Teaching martial arts

The martial arts master took a sip of tea and said to the disciples sitting around him:

• I am always torn between two things. One is to teach you the essence of the martial arts handed down by our forebears, so that it is not lost. The other is to teach you ethics, so that you know how to restrain your own martial skills. Once I have taught you the martial arts, I cannot take them back. How you use them is up to you, to your ethics and your wisdom. If you use them rightly, you gain merit; if you use them wrongly, you commit wrongdoing. But I too must bear part of the responsibility.
  You know, nowadays wars are fought with modern weapons, not martial arts. But in the old days our ancestors needed extraordinary martial prowess to defend the country. That extraordinary prowess is a precious heritage of our people and must be preserved. The way to preserve it is for those who know it to pass it on to those who come after. But the motive for learning martial arts is weak these days, because it is hard work and rarely used. Now and then there is a clash in society, but the law deals with it thoroughly. Today martial arts are mostly for demonstrations at festivals and conventions. As for competition rings, some places have them and some don't. Only those who love and treasure their forebears' heritage will take the trouble to learn, especially those who love the remarkable prowess of Vietnamese martial arts.
  In truth, besides fighting skill, martial arts give us other benefits too: a strong spirit, firm will, lasting health, courage and self-confidence. These qualities are not easy to come by, and they are very necessary in this life.
  In the old days masters often sought each other out to challenge one another and see how far their ability went; nowadays masters are cautious about that. I too had to go through many challenges before I could open my own school.
  One disciple spoke up:
• Master, could you tell us about one memorable fight?
• Once I went to the next village to meet your master's wife-to-be and ask for her hand. In those days everything was arranged by the elders, and a child's part was just to obey; whether the marriage would be happy was something to be worked out afterwards. I met the bride's family and when we had finished talking, I went out of the gate and found a whole group of young men blocking my way and threatening me, forbidding me to come and marry a girl of their village. Every one of them carried a stick. My father took out his tobacco and smoked, paying no attention, standing to one side looking at the scenery. My mother and a few of the elders with us were a little worried. By the standards of a martial family, I first clasped my hands and pleaded. I apologised, saying this was a matter between the elders and that we children could only obey. Whatever I said, that crowd would not listen. They would not let us go home and demanded that I promise never to return to their village.
  When pleading was exhausted I had no choice but to accept the fight. But I said beforehand: if I lose to you, I won't come back here; if I win, our two villages will be friends. They agreed. I invited them to attack together.
  It turned out they had trained in martial arts too, but the martial art handed down by my ancestors' clan was far too formidable. I didn't wait for them to attack; I stepped forward and provoked them into striking. The moment they stirred a stick, I had closed in and struck again and again, knocking the stick away and injuring a shoulder. Before that man had hit the ground, I had pressed in on the next and thrown a series of strikes that put him down as well. You know, I brought down ten men in less than twenty seconds, and no one could see clearly how I struck. Only my father understood it all.
  Afterwards I helped them up, comforted them, promised to regard them as friends, and went home. From then on word of me spread quickly. I had to receive many other masters who came to visit and test themselves. Many masters were very gentle, and came simply out of curiosity about my reputation to exchange ideas; if there was any fighting, it was only to learn from each other.
  Now I am old, and when I look at the future of martial arts I am worried. You can't devote yourselves to training the way I did in the past, so I can't pass on all the secrets. And society's ethics have declined too much today. Martial arts must be accompanied by ethics, or they become a calamity.
  The disciples, moved, knelt with hands clasped and said:
• Master, we promise to try to spend more time training in order to keep our forebears' martial prowess, and we also promise to cultivate our ethics so that they match our martial arts.
  The master said:
• You must remember that the ethics of someone who learns martial arts must be several times higher than other people's, because a martial artist carries within them a dangerous skill for killing. 🤸‍♂️

Martial arts are fighting skills, which were very important in the past for defending the country. But with the refined spirit of our national culture, the founders and masters created a way of martial arts full of artistry. Strength was wrapped in beautiful art. To fight crudely is ignorant and inept. Fighting must be beautiful and artistic.
It is precisely this artistry in traditional martial arts that makes many people still passionate about training today. Within the valour there is still culture and art. The more a person trains, the more refined and elegant they become. This style of martial arts is very different from the martial arts of the West.

For example, Eastern masters found ways of developing strength quite different from the West. Mostly, to gain strength one must train the muscles. But the Eastern schools develop strength through qigong, breath and stillness of mind. Perhaps because Eastern people are physically slight, they discovered this kind of internal power. It may also be that a secret was passed down by divine beings.
This internal practice is very close to the wisdom-filled learning of the East. The more masters cultivate, the loftier and keener their inner minds become.

Today martial arts schools focus more on technique and even forget to teach the Way of martial arts, which is a great shortcoming. The better the martial skill, the brighter the Way should be. To give disciples the ability to kill, like handing them a weapon of destruction, without teaching deep ethics is no different from releasing unruly fighters into society. The more one learns martial arts, the more one must learn ethics.
Likewise, the more knowledge and qualifications one has to climb to higher positions, the more ethics one must have beyond others.
Likewise, the more one studies at school, the more one must be taught about ethics.

In general, the more talented someone is, the more they must equip themselves with matching ethics, so that their talent does not become a capacity to bring disaster on the world.