Wuji as Formlessness

Wuji as Formlessness

By Andrew Miles
 

Emptiness is the most important attribute in martial arts.  Just as nothingness gives birth to something, formlessness must precede form.  Without emptiness all of the postures go from being flexible suits of armor to rusty cages that imprison a fighter.  Postures are a battle arrangement of the major striking surfaces.   

Consider every striking surface to be free floating.  Empty everything else. 

The seven stars and the dan tian fly like a formation of helicopters, each part is small, but the overall area of the whole formation is large and filled with emptiness.  If you shoot into this formation your chances of hitting something are smaller than if you have a single larger target such as a Zeppelin blimp.  A student must begin with emptiness of mind, free from fear of loss or desire to win.  Those who fear a fist, will eat a fist, those who flow fearlessly into the spaces between the firsts have nothing to fear.  Emotions eat away intention and divert energy.  Having no intentions, one may use true intention.  The student must learn to find the empty spaces of the attacker and flow into them.  When the student can enter into the safe empty spaces of an attacker, then formlessness can give birth to form and even the horse stance is enough to overcome a fierce opponent.  If you try to use horse stance out of context, you be destroyed.  Those who have lost this philosophy will begin at form and strive toward formlessness discarding technique in the process.  In the end, what they consider mastery is actually the first stage of training and their lives are over before they can truly begin to learn martial arts.  They curse the form that held them, ignorant that if was their own improper training which bound them to failure.  When one follows the way and trains in accordance with nature one thousand days are more than enough for foundation and ten thousand days are enough to achieve mastery.

In this video Chen Ziqiang demonstrates formlessness in Taji and only then applies the concept of horse stance.  The rules prohibit true combat, but he handles the situation well using these two concepts.  Note his facial expression during and after the bout.  No fear, no celebration.

Formlessness proceeding form in systema training.  Using comparatively few postures he accomplishes creative application by first being empty.

  Learning form before formlessness is like fighting helicopters with a Zeppelin.