The Chinese conception of the universe is derived from the philosophy of the Dao. The term is just a term, but there are two main ways that the term Dao have been understood: the Daoist with their emphasis on 天道tian dao or Heaven’s Dao and the Confucian 人道 ren dao or Person’s Dao. Here is a brief explanation of their differences.
The Daoist idea follows the importance of 天 tian or the Heavens or Sky (has nothing to do with the Christian idea of heaven), the existence of what we see when we look up (yang). This is more of the idea that existence of the universe as a whole and that the Dao really means flowing with nature as ‘what is naturally so’. This means we have fate and we need our actions to guide us to that fate. And the best way to do that is to follow nature.
The ancient sage Lao Zi wrote one of the world’s most important and influential books on the Dao: the “Dao De Jing”. The first line says 道可道，非常道，名可名，非常名。 Dao ke Dao, fei chang Dao, ming ke ming, fei chang ming. “The Dao could possibly be the Dao, but often is not the Dao. The name can be the name, but it is often not the name.” The Dao contains everything that is, and everything that isn’t. Existence and non-existence are all bound up into one: the Dao— and there is only one Dao. Because the Dao cannot be divided, one cannot speak of one thing excluding others and call it the “Dao”.
Our training will follow mostly this study of the Dao. It is the way things are in the universe, and since we are part of the universe, we should observe how it works. That means we need to study our physical body, the way how our environment flows and how the universe works, from the Newtonian physics to quantum physics and how our body functions. Therefore, studying nutrition, kinesiology, anatomy… are part of studying what is naturally so.
The term 人ren means person or the plural people. To the Confucians, individuals create the Dao by daily actions. One can create a better Dao by following the ideas of ren (仁) or benevolence, xiao (孝) or filial piety, li (禮) or ritual, yi (義)or justice, zhong (忠)or loyalty, jie (節) or contingency, xin (信) or integrity and zhi (智) or knowledge/wisdom. (These are approximate translations.) Confucius emphasized the importance that humanity creates the Dao, the existence we live in. In a sense, this is forcing us to realize we have a major influence of our fate.
Wu De or Martial Virtues comes more or less from Confucius philosophy of how society should function; everything from etiquette to politeness and hierarchy. It is important for our training to study the basics of Confucius because if you are doing Asian martial arts, you must know the culture of where your art comes from.