Samjae
The meaning of Samjae can be explained as "Three Essential
Materials". 'Sam" means 'Three" and 'Jae' means 'material'. Those
three materials have been symbolized as Heaven, Earth and Man. This SamJae is
a fundamental frame of all kinds of changes in oriental philosophy. Thus the
Kwae(trigram) is composed of three yin or yangs obeying this frame. Yin&Yang
symbolize the change or the thing that changes while SamJae means the meta-frame
of those change.
So the concept of SamJae is more abstract, so more metaphysical
than that of YinYang. Thus it can be said SamJae is the foundation of YinYang.
But the concept of SamJae couldn't have been explained logically and extinctively
so that even the YinYang is still somewhat mythical in philosophical respect.(Any
way, it is not the objective of this page to explain the logical foundation
of SamJae and Yin-Yang, so let me skip it.)\
Also in Taekwondo SamJae means the fundamental frame of changes,
i.e. the skills. Since SamJae is somewhat metaphysical it might be understood
as abstract and ambiguous like another difficult metaphysical concepts. But
unless you can understand it you may not able to understand the whole principle
of TKD.
The way of Heaven in Taekwondo is that "everything of yourself
should be kept on its own place, i.e. its most proper position in continuous
change". The most proper position of everything moves in interrelations with
everything else, so everything of yours has to keep moving in the best harmony
with all anothers.(Ch.6)
Have your opponent opposed to the world harmonizing yourself
in it; This is called "the way of Earth", which is the right principle of every
skill in Taekwondo.(Ch.11)
it is important that you should always keep yourself as what
you are without being biased to an extremity in a battle against your opponent,
which is the third principle, called "the way of Man".(Ch.12)
This SamJae is also the frame of poomsae(Ch.51)
and also of ethics(Ch.18) in Taekwondo.
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