Good and evil have been locked in struggle since the dawn of humankind. Our wise teachers have taught us to see our lives in terms of the actions and manifestations of body, voice and mind. Good and evil can exist in each of these. Buddhists essentially endeavour to do good, advance goodness and avoid evil and impede evil. This doesn’t entail being some sort of silent, smiling, emasculated wimp, allowing evil to walk all over you and truth to be buried, though, I’m afraid. It doesn’t mean ignoring evil and doing nothing. That would be evil as well! Buddhists are taught to speak up firmly against evil! To do nothing is to endorse the evil. To do nothing is to allow the evil to increase in strength.
In the martial arts world, which is obviously not separate from the world as a whole, good and evil also co-exist. We have people like Chuck Norris in the USA reportedly doing good for youth (Blessings be upon him!) and we have internationally known figures having built their reputations on lies and character assassination amassing selfish fortunes, never shared with those in need. Some of the most well-known martial artists are decidedly not good people I’m afraid! We have martial arts cults which teach derision, lies and anger towards outsiders. We have had martial arts teachers who have assaulted or encouraged assault upon their students. We have had martial artists who exploited their poor students varying from over-charging them to sexual exploitation - of both the under-age and adults in their classes. We also have martial arts groups that do good and raise money for charities. We have martial artists who teach poor youth and provide role models. So, there is a mix of good and evil in the martial arts.
When we meet some martial artists we can instantly feel that they are good people. We listen to how they talk and we watch how they treat others and we can see. Others we meet, we can sense are evil. In the past there were martial artists who were bullies, thieves and murderers and those who were kind, helpful and benevolent. Many martial artists today unfortunately idolise their ancestors and paint them as demi-gods when those who actually knew them experienced them as un-likeable personalities if not outright criminals, con-men, thugs, liars, exploiters of the weak, and/or thieves! As we can see from history and by looking around us, being a good martial artist does not correlate with being a good person. Some evil people I have encountered have been martial artists to varying degrees!
Modern martial arts have tended to emphasise the character-building aspects of their organised, sport/fitness martial arts activities. The Japanese probably had a big hand in this with their emphasis on the "do" or “way” of the martial arts rather than the “jutsu” or technical aspects. The Koreans too, with their mass martial arts business empires have mostly done a good job of emphasising some sort of martial morality and civic mindedness amongst youth. The Chinese have romantic pop culture notions of the Chinese knight of old and in some gung fu traditions emphasise Mo Duk or “martial morality”, depending on the sifu. Chinese communities are imbued with the Confucian ethic so their gung fu schools are usually forces for good - despite some having criminal Tong connections. Sadly, the reality seems to be that many followers of martial arts masters and their systems which preach good values and ethical behaviour pay only lip service to the ideals.
When I was young I recall a number of martial artists who, in their own mind, I think must have imagined themselves as some sort of oriental noble or martial arts movie superstar yet in reality behaved little better than treacherous heel-snapping dogs. The martial arts in the West were in their infancy forty years ago. This is the time I am thinking of - thirty to forty years ago. There were then, as now, martial arts political groups which from time to time I heard about from various members of them. I never belonged to any as I see, as did my teachers, such groups inherently and inevitably as trouble.
The various members would talk to me about their fellow members whom they publicly praised and smiled at and associated with and yet privately and in their training halls, denigrated them. I had difficulty with such hypocrisy. My thinking was that if the other person was a thug, a fraud or a con-man (I have known all three types in martial arts, sometimes in the one person!) then you did not associate with him lest others see you as endorsing him and his morality. I recall one of my Japanese senseis once going to speak to one of the very big names (an untalented, unfit and fraudulent con-man) to try to teach the fool some sort of morality. Yet he was rejected by this worm of a person of less than one-tenth of my skill, let alone that of my teacher's skill. Our group stalwartly refused to become members of the group this guy had taken control of, or to be controlled in any way by a fraudulent practitioner such as he (he had bought his grades, in short). I felt very uneasy that day and wished we had been back a few hundred years in time. Things would have turned out very differently indeed!
In those days such martial arts political group membership was voluntary and not belonging was not punished by exclusion and relegating the non-member to some sort of martial arts netherland as such non-membership in today’s over-regulated world would entail. Of course, some bogus teachers very cunningly worked on gaining membership and the sort of “acceptance” this brought . But, behind their backs those who had accepted them into membership to increase the power of their organisation, or because they had recruited sufficient backers, never ceased bickering about them. And they, in turn, were full of spite, envy and criticism for the original, authentic members. (Some organisations were founded with so many non-legitimate members that their power struggles took other forms - paranoia about control and ego seemingly being the main motivators). So, I thought that if these people I knew belonged to these groups and associated with these people then they were signalling their approval and acceptance. The old adage about being “stabbed in the back” it seems can be very apt in the martial arts where many people will be polite and friendly to your face but devious and under-handed and assassinate your character behind your back. Some, and this never ceases to give me constant amusement, will denigrate you having never once even seen you face-to-face and never having ever seen your art! I find this hilarious! They assume and presume a great deal! This has to be an incredible example of ignorance if ever there were one! I’m familiar with one situation where the object of a certain critic’s denigration is a superior martial artist not only to the critic’s teacher but to his teacher’s teacher! Is stupidity evil? Well, yes, it is. It qualifies by the definition I give below.
So, in martial morality, the ideal and the real must match up! What then is “evil”? Evil is simply nothing more than the lack of empathy. It begins with small things like refusing to speak to some-one and leads on the one continuum through all the range of its manifestations to genocide. It is exactly the same process which operates - lack of empathy.
Seeing and understanding evil this way helps us to see that when we lack empathy - an awareness of how the other must be feeling and the capacity to experience their state and feel compassionate towards them and for those they are influencing - we add to the global stock of evil in the world and further it. Hence, whilst not endorsing the three poisons - anger, greed or ignorance and increasing them by acknowledging and supporting their growth, we need to be empathic - compassionate.
Especially in the martial arts there will be times when we need to invoke what my lamas call “wrathful compassion”. The parent may need to make the child feel uncomfortable in order to teach them morality and to help teach them to avoid causing themselves or others unnecessary suffering. This is what I alluded to earlier. We ought not pay respect to bogus martial artists by recognising their art nor by giving credence to their claims to be legitimate practitioners descended from a legitimate lineage. We ought not allow lies about lineage or history to proliferate. If we encounter these things we have to politely but courageously oppose them. We will attract considerable flack as not only do fortunes ride on these lies - fragile and inflated egos do, too. However, we do not endorse evil. To do so is to increase it’s strength.