The Importance of Symbolism in the Chinese Internal Martial Arts ââ“ Part 1

Overview: Symbolism is an of import and frequently misunderstood aspect of the Chinese internal martial arts. This, the first installment of a three-part commodity, discusses the importance and relevance of the symbols of heaven and earth, yin and yang, the five elements, and the dragon and the tiger.

Symbolism in the Chinese Internal Martial Arts

Symbolism is an important and often misunderstood attribute of the Chinese internal martial arts. The symbols connected with the internal martial arts are often dismissed in the West as superstitious cultural luggage that has little value in the practical apprehension and application of these arts. This attitude has increasingly been directed at the Chinese internal arts (nei jia), largely because the confusing nature of the culturally specific images used past Chinese martial arts practitioners makes it hard for students in the West to engage with this aspect of Chinese internal arts.

Every bit a result, many Western teachers and students attempt to update and transform traditional imagery, recasting the symbols to course scientific, bio-mechanical explanations with regard to training and application. Similarly, there is a tendency in the West to re-work the circular, more organic learning process and curriculum of Chinese internal martial arts into a logical, stride-past-step process that smoothly carries one through a serial of levels, from beginner to expert practitioner. This arroyo is characterized by attempting to parse out the movements, training methods and principles then they can exist broken into their component parts.

This more "modern" and "scientific" approach creates equally many problems as it attempts to solve – ultimately diminishing these arts and leading students to look elsewhere to fill in perceived gaps. Because each aspect of an internal art interpenetrates with each other aspect, breaking things downward into their component parts can actually make learning harder, or fifty-fifty impossible. The Chinese internal arts accept an fractal-like nature. Each aspect, each part of an art like Ba Gua Zhang – from the most "basic" aspects to the most "avant-garde" – is a hologram that contains, interconnects and interacts with every other part of the organisation to class a consummate, organic whole. This makes information technology impossible to isolate individual components without losing the essence of the internal arts.

The common statement put forrad past the modernist military camp goes something like: "the real fighters were not intellectuals; they did not know this stuff. They just trained difficult and kicked donkey." Really, they did know "this stuff." Symbolism is so embedded in every aspect of Chinese life, culture and community that they could not avoid knowing it. The Chinese written language itself is a collection of ideograms based on pictographs and symbols. The "existent fighters" not only knew the stories, metaphors and symbols, but for them, the mere mention of a story, metaphor or symbol triggered a cascade of other associated stories, metaphors and symbols. Even the most casual statements, by the most downwards-to-earth fighters that I accept met in China are steeped in the language of the Yi Jing, traditional Chinese medicine, Daoist metaphysics, and classic books similar the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Outlaws of the Marsh.

One necessary past-production of the "scientific" approach is the discarding of the rich symbolism inherent in the internal arts. This is the very aspect of these arts that expresses and communicates their holism to the practitioner. Symbols are the very tools necessary to express the highly complex organic entity, with its many manifold and culturally embedded layers of reality and understanding, that is Chinese internal martial arts. Symbols are like a code, a lawmaking that serves to limited aspects of reality which are obscured past the limitations of language and other modes of expression. In this way, symbols communicate and crystallize an aspect of directly feel, or truth, that is across words – and beyond the symbol itself. Symbols in this context besides provide a platform for self-discovery, experimentation and transcendence.

Nei jia symbolism is a vast and circuitous subject, then for purposes of this article we will focus on 5 manifestations of symbolism commonly constitute in the internal martial arts. Many of these symbols and concepts have overlaps with Daoist meditation, Nei gong and Chinese medicine. The v manifestations of symbolism covered in this article include:

1. Animal Symbolism and Imagery
2. Cosmological Symbols: Yin and Yang and The Five Forces (Wu Xing; Wu De)
3. Yi Jing Symbolism
4. Movement Names in Chinese Forms
5. Chinese Ideograms/Pictographs

Heaven and Globe & Yin and Yang

In Chinese thought, Heaven and Globe are considered to be the 2 fundamental operating forces. Heaven is yang and globe is yin. Heaven is said to come before (xian) and Earth, later on (hou). In Chinese cosmogony, Heaven and Earth develop from the Wu Ji, an undivided potential without limit. Wu Ji (literally "no polarity") is sometimes referred to as emptiness, or the void – substantially it is matter undifferentiated, undivided, non-polarized. Move occurs within the emptiness, within the void. The movement is similar wind, like a breath. It is  an inhalation and an exhalation, or an opening and a closing. This movement is the Breath-Energy or the Qi/Breath.

This motion, this polarity created past the Qi/Breath is the Tai Ji, the "great pole", or "extreme polarity." With the Tai Ji , the lighter, transparent Qi/Breath rises, and the heavier, opaque Qi/Breath sinks down. The light and yang attribute produces Heaven, and the yin and heavy aspect produces Earth. The yang diffuses and the yin receives. The stiff unbroken lines of the Heaven Trigram menstruation downwards to be received past globe's softer "receptive lines." Earth in turn responds, actualizing Heaven'due south potential into grade and sending the Qi/Breath dorsum upward. This is expressed equally follows:

From the interaction of Heaven-yang and Earth-yin, the world that we know every bit human beings, with its cyclical seasonal changes, rhythms and patterns, develops.

An alternative Tai Ji Diagram, attributed to Chen Tuan of the Song dynasty, visually conveys the spiraling, circular motility of Qi/Breath in the eye initiating the movement which creates polarities of calorie-free and heavy; clear and turbid; movement and stillness; yang and yin.

In Tai Ji Quan, Xing Yi Quan and Ba Gua Zhang, these concepts manifest in the importance placed on understanding, at an instinctive level, the power inherent in balanced, still oppositional forces, equally well every bit the interplay of movement and stillness, emptiness and fullness, firmness and gentleness, the hidden and the obvious

The Five Elements or V Powers

The Wu Xing (Five Elements) are besides sometimes referred to as the Wu De (Five Powers). The Five Powers are intimately connected with the life of human beings on World. The interaction of Sky and Globe, is a fixed unchanging polarity. Information technology is timeless, and immutable. In human beings and the natural earth, the breaths of heaven and earth are experienced through the five powers, because it is through the them that life takes on cloth form and shape. Our senses, tastes, sounds, our ability to discriminate, even our internal organs, are all considered to be expressions of the Five Powers. There is besides the concept of time and cyclical movement and change. The Five Powers operate within usa in the same way that they operate in the earth around united states of america, reflected in the seasons, the conditions, and the movements of the planets. The cyclical movement inherent in the 5 Powers can be seen in the diagram below:

The Five Elements can as well be understood as five primal forces, that have inherent movements and powers. For example, h2o moves downward and moistens while fire flares upward, clinging and warming. This is particularly evident in the Five Fists or forms equally they are expressed in Xing Yi Quan. Each of these core movements creates a very different internal manifestation of jin 劲 (strength, energy, spirit) in the body. This is diagrammed in very basic mode below.

The Five Powers are sometimes obliquely referred to by using the names of the mythological or allegorical animals. The Blackness Tortoise/Ophidian is besides known as Xuan Wu: Dark Warrior of the N. The diagram below shows the seal forms of the four emblematic animals. In the center is the ideogram for Earth.

The Dragon and The Tiger

Prior to the creation of the Tai Ji diagram (in the 8^th century), yin and yang were symbolized by the Tiger and the Dragon. The Dragon was besides associated with Heaven, and the Tiger with World. The post-heaven manifestations of Sky (yang) and Globe (yin) are Fire and Water, ii of the Wu Xing (Five Elements). Fire is associated with the South and H2o with the North. The almost prevalent manifestations of the Dragon and Tiger are The Green Dragon, which is related to Wood in the East, and the White Tiger, related to Metallic in the Westward. The Green Dragon and White Tiger are as well considered to be manifestations of the Pre-Heaven Trigram arrangement within the mail service-sky system of the trigrams. Therefore the Light-green Dragon is associated with Li-Burn and the White Tiger is associated with Kan-Water. Together they symbolize movement and modify:

• Forest becoming Fire – The Dragon Leaping Upward
• Metallic becoming Water – The Tiger Pouncing on Its Prey

The Dragon is yang. Information technology symbolizes the move of life growing upward and outward, like a plant growing from a seed. The Green Dragon represents the spring thunder and rains that nourish living things. In the Spring, the Dragon is said to come up out of its hiding identify under the earth and rise upward into the heaven creating thunder and rain. Hence the Dragon besides represents the incitement of life and movement.

The Tiger is yin. The White Tiger represents autumn, when growing thing begin to withdraw into the globe, when the first frost comes to kill living things. Hence the Tiger tin can represent expiry, simply likewise the quiet and stillness of late autumn as it moves into wintertime. The Tiger is therefore associated with the nonetheless lake whose depths cannot exist seen. In this context, the Dragon and Tiger together represent the natural bike of life and death that moves through us and all living things.

The Dragon is associated with the trigram Zhen-Thunder – excitation and movement. The Tiger is associated with the Dui-Lake trigram representing joyousness, sensibility and feeling. These qualities are conveyed in the Chinese proverb: When the tiger roars the valley wind comes. When the dragon arises great clouds announced.[1]

The Dragon has both yin and yang associations. It tin can be yang in that information technology soars through the clouds, and yin in that it hides nether the earth – every bit in the Qi Gong movement, "the Blackness Dragon Enters the Cave." Every bit it moves through the sky, the dragon appears and disappears into the clouds. The Dragon does not have wings but flies through a yin-yang oscillation, literally "swimming through the clouds":

The dragon at present lurks in watery depth, now streaks aloft to the highest heavens, and its very gait is a continuous undulation. It presents an image of free energy constantly recharged through oscillation from ane pole to the other. The dragon is a constantly evolving creature with no stock-still form; it can never exist immobilized or penned in, never grasped. It symbolizes a dynamism never visible in physical form and thus unfathomable. Finally, merging with the clouds and the mists, the dragon's impetus makes the surrounding globe vibrate: information technology is the very image of an free energy that diffuses itself through space, intensifying its environs its environment and enriching itself by that aura.[ii]

Although the Tiger is associated with metal, it also has an association with Air current which is related to the Wood element. The Tiger is connected with both the "unbridled forest energy of spring and the refined metal energy of autumn."[3] The Tiger'southward roar produces Current of air, which is associated with Forest. It is also a reference to "nature's breath, equally well as to the tiger's naturalness and unrestrained way." Like the wind, the Tiger "comes and goes as it pleases, showing up suddenly and unexpectedly, sometimes with devastating force."[four] The Tiger is sometimes viewed as a yang animal, however it draws its ability from the Globe (yin) by crouching in order to bound  – therefore, like the Dragon, the Tiger has both yin and yang aspects.

In Xing Yi Quan, the Dragon is the first fauna class ane learns, and the Tiger form the 2nd. The Dragon grade rises and falls every bit its trunk coils and uncoils. The basic and tendons of the whole body extend outward and contract inwards. This rising and falling movement of the Dragon opens the Ren (Conception) Aqueduct and the Chong (Thrusting) Channel. Ren Mai, Du Mai (Governing Channel) and Chong Mai are idea to be one meridian (the "Central Channel"). The Central Channel must circulate freely for the other meridians to besides circulate freely. If the Fundamental Aqueduct opens, information technology is said that the "hundred meridians can open" and ability and force will emanate without obstruction. The Tiger uses its back to generate power in crouching or springing, thus, if practiced correctly, the Tiger form is said to open the Du (Governing) Channel which runs up the centre of the spine. If the Governing vessel is opened, clear Yang-Qi can ascend to the head and encephalon, and Ren Mai and Chong Mai will also open. When the Tiger "sits in its cavern," crouching and gathering its power, the qi gathers at Cheng Qiang acu-point (DU 1). When the Tiger 'Pounces on its prey," The Mingmen point in the back opens and qi moves upwards along the Du Channel.

In Ba Gua Zhang, the movements of the body in walking and circling are frequently likened to the Dragon (long). Many styles of Ba Gua contain a sequence known equally Yous Shen Long Xing Ba Gua Zhang or Swimming Torso Dragon Shape Viii Diagram Palm. Wang Xiang Zhai, one of the great internal boxers of the 20^thursday century, described Cheng Ting Hua's operation of Ba Gua as "similar a divine dragon roaming-winding and twisting in the heaven."[v] While moving like a pond dragon, the Ba Gua practitioner is simultaneously advised to "Sit like a Tiger" – by squatting  downward and "sitting the kua," the fold in the front end of the hip. In this way one is rooted in the earth, ready to leap and pounce with power and ferocity like a Tiger.

In the due west, we have trend to look for one-to-one correspondences betwixt things. The symbols of the Dragon and Tiger serve as good examples of the many overlapping correspondences and relationships (some of which at first appear contradictory), that are common in Chinese martial symbolism.

 Notes:

[1] History of Chinese Philosophy (Routledge History of World Philosophies vol. 3), Edited by Bob Mou. London and New York: Routledge 2009, p. 285.

[ii]The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in Communist china, Francois Julien. New York: Zone Books, 1999. p151.

[three] The Lung and the Tiger Image: An Case of Decoding the Symbolic Tape of Chinese Medicine. by Heiner Fruehauf, PhD. classicalchinesemedicine.org. 2008, p. five

[four] Ibid, p. 3.

[5] Da Cheng Chuan,  by Wang Xuanjie. Hong Kong: Hai Feng Publishing Co. Ltd., 1988. p.xl.

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