Scott's comments (member since Sep 01, 2008)

Scott's comments from the Martial Arts group.

Sorry I have been out the loop. I do believe that boxing is a martial art. Martial coming from Mars (the Roman God of War) and art meaning an expression of the self. There exists an animosity between Asian arts and boxing because of ignorance on how either works. I would love to get involved in boxing personally but you only have so much time and I tend to do better if I focus on one project at a time.

I am curious, how does everybody else find martial arts schools? I use the internet and word of mouth as much as possible, but sometimes it can be tough to find a dojo (dojang/school/etc.) around my area. Also, what criteria should you judge a school on?

Life is battle. Everyday we fight and usually not with others, but with ourselves. We have different individual goals yet we strive for the same general ideal: to live free. Free of doubt, free of fear, free of our capacity for selfishness, apathy, and cruelity. Martial arts teaches us, as Russell put quite well, to "strip away our fears." It helps us to learn a fundamental lesson of life. To get from point A to point B usually requires struggle. In martial arts we struggle to learn a new skill or master a kata. In order to accomplish these tasks we must constantly practice while sweating and occassionaly bleeding. We could just as well quit, but we would never accomplish our tasks. So martial arts better prepares us for the "battle" or struggles that life requires to go from point A to point B, from my goal to its end.

Martial arts is an art. As a painter demonstrates their inner world by the choice of brush, stroke, and color; so the martial artist chooses. Not just the styles we practice, but how we practice. What we do when faced with a powerful opponent, how we move to accomplish our techniques, etc. These choices define us as artists and on a grander scale, as humans. Matial arts are self-expression. You cannot create what was not already there to begin with.