The Bong Sau Allegory

This is a silly little thing, written a long time ago, and I wasn’t going to post it. But I had reason to remember it recently. As much as I’m not so inclined to write like this anymore, I stand by the truth of the content. Perhaps that’s worth showing.

I’m struck by those times when we do what is right but still fall into the inevitability of other people’s negative judgements. I call it ‘the law of people’, because everyone is ‘people’ to someone: as in when we exasperatedly say ‘honestly, some people!’.

A trivial example, to avoid anything too dramatic: I meet a car on a narrow road, and reverse to the next nearest passing spot in order to let them pass, but they’ve already turned around to do the same and don’t look to see what I’ve done. After a time, they are long gone. I move forward. When we pass, they give me a dirty look and a rude word and throw their hands up as if I made them reverse. ‘Honestly, some people!’

It’s a simple misunderstanding. I know I’ve done nothing wrong here, but there is no escaping their bad opinion of me. There is no escaping bad opinion as such, because people judge things differently, people perceive things differently, and some people are idiots. Misunderstandings happen. There’s nothing you can do about this. You must learn to swim in it, or else drown.

The Crack in My Soul

The crack in my soul, out of which all my contentment leaks, is a need for other people to think well of me.

As a result of this vulnerability, what causes me most harm is other people’s judgements. I have endured many things, but people judging me badly is intolerable and has shattered me in the past.

I’ve been working hard to fix this error and rid myself of this vulnerability. In the process I made a note to myself:

‘The art of living, like wrestling, like a wing chun bong sau. Take that feeling of external judgement and react, instinctively, with the assertion of right value. Meet what comes, let it pass, add your own.’

I think this is an important idea, and it’s obviously meaningful for me, but it will need some explanation to make sense to anyone other than me. It’s difficult to explain in text. I’ll make an attempt, but what it refers to is a concept that wouldn’t translate unless you happen to have experienced something comparable. The ‘Bong Sau’ is referring to a physical understanding, what we might call a ‘knack’, something you have to get the feel of, like riding a bike or throwing a ball.

(Bear in mind that all of this is an allegory for the art of living.)

Wing Chun Kung Fu

I spent years learning a martial art called ‘Wing Chun’. A guiding principle in Wing Chun is that you move forward in a straight line unless and until you meet resistance. So you might punch, say, direct to a target, and if the way is clear then you hit your target. Moving in a straight line is the quickest way to do that. A straight line will get there quicker than a curve, for example, so a straight punch will beat a hook, in theory. This is why boxers jab.

(Bruce Lee, having famously started by learning Wing Chun, used this principle as the basis for his own martial art of ‘Jeet Kune Do’ or ‘The Way of the Intercepting Fist’.)

Bruce Lee and Ip Man (Bruce Lee’s right hand is a bong sau here)

But if your opponent is doing the same as you then sometimes you might meet something else coming in the opposite direction. Force meets force; what should you do?

Most of the techniques of Wing Chun spiral out from this point. If you can punch straight and fast, and never meet resistance, you wouldn’t need any more techniques… Just punch straight and fast over and over again until you win. (This is the reasoning behind Wing Chun’s idiosyncratic ‘chain punch’: if the way is clear, punch; if it’s clear again, punch again; repeat.) But when the way is not clear and you meet an opposing force, you must do something more.

If your force is greater, then you can power through the resistance, but, again, that requires no more technique, only more power. And becoming ever more powerful isn’t that technically interesting; and there’s always someone more powerful than you, so it makes sense to develop your art on the assumption of being the lesser force in the equation.

If the force that you meet is greater than your own, you must yield. That’s physics. Move out of the way of the incoming force, redirect it, make the way clear, then add your own force once the way is clear again.

Most Wing Chun techniques are expressions of this principle: move forwards, meet what comes, yield to a greater force, let it pass, then move forwards again when the way is clear. How you do that will depend on the precise circumstances. And this happens so quickly that you have to develop a feel for it so that your reactions become instinctive. In Wing Chun it is a literal ‘feel’, in that it is the feeling of contact – on your forearms, say – that triggers the instinctive reaction. You throw your hands forward, meet what comes, and respond accordingly with the appropriate technique. Skilled practitioners can do it blindfolded and be at no great disadvantage, since the techniques do not depend on sight but ‘feel’: I put that in inverted commas because it is a combination of physical sensation and cultivated instinct.

A ‘Bong Sau’ (which we’re told translates as ‘Wing Arm’) is one of these techniques. It’s the reaction to your punch being met with resistance when the point of contact is more towards your hand or wrist (as opposed to your elbow) with the incoming force coming somewhat ‘across’ you. The bong sau involves a flipping of the wrist and elbow: your elbow rises as it moves forwards. It looks a bit like a bird’s wing, thus ‘wing arm’.

In practice it feels very much like a ‘shoulder roll’ in boxing (picture Mayweather) and there are very similar techniques in Thai boxing, such as when you move from a ‘long guard’ to a double forearm block. As I said, it’s difficult to explain in text; it would be easier to demonstrate. But the point is that your forward movement is stopped, having met with an opposing force, and so you yield to this opposing force and let it pass while still keeping forward pressure.

This is a very meaningful concept for me. Not least because one of the important aspects of Wing Chun technique is to rely on structure and not muscular strength. Everything ought to work while remaining in a state of relaxation. If you need to exert strength to power through, you’re not really doing it right.

I’ve found the same concept expressed in other arts that I’ve practised, like jiu-jitsu and escrima and fencing, and also when handling large animals or livestock. It seems to be a universal principle for any activity where force meets force.

The Art of Living

It’s clear how this is a useful analogy for a philosophical art of living. I suspect the Greek and Roman allusions to wrestling amount to the same insight.

You can’t overpower everything with muscular strength, so you must learn to react accordingly, with good technique.

Wrestling with Judgement

In this life we meet with judgements. These have a certain force. They impact on us. This impact can be damaging.

I have my own judgement. This also has a certain force. I have a capacity to reflect on myself and my behaviour and hold myself to account according to standards of my own choosing. On reflection, it’s clear that I would choose standards that stand up to rational scrutiny, and in the end it must be these standards that matter to me most, or else I am a slave to other people’s fickle and unreliable opinions. I know this, having investigated the matter and having become convinced by these rational accounts, so it’s important not to forget it. Socrates knows it; Epictetus knows it; Kant knows it; I should know it too.

I move forwards in life conducting myself according to to these standards. What happens when I meet an opposing force: an external judgement that goes against my own?

Meet what comes, let it pass, add your own.

Philosophy as a Way of Life

Philosophy, when understood properly, equips you with the techniques that you need to perform this art of living. My particular vulnerability is other people’s judgements, but this art would apply just as well to anything else that troubles you in life. This is why it has stood the test of time for 2,500 years. This is why all philosophical schools of thought across all cultures and times tend to converge on the same core concepts: the priority of wisdom, the priority of virtue, the necessity of self-rule. You will find this in the ancient Greek and Roman traditions, but also Old Norse, and any number of Eastern traditions. You’ll even find some of it expressed by modern psychologists.

All of the doctrines that determine the differences between these diverse schools of thought – gods or no gods, scepticism or knowledge, unity or division, materialist or dualist – seem like superficial additions compared to those core principles. Like the principles of martial arts being expressed differently in different contexts: stick a sword in my hand and it becomes fencing; take it away and it becomes boxing; close the distance and it becomes wrestling.

They all seem to converge on a recognisably similar set of guiding principles, always with the same aim: to live well, by which we mean to be virtuous, free, and untroubled, according to good judgement.

Self-Defence

Some time ago, I made another reflective note to myself:

‘I’d feel calmer, I think, if someone drew a weapon on me than if they insulted me. Partly that’s because I’ve had training. And because of that training I feel like I know what I’m doing in that situation. But how much and how long did I train to better defend myself against physical attacks that never happened and did not trouble me? And how much and how long did I train to better defend myself against psychological attacks that did and do? Is it that you think there is no art to these things? Because there is…’

In all the time I’ve trained in martial arts, I’ve never once been physically attacked. But I have been wrestling with other people’s judgements for decades. I’m frustrated, now, that when I was younger I spent so much time and effort on things that I didn’t really need, all the while neglecting the one thing I really needed. Why is it only recently that I’ve decided to apply myself to cultivating this art?

As a student and teacher of philosophy, I can’t claim ignorance as an excuse. Old philosophers are always trying to train us in this art of living. They offer sentences and maxims like ‘know thyself’ or ‘nothing too much’ or ‘people can only judge things as they seem to them’ or ‘align your will with nature’. These stand as short-hand references to practical techniques, like a name of a martial arts technique: ‘Bong Sau’ (wing arm) or ‘Tan Sau’ (dispersing hand) or ‘Pak Sau’ (slapping hand) or ‘Gaun Sau’ (chopping hand). Obviously, though they might help you remember, there’s only so much you can learn from the words. It’s the practical application that teaches you the most.

It frustrates me that it took me so long to learn that lesson. At least I realised my mistake. I am considerably less troubled by these things than I was.

Kung Fu, Martial Arts, Mental Health, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Wing Chun