Life is constantly changing. Our virtues need to keep up. Traditional martial arts’ virtue is not about clinging to the past, but learning from the wisdom from the past and adapting it to the present. Our friend, Justin Ford, told me a great quote from Matsuo Basho: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought”. We are in the 21st century and we need to update what the wise sought through Martial Virtue.
In Chinese, it is known as ‘Wu De’ 武德. It is a simple, yet full of cultural nuances from Confucius, Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi (Daoism), and Buddhism. So, it is not a simple idea. Virtue is different for each of these philosophies; therefore, virtue becomes personalized to each generation and individual. My personal understanding, at this time, is ‘finding harmony for everyone and everything’. Lao Zi taught that the Dao (or universe) is always changing and we need to keep up with the change. The universe constantly changes and virtue changes with it. Therefore, we must learn wu wei (or going with the flow; Bruce Lee called it “naturalness”, Ismet Himet calls it “doing without ego”). This is a different lesson for a different time.
Now that the world is becoming smaller, modernized, and technologically advanced, a whole new world order is taking place. The virtues of the past are still true today, regardless of culture. Namely because there are more similarities than differences. I believe some philosophies of virtue can be misused to create a hierarchy of power. However, the deeper aspects of virtue attempt to teach us how to be better humans. Historically, one part was left out because there was no real need: how to be better to the environment.
Why Environmentalism for Martial Artists?
Martial arts started as training for the military. It still should today. Throughout the millennia it has changed and evolved. People have used it to further not only fighting skills, but philosophy, medicine/health, and spirituality. A mainstay martial art lesson is how to be a good person: to be virtuous. Therefore, it must be studied, regardless of style or tradition.
Martial arts training teaches us to adapt, overcome, and excel. We are supposed to desire challenges to overcome. The challenges we face allow us to grow, mature, and become better people. Our planet and our children need us to step up to this worldwide challenge.
One principle of martial arts is to protect those who cannot protect themselves and to pass on what we have learned. These are basic martial virtues. The environment cannot protect itself anymore, and we are reliant on the environment. our children will suffer through our laziness, selfishness and greed. Martial Virtue needs to be updated and environmentalism added4rf to its lesson. We don’t need martial art violence to protect the environment, but rather the discipline, the determination, and love to protect it.
We are at the beginning of the 6th Great Extinction. Our air is polluted, our water is becoming too dangerous to use, and our food is contaminated. Species are going extinct faster and at a higher rate that is sustainable for life to exist. We are essentially committing mass suicide.
Our virtue is taking our own personal responsibility and owning up to our mistakes then changing our ways.
Steps We Can Easily Take
We are martial artists. Take this statement seriously. It is an honor to study our arts. It isn’t a thing we do. It’s who we are and live it every second of our lives. Let our training expand into new parts of our lives.
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Be a Minimalist
A minimalist is someone who tries to live with the least amount of things as possible. Most of the stuff in our home is not actually necessary for our life. This is up to you on what you think is actually necessary. But if you have not used something for years and you completely forgot about it, donate it. Not only do you clean up your dwelling, and it looks better, it will help your emotions of how you feel inside your home. In Chinese culture, it is a basic idea of good feng shui.
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Donate
Donations are not just a way of feeling good about yourself, tax credit, or helping the needy, it is also part of keeping the environment clean. Less production is less pollution. So not only can you clean your house and feel less claustrophobic, you are also helping keep the environment clean.
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Single-use plastics
Most plastics are not recyclable. And even if it is recyclable, if there is any oil on it makes it unrecyclable. Only 9% of our trash is recycled. The rest end up in our water, burned, or in our landfills.
If you are out and want a coffee or tea, bring your own metal or silicon container to Starbucks or Coffee Bean or wherever. When you go out, bring your own water. Avoid the plastic bottled water as much as you can. Use tote bags. Buy metal straws and have them handy. These are simple and easy to begin doing.
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Drive Less
We can carpool. Sometimes it is small. But every little piece is important. Plan out your time to do errands all at once or drive to work with a coworker.
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Less Online Shopping
Although shopping can be instant and easy to buy online and have it shipped to your house, it is actually terrible for the environment. The transportation to individual homes actually forces many trucks to deliver individual packages to multiple houses instead of large shipments to a single location. Orders are fulfilled at different warehouses the packages come in different boxes as well as different times. Also, the packaging and bubble wrap creates lots of trash. Even though the boxes are recyclable or biodegradable, most are not going through the process. UPS doesn’t take old Amazon boxes for reuse. China isn’t taking our recyclables anymore. And the places that are importing recyclables are not up to speed so much of it gets burned. Unless you are interested in buying something specific that is close to impossible to get at your local store, do your best to avoid online shopping.
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Buy Local Food and in Season
This is sometimes hard to do unless you go to the local farmers market. And somethings just don’t grow in your area. The problem is that a lot of food literally travels an average of 1500 miles just to get to the store. This is a lot of wasted gas. Have you ever noticed that summer fruit doesn’t taste the same during winter? That’s because it is grown halfway around the world and picked too early. It ripens on the plane, train, and truck. Freshly picked fruit is not only tastier during the right season, it is also better for the environment.
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Eat Less Meat
It is an individual’s perspective if meat is tasty or not. or moral or not. But much of our planetary destruction comes from meat, and a lot from cattle. There are more and more ‘dead zones’ along our coastlines. These areas are inhabitable to any sea life. There is so much manure that it cannot be turned properly to fertilizer in time. Much of the manure get washed into our streams, rivers and then the ocean.
Not only does it kill off our coastlines of fish, the manure, along with other trash at landfills, creates methane. Methane is, depending on who you ask, 20 to 80 times worse than CO2 at warming up the planet.
Also, if you are looking to lose weight it isn’t more exercise, it is what you eat. Less junk for sure, less carbs can help, but also less protein. Excess protein turns into carbohydrates in the body. Excess carbs turn into fat. You don’t need to be vegetarian or vegan, just less meat will help on many levels.
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Don’t Wrap Gifts
Wrapping paper just goes into the trash after Christmas. It is fun to unwrap, but it is very wasteful. Instead, you can use gift bags. As long as you are careful, they can be used multiple times, exchanging from person to person throughout the years.
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Demand Change
Although the major companies are in part responsible for much of the problems we face, we easily just accept. Begin writing and complaining to companies and politicians. Write on their website, social media, email or snail mail.
These are small steps that won’t take much of our time. Some are just a little change we can implement into our lives. It is a new virtue for us to put into martial virtue lessons because responsibility and discipline are core to our lives. We need them to train correctly. We need a healthy world in order to be better martial artists. If the world is sick, we are sick. And if we love our arts so much, don’t we need to pass it on?
The sins of our fathers have not been corrected. People don’t like to take blame. But the worst of the offenses are in our times. We are to blame for the current crisis. If you believe in climate change is our fault or not is beside the point. It is happening. Our world is becoming trashed and disgusting to live in. To be honest, I am an addition to the problem. I am to be blamed for my part. Just the other day I got a coffee at a café using a single-use cup and I wrapped some of the gifts for my children. I am far from perfect. However, I do what I can when I can. Every bit helps. Now, what will you do?
As always, Keep Training
Check out our other articles on Martial Journal like reviews for movies, television, and books as well as our contributors’ own thoughts and journies with martial arts.
I recently finished writing my book on virtue. Please go to my Facebook page of Virtues Path and follow for more essays on virtue. Also, please visit my website thevirtuespath.wordpress.com
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- Teaching Martial Virtues - October 23, 2023
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