Bruce Lee
I feel I have this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. Whether it is a godhead or not, I feel this great force, this untapped power, this dynamic something within me. This feeling defies description, and there is no experience with which this feeling may be compared. It is something like a strong emotion mixed with faith, but a lot stronger.
So whether or not we can get together, remember well that art lives where absolute freedom is. With all the training thrown to nowhere, with a mind perfectly unaware of its own working, with the self vanishing nowhere the art of JKD attains its perfection.
Self-knowledge is the basis of JKD because it is effective, not only for the individuals martial art, but also for his life as a human being.
When a man comes to a conscious vital realization of those great spiritual forces within himself and begins to use those forces in science, in business, and in life, his progress in the future will be unparalleled.
I'm willing when time permits to honestly express or to open myself to you, to act as a sort of sign pole for a traveler.
Unfortunately, most of the students in martial art are conformers. The student seldom learns to depend upon himself for expression. Instead, he faithfully or blindly follows an instructor, the authority figure, and his instructor's imposed pattern. That way, the student feels he is no longer alone and finds security in mass imitation. However, what is nurtured is the dependent mind rather than independent inquiry, which is so essential to genuine understanding. So through daily conditioning a student will probably be skilled according to a pattern, however, he will not come to understand himself.
Learning is definitely not mere imitation or the ability to accumulate and conform to fixed knowledge. Learning is a constant process of discovery and never a concluding one. In JKD we begin not by accumulation but by discovering the cause of our ignorance, and oftentimes this involves a shedding process. Truth will not come until we have come to understand personally the whole process of the working of our being. After all, ultimately, knowledge in martial art simply means self-knowledge, and JKD can become intelligible only in the vigorous and constant process of self-inquiry and self-discovery.
To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.
You see, when we have the opportunity of working out, you'll see that your way of thinking is definitely not the same as mine. Art, after all, is a means of acquiring personal liberty. Your way is not my way nor mine yours.
I do not believe in styles anymore. I do not believe that there is such a thing as the Chinese way of fighting or the Japanese way of fighting, or any other way of fighting, because unless a human being has three arms and four legs, there can be no different form of fighting. To me, ultimately, martial art means honestly expressing yourself.
My experience will help, but I insist and maintain that art - true art that is - cannot be handed out. Furthermore, art is never decoration or embellishment. Instead it is a constant process of maturing.
When I look around, I always learn something and that is to be always yourself. And to express yourself. To have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it. Start from the very root of being, which is how can I be me?
To me, at least the way that I teach it, all types of knowledge ultimately means self-knowledge. So, therefore they're coming in and asking me to teach them not so much how to defend themselves or how to do somebody in. Rather, they want to learn to express themselves through some movement, be it anger, be it determination or whatever. So, in other words, they're paying me to show them, in combative form, the art of expressing the human body.
A teacher, a really good teacher, is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to truth. Therefore, a good teacher, or, more appropriately, a guide, studies each student individually and helps to awaken the student to explore himself, both internally and externally, and ultimately to integrate himself with his being. All in all, a teacher acts as a catalyst, and not only must he have a tremendous understanding; he must also possess a sensitive mind with great flexibility and adaptability.
Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality in your own mind.
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.
Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.
Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.
It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.