Like the title, I'd like to ask the question: What is the highest form of martial arts? Because of media, specifically television, many people have been coaxed into thinking it is Ninjitsu because of the mystery that has settled around it. Well... it's not. Yeah, I just said it. Ninjitsu is NOT the highest form of martial arts.
Why? Don't get me wrong, Ninjitsu is an excellent martial art. It's just not the highest form a martial arts--at least, not in and of itself. In fact, no martial art is. Ninjitsu, in its very essence as a combat art, is a mix of striking and grappling. So how can that be the highest form of martial arts.
The highest form of martial arts is not necessarily an actual style or sect. But if it had to be labeled to one, I would say internal arts. Bear In mind that the highest form of martial arts has nothing to do with how effective you are in a fight. It has to do with efficiency and subtleness overall.
More specifically I would point to Chinese Taiji quan and Japanese Aikido. These are beautiful and elegant martial arts. And with the right teacher, you can use them to effectively defend themselves provided you have "hard" style training to add it to.
So here it is: the highest form of martial arts is the subtle efficiency one has gained through master of technique and ultimately one's self through unification of mind, body and spirit. Internal power generation methods are the greatest example of this in actual combat application. Not the chi ball kind; the physical kind. The looseness, the full body movement, the intricate control. All of that is an example of internal power. Of "jing" or "fa jng" as it is called in Chinese.
That, I must admit, is only the physical side of the highest form of martial arts. And it is important to remember that hard styles also strive for this power. Shorin-ryu Karate, for example, tries to instill in its students the ability to punch with a completely relaxed arm, tensing only on contact, and snapping it to create power (drawing from the ground through the hips of course). This, mastered, is also a form of internal power generation.
So, in essence, the greatest example of the physical embodiment of the highest form of martial arts is internal power generation methods.
