I've been wondering for some time now whether it is logically/morally defensible to be an absolute pacifist while practising a martial art. It's particularly troubling because I'm in that situation and I haven't - as yet - found a resolution to what appears to be an adherence to two conflicting philosophies.

I am not sure what you mean by "an absolute pacifist." If you mean that you would not even disarm a person who was attempting to kill you, then you may have a problem reconciling it with practising a martial art. However, there does not seem to be any good nonreligious reasons to be an absolute pacifist in this sense. One can be a pacifist in a fairly absolute sense by refusing to ever seriously harm another person, and though there might be situations in which even this view would be hard to defend, it is somewhat more plausible than absolute pacifism. Another even more plausible form of pacifism is refusing ever to kill another person. If practising a martial art does not involve practising killing anyone then it is not incompatible with the most plausible form of pacifism that I mentioned above. If practising a martial art does not involve practising seriously harming anyone, then it is not incompatible with the somewhat plausible form of pacifism that I mentioned above. I assume that practising...