practitioners of those traditional martial arts felt that there was a deeper and
abiding value to their traditions. Traditional martial arts benefited the self in
some unique way.
It was not a Qing Dynasty idea that some kind of self-cultivation was
attainable through the martial arts. As we saw in the early chapters of
this book and in the discussion of internal martial arts, Warring States
period thinkers thought there was a direct connection between martial arts
practice and inner cultivation. Archery in particular had a central role in
Confucian public ritual, reflecting the Warring States period origins of
Confucian thought. That connection was attenuated andfinally broken in
practice by the Song Dynasty, at the latest, leaving educated elites without
an identity-affirming martial art. Some Confucian thinkers in the Song
advocated“quiet sitting”as an appropriate form of Confucian meditation
(and some modern writers have classed quiet sitting under the rubric of
“Confuciandaoyin”). In the Ming Dynasty, the long sword became an
acceptable gentleman’s weapon, and this association continued through
the Qing and after.
The long sword became a weapon of the gentleman when it was no
longer a regular battlefield weapon. It retained some value for self-defense,
but its non-military status allowed educated men to practice its use without
associating themselves with thuggish militarism. Still, practicing with the
long sword was not discussed in terms of inner cultivation. Some Ming
literati practiced with other weapons, including spears and staffs. Men like
Wu Shu spent their entire lives pursuing martial arts study without suggest-
ing why they did so. It does not seem entirely unwarranted to suggest that
these literati martial artists were seeking some sort of self-cultivation through
the martial arts. They self-consciously devoted themselves tofinding teach-
ers, often traveling great distances, and spent enormous amounts of time
and money on advancing their martial arts skills. Unfortunately, they did
not articulate a specificgoal.Wehaveevenlessinformationregardingthe
professional martial artists they studied with. For many of those men, at
least, studying and teaching the martial arts was a way to make a living.
Daoism has a strong connection to ideas of self-cultivation and some
connection to the martial arts, but it seems that the two were not consid-
ered together before the Qing Dynasty. Daoist thinkers from the Warring
States used examples of martial arts practice in their writings to make
philosophical points without necessarily practicing the martial arts them-
selves. Mount Wudang had a strong connection to martial spirits, with
Ming imperial patronage of the Daoist temple on Wudang connected to
the True Martial spirit. The Ming imperial house thus patronized both
Self-Cultivation 199