Tai Chi is the highest form of combat — Ramsey Dewey

[marvin8]

Ramsey Dewey
Apr 23, 2022

Taijiquan (tai chi chuan if you use the antiquated Wade Giles spelling) literally means the highest form of unarmed combat. But most tai chi practitioners today don’t know how to fight at all. Can you reverse engineer functional combat ready taijiquan from today’s live combat sports like wrestling, judo, BJJ, and Muay Thai?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPyfAYlpcSI

[LaoDan]

Dewey has good points about fighting but, IMHO he is missing the point about TJQ. My understanding is that many past practitioners of TJQ had combat ability before learning TJQ. It’s not about learning different applications to use (in an “external” manner), it’s about changing the approach: avoiding using strength against strength, transforming incoming attacks (while maintaining one’s own central equilibrium) such that one can defend and set up counterattack (e.g., using stick & adhere, connect/link and follow; using hua-na-da (or ting-hua-yin-na-fa, or however your school lists the stages); following the opponent rather than your own plans... If one keeps their techniques, but changes their approach, then one could possibly call it “reverse engineered” TJQ. The “reverse engineering” should be the ways that incoming energies are interacted with, NOT which applications can be used (i.e., incorporated into your previous combat style’s approach). The da (or fa) is the stage after one defends (transforms), and controls (na). If one’s focus is on da (or fa), then they are not learning (or “reverse engineering”) TJQ. If one learns hua and na, then they are free to use any finishing technique that is in their arsenal (whether from previous fighting experiences, or applications learned through TJQ). But what do I know - I do not have a fight record!

[Bao]

He makes a very good marketing effort for Tai Chi, so I won't complain about anything or nag about him getting the name wrong.

[wayne hansen]

He gets as much right as he does wrong
Was his training in tai chi that one spar he had at the ginger factory
It seems so by what he shows as his reverse engineering
What is his combat record
Is he a known fighter world wide
Kokashin and TKD that’s the two polar opposites
You can’t reverse engineer tai chi unless trained in tai chi
He is right most don’t have it and never will
He seems to imitate moves like most people who find out you train and wave their hands in the air in a way that has nothing to do with what you do
He seems to only repeat one or two things
Did he learn any pushing drills and does he use them on a regular basis
I have taught pushing drills to professional rugby players
Karate champions judo fighters FMA warriors
All found them useful
I see him as another YouTube presenter who is vaguely interesting
Not interesting enough to follow

[GrahamB]

I suppose "highest form of combat" is one way of interpreting the name "Taijiquan", but really I think if you actually know anything about Taijiquan you would interpret it differently. I'd say it has more to do with two extremities and the oscillation between them, which is the action of going from yin to yang to yin to yang and so on. That's what the name is actually about, isn't it?

[origami_itto]

I suppose "highest form of combat" is one way of interpreting the name "Taijiquan", but really I think if you actually know anything about Taijiquan you would interpret it differently. I'd say it has more to do with two extremities and the oscillation between them, which is the action of going from yin to yang to yin to yang and so on. That's what the name is actually about, isn't it?

Well yes. Taijiquan can be translated "Supreme Ultimate Fist" but it's a misnomer.

Taiji (太極) is a compound of tai 太 "great; grand; supreme; extreme; very; too" (a superlative variant of da 大 "big; large; great; very") and ji 極 "pole; roof ridge; highest/utmost point; extreme; earth's pole; reach the end; attain; exhaust". In analogy with the figurative meanings of English pole, Chinese ji 極 "ridgepole" can mean "geographical pole; direction" (e.g., siji 四極 "four corners of the earth[clarification needed]; world's end"), "magnetic pole" (Beiji 北極 "North Pole" or yinji 陰極 "negative pole; cathode"), or "celestial pole" (baji 八極 "farthest points of the universe; remotest place"). Combining the two words, 太極 means "the source, the beginning of the world".

Common English translations of the cosmological Taiji are the "Supreme Ultimate" (Le Blanc 1985, Zhang and Ryden 2002) or "Great Ultimate" (Chen 1989, Robinet 2008); but other versions are the "Supreme Pole" (Needham and Ronan 1978), "Great Absolute", or "Supreme Polarity" (Adler 1999).

Taiji references are found in Chinese classic texts associated with many schools of Chinese philosophy.

Zhang and Ryden explain the ontological necessity of Taiji.

Any philosophy that asserts two elements such as the yin-yang of Chinese philosophy will also look for a term to reconcile the two, to ensure that both belong to the same sphere of discourse. The term 'supreme ultimate' performs this role in the philosophy of the Book of Changes. In the Song dynasty it became a metaphysical term on a par with the Way. (2002:179)

So basically, yes, the words refer to extremes of duality, the term is a way to refer to Yin and Yang as a unit, from which all things are born.

[Bao]

The confusion about the name Taijiquan comes from the translation of the ying yang principle into "Grand Ultimate". This is an old translation for the philosophy of the Taiji principle, or the yin-yang symbol. So this name, The Grand Ultimate, was not invented as a translation for Taiji QUAN specifically.

Grand Ultimate is a literary translation for Tai = Great, Grand, too much
and for JI, Ultimate, utmost point, pole.

Some people explain it as it was called Grand Ultimate as it was the greatest cosmological principle that rule over all other principle (which is, or is not, correct, depending on which philosopher you ask).

Taiji as a symbol or principle was never meant as a static balance between yin and yang, or as a "harmony" between them. Instead, the name actually describes a movement between Yin and Yang. The name means that when Yin har reached its utmost point, it turns into Yang, and vice versa.

The name in Chinese is literally "too much over the utmost point". Or that something reaches "too far over its own limit," thus turning into its opposite.

"Through activity Taiji generates yang. Reaching the limit of activity it turns into stillness. In stillness it generates yin. Reaching the limit of stillness it turns into activity. Activity and stillness alternate."

-Zhou Dunyi, Taijitu shou (Explanation of the Taiji Diagram)
(my translation/interpration)

the oscillation between them, which is the action of going from yin to yang to yin to yang and so on. That's what the name is actually about, isn't it?

Exactly so.

[Quigga]

Tai Chi is the hidden yet obvious center
Center is everywhere and nowhere
Periphery and Middle at the same time
It is what everything revolves around
Where everything naturally comes to it's foreseen conclusion, 'turning point'
Electrons and Core of an atom in the same picture

PS: yes I was way too collapsed in my last vid

[everything]

Good post Bao.

Nice poem Quigga. You naturally write in poetry style!

[GrahamB]

The more I look at this cartoon, the truer it seems to become...

The real meaning of supreme ultimate :

[Quigga]

[Bao]

I dug up an article on Academia.edu by Adler "On Translating Taiji". Haven't read it all yet, so I won't comment on it, but it seems to focus on Zhu Xi's interpretation.

Free to download for everyone who creates an account:

https://www.academia.edu/25564748/On_Translating_Taiji_太極

[windwalker]

Taiji as a symbol or principle was never meant as a static balance between yin and yang, or as a "harmony" between them. Instead, the name actually describes a movement between Yin and Yang. The name means that when Yin har reached its utmost point, it turns into Yang, and vice versa.

@ Bao,

interesting look at it as the study, practice of “transitions" between open and close, empty and full expressed at the contact point or before.

"The Limitless (無極; wuji) produces the delimited (有極; youji), and this demarcation is equivalent to the Absolute (太極; taiji).


The Taiji (the two opposing forces in embryonic form) produces two forms, named yin-yang (陰陽) which are called Liangyi (the manifested opposing forces).


These two forms produce four phenomena: named lesser yin (少陰, shaoyin), greater yin (太陰; taiyin, which also refers to the Moon), lesser yang (少陽, shaoyang), and greater yang (太陽; taiyang, which also refers to the Sun)."


As some may know the naming was done by someone watching

What is now known as tai chi appears to have received this appellation around the mid-19th century.[16] Imperial Court scholar Ong Tong witnessed a demonstration by Yang Luchan before Yang had established his reputation as a teacher.

Afterwards Ong wrote: "Hands holding Tai chi shakes the whole world, a chest containing ultimate skill defeats a gathering of heroes."

Before this time the art may have had other names, and appears to have been generically described by outsiders as zhan quan (沾拳, "touch boxing"), Mian Quan ("soft boxing") or shisan shi (十三式, "the thirteen techniques").

A martial practice based on internal principles, accords with philosophical construct based on the I-ching "book of changes"

Later as sometimes happens becoming caught, stratified, as what was once something based a philosophical concept allowing freedom, become trapped in the physical practice's arising based on it, devoid of the concepts that made it so...or concepts with out the physical practices allowing it to be expressed as such.

[robert]

I dug up an article on Academia.edu by Adler "On Translating Taiji". Haven't read it all yet, so I won't comment on it, but it seems to focus on Zhu Xi's interpretation.

Free to download for everyone who creates an account:

https://www.academia.edu/25564748/On_Translating_Taiji_太極

I like Adler. More of his writings can be found on his website.

https://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/writings.htm

If people are interested in the philosophy of taiji I recommend his book - Reconstructing the Confucian Dao
Zhu Xi's Appropriation of Zhou Duny.

[GrahamB]

Another way of looking at this is to realise that Zhu Xi took existing concepts that were much more rooted in the natural world and turned them into a horrible Confucian authoritarian pastiches of the originals, which were popular amongst the Confucian intellectual elite and that's exactly where the 'philosophy of Tai Chi Chuan' that we all know and love comes from.

We've done a podcast about this is anybody is interested.