WING CHUN ‘IS’ SMOKE AND MIRRORS.

Despite their complete misunderstanding, they are correct, Wing Chun is smoke and Mirrors..

Hey Guys.

This is a longish post that should pull a lot of other posts into a single focus, no matter what you think is going on it will pay great dividends if you read it through to the bitter end and retain the information.

The main reason I dislike YouTube videos regarding Wing Chun is that the people who make them clearly do not fully understand what Wing Chun is, or what it aims to achieve.

Sadly, I am not only talking about the haters, this includes the well-intentioned souls that step up to defend Wing Chun’s honour.

In many instances, the “Defenders of the Faith” are doing much more damage to Wing Chun than the detractors ever could.

By putting time and effort into demonstrating that Wing Chun can work in a ‘Real Fight’ they are moving away from what Wing Chun was, is, and could be.

The detractors that make negative comments about Wing Chun are not doing anyone any harm, they are just voicing their opinion, which is everyone’s right.

They have no understanding of Wing Chun and so they call it as they see it.

 Through the lens of ‘Not Knowing,’ they say that Wing Chun is nothing but ‘Smoke and Mirrors’.

Despite their complete misunderstanding, they are correct, Wing Chun is smoke and Mirrors..

Then up stand the loyal disciples, usually young men keen to impress as young men are.

Through effort and enterprise, they try to show that the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ can work in a ‘Real Fight’.

It can, but it is nonetheless still just ‘Smoke and Mirrors’.

Understanding Wing Chun is more about understanding LIFE than it is about understanding fighting.

A big ask for a young person, and by young I am talking about being under 40 years old.

The reason Great Kung Fu Masters are old is not because of a lifetime spent training, it is because of a lifetime spent living.

People who understand Wing Chun say yes, Wing Chun training is as you call it, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’.

But the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ are not Wing Chun, they are simply a vehicle, a way for us to see and explore Wing Chun.

Just as a prism can split a beam of white light to show the colours of the spectrum.

Without the use of a Prism, all that is visible is a beam of white light, but those of us who previously saw that light pass through the spectrum know that in truth that beam of white light is in reality, every colour of the rainbow.

Smoke and Mirrors.

This is where ‘Shit Gets Weird”

Wing Chun is a Conceptual Martial Art.

There is nothing physical.

But the only way we can interact with or experience the Concept of Wing Chun is through physical interaction and physical training.

It is doubtful that Dr Leung Jan of Foshan had any IDEA about Quantum Physics, but that is exactly how he created Wing Chun.

Light as a particle and a wave.

Doing and not doing.

If you have stayed with me this far then it should be clear that to understand the nature of Wing Chun we must understand, as well as we can, the nature of Dr Leung Jan’s thinking.

But here is more weird shit, this thinking can only be understood through the physical interaction of what we call training.

Seeing as how he has been dead for more than a century connecting to his thinking may be difficult.

But enough has been handed down through the years for us to at least find the door, and hopefully prise it open.

Hints that have been left like breadcrumbs are often ignored because they have been usurped and used as cliches by the movie industry, or exhausted as advertising spin.

But it is these very cliches and spin statements that hold the key to understanding.

These are the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ that hide Wing Chun.

And there are hundreds of them.

Here are a few that I found value in exploring.

He attacks first, but I strike first.

He walks the Bow, but I walk the string.

These two nuggets are from the Kuen Kurt, the language is flowery so we need to update it.

The first describes the reality of counter-attacking, in a simple clear way.

As you all know, I think that the majority of Wing Chun students do not understand counter-attack, but this is it in a nutshell.

Q. Does a counterattack need any kind of defensive action?

If your answer is yes, or some variation of simultaneous attack and defence, you are among the people that do not understand.

The second is a clear instruction that we attack with straight lines, we walk the bowstring.

But think about the things we use to try and sell Wing Chun.

We claim that Wing Chun is not a ‘they do that, so we do this’ type of Martial Art.

What does this imply, especially when we think about how we train, someone poses a strike {they do that} and we reply with a counter from the Wing Chun repertoire {so we do this}.

What we do in training is clearly not what we are meant to learn.

Here we go again with the ‘finger pointing at the moon’.

In our Science focused education system, we are accidentally taught to abandon abstract thinking.

But I maintain that only abstract thinking can cut through.

Think abstractly, but deeply, about statements such as ‘fighting without fighting’.

And my favourite ‘it is only when we do not try to use Wing Chun that we use Wing Chun’.

If as per the statement above Wing Chun is not a ‘they do that’ style of Martial Art, surely this is implying that we never know what is going on.

Think deeply about this one.

If we know what is going on, if we know what the opponent is trying to do then we are involved.

This is fighting.

Wing Chun does not fight.

As I have said there are hundreds of IDEAS we can think of, hundreds of breadcrumbs, you do not need to use the ones I use.

The message in the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ reveals itself bit by bit, in small packages as our understanding grows.

When we have none or little understanding the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ present themselves as a pile of steaming Horse Shit.

This is what the haters see, just plain white light.

With some understanding, shapes appear in the smoke, and weird, unrecognisable reflections flash across the mirrors, it is pretty much gobbledygook.

This is what the defenders see, still plain white light.

But a time does come when the IDEA presents itself as a Fog Lamp that cuts through the smoke, reflects off the mirrors, and illuminates the prize.

The Prism.

Violence is white light, Wing Chun is a Prism, and the training is a rainbow.

To understand a Concept’ we must use a ‘Concept’, to understand thinking we must use thinking.

After that, we just smack people.

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY

Alfred Korzybski