Sorcerer wrote:Recently me and some people I know want to start a public martial arts club that will train regularly here in a park in my city. However, I am hesitant to do this! because I do not know who will show up and what type of person they are. I am concerned that people will use these spiritual practices and their martial applications to do and promote things that are wrong.
There are at least two common approaches to this, one is that if the teachings have the capacity to benefit those who practice them, then they may actually allow people to refine their character, thus improving them to a large degree.
In this line of thinking, bad and good are what you do, not what you have done or how you look at things, thus a person who has saved lives can take them, a person who has done good things can do bad things, a person who has done bad things can do good things. In and of this a teaching has the capacity to allow so called bad people to realize the error of their ways, so to speak. Likewise the destructive potential for martial arts techniques can be abused by good people, no person is free from the ability to make bad choices and any increased ability or capacity to harm people that may be entailed in martial art teachings and training methods can provide a source of temptation for any human being. It is a tool, so to speak, and no tool is incapable of being misused or abused, nor is there a person alive who does not have the capacity to make mistakes or poor decisions, particularly when acting in haste or under duress.
The second approach to this topic is discretion, in this there are two major methods, the first is refusing to teach any person who has not met specific requirements in terms of moral character and personality, this is typically determined through carefully devised tests of a persons behavior, patience, determination and choice patterns. In this method a teacher typically teaches only one student at a time and does so in an in depth and one on one approach that demands a great deal from both the teacher and the student.
The other method employed regarding discretion is to have public teachings that are engineered or designed for general public consumption, and then supplemental private teachings that are reserved for specific students who have met requirements such as both showing the proper level of commitment, ability and right moral character and mentality. In general the public teachings are those, which do benefit people in general in both mental and physical ways, but yet are not easily utilized in a way that can be abused to harm others or the self. The supplemental teachings tend to include application information as well as further details, meanings and methods, which build upon the public teachings as their foundation.
In an analogy the public teachings are like learning to speak, the private teachings are like learning to read and write. Martial arts is like language in general and different martial arts are like different languages, different styles of specific martial arts are like dialog. I am interested in the linguistics, how the languages originate, develop and diverge.
Sorcerer wrote:Second, what do people here make of the general growth of interest in martial arts? Good? Bad?
I view the general growth of interest as inconsequential in general and individual or varied in specific context. It seems to be a facet of the communications media age in which the world has much greater access to information in general.
I do not know that there is more interest in martial arts in general, or if there is greater interest then I do not know that it equals more widespread practice of martial arts, or if there is more widespread practice I do not know if it equates to more widespread violence or applications.
As a species we are incredibly violent, always have been and always will be. Ever human is by nature violent and cruel, as well as peaceful and benevolent. It seems that the more a person puts into practice teachings of traditional martial art, the less likely they are to use those teachings in a bad way, however history is full of examples of both violence and retribution in the martial arts community. Some martial art styles became family teachings because of revenge killings, the teachers wished to prevent future loss of life.
In one story a specific martial art was used by people who acted as hired bodyguards, they were hired to guard some valuable property and when thieves tried to violently take those valuables a thief was killed by one of the martial artists. The family of the thief then went and murdered the innocent members of the family of the bodyguard martial artist and several others as well including many of the family of the person who taught the martial art to the bodyguard, the family of the teacher was targeted for attack in these revenge killings.
The point is that in some cases if you give a man a gun, and he commits a crime with that gun, you will be held legally responsible for that crime, but in other cases if he prevents crime with that gun, you may be held responsible still by those who feel wronged by the use of the gun.
Violence breeds death, regardless of the way it is used. Martial arts are best used to prevent violence, not to promote it. If you harm a person, regardless of why, when or how, it can and often will come back to haunt you and can even end up harming those you love. Retaliation is a very common human behavior regardless of the perception of justification of action. In general harming anyone, even if they are trying to harm or kill you can have negative consequences regardless of a persons moral character. In this way teaching a so called good person is no different than teaching a so called bad person.
You may find that being no human is a good judge of good or bad, particularly in terms of the character of others. In general those who are not worthy of the teachings do not have the patience, dedication or willingness to learn them. Those with the attitude that it takes to learn a martial art are seldom not worth teaching and no person is who they seem to be.