. Since the Mu (Martial) is hard, through training in the martial
arts one builds such character that is courageous with fortitude to fight
injustice. The softness of literal knowledge never be damaged, even when faced
with the determined opponent, for the opponent actually helps augment your
knowledge and hone your rhetorical skills. This may be likened to how cotton
balls are not damaged through their mutual collision. The hardness of martial
arts helps you to break what resists you, and to realize your ambitions. There
can be neither contradiction nor subjective distortion in it. Thus, it capably
breaks unnecessary ideas and comes in direct contact with reality.
If
you only learn literal knowledge not training martial arts your personality,
promoted with conceptual ideas, will be filled with doctrinairisms and wild
fancies, so you will be nothing more than an effeminate highbrow. Also, if you
only train martial arts with little literal knowledge your force will get lost
of its direction and may turn to violence which will kill itself and you at
once. Therefore, the lack of any of both prevents you from completing good
personality, thus you ought to train both Mun-Mu (문무[文武]) to
get the balance of the hardness and the softness in it. It is closely related
to your having the balanced Mun-Mu that you as a Taekwondo-Een learn both the
hardness and the softness in a wide view.
In
Taekwondo one should train the body to be soft and flexible rather than hard
and strong. This is based on the same principle as having an opponent opposed
to the world while you are harmonized with it. The soft and flexible body
adapts itself to every kind of change, while the strength and hardness in it
breaks whatever resists it. This is the TAEKWONDO that is neither softness nor
hardness but a unity of the two. It has no proper name, but an appropriate term
may be “naturality”. Without naturality it is nearly impossible for the
hardness to become soft or the softness to contain hardness, or to harmonize
the various changes into oneness. You should never forget that you desire the
strength and hardness from Taekwondo, not for the sake of suppressing yourself,
but for the sake of subduing your opponent.
[1] “Kang-Yu”(강유[剛柔]) may be
regarded as the same as Yin-Yang (陰陽), but any
discussion of Taekwondo distinguishes the former from the latter for a more
precise understanding of martial arts. You can grasp the concept of Kang and Yu
as a sort of Yin-Yang, but while the latter represents states of a thing the
former represents its properties. Concerned with the existence of a thing we
use the concept of HeoSil (허실[虛實]).
[2] “Mun-Mu”(文武) is a couplet comprised of Mun and
Mu, much like the terms Yin-Yang or Kang-Yu. In traditional Korea
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