The Moon on the Water and its Reflection

I wanted to share another piece from 'The Life Giving Sword' by Munenori that stuck with me.

"The moon on the water" refers to the fact that if there is a certain distance between you and your opponent, his sword will be unable to strike you. Stepping inside this distance and stealing close to your opponent without his noticing is like piercing the reflection of the moon on the water."

This is a concept I have experienced in my time sparring with TaeKwon-Do. At the black belt level the way fights normally go are the opponents stand about six feet apart (outside leg range) and are facing each other and not moving forward or back - there are lots of little subtle feints and movements. At some point one combatant will step inside the range of an attack and both people will explode towards each other - there will be a flurry of hand and foot attacks and they separate again.

This is very different from kung fu where we fight very close to each other with many repeated and fluid attacks. The distance or "The Moon on the Water" is way inside my instinctive circle of safety trained with years of TKD so I have big flashing proximity warning lights and sirens going through my head still when I am kung fu sparring.

Joe Hyams writes an excellent chapter on 'drawing a circle' in his book 'Zen in the Martial Arts' (one of my favorite books). He talks about drawing a mental circular line around you which is the distance where an attack cannot reach you. Outside this line noone can physically hurt you. So why feel defensive or afraid? How liberating is that?? Whether in sparring, in a business meeting, in a confrontation in a bar - if someone is outside this imaginary line then you are invincible - noone can hurt you so there is no need to be afraid.

When someone steps into this circle of safety, that is when you react and take care of the situation, otherwise they can be as aggressive as they like but you have no need to be concerned.

Nick
Yellow sash