219. The art of Weiqi (Go/Baduk) war (碁#29) - Developing Situational Awareness

So much of martial arts these days is focused on the physical. Can a person kick, punch and wrestle to overcome their opponent (if there is one)? Yet, as I play weiqi or Go against my American opponent, I start to understand that the over-reliance on the physical, is just a mask. A mask to hide deep fundamental flaws in one's training. And that flaw is the rejection of what it means to be human as opposed to just being an animal. We humans are sentient beings, who have overcome our natural adversaries by cultivating our minds to such an extent, that compared to our closest animal cousins, we might as well be gods to them. For, it wasn't our physical abilities that put us at the top of the food chain. Both, me and my opponent, do baguazhang and qigong. The baguazhang takes care of our physical realms. While the Qigong takes care of our energetic realms. What you are seeing on the Go board is what happens when these two modalities of baguazhang and qigong are transferred onto the mental realm. And both sides are using guerilla warfare to kill each other in the dark. But in order to do that, we both are using the game to develop our 'situational awareness' capabilities. The capability of being aware of your opponent and their moves in advance of them being played, when one does not know their opponent well. And it is far harder to do than it looks on the board. Imagine an opponent in the ring, who can appear and disappear at will. No matter how good you are at wrestling or boxing, you are constantly trying to figure out in advance where they will materialise, so that you can strike before they strike. And then, not every move appears like a traditional strike from them, even though it is. What then? Does that mean your martial arts, including you MMA guys, is useless? Well, that depends... You may be the best in the ring, on the mat or in the cage, but most people are not. And so, they will not fight you directly. They will twist the battle onto the terrain of their choosing and defeat you there. And you see it all the time. Guys who are at the top of their game brought low by a situation that they have no real skills to deal with. Coming, seemingly out of the blue, it hits them where they are most vulnerable. And as expected, the pain point is never their physical ability. So cut the bullshit about adding more and more rules and handicaps to the game and train your mental abilities like a B2 bomber about to unload it's shit on your dumbass! ⚔️圍棋戰聖 Follow on Insta: @baguazhang_