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Chapter 5.![]() There be no difference between TAEKWONDO and Life "Too difficult for me." "Because you cling to words"
TAEKWONDO, of which the appearance is same with that of Life, is essentially simple in spite of its various techniques and many features. Just as a seed contains already everything of a big tree, so even a technique of Taekwondo, if it were perfect, implies everything of TAEKWONDO. And just as the long growth of a tree is for a production of a seed, so is the hard and long training of Taekwondo for only perfection of a skill. Therefore, the complete Taekwondo is alive. It does not show a fixed shape nor has a rest, yet is it simple though. Just like the life. To be alive is simple. Therefore, it can be recognized simple and easy only as something with no fixed shape. It would be infinitely difficult to understand the life when you are to consider it in the perspective of fixed scheme, which is appropriate for the dead. This implies that it is infinitely complicated and difficult to conceive the mechanically typical aspect of TAEKWONDO. Because Taekwondo and life is One organized in harmony each part of Taekwondo is equal to the whole. So is it beacause the form of perfection is that each part contains the whole while the whole can stand only with every part complete. Nevertheless, however, a part is different from the whole on the other hand. The simple thing you can feel. Are you alive? Then you would be able to grasp your being alive just as it is. Is your world dead? If so, every living thing would remain difficult beyond your understanding then. It's because the living are essentially different from the dead. A little insect cannot get the bigness of mountain nor the hardness of rock, which it thus cannot understand, while the enormous mountain and the hard rock can neither get nor understand the brilliant mystery such as that the creeping larva becomes the beautiful butterfly or the cycling appearance of life such as that a seed grows to a big tree which again bears fruit, the seed. Such like that is Taekwondo. If you, who are alive, are to meet Taekwondo as a living thing you would come to know that TAEKWONDO is very simple whereas, if not, you will come to regard it infinitely difficult. To do Taekwondo is to make your acts truly alive. To live is a continuous process and a kind of tension, confrontation and contradiction. The life can neither be abandoned nor can be completed in any case. This is the true figure of life to the life itself. Therefore, Taekwondo is something for Taekwondo man which he can never give up nor reach the completion of. Completion means end. When life is completed it ends. The right completion in life is a never ending process. You can manage your life when you want completion. You can be happy at last when you know all of these. The completed Taekwondo is to be broken. The Taekwondo in continuous pursuits and threats is TAEKWONDO as true way of life. Therefore, there is no completion in Taekwondo. Rather, there can be completion of Taekwondo each moment when you realize it. Taekwondo man can be pleased then only.
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