Another aspect of the martial arts that I love is the philosophy — that there is a special code to live by, important tenets that outline the responsibilities that accompany martial arts skill.
All of my childhood comic book heroes had some type of code, lines they would not cross — never kill a villain, do whatever was right regardless of politics. The heroes of the kung fu movies that mesmerized me followed their own code too, one being to never fight or use their skills to hurt others unless absolutely necessary. It was maddening to watch Bruce Lee spend an entire movie NOT fighting, only to cheer when he finally unleashed his Fists of Fury at the end.
But that restraint was the whole point.
When I started training, I learned how and why to bow at the dojo. Then I noticed something: the advanced students began and ended their classes with a different sequence of gestures — more elaborate, more deliberate — all performed in unison. We didn’t do this in the beginner class. I had no idea what it meant, but it looked remarkable. It reminded me of the gang signs I’d seen flashed on Chicago’s South Side — but this time, for the good guys. I wanted to be initiated into this secret society of martial artists as soon as possible.
In my lineage, the full salutation was performed at the beginning and end of the Self-Defense Forms — Short Form 3 and up — and in Brown Belt and above classes. I had to earn the right to learn it. I had to wait, train, and advance before this layer of meaning was opened to me.
That waiting was intentional. What it contains is not for beginners — not because beginners can’t understand the words, but because you need enough training behind you to actually mean them.
The Old Part: A Living Connection to History
The full salutation begins with the attention stance. From there, you raise your right fist out in front of you. The cue is simple and powerful: the warrior stands alone.
Next, you step forward with your right foot into a twist stance, drawing your right fist back toward your ear while presenting your open left palm. This movement presents the scholar.
Then the open hand comes back toward the fist — the warrior and the scholar coming together.
Stepping forward into a cat stance, both hands are presented forward showing the knuckles, then placed back to back. The warrior and the scholar going forward — to fight back to back.
As your feet step back to where you began, the hands roll and pull back to chamber. This represents taking the country back — pulling it back from foreign invaders.
In full, the old part of the salutation says: “The warrior and the scholar come together to go forward, to fight back to back, to take our country back.”
This is called the old salutation because it is historically Chinese — found across Chinese martial arts and in Chinese society going back hundreds of years. Notice that in this part of the salutation, as you present your fist and hand, you uncover your weapon. The left hand shows its knuckles — communicating that this is a time to fight, for your country and for yourself. The covering of the weapon — the sign of peace — is deliberately set aside. This is not aggression, it is resolve: when the moment requires it, the martial artist is ready.
This old part of the salute is what connects modern practitioners to a lineage of people who have used their mind and body to both defend themselves and promote their civilization. Every time it is performed, the practitioner is not just doing a sequence of movements — they are joining a line of people stretching back centuries who made the same declaration with the same gesture.
Ancient Roots of the Warrior-Scholar Ideal
The warrior-scholar is not a martial arts invention. It is one of the oldest and most universal human ideals.
In ancient China, the concept of wen wu — the civil and the martial united in one person — was central to Chinese culture for over two thousand years. The ideal Confucian gentleman was expected to cultivate both literary achievement and martial virtue. Neither alone was sufficient. A person of only martial skill was dangerous without wisdom to govern it. A person of only scholarly learning was ineffective without the strength to act on it.
The same ideal appears in ancient Greece — the philosopher-warrior embodied in figures like Socrates, who fought in three military campaigns, and the Stoics who followed him, for whom physical and philosophical discipline were inseparable practices. It appears in the Japanese samurai tradition through figures like Miyamoto Musashi, whose Book of Five Rings is as much a philosophical text as a combat manual. It appears in the European knight’s code of chivalry, which demanded both martial prowess and intellectual virtue.
Every serious martial tradition in history arrived at the same conclusion: the most dangerous person in the room should also be the wisest, the most restrained, and the most humane. The full salutation encodes this insight into a physical sequence that every advanced student performs before every class.
The New Part: Three Movements, One Moral Statement
The new part of the salutation — the layer added to connect ancient tradition to modern moral clarity — begins by stepping out to a horse stance and bringing both open hands overhead, thumbs touching, index fingers touching.
This shows that you have no weapons.
I had a Filipino martial artist call this part “silly” because in their view, you should always have a weapon. I appreciate that perspective. But the deeper philosophical meaning here is that you come in peace, that you are not here to hurt anyone.
The second movement collapses the open hands into the traditional hand-over-fist salute. This is the reminder: should you be forced to defend yourself. Not “should you choose to.” Forced. This part of the salutation is a reminder that you are not here to pick fights, not to start fights, not to be aggressive, or to be a bully in any form.
If you fight, it is because you had no other choice — because you exhausted every other possibility first. This is an important reminder, because as people learn how to protect themselves, the thought often arises: why can’t I use this? Isn’t this what I’m learning? The salutation answers that question before it becomes a problem.
The third and final movement drops the hands to a prayer position at the solar plexus.
This completes the sentence: Should I be forced to defend myself…forgive me for what I am about to do.
This is not arrogance, as it might first appear. It is the opposite. It is an acknowledgement that fighting — physically harming another person — should always be the last resort. And even when it becomes necessary, it should never be celebrated. It is a transgression. You ask for forgiveness. You recognize that you have broken the bonds of social relations, even when breaking them was the only right thing to do.
Rather than denigrating an opponent or glorifying victory in a physical altercation, this final movement insists on a nobler commitment: seeing every person as a human being with a right to live and not be injured by another. Conflict can and should be resolved peacefully. The prayer position is the reminder that you know this — and that you carry the weight of it every time you train.
What the Research Says About Moral Priming
The full salutation is not just philosophy — it is a ritual for shaping behavior before training begins.
Research in moral psychology shows that explicitly stating ethical principles before an activity measurably influences behavior during that activity. This is called moral priming — and its effects are well documented. People who articulate their values before a task are significantly more likely to act in alignment with those values when the task presents ethical choices. The salutation is moral priming performed in movement rather than words — and performed daily, before every advanced class.
There is also compelling research on what psychologists call pre-commitment — the practice of making a decision in advance, before the heat of the moment arrives. The new part of the salutation is exactly this. By physically enacting “should I be forced to defend myself, forgive me for what I am about to do” before training begins, the advanced student is pre-committing to a set of values that will govern their behavior if a real situation ever arises. The decision is made in calm, in clarity, in a room full of people who share the same commitment — long before adrenaline, fear, or anger could cloud it.
The most dangerous people I have ever trained with have also been the most peaceful. That is not a coincidence, it is the direct result of encoding this kind of moral pre-commitment so deeply — through years of repetition — that it becomes character.
What Getting Here Actually Means
When I finally earned the rank to learn the full salutation, I understood for the first time why it had been held back.
It wasn’t gatekeeping. It was timing. A white belt performing this salutation would be reciting words. A brown belt performing it has enough training behind them — enough real experience of what the body can do, enough honest confrontation with their own capabilities and their own ego — to actually mean it.
The full salutation is not a reward for advancement, it is a responsibility that comes with it. The further you go in training, the more dangerous you become — and the more important it is that the philosophy keeps pace with the skill. The old part connects you to everyone who carried this tradition before you. The new part reminds you of exactly what that tradition demands of you now.
This is another reason why I love martial arts: it teaches us to keep ourselves safe and, at the same time, to seek and choose peace — to work toward the benevolence of all people. Without the training, it is far easier to succumb to violence. With it, and with the philosophy that should always accompany it, we become something rarer: people capable of great force who have made a considered, deliberate, daily choice not to use it, unless there is no other way.
Forgive me for what I am about (have) to do.
Those simple words, meant sincerely, may be the most important thing I have ever taught.