E-Paper
How spiritual are the martial arts?
Anne Marie from Scotland wonders why the martial arts claims to be spiritual. Veena Minocha answers...
Anne Marie from Scotland asks,
Dear Veena, there are a lot of groups in Scotland who are learning the martial arts, like Tai-Chi, Kung Fu, Karate, etc and they all claim that this is the path to a spiritual life. What bothers me is that how can any art that claims to be martial, that is propagating fighting and war, ever be spiritual. After all everything spiritual starts with love and peace, not having aggression and defeating others as its basis. They talk of the good fight and call themselves spiritual warriors, but to me this is incomprehensible. Reverence for life, and cooperation with all life is spiritual, according to me. Please explain this anomalous way of thinking……
Veena Minocha answers, dear Anne Marie, please do not get taken in by the name of these arts, which call them 'martial'. To you, and to the rest of the world for which this knowledge is new, it does seem an anomaly, and a travesty of the term 'spiritual', in every way. But, it is not so in actuality.
In the new age, we are all Warriors of the light, which means that we are warriors who have pledged to uphold the light in all circumstances, and in all experiences, however much they may try to draw us into darkness and wrongdoing. And nothing satisfies a warrior of the light more than knowing that he has fought the Good Fight against all negativity and darkness.
The martial arts were born out of the same principle of the great fight against all dark forces on the earth. They were honed into a fine art in the far eastern countries of China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia. The very first principle that they operate from is that theirs is an unarmed combat, that is they only use the powers of their physicality, that is their mind, body and spirit to conquer all that seeks to downgrade mankind into duality. Their attempt is to attain such a finely tuned balance between their forces of mind, body and spirit, that they can then invoke the whole soul power of the cosmos, which descends within them to fight the good fight. These martial peoples fight only for principles of goodness, and not for personal gain or revenge. They lift up their bodies to fight only where injustice and darkness have to be brought into the light.
Though this way of fighting is not very relevant in modern times, as it was in ancient times, the principles are still extremely valuable training for the human soul. This is so because they teach the underlying reverence for all life, and cooperation with all life which the spiritualist seeks today.
The commitment to preserve what is God's creation, is the dominating thought of all these arts, as well as the instinct of preserving our bodies, minds and spirits in pristine condition.
