Passai — The Cobra

Stillness embodies motion; motion, stillness.

That line is taken from the Song of the Sip Sam Seh, and to me it encompasses the essence of the Passai hyung — that in stillness we find the source of motion, and in motion, the need for stillness.

Passai

According to our founder, the hyung that we know as Passai was originally known as Pal Che, a form thought to have originated in the mid to late 1500s. Its movements were refined from the most popular motions used in the So Rim Sa Kwon Bup style.

So Rim Sa Churl Kwon Bup (as it is known in Korea) is a Chinese art founded in the province of Henan during the Ming dynasty. It is a Shaolin boxing style that can trace its lineage to 1377.

Versions of the Passai form appear in several other martial arts, most recognisably as Bassai Dai in the Shotokan Karate and Kung Fu styles.

In Soo Bahk Do, Passai is associated with the cobra. In performing the hyung, the martial artist slips from quiet gathering movements to abrupt strikes. The movements of the hyung characterise the snake — poised between stillness and motion.

Naja

Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind…

In this quote from the Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling was writing about the King Cobra, but the motion he describes so eloquently is the same for any true cobra. Humans are naturally afraid of snakes, and the cobra, with its ability to rear up to man-height and its terrifying growling hiss, is one of the most feared.

A cobra is any of a number of venomous Asian and African snakes, especially of the genus naja, which can dilate their necks to form a hood when threatened. The name cobra comes from the Portuguese cobra de capello, meaning “snake with hood” (which in turn derives from the Latin colubra, meaning snake). It was so named by one of Vasco da Gama’s men when the Portuguese explorer landed in India in 1498. In Hindi, the snake is called nag, from which comes its genus naja.

Although cobra venom is quite capable of killing a human, we are not in their prey profile, and so the cobra’s threat display is just that — a way of appearing larger and more threatening than it actually is. They will head for cover if disturbed, but can be aggressive if cornered. When confronted, a cobra will raise its forebody, spread its hood, hiss loudly, and will strike in an attempt to bite and defend itself.

It’s that rearing pose we associate most with cobras, along with the hypnotic swaying motion they effect in response to visual stimulus. In any of the iconic Indian snake-charmer performances you see the essence of the cobra — being utterly still or swaying from side to side, biding its time, waiting for the moment to strike.

Stillness and Motion

When I was first introduced to the Passai hyung, I was struck by the quickness of it, and by the satisfying violence of its movements. Like all hyung, it’s easy to focus on the movements and forget about the spaces in between. But it’s the spaces — the stillness — that need focus.

In a world full of distractions and defined by speed, we hurry from point to point, never taking the time to pause and think about where all our rushing is taking us.

If we take the time to pause, to think before acting, we encounter fewer problems, and we make fewer mistakes. And yet, even knowing this, we still tend to do things in a rush and fix it later, rather than thinking first and doing it right the first time.

The same is true for performing a hyung. We should not hurry, because that only leads to making mistakes. We should take the time to let a motion finish. We should recognise that every motion has an end. That in every motion, stillness is naturally encompassed.

Eventually, thought gives way to instinct, and the pauses we take become less about thinking of the next movement and more about taking the time to finish the last move and gather the next. Because just as there is stillness in motion, there is also motion in stillness. In every pause there is the beginning of a movement. The instinct that leads to action.

That, then, is the essence of Passai — stillness and motion in perfect balance. The cobra never truly stops moving, even when at rest. In Passai we are like the cobra — either poised, readying the next strike, or stilled at the end of one of those violent strokes.

– Nicole Karman, August 2012, 1st Gup essay