PENCAK SILAT

Last weekend, I met a leader of Australian PENCAK SILAT group in one of Melbourne cultural events. His team performed PENCAK SILAT art on that event, while my group performed Saman dance. We have an interesting conversation while we were waiting to perform. I expressed my surprise of knowing that PENCAK SILAT is exist in Australia and the fact that there are Australian that interested in it. 

He told me a lot about PENCAK SILAT. He told that this martial art originally develop and grow along Sumatra, West part of Java, Malaysia, and some other South Asian countries. There is two kind of PENCAK SILAT, which are for self-defense and for art. And lot more facts and stories.  

Then I shared a story about my experience in practicing Silat when I was kid, even though it only reached the yellow belt which was the second level of the practice. Responding to my story, he then told me that he doesn’t have belt system in his Dojo (Silat School) here. He said, learning and practicing SILAT is about process inside us. It is a journey of heart, body, and mind. It is a way to understand ourselves, to be able to control ourselves, to grow, and to be better of human being. We don’t need a belt to describe ourselves, it is growing inside. SILAT is not only about physical skill but also spiritual maturity, and the belt system is quite hard to measure that.

Listening to his SILAT philosophy makes me to introspect myself. Do attributes and titles I have now, show who I really am? Do I have enough quality to engage with those title? Because it is really not about what people see, it is about the truth inside me.