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In Place of an Introduction
THERE ARE few books even in Chinese on Pa-kua Chang (palm) or Pa-kua Ch'uan (boxing). This is not only the first book on the art in a foreign language, but also the first to present the circling method with its functions balanced against a more linear method which initially may have more appeal for Westerners. The more linear system is the result of three years of study under Huang Ihsiang ( ), senior student of Chang Chun-feng ( ), one of the leading boxers in Formosa. For the classical circling method, I have used extensively the two best books written on the art to date, Sun Lu-t'ang's Pa-kua Ch'uan Hsueh ("Study of Pa-kua Boxing," Peking, 1916), and Huang Po-nien's Lung Hsing Pa-kua Chang ("Dragon Shape Pa-kua Palm," Shanghai, 1936). Master Sun, whose "eyes were very high" (meaning he stood above most boxers), is known and revered by many Chinese. His book forms the basis of the circling system presented here. Huang's book reveals how the art had been modified in the twenty years following issuance of the Sun text. To show the present circling methods, I have used the teaching of Kuo Feng-ch'ih ( ), my personal teacher; Chen P'an-ling ( ), the world's leading authority on Chinese boxing; and Wang Shu-chin ( ), pupil of famed Master Chang Chao-tung ( ). Why write a book on a subject about which even few Chinese know? Simply, to inform Western readers about a discipline worthy of far wider recognition than it now has. Although Pa-kua is self-defense par excellence, it is also an excellent system of exercise which will enlarge one's physical, mental, and possibly even psychic horizons. Physically, it will tone and invigorate your muscles and sharpen and soothe your nerves, teaching you to relax and improving your overall health. Mentally, the bodily relaxation will produce a calm mind, one capable of great concentration. I leave it to someone more competent to enlarge on the psychic reward; suffice to say I believe there is one. Also, I have avoided using the word "character," but I insist that the practice of Pa-kua requires ever-increasing increments of self-discipline, and this cannot but have its impact. In the end Pa-kua will let you know and conquer yourself (like Mallory and his mountain, we only conquer ourselves). Only one with true self-knowledge can master others. This mastery comes, not from the muscles, but from the mind. But, paradoxically, seek to master others and it will elude you; seek to know yourself and you will achieve mastery. "If you ask how I strike the enemy, I cannot tell you: I only do my exercise," said Wan Lai-sheng about Master Tu Hsin-wu's natural boxing Tzu Jan Men, and the same holds for Pa-kua and the other internal methods, t'ai-chi and hsing-i. Chinese books on Pa-kua boxing lay great stress on philosophical aspects which most Westerners would stamp as mysticism. My eschewing of most of these does not mean I disbelieve them. It merely means that I do not think a beginning text written for the Western reader is the place for philosophy—that too much philosophy would obfuscate material which by its very nature is difficult to present. Germanely, there is the delicious story of a philosopher in a boat asking the boatman if he knew philosophy. When the boatman replied in the negative, the philosopher sighed: "Ah, then you have lost half a life." A storm broke and the boat began to sink. The boatman asked the sage, "Do you know how to swim ?" When the philosopher shook his head, the boatman said, "Ah, then you have lost all of a life!"
This book cannot teach you everything there is to know about Pa-kua. In the absence of a qualified teacher—I know of only a few in the U.S.—it can, however, serve as a substitute. Rose S. C. Li of the University of Michigan, who has spent a lifetime practicing Pa-kua and Hsing-i, wrote me recently that "its delicate technique, theories, and philosophy are not easy for the Western mind to grasp." I more than half agree. Therefore, this book is but an introduction and basic guide lo a highly sophisticated exercise. It is brief because 1 didn't want to be like the man who said he knew how to spell banana but didn't know where to stop. Over two decades of learning and teaching non-Chinese fighting arts have provided some useful background for me. Pa-kua, however, is unlike and superior to the other arts 1 learned, and so, in 1959 when I began to practice it, I did so from scratch. 1 am still learning. Won't you join me?
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