> I would see him as a lay practitioner of a mystic path who at the
> start of the film was seeking to put his affairs in order so that
he
> could become a dedicated practitioner.
Some martial arts certainly have only an incidental link to mysticism. In the real world, Karate has (almost?) no maystical dimension. Yet at the other extreme, Wu Shu (Kung Fu) was developed as an integral part of an ascetic monastic practice that I'd characterise as being mystical.
In CTHD, Li Mu Bai follows just such a practice which obviously has a deep mystical dimension and equaly clearly has a highly developed martial system. I do not believe it makes any sense at all to say that these two things are wholly unrelated to each other. Certainly they can be divorced from one another, and Jade Fox has done that, but equaly obviously hers is a dead-end path. Only by mastering both can either be perfected.
Li Mu Bi says that he stands at a crossroads because his martial skills have finaly been (almost) fully perfected, the only step between him and perfection is the final attainment of transcendence itself. He's certainly not some bloke who learned martial arts, who got broed with it (or past it) and now thinks it might be a good idea to become a monk.
Simon Hibbs
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