OT: Western v. Eastern martial arts

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

I think a lot of the spiritual / artistic part of martial arts is exaggerated in popular culture.

I've just done a light skim of research, and I think I have to agree (certainly for samurai).

I'd guess that actual warrior monks (there must have been some, somewhere) would have at least learnt the spiritual stuff in parallel with the 'punching people so hard their eyeballs squirt our of their ears' stuff.