by Late last year, I started to take Tae Kwon Do lessons. It started out because my son was interested, and I wanted to encourage him. I found out that there is a veritable Tae Kwon Do legend living in the Columbus area and teaching just a few miles from my house. Sr. Grandmaster (9th Dan) Joon Pyo Choi is a veteran Olympic Coach, recipient of the 2007 US Tae Kwon Do Grandmasters Society Coach of the Year, past multi-year Korean National Champion (equivalent of current World Champion ranking), and founder of the International Oriental Martial Arts College.
The experience of training under GM Choi has been amazing. His philosophy encompasses not just TKD but holistic life experience, including the Kimoodo Healing Arts and the Moogong Ryu (Way of the Peaceful Warrior) style that he developed.
When we test for each new belt level, we are required to write a short thesis on our thoughts about a particular subject based on our training. Last week, I tested to advance from Yellow Belt (9th Geup) to Orange Belt (8th Geup). Our subject for this thesis was “Jung Shin Tong Il” or “Concentration of Mind, Body, Spirit, and Emotion”. For whatever it may, or may not, be worth, here is my thesis.
Jung Shin Tong Il
Concentration of Mind, Body, Spirit, and Emotion
”A spirit with a vision, is a dream with a mission”
A person may have strength, but without the mind, he can not learn beyond simple things and is a brute flailing about. It is only through the mind that he learns and improves beyond the most primitive activities. Many animals have tremendous brute strength. The elephant has great strength, but it is incapable of creating art, cultivating its own food, or developing culture.
A person may have strength and mind, but without spirit, he has no desire to do more than is necessary, and exists only at the level of subsistence. There are millions – perhaps billions – of strong and intelligent people who never achieve anything in their lives. It is only through the spirit that he develops determination and desire to do more than is necessary. When I was growing up, I knew one of the most intelligent people in my school. He excelled at all things academic and he was a talented musician. He had no spirit though, and started talking drugs. He ended up in a car wreck that crippled him and caused him massive amounts of brain damage.
A person with mind, body, and spirit may be capable of tremendous accomplishment, but without emotion, may care only for himself and become a bully or tyrant. It is only through proper emotion that man cares for his fellow men and uses his abilities for accomplishments that benefit them. History is filled with intelligent determined men, who are almost universally reviled because of their lack of compassion; men like Stalin and Hitler and Khan.
History is also filled with strong, compassionate, intelligent, and determined people who have made great works for the betterment of others. It is through concentration of mind, body, spirit, and emotion, that they are able to harness all of their capabilities and perform great works. It may be something small, such as the fireman who is able to bring all this to bear and allow him to lift a car off a trapped child in order to save the child. It may be a great work of art, such as the Cistene Chapel or Starry Night. It may also be a great leader, such as a George Washington or a Martin Luther King, Jr, who is able to rally people to a cause and bring about profound change.
There are also the rare individuals who are able to use the concentration of the non-physical abilities to make up for the lack of one of physical capabilities. The great physicist, Stephen Hawking, has almost no body to speak of, but has been able to use his concentration of mind, spirit, and emotion to make revolutionary breakthroughs in his field. Franklin Roosevelt, similarly, was bound to a wheelchair and yet was able to become President – and the only one ever to be elected more than twice – and lead the United States through the Second World War.
To truly excel in life, to be truly great, requires a focused concentration of the mind, body, spirit, and emotion. Greatness is not necessarily being rich, famous, or powerful. There are many examples of rich, famous, and powerful people who were not great. Greatness is achieving ones highest potential.