“ my hands are shaking! I have just enjoyed my first fencing bout.
You know! I want to be a Swordsman.”

Jose Rizal age 18

Jose began espousing original ideas at an early age, his poetry, plays and writing are largely concerned with the national identity of the Filipino and modern nationhood; at the turn of the century the success of the interface between Colonial and Asian cultures, hinged upon this. Rizal understood or felt that a Europe emerging from the dark and industrial ages, had an offering to the East that was limited, and that if the current were allowed to continue in the vein of exceeding common humanity – denying the Filipino people their own human dignity, special capacities and honor as human beings; the false campaign was doomed to failure.

Gandhi gave Rizal credit as a founding forefather within the Asian freedom movement; his patriotism and intellect have inspired many toward the extreme importance of nation building. Influenced in no small part by Zen, Rizal has remained a controversial figure; to this day, he is a true martial artist displaying the many virtues of practice: discipline, loyalty, valor, justice, compassion… Jose Rizal was arrested by the Spaniards for his inciting of revolution during the era of the Katipunan, where the Filipino sought to re-establish his rightful claim to the heritage of an ancient and valuable culture; he faced death unflinchingly and left us a fine example, to quote some lines from the author Laurens van der Post:

“There can be only one end, and that is the search which brings man to the threshold of the task that life demands of him, something greater than happiness and unhappiness: meaning. To serve this vision of life, to protect it against all plausible substitutes, reasonable approximation and cowardly compromise – is the knightly duty of contemporary man, if he shirks it – I believe he shall never know inner peace.”

“The Flamingo Feather”