Martial Morals 武徳

Martial morals (武徳) is an important aspect of training in martial arts. When I was learning wushu, my coach would always finish off each training session by gathering the students and talking to us. My taiji teacher likes to talk too, though he doesn't make it a practice to talk to the students together as a group. While the topics vary, the important thing is to glean a bit of understanding about how my coach or my teacher thinks about life in general, about their principles in life, about how they go about dealing with issues. Although they are not 100% correct (then again, who is to judge right and wrong?) they do serve as examples that we can learn from, to build up our own set of martial morals.

One of the calligraphy pieces that I wrote.

While we may have skills that can subdue the world, it is only through our martial morals that we can make the world submit to us. You can defeat an opponent by skill, but you can only win his heart with your morals.