The concept of Ten Chi Jin (Heaven, Earth, Man) for martial artists.
This model is woven into traditional Japanese Budo; what is the philosophical base?
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Why this is important.
Ten Chi Jin is a philosophical, metaphysical and practical concept; a structure that underpins oriental thinking that goes back centuries. Martial artists understand it as an overarching picture of the relationship between this triad of entities at a universal and cosmic understanding, as well as at a micro level affecting functional martial arts. For this study I will take a brief look at the big picture to hopefully supply the necessary background context, and I will leave the details of the functional martial arts material to another day, but, I don’t think you can understand one without the other. You will see why.
Ethics.
My feeling is that getting to grips with this conundrum helps the martial artist to fill in some of the gaps in their foundational moral and ethical understanding. The type of problem we are confronted with tends to express itself through such puzzling questions as, ‘what are people who engage in developing fighting skills talking about peace and harmony for? Surely that is majorly hypocritical?’
However you want to answer that question, whether it be, ‘we learn to fight so that we don’t have to fight’ or a ‘fight for justice’ argument, it does tend to ring a little hollow. I believe that the ideas rolled into the Ten Chi Jin model supply a more grown-up and universal way of solving that problem.
A word on the idea of the Trinity, as it works in human logic.
There is a difference between patterns of two and patterns of three.
Two is a binary definition, it sets up opposites and is useful to us; think of, ‘good/bad’, ‘positive/negative’, ‘Yin/Yang’ and yes, ‘Heaven/Earth’. In these you are confronted with the challenge to categorise and compare.
Add a third element to create a trinity and you get the sense of a functioning whole. The third element becomes a regulator that completes the logic. It is no longer a simplistic either/or, or a bald definition of opposites that just ‘are’. It becomes an active creative dynamic.
Think of the familiarity and completeness of other trinities, ‘Beginning, middle and end’, ‘Of the people, by the people, for the people’, etc, you get it. The addition of a third entity gives the appearance of encompassing everything, it just works. Hence: ‘Heaven, Earth and Man’.
Heaven and Earth are opposite powers, the unifying force is in the hands of Man. In this, the big deal is that Man is empowered by consciousness and agency; Heaven and Earth are immeasurably vast and without thought or artifice, while Man is puny by comparison, but through the individual (and combined) consciousness of Man, if he is living up to his divine potential, he is an energising conduit between the vastness of the other two. It is in this ‘conduit’ role that he has infinite utility at many different levels, from macro to micro.