Kung-fu’s 5 Excellences teach you how to enjoy the pursuit, regardless of the result.
Image
Chrissy Koeth, Inside Kung-Fu’s 2009 “Writer of the Year,” is a Seattle, Wash.-based freelance writer. Grandmaster Don Baird is a Southern California kung-fu instructor who has a DVD with Unique Publications. One of his 5 Excellences is his love of the clarinet, which he plays in orchestras that produce Disney soundtracks, among others.

“People dedicate their lives to kung-fu because of what the characters ‘kung-fu’ means.”

“If you wash the car because you’ll look good in it, you’re not doing kung-fu.”

You come home after another stressful day at your 9-5. Your shoulders are tense and your eyes hurt. Dinner needs be made, kids have to be pried from the television to finish homework, and you’re rushing to kung-fu class. Do you take time from your busy schedule to relax? Do you paint or write—anything that connects your creative side? Do you do it for the simple joy of doing it?

All our constant obligations, what this world demands, squelches our lives: paying taxes, laundry, work, raising a family. As we go through this daily process, we have no room to breathe, no time to enjoy ourselves. There’s something missing in our life and most of us don’t realize it.

The old warrior-masters, like Cheng Man-ch’ing and Miyamoto Musashi, recognized the need for more in their lives. Killing people would never satisfy their great minds, their dedication, commitment, and refinement. They sought a balance within themselves, something that made them more than warriors.

“For the warrior, the excellences brought balance. To hurt someone means you should also heal people,” explains grandmaster Don Baird, who has dedicated his life to the five arts of photography, music, chi kung, poetry, and kung-fu. “They were protectors of society. They tried to harmonize with nature, to balance their characters because in their hearts they didn’t want to just die. They wanted more depth.”

They became poets, calligraphers, painters, healers, and musicians. They took the core principles of kung fu—diligence, dedication and honor—and internalized them. They incorporated this philosophy into all aspects of their life.

Creative Excellence
     When was the last time you sat and observed a moment in time? No pondering allowed. When was the last time you observed a ladybug on a blade of grass?

     “There’s a connection between a haijin—a Japanese poet—his immediate surrounding, and his ability to recognize the smallest detail as important,” says Baird. “He then writes that detail, that haiku, so it resonates.”

 A haijin sees beyond the ladybug and the grass, reaching for a spiritual meaning and deeper understanding of the world. He writes this in three lines, 17 syllables or less, and transports us there. “This is an Excellence,” explains Baird. “It’s the clearest mind you can have to do this, and have it still make sense.” Here is a haiku written by Baird showing the clarity and vision needed:

Afternoon shadow a frog jumps over himself
“Haiku’s want to trap the reader’s mind in a way that there’s a revelation or ‘aha’ moment,” explains Baird. Here, the question is how a frog can jump over himself. One image the reader might conjure is the frog jumping over his shadow, which allows him to jump over himself.

“There are layers in haikus,” the kung-fu grandmaster adds.
“Readers sit and meditate on what they read, focusing on the image in their mind. There’s always something else hidden, a subtle meaning.”

This clarity isn’t developed overnight. It takes years of dedication and observation to reach this; you have to be willing to carry the Excellences your entire life. This mastery isn’t achieved if you don’t stick with it. By carrying his love of poetry since he was eight, Baird nurtured and groomed this Excellence. He writes poems for the sake of the poem, not so he could attract fame.

“I tried to model my life philosophically after these old masters. I want to see what it feels like to carry these Excellences when I’m 90,” says Baird. “These masters believed in the pursuit of excellence and what they did, they did to refine who they are.”

The old masters didn’t care about money, fame or how good they were. Instead, this idea of Excellences grew from their actions and how they lived their life. Those masters followed through with everything they did. They were focused and committed, even if it was weaving knots for fishing nets.

“They not only did everything to survive, but on top of it they had extracurricular activities and mastered them,” says Baird. “And it wasn’t just one, it was three, five, and seven they marked themselves experts in.” These Excellences were a part of them, inseparable from their characters. Every painting, every piece of music mirrored who they were. They became experts in dozens of areas, other art forms, and they accomplished this by applying the principles they learned from kung-fu. 

Diligent Work
Why train for years, waiting for the one moment when you throw a punch in self-defense? You don’t need 20 or 40 years of training to learn how to kick or punch someone.
“You can take a few boxing classes for a year and be a little ruffian if someone bothers you,” says Baird. Kung-fu, and the essence of kung-fu, goes deeper than that. “People dedicate their lives to kung-fu because of what the characters ‘kung-fu’ means.”
 
“Kung” simply means “work” and “fu” is the quality of the work. Together they mean hard work, diligence, responsibility, discipline, honor. When practicing your forms, you care about structure, the position of your hands, and the fluidity of the moves. You dedicate hours studying the techniques, memorizing them and building muscle memory. Yes, you are training kung-fu, but you are also training its principles.

The idea behind “kung-fu” expands beyond martial arts. Whatever it is you’re doing, as long as you’re working hard, focused and fully committed, then you’re studying kung-fu.

Go out with a rag and polish your car. If you care about the windows and the tires, take your time and really focus on your car, then you’re doing kung-fu.
“A person of kung-fu will do it sincerely and completely committed for the essence of the car,” explains Baird. “If you wash the car because you’ll look good in it, you’re not doing kung-fu.”

The old masters wrote poems for the essence of the poem, played music for the essence of the music, not because it would make them famous. It wasn’t about perfection, but the pursuit of those Excellences.

Kung-fu was never about what you could do to someone else or your ability to fight, it was about how you treated yourself. By working on your character, your intellect, your spirituality, you automatically apply this to other areas in your life.

Your Excellence
 What is it you enjoy doing? Do you play basketball? Do you sing? Are these things a part of yourself, of who you are? Take a shot at it. Find your Excellence. Grab it and play. Carry it with you; don’t let go. Let’s see where you end up.
 
“I’ve been a master for a long time and I’ve never seen a student come into the school who didn’t have a personal area of mastery,” says Baird. “We all have some expertise, somewhere in us.” By encouraging your expertise to emerge, to blossom, you then apply it to other areas. Because of your dedication and commitment to photography, you now can find the photograph on a busy street. What if you took that same dedication, the willingness to learn, and focused on dancing? 

 “People go to Disneyland and wait hours for five rides, but for their life they only ride one when they have the talent to ride five,” says Baird. “I look at the five Excellences as choosing arts to develop you as a person, and you pursue them as best you can, with time and energy. Enjoy the process. This is what really counts.”
 
By pursing Excellences you open yourself up. They give you the chance to lead a more fulfilling life, bringing more dimensions to you as a person. They help you recognize the small things, to become concise and see clarity through chaos.

At the end of the day, when you look back at your long life can you say: I had a full life; I lived and experienced life to the fullest? Or did you only watch people on television instead of experiencing your own relationships? Did you only admire paintings, or did you paint?
 
“I have better days and lesser days in my Excellences, like everybody,” says Baird. “The important thing is when you have a lesser day you don’t throw your Excellences in the trash. You wait for a better day.”
 
Excellences are a way of life, if this is your choice. They teach you about the pursuit and how to enjoy the process, not just the end result. Diligence, honor, dedication, and commitment are qualities the old masters carried and applied to everything they did.
 
Each excellence is your Bonsai and if you don’t pay attention to them, they’ll die. What are your Excellences? Will you carry them?