As a martial artist, I derive much pleasure and food for thought from reading books on both history and philosophy, particularly Chinese history and philosophy.
Although people talk of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism as though they are three totally independent entities each has elements of the others. For example when I visited the Taoist temples and monasteries on Wudang Mountain, in addition to a plethora of Tai Chi and Pa Kua symbols, I found statues of Buddhist deities as well as swastikas, while the rigid Confucian codes of conduct of the Taoist monks were inscribed on stone pillars protruding from the backs of giant stone tortoises.
The term Zhong Yong is often referred to in English as the Doctrine of the Mean and is also the name of a Confucian philosophical tract, but I prefer to translate it as the Doctrine of Centrality (Zhong) and Constancy (Yong). By this I mean that one is focused and emotionally detached and behaves appropriately in a particular set of circumstances according to one's nature and code. This may require minimal effort or action on the one hand or on the other, an extreme amount of effort or action. In fact many of the admonitions of the Zhong Yong are as difficult to follow as those of the Good Book.
Set against this is the dictum of the great Irish wit and aesthete, Oscar Wilde's dictum "nothing succeeds like excess". Yet in a way there isn't a conflict of ideas here. One of the most telling quotations from the Zhong Yong is:-
If others do it once and can achieve it,
I will do it 100 times
If others do it 10 times and can achieve it,
I will do it 1000 times
In other words in order to achieve Zhong Yong constant and repeated effort is required. In a way also, Zhong Yong is the answer to more than 90% of the questions asked in martial arts classes. When students ask me how big their movements should be, I tell them, "not too big, not too small" - Zhong Yong. When they ask how fast they should practice the sword, I tell them, "not too fast, not too slow". When they ask how many back bends to do, I tell them, "not more than 360". When they ask how much punching they should do with the small weights we use in Tai Chi Chuan, I tell them, "not more than 20 minutes". When they ask me what I'd like to drink, I tell them, "Bushmills 1608".
Externally someone's level of Zhong Yong is evidenced by their behaviour, internally by their integrity. As martial artists we can judge the former in the technique and spirit of an individual, both of which are forged by repetitive training.
However, On a visit to Crete in 1994 I spent most of my time knocking around with a bunch of archaelogists from University College Dublin led by the indomitable Dr. Alan Peatfield, known to his students as Doctor Death.
Every evening the good doctor had arranged a set menu at one of the local taverna. Unfortunately he had not reckoned with my gargantuan appetites and had to order extra souvlaki and retsina every evening,. After a few days of placing extra orders, the owner came out to see whether the recipient was really just one person, so he came out to rap with us.
He said that once upon a time a stranger went into a taverna and ordered 99 souvlaki. The astounded taverna owner said, "99 souvlaki ! Why not go all the way and order 100 ?" The stranger replied, "Who can eat 100 souvlaki ?"
The point is that there are both limits and targets, with time and effort we can expand those limits and hit those targets. One of my heroes is Mr. Wong Seung-yau, a small, tubby, Tai Chi practitioner in his sixties in Hong Kong. Mr. Wong is not a fighter, his Tai Chi isn't even particularly good, but he is still my hero.
A few years ago when I was in Hong Kong preparing to give a Tai Chi seminar in Australia with my teacher, I noticed that every lunch time Mr. Wong would come up to the rooftop training area and practice the sabre form over and over again. I said to him that I didn't understand why he needed to practice the sabre so much when he'd been doing Tai Chi for more than 30 years.
He said that like me, he would be demonstrating at a forthcoming Tai Chi banquet and dare not lose face in front of the younger people there by not having the energy necessary to demonstrate the sabre at the correct speed so that for the last 2 weeks he had been practicing the sabre form 20 times in an hour every day.
Mr. Wong knows Zhong Yong. Mr. Wong is a true martial hero. Mr. Wong did a good demo on the night. But I don't know if Mr. Wong could eat 99 souvlaki, never mind 100.