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Taekwondo Bible Vol.1
Preface to the English ver.
Introduction

Part. I

1. Oneness and ...
2. There is Do ...
3. The World, ...
4. Picturing ...

5. There is ...
6. The Principles ...

Part. II

7. In Taekwondo ...
8. Facing the ...
9. Erasing ...
10. Thinking ...
11. Doing TKD
12. Not Losing ...
13. Three ...

Part. III

14. Taekwondo's ...
15. Distinction ...
16. Doing Both ...
17. Questioning ...
18. Looking Out ...
19. Endless ...
20. Finding ...
21. Begining ...
22. Keeping ...

Part. IV

23. Moving ...
24. Controling ...
25. Attacking ...
26. Leading ...
27. Surpassing ...
28. Attacking ...
29. Capturing ...

Part. V

30. Having ...
31. Knowing ...
32. Filling Mind ...
33. Taekwondo ...
34. Hitting ...
35. Attacking ...
36. Making ...
37. Avoiding ...
38. Offense and ...
39. Winning with ...

Part. VI

40. Offense and ...
41. Having Softness ...
42. There Be ...
43. Controling ...
44. Being Able ...
45. Harmony of ...
46. Beautifulness ...
47. Able to Stab ...

Part. VII

48. Seeing Motion ...
49. Sparring with ...
50. Free in Strict ...
51. Having Poomsae ...
52. Perfection ...
53. Having Yourself ...
54. There being ...
55. Getting Everything ...

Part. VIII

56. Completing ...
57. Taekwondo Be ...
58. A Piece of String ...
59. Seeing New ...
60. Everything in ...
61. Begining Training ...
62. Seeing the World ...
63. Truth of TKD ...
64. Oneness and ...

Taekwondo Bible Vol.2

Taekwondo Bible Vol.3

Taekwondo Poem


 

Taekwondo History

Taekwondo Traning


 

TKD Culture Network

 



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?