Happy 67th Bruce!
Last Tuesday was Bruce Lee's Birthday, he would've been 67. I'm still collecting some material together to present here, so I decided to post something I wrote last year and sent out as an email. I hope this will suffice until I put up the new material.
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I wanted to celebrate Bruce Lee's birthday (November 27th) by sharing some writings he wrote that I cherish. His writings has and will always have a profound effect on me, not only as a martial artist, but as a human being. Many people do not know that he was a philosophy major and was influenced by Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the writings of Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi, and Krishnamurti. (Just to name a few of his influences and doctrines that shaped his philosophy and Jeet Kune Do.)
These quotes should be read and applied to our lives, and reread and adjusted accordingly as we change and grow. As Musashi, the Sword Saint explained, to understand the Way one must understand all class and "If you want to learn the Way, deeply consider the things written in this book one at a time. You must do sufficient research." Research meaning, thinking, applying, reapplying and finding out the truths for ourselves. Bruce said that "All knowledge ultimately means self knowledge," and "to be a martial artist means also to be an artist of life."
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"I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude."
"If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
"To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person."
"All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns."
"using no way as a way, using no limitations as a limitation."
"Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."
"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." (This quote is borrowed heavily from Musashi's The Book of Five Rings. I will talk about him soon enough.)
"Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system."
"Real living is living for others."
"Willing is not enough; we must do. Knowing is not enough; we must apply."
"Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable."
Happy 66th birthday Bruce Lee!