6.
What Are the Basic Theoretical Schemes of Taekwondo Philosophy?
 Now
let me give you a brief explanation about basic theoretical schemes of Taekwondo
philosophy suggested in this book.
If you have ever read Cheon
Bu Kyeong, you could have recognized right away that titles of the first
and last chapters are same with the beginning and the end of Cheon Bu Kyeong.
It is at least because the foundational thinking way of the Taekwondo philosophy
I suggested in this book is the Korean traditional philosophy. It is the philosophy
of harmony that understands oneness and nothingness beginning and finishing
together with each other, so which sees the distinction of being and not-being
is artificial, thus conceives the entire harmony. This philosophy of harmony
includes full comprehension of the distinction that enables difference between
being and not-being, showing it is not ultimate, and establishing a firm harmony
under entire existence and recognition, so it is extremely fundamental thought.
You can see there are oppositions and conflicts on the harmony
in daily life. The fact that there can be oppositions and conflicts, of course,
depends on that there is the overall harmony as foundation that supports them.
Any way, since you know the entire harmony you can accept the oppositions and
conflicts in it. So you can also accept that Taekwondo is not skill of reviving
yet of killing man, investigating truth in it with its positive sublimation.
Some people argue "Taekwondo must not be a way of killing but the way of
reviving". This argument, however, comes from the loss of its origin caused
by over-beautification of Taekwondo. It is to avoid a dark aspect of life. It
is medicine that revives man. Taekwondo is not medicine. And you learn striking,
kicking techniques, so techniques of killing in Taekwondo actually whenever
you practice it. Now you should not hide but accept the dark truth. The root
of the truth is not Taekwondo itself, yet the life. You should accept entire
life through Taekwondo. When you accept entire life, not only bright aspects
but also darkest aspects, you will get the attitude of life that I call "transcendence
to inside of life".
Another important theoretical scheme of Taekwondo philosophy
is the concept of life. In order to get better understanding of PPT you need
to understand life. Because PPT must be something that explains the internal
principle of man's motion, which is different form that of mechanical movement.
The most significant difference of both lies in that man is living creature.
Unlike the physical principle that rules man's physical structure and motion
in external way, the principle of Taekwondo is that that connects man's internal
side(subjective) with his external side(body). By the way, man's internal side
comes from the fact man is not a mere thing but a living creature.
 Then
what is life?
Life is the self-intending process. This term may sound somewhat
difficult, but it cannot be difficult to understand step by step. Let's take
an example. A man moves his body, eat some food and does something like that,
all of which aim to preserve his life. By the way, "to preserve his life"
is to continue those activities of moving his body and eating some food and
so on. We can say it is "the process for the process itself", and
to abbreviate the expression, we can call it the process of intending itself,
i.e. "the self-intending process".
This self-intending process is also a formal frame. It is the formality that
you can find in every scale from a cell, which we can say is the smallest unit
of biological phenomenon, to man's entire life. I mean, the function of biological
metabolism of a cell works in this formal frame and man's body, which is the
biggest composition of cells, functions in this frame too, and also man's macroscopic
life follows this frame. It is called "self-similarity" that same
formality appears repeatedly in small and big scales of a phenomenon. The self-similarity
refers to the property of a structure that the parts of an object resemble the
whole object, and PPT can be also explained based on this property of life.
It can be said, philosophy of harmony, the transcendence to
inside of life and the concept of life that is self-intending process are the
main theoretical schemes for all thought in this book. And each of the three
also corresponds to each of Sky, Earth and Man of Samjae. I submit each of
all these themes requires another immense philosophical discussion, which I
want to put off till next time since this book intends to suggest PPT systematically
at first.
 1.
What is Taekwondo Philosophy?
2.
What is the Philosophical Principle of Taekwondo(PPT)?
3.
What are the Relations between Taekwondo Philosophy and Traditional Oriental Philosophy
4.
What Concepts of Oriental Philosophy to Explain Taekwondo Philosophy?
5.
What Constitutes the Entire Contents of PPT? (Rough Contents)
6. What Are the Basic
Theoretical Schemes of Taekwondo Philosophy?
7.
What is Taekwondo?
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