I think that most people have a very flowers and blue-sky idea about what "spiritual" means. They assume that fighting and violence are somehow anti-spiritual, as if the goal of humanity should be to wind up like Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King. I think those two are great and admirable men, and I love people like Thich Nhat Hanh, but I also love people like Miyamoto Musashi, Malcom X and Kwan Saihung.
To me, being "spiritual" is simply recognizing and working with the reality of our spiritual component; it doesn't necessarily imply any inherent moral system. Fighting can be an extremely spiritual practicethe originators of zen were themselves warriors living in a world where life could end violently at any time.
I have synthesized my own personal moral beliefs with my spiritual practice of the fighting arts, but I do not confuse the two, if that makes any sense. I know (for example), that my mentor does things with his martial application that I would not personally be comfortable doing, and that is o.k. by me. It doesn't mean that he is a higher or lesser person than I am, save that he is definitely more skilled and has a much more broad, real-world understanding of human conflict.
The role which physical coercion or force of unavoidable circumstance plays in bringing men into, and often through, the ordeal of battle is one which almost all military historians consistently underplay, or ignore.
-- John Keegan, The Face of Battle
Human interaction, more than any other thing, defines our lives, and human interaction is itself defined by conflict. I have found that human conflict is a kind of overlay that expresses itself through its various forms without changing much in substance. A fencing match is a lot like a verbal debate, for example. Some of the people Ive trained have gone on to apply the principles of empty-handed fighting to business negotiations, relationship difficulties, and other essentially conflict-driven situations.
Im not a high-powered executive type, but Ive used fighting principles to resolve and diffuse conflict in my own personal and business relationshipsmore often than not, knowing how to fight gives me the ability to not have to. And when I do have to (see quote above), I prefer to win.
Sure beats those little shiny sticker ones..
very interesting.