The Teachings and Songs of New Pakua
Martial arts! Just the thought of the arts gives me delight.
As the Chinese idiom says, “a giraffe is inferior to an old horse when it gets old.” However, I have been practising the Chinese Wushu, otherwise known as kung fu, since 1956, and the arts are what keeps me going.
I began training in Baguazhang(eight trigrams palm) as a boy and later in Shaolinquan, returning to the study and practise of Baguazhang once again.
Fist(quan) or strength in terms of martial arts may correlate with great spirit. Values on martial arts are reflected well in the use of the term ʻquanʼfrom the Book of Poetry(Shijing), which translates as “if a man has neither quan ability nor courage, such may be the cause of disorder of his duty.”
Having been fully absorbed in martial arts, I was able to realise the reason of a profound change of Qui or Chi(vital energy) which is explained by the attribute of martial arts, even though I have not attained a philosophical enlightenment. It is not consequently shameful for me to be called grandmaster.
In my experience Chi can be demonstrated by the harmonious and balanced motions. Harmony keeps the mind and body stimulated through the techniques that inherently combine different qualities such as ‘hardness and softness’ or ’emptiness and substance’.
Balance makes one’s body shake, vibrate, spiral, swing and react instantly; the changes happen within a flexible and agile trained body, achieving the separate goals of defence and attack within the available space. In particular this balance cannot be present without stability which we must bear in mind. In any case harmony and balance should be blended smoothly in Chi like oil painting or water colours.
I have seen Chi expressed in other martial artists for example by putting out a candle with the force of the palm; or the breaking bricks and rocks almost effortlessly, blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting his force, or other feats of power. Their perception of the change of actions is also linked to the complementary flow of Chi.
You too might also acquire experience in the essence of Chi by practising my own style called ʻNew Pakuaʼ.
In physics, it is said that all physical movements are associated with energy. This kinetic energy is Chi.
Western philosophers say that the movement of Chi is an intrinsic attribute of the substance and causes changes by interacting with its elements. Philosophical Taoism and Confucianism represent convergent and contrasting factors as Yin and Yang, or stillness and movement.
Their sages believe that changes are the essence of movement forms derived from the dual elements of Yin and Yang, and the driver is Chi.
Therefore, Chi retains a unity of the dual factors: so even within Yang there is Yin, and vice versa, but generates vitality by the interchange of two elements as Kapila’s theory of the polarities of light and dark.
In the practices of meditation and martial arts Chi is regarded as an indispensable requisite. Ch’an Buddhism also applied Chi in seeking sudden inner enlightenment.
It is fundamental to the techniques of fighting to unite mind and body. Traces of earlier Chinese martial arts show the cultivation of Chi combining respiratory and physical exercises. This is inextricably linked to the background in which philosophical Taoism and Ch′an Buddhism have pursued an eternal life and inner enlightenment through the training of spirit.
The basic practices are thought to have originated from the Five Animals Exercise created by Hua Tuo and the Yijinjing by Bodhidharma.
These two styles are exactly the same in the way that they apply the cultivation of Chi to the deliberate teachings of developing internal strength, physical stretching and mental concentration.
For martial arts to be used in combat requires dogged perseverance and tenacious training. We also ought to have profound skills. The training of the flow of Chi is essential for achieving the whole thing.
Chi contains both complementary and convergent factors such as firmness and suppleness, movement and stillness. These factors constantly interact with each other in combat. An attacker can simultaneously release strong or soft energy in a flash.
Let us explain Chi in more detail.
There are many Chi developing exercises in the martial arts world. All are aimed at improving physical and mental health, with mental concentration exercises leading to greater emotional wellbeing. There are many disciplines to grow intrinsic energy as well as the mental concentration. However, there was nothing equal to Baguazhang until an alternative system was proposed by me.
Within New Pakua Chi is cultivated in harmony with Spirits via animal forms. This is represented with its potential infinite variation by diagrammatically using and the applying the Trigrams and Hexagrams composed of a set of horizontal lines in the I Ching. These are used more specifically than original Baguazhang. New Pakua was introduced by Yang Johng Un into the martial arts world for the first time.
The emphasis here is the principle in training of prioritising defence as the kernel of attack. This does not simply mean block and counter-attack. Rather it means that the changing circumstances initiated by the aggressors create the response.
For instance, even as I am attacked I must be absorbed into the aggressor as if I draw into a vortex, and my attack itself must seem to be vain, without disturbing the mind or creating agitation. This empty form should be turned into counter-attacking against his attack as his own being, in other words, as a virtual image. This is the principle of employing Chi that has initiated my response.
The essence of Chi appears in the variable actions like this. Chi must be everchanging through its Yin and Yang polarities, following as if there are forms but no forms.
Practitioners endeavour to retain those ever stronger feelings of Chi and that fullness of spirit and oneness of mind and body. They practise chi just for prenatal care as a pregnant woman does antenatal training. They sometimes would suffer many defeats in combat due to either their imperfect skills or an unusual opponent’s ability. However, the cause is neglected self-discipline and training in the circulation of Chi more than any other imagined cause.
Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s greatest swordsman, said at one time.
“When I stand with my sword in hand against a foe, I become utterly unconscious of the enemy who stands before me or even of my own self, and in truth I am filled with the spirit of subjugating even earth and heaven.”
Exactly! We would be qualified to discuss self-discipline, if only we were able to reach that stage.
If there is a state of complete absence of ego, which can get the mind off to sleep like stillness in the deepest water, even though there are ripples on the surface, one can still be enveloped by and surrounded with the resulting latent energy force that would flow like a spark from the point of the Musashi’s sword, as a consequence of his described condition.
This is the correct way of moving in a silent state, which is the self-discipline absorbed in a so-called Movement in Stillness. We must stress mind rather thought. Thought in combat can be too slow in reacting to changing circumstances.
Next circulation of Chi is based upon the principle of mutual harmonisation of spirit and vigour or Chi.
What condition do we need to reconcile vigour with spirit and for these to be dispersed equally to each part of the body? It is premised on the state that when all one’s body is strongly united, is to be like the round space of a rolling ball.
The variable actions of vigour have to influence every movement as our body undertakes postures and actions whilst circling.
Now we have to reach such a stage where martial artist of Hong Kong, Bruce Lee has explained: “When we have nothing in our mind, the spirit flows from one action to another just as a stream flows.”
In this stage moving in a circular fashion has to be able to unite both the internal and external Chi of the body through movements harmonised with emptiness and substance, hardness and softness or Yin and Yang. Passing through this process Chi may be varied according to a six-directional dimension of forward, backward, left side, right side, upward and downward.
Let us talk about the practice again.
Just as a supple ‘rope’ will tighten when swung with a weight in any direction, when interrupted it will bend, but it is strong and will hurt on contact. So the actions are not designed for an intermixture of firmness and suppleness, but rather dwell within the concept of the circle and sphere or spiral as a united whole.
Therefore analysing static postures or the ‘rope’ in terms of Yin and Yang in the moving form is wrong. As explained Yin and Yang are ever-changing, flowing into one another.
The action is a variable unity of the dual factors, I would say. However, more efficient use of the unities around us could maximise the relative changes within these circular and twisted forms. This is the substance of New Pakua.
This means that the dual elements if Yin and Yang are converted to a unity based upon the principle of complementarity, e. g. the balance of firmness and suppleness, straightness and bending or discord and harmony, whereby an increase in one condition naturally creates a reciprocal response in the other.
This response just releases Chi in a circular fashion. In other words, the reciprocal response is a change and the changes are the production of Chi that contains both attack and defence elements.
Therefore, these elements must secure an imaginary sphere against target point or part. This will be felt. Circulating changes have also to be employed by the substance of movements. This is why Chi training must begin from the very start of learning New Pakua.
New Pakua further develops the concept of sphere and variety of useful movements through the hexagram diagram creating the sixty-four Hexagrams. As the universal principle of trigrams is evolved into the circular theory of “ending is beginning”, through coadjustment of Yin and Yang, the Hexagram mixed Yin evenly with Yang just means the space around oneself and opponent. (i.e. The space that is occupied or vacant.)
Sure the space means six directions, but it also affects the movements. Whirling around in circle, it is easier to injure an opponent while at the same time deflecting his force. Furthermore, it is suitable for speeding arms, legs and torso, while circling in the opposite direction, to bring down an opponent who relies upon strength alone.
Each set of Hexagrams composed of six stacked horizontal lines, as was stated above, symbolises the six-sides of the unities.
Within the forms the probability of change is not 8 but 64 of which each of the six spatial elements of the Hexagram represents a direction, i. e. front, rear, left, right, up and down.
In order to gain a better understanding of the skills of New Pakua, we have to examine its process.
In 1973 I reorganised the original Taoist style to practise circular change.
We must begin with the Hua Huo postures that I recommend for Chi development. The exercises are based upon the peculiarities of the Deer, Monkey, Bear, Tiger and Crane. The animals are each designed for two postures, except Monkey has three. The new style takes into consideration, however, that these five animals each have six postures, giving a total of thirty in all.
The Hua Tuo style has been employed as “embryo breathing”, “harmonised breathing”, or “the discipline of concentrating internal energe to make Chi” from old times. After finishing the dantian breathing, my style is used for the training of so-called basic movements. This is the correct preliminary training for fighting arts. In the postures we must relax and breathe into the abdomen using the diaphragm gently but firmly.
We must first realise that the Five Shaolin Animals are exercises for the state of being outwardly strong with inner softness, whereas the Hua Tuo Animals are practiced in the state of outwardly soft but inwardly strong.
We now practice postures while slowly alternating the Chi of both Yin and Yang in the hands and feet, dividing each animal into six sides. The animals, so to speak, train the six-sided effect of exhaling Chi.
The feeling of Yin in the case of deer, for instance, must be concentrated in the front hands and foot when stretching both gathered hands ahead or raising up the leg or stepping forward.
Yin in terms of feeling, is a bloodthirstiness, and said to be a preparatory stance for counter-attacking. Simply speaking it is seemingly a defensive or empty position. It gives the impression of cold and light movement. At this time, the rear hand or foot is filled with the feeling of Yang.
The feeling of Yang is of generosity and gives the impression of being strong like a rock, but it is a posture readily changeable to that of Yin in a moment.
The other important point to remember is to have a state where there is a complete absence of ego. Try to feel Yin and Yang, which is dispersed simultaneously around the dantian, while being conscious of the posture. Focus the mind on the dantian will zero thought, but one hundred per cent awareness.
While your eyes are focused ahead, concentrate your attention on the rear side too, and think of the right side at the same time as your eyes are turned to the left. As you do so, circulate the Chi. Avoiding unnecessary tension enables the Chi to flow.
After mastering these points, we will feel as if the body and mind are one. This expression is used to inculcate “mutual correspondence of mind and hands”.
But it is somewhat silly and dangerous to make a rule, because everyone has their own different skills and also presumably their own repertoire of techniques that can be utilised. I think that there are two kinds of knack, as manifested in the context of my own limited skills.
One is the ability to block and attack according to the six directions. The second is the attainment of the method for creating emptiness and substance by moving hands and feet, waist and arms, and also legs in the state of complete absence of ego.
In my experience I have developed the game of emptiness and substance in sixty-four rules or cases, of which each case includes six changeable elements. I think this rule may be the best practice of internal and external schools of fist training. In particular it is important for both arts to sustain not too much firm and not too much pliant as a rule. There should not be an excess of hardness,- being rigidly;- or excessive softness,- being weak and fragile. Both of these are vulnerabilities.
The internal school is based on the theory that all the movement must fundamentally arise from the principle of the soft and fragile which contains the hard. Soft fist is literally the name for fist arts which are outwardly soft but which are inwardly strong. Mainly the fist schools of Taijiquan, Baguazhang and Xingyiquan belong to these arts.
The external school is expressed in the martial arts as being outwardly strong with inner softness, but what is only generally seen are its fast and hard movements. Shaolinquan and Praying Mantis quan seem so powerful.
A new system of Baguazhang was devised by me in 1986. This achieved the practical application of the Five Hua Tuo Animals to a new circular form called Eight Animals Form.
In training the Eight Animals form we should adopt the characteristic of the animals. The animals are Lion(dignity), Monkey(promptness), Eagle(sharp, alert), Dragon(writhing), Phoenix(grand fly), Snake(craftiness), Bear(generosity), Tiger(force, agile).
Range of the symbolic animal forms is the most suitable medium for practical combat.
Each of the eight sequences contains a different combination of six sided Yin(defence) and Yang(attack), and comprises a series of eight manoeuvres.
This rule is rearranged into a circular pattern through the ground-plan for 64 Hexagrams, each of which is composed of two three-straight and broken lines.
Arrange a set of eight diagrams in order, for instance, and then assort another reversely to generate a series of eight Hexagrams progeny. These symbolise eight manoeuvres of Lion.
But, I must add, each manoeuvre generally comprises sequence of two or three postures. To repeat; Yin and Yang are in a state of continual change, so the Hexagrams for individual manoeuvres change as one posture flows into the next.
In case of the first series of Hexagrams which represent the Lion form, it contains a different combination of six sided Yin(defence, broken lines, emptiness) and Yang(attack, straight lines, substance). So the first in the series has attack on three sides of front, rear and left and defence on the other three sides of right, up and down.
Following the principle of change there is no rigidity in attack and defence elements. Mind must always be aware of both. What makes the Eight Animals form different is that attacking is an empty form even though it is Yang, giving this Yang element strength whilst at the same time keeping it rather empty. Even within Yin there is Yang. Bear in mind that it is easy to injure someone by accident even though intention is not present.
We must also appreciate that attack is an action which defies changes. It is not to stop or destroy the attack but to perceive the progress of change quickly and adopt ourselves to counteract, absorb, avoid or divert its power. This flexible response is similar to sports people who successfully ride the waves or wind in their sensitive actions. The response is somewhat self-defence through self-acceptance.
This means that the animals form has the advantage of tricks of emptiness and substance, and subtle action. It is fact, of course, that my style employs the actions of twisting palms called Zhuanzhang which was the initial name of Baguazhang, like grinding grain in a millstone, whilst circling. There is also a distinctive step called Tangnibu like walking in the mud, being applied to my style.
All changes of my actions occur when moving in the space where my defence tries to be consistent to the opponent’s attack, with the awareness of the six sides as symbolised in the Hexagrams.
Their changes, in original Bagua, however, occur from applying Yin and Yang, whilst walking and turning in the Eight Trigrams. They have no use for the six sides, because circulating plays a significant role of causing changes. They only view the six sides as the space of their actions. Furthermore they say that the Trigrams symbolised as straight(Yang) or broken(Yin) lines signifies the combination of attack and defence on the three parts of the body, I.e. up, middle and down.
Afterwards, in order to help my students and to demonstrate the role of the Hexagrams in the Eight Animals Form, I named this style New Pakua in 1999. My disciples of Seoul National University also played a key role in establishing New Pakua Society.
This is a valuable addition to our kung fu martial heritage, because it extends the Eight Trigrams principles to include the reason of universal dimensions of space and change.
The practice and teaching of New Pakua has already spread from Korea to the United Kingdom. I taught the British students kung fu at Swansea University, while studying in the UK in 1972. They established Leighton Buzzard Club in England in 1978, where it was called ʻMaster Yang’s Truthʼ in the syllabus of the club and since headed by Dr. Richard I Macphail, Stephen W Macphail and John Bates.
They have practised my style New Pakua and proved the benefit of my art which is marked as exceptional, for health, spirit and defence.
In particular, New Pakua forms are the training that realises the substance of the body and mind according to the six sides-change principle. Thus it is not a training of simply having consciousness of conceptual sides. It is ‘balanced cerebral training’, which enables Chi to activate at the maximum levels in latent consciousness.
The eventual aims of New Pakua is to lose the enslavement to form, and become free to act and react naturally in latent consciousness that is steeped in the principle of change.
I have newly designed a Dragon form, mixing various Baguazhang Chen Tinghua and Liang Zhenpu styles, as an example of the application of my style in my fifth book entitled “Principle of Infinite Competition in Baguazhang”, 2010. It will help Bagua practitioners break away from the stereotype of three parts skills of up, middle and down based on the Trigrams.
I come to realise that through New Pakua our brain can still be developed, countering age-related mental decline and help regenerate human beings.
I wrote a poem entitled “Practice” in 1975, which was later modified to adjusted to New Pakua. The poem is about:
If substantial endeavour is made
to reach the acme that is soft
and gentle but hard and strong,
and neither weak nor enervate,
in a clean, calm and peaceful
mind, then a peak of latent
energy will emerge.
If emptiness and substance
are harmonised, it will yield
dynamic energy which is slow
but fast, straight but flowing and curved but twisted.
If energy is circulated in
the blood and is concomitant
with the principle of complementarity of
six-sided yin and yang
in front, rear, left, right, up and down,
every movement will appear in the mind
and the mind becomes the body; the body
forms the stances; and finally the stances hit
the target.
In the harmonised condition of moving but being still,
being still but moving, circulating the whole body
around the Chi filled abdomen,
not impure but clean energy is yielded in an
instant, lightly but heavily, heavily but lightly,
and finally it makes an essence of techniques
in which one can step forward as if one would
fly and circle as if one would step forward.
Incomparably the greatest advantage to be gained by practising is the realisation of the truth rather than the skills. I also recognised that martial arts do not satisfy our craving for a secret, having no genuine commune with their potentiality.
Besides, the training provides me with the instructive guidelines. These will be teachings to be preserved unsullied in the humble passage of our life. What shape is my practice in today? I render as:
Keep skillfulness hidden, instead pretend a lack of ability;
Keep the attack to be beaten off by the spirit;
Keep both hardness and softness coadjusted;
Never get angry or seek a fight;
Knowledge of thousand skills is no substitute for an exquisite one;
Keep oneself controlled first in order to beat the opponent;
Cast your bread upon the water, at long last you will find it again;
Martial arts without profundity is perilous; learning to overpower the opponent is in vain.
Yang Johng Un
June 2014