Excerpted from the book "Scholar Warrior" by Deng Ming-Dao
The first thing most people notice about the Taoist Warrior is the tremendous emphasis on skill and knowledge. They want to know if all of it is necessary.
Students often protest subjects like trigonometry, world history, and chemistry with the question, "Why should we learn this? We'll never have to use it in the real world." Unfortunately, teachers seldom have an adequate rebuttal to this mistaken notion. In the same way, you may wonder whether all the skills of the Warrior need to be learned. But they most certainly do, and in fact, they are the very minimum necessity (regardless of what style or form of martial arts you study). If applied correctly, learning is never wasted.
The first assumption that needs to be corrected is that learning must somehow always be "useful." If that were true, we would only need to go to trade schools, and there would be no need for poets and singers, or perhaps even physicists. No, learning is valuable in and of itself, for it allows us to wonder, to play with our new knowledge, to combine it with other things we know. We all make unique bridges across the oceans of learning we have within us. That could never happen if learning were always "one way," or always "practical."
Learning satisfies a certain curiosity and interest that is innately human. We may not all want to learn the same things, but each of us has certain things that we are not only curious about but would enjoy knowing in some depth. For some of us, it might only be melodies of popular songs; for others, it might be the measure of the universe. Fundamentally, however, we all want to learn. There have been many times that we have met someone who is supposedly dumb or "uninterested in learning," only to find that the individual does, in fact, have interest in some body of knowledge. The desire for knowledge is innate, and unless it is satisfied and cultivated, a person will remain unformed.
Proper knowledge gives us freedom. As long as we acquire an enormous range of skills, we can be prepared for whatever life throws our way. It is impossible to predict the future. All of us, from the lowest beggar to the highest saint, are surprised by life at one time or another. The important thing is to have the resources to confront whatever circumstances come our way.
This is why the Taoists say, "Know magic, shun magic." They mean that through the cultivation of knowledge, you can know precisely how natural calamity and human enmity can be avoided. You can know all the ways in which you might be affected and be able to meet crisis on the challenger's own terms. The Taoists do not mean that you should learn the ways of others in order to be like them, only you should learn the ways of others to avoid being manipulated by them. For example some people object to learning the warrior's art because they see no use for it. But one can never say with certainty that one will not need to defend oneself or defend others. If you learn how to fight but never have to use your knowledge, you have not learned in vain. There will be many times that you will have to face a situation with the assurance that you will be able to survive. You may not actually have to punch and kick, but the courage you have from knowing that you could will make you a much stronger person than one ignorant of fighting. The same is true of math, or reading, or medicine. Why surrender your rights of knowledge and action to other people, professionals or not? It is far better to be able to depend on yourself, and this is impossible without deep learning.
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