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Originally Posted by zefff One more question about MA practice. I have been thinking for a longtime that its a selfish thing and/or that the intent behind practice is selfish. What do you think? Is it even a bad thing and is there a way one can practice in an unselfish manner if it is? |
Wow. Determining whether or not something is genuinely not selfish is actually a VERY difficult thing to do. For example, do people donate to charity because they are truly altruistic, OR do they do it because it fulfills some spiritual or ethical sense of morality, because they get tax cuts, because they emotionally feel better about it, etc.? Just about any action or motivation for action can be 'reduced' in a sense to some sort of selfishness and altruism seems either nonexistent or rare.
That being said, I believe in altruism. I believe that people can and will act with others' interests at heart before their own, and for reasons that aren't selfish when you boil them down. Of course, all of this has been about actions in general and not specifically about the martial arts, so I haven't REALLY answered your question.
What does one do with martial arts? You fight people. How can fighting somebody be altruistic? If you do so for the benefit of others and if you do not harm the person(s) you fight. If you harm them, how can you say you took others' interests to heart, how can you say you fought for the benefit for others'? Generosity is only genorosity if you give to everyone, not if only give to a certain group of people and the same is true of altruism. If you fight so that you, your loved ones, your property or anything else connected to you is not harmed, you not altruistic because you have a vested interested in what you fight for. So, just like you cannot harm anyone, you must fight for everyone.
Altrusistic martial arts is obviously quite difficult to follow, and like any other system of ethics you might read, no one is really expected to follow it. All that matters is that the system is acknowledged as true and the logic that produced it as flawless. That's what philosophy is about. So, are you selfish if you practice the martial arts, not necessarily, but pragmatically speaking you probably are. Does being selfish with the martial arts matter? That depends on you, personally, to decide, and in a twist of irony, if you begin to practice altruistic martial arts BECAUSE you believe you should not be selfish in any actions you do, then you are being selfish because you are only being altruistic to satisfy an internal need for altruism.
Ethics is quite possibly the strangest form of philosophy, wouldn't you agree?