Bruce Lee Quotes
Quotations by Bruce Lee - the famous martial artist and film star.
The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper
execution of all physical action.
There is no fixed teaching. All I can provide is an appropriate medicine
for a particular ailment.
The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world, to state in
aesthetic creation the deepest
psychic and personal experiences of a human being. It is to enable those
experiences to be
intelligible and generally recognized within the total framework of an
ideal world.
Art is an expression of life and transcends both time and space. We must
employ our own souls
through art to give a new form and a new meaning to nature or the world.
"Artless art" is the artistic
process within the artist; its meaning is "art of the soul".
The art of Jeet Kune Do is simply to simplify. Jeet Kune Do avoids the
superficial, penetrates the
complex, goes to the heart of the problem and pinpoints the key factors.
Empty your cup that it may
be filled; become devoid to gain totality.
When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity.
The classical man is just a
bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical
pattern, you are understanding the
routine, the tradition, the shadow - you are not understanding yourself.
Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is
without choice, without
demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To
know oneself is to study
oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is
giving of your whole being,
without exclusion.
A Jeet Kune Do man faces reality and not crystallization of form. The tool
is a tool of formless
form. Self-expression is total, immediate, without conception of time, and
you can only express
that if you are free, physically and mentally, from fragmentation.
The Jeet Kune Do man should be on the alert to meet the interchangeability
of opposites. As soon as
his mind "stops" with either of them, it loses its own fluidity. A Jeet
Kune Do man should keep his
mind always in the state of emptiness so that his freedom in action will
never be obstructed.
Jeet Kune Do, ultimately, is not a matter of petty technique but of highly
developed personal
spirituality and physique. It is not a question of developing what has
already been developed but of
recovering what has been left behind. These things have been with us, in
us, all the time and have
never been lost or distorted except by our misguided manipulation of them.
Jeet Kune Do is not a
matter of technology but of spiritual insight and training.
The tools are at an undifferentiated center of a circle that has no
circumference, moving and yet not
moving, in tension and yet relaxed, seeing everything happening and yet
not at all anxious about its
outcome, with nothing purposely designed, nothing consciously calculated,
no anticipation, no
expectation - in short, standing innocently like a baby and yet, with all
the cunning, subterfuge and
keen intelligence of a fully mature mind.
I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and
not the different decorative
branches, flowers or leaves.
Art of the Soul
The aims of art is to project an inner vision into the world, to state
in aesthetic creation the deepest psychic and personal experiences of a
human being. It is to enable those experiences to be intelligible and
generally recognized within the total framework of an ideal world.
Art reveals itself in psychic understanding of the inner essence of things and gives form to the relation of man with nothing, with the nature of the absolute.
Art is an expression of life and transcends both time and space. We must employ our own souls through art to give a new form and a new meaning to nature or the world.
An artist's expression is his soul made apparent, his schooling, as well as his "cool" being exhibited. Behind every motion, the music of his soul is made visible. Otherwise, his motion is empty and empty motion is like an empty word--no meaning.
Eliminate "not clear" thinking and function from your root.
Art is never decoration, embellishment; instead, it is work of enlightenment. Art, in other words, is a technique for acquiring liberty.
Art calls for complete mastery of tecniques, developed by reflection within the soul.
"Artless art" is the artistic process within the artist; its meaning is "art of the soul." All the various moves of all the tools means a step on the way to the absolute aesthetic world of the soul.
Creation in art is the psychic unfolding of the personality, which is rooted in the nothing. Its effect is a deepening of the personal dimension of the soul.
The artless art is the art of the soul at peace, like moonlight mirrored in a deep lake. The ultimate aim of the artist is to use his daily activity to become a past master of life, and so lay hold of the art of living. Masters in all branches of art must first be masters of living, for the soul creates everything.
All vague notions must fall before a pupil can call himself a master.
Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities--thoght, feeling, will--to the life rhythm of hte world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.
Artistic skill, therefore, does not mean artistic perfection. It remains rather a continuing medium or reflection of some step in psychic development, the perfection of which is not to be found in shape and form, but must radiate from the human soul.
The artistic activity does not lie in art itself as such. It penetrates into a deeper world in which all art forms (of things inwardly experienced) flow together, aand in which the harmony of soul and cosmos in the nothing has its outcome in reality.
It is the artistic process, therefore, that is reality and reality is truth.
On Zen
To obtain enlightenment in martial art means the extinction of everything which obscures the "true knowledge," the "real life." At the same time, it implies boundless expansion and, indeed, emphasis should fall not on the cultivation of the particular department which merges into the totality, but rather on teh totality that enters and unites that particular department.
The way to transcend karma lies in the proper use of the mind and the will. The one-ness of all life is a truth that can be fully realized only when false notions of a separate self, whose destiny can be consedered apart from the whole, are forever annihilated.
Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that. The void is all-inclusive, having no opposite--there is nothing which it excludes or opposes. It is living voud, because all forms come out of it and whoever realizes the void is filled with life and power and the love of all being.
Turn into a doll made of wood: it has no ego, it thinks nothing, it is not grasping or sticky. Let the body and limbs work theselves out in accordance with the discipline they have undergone.
If nothing within yous tays rigid, ouward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like and echo.
Nothingness cannot be defined; the softest thing cannot be snapped.
I'm moving and not moving at all. I'm like the moon underneath the waves that ever go on rolling and rocking. It is not, "I amd doing this," but rahter, an inner realization that "this is happening through me," or "it is doing this for me." The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the properexecution of all physical action.
The localization of the mind means its freezing. When it ceases to flow freely as it is needed, it is no more the mind in it suchness.
The "Immovable" is the concentration of energy at a given focus, as at the axis of a wheel, instead of dispersal in scattered activities.
The point is doing of them rather than the accomplishments. There is no actor but the action; there is no experiencer but the experience.
To see a thing uncolored by one's own personal preferences and desires is to see it in its own pristine simplicity
Art reaches its greates peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.
The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart; if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease.
Wisdom does not consist of trying to wrest the good from the evil but in
learning to "ride" them as a cork adapts itself to the crests and troughs of
the waves.
Let yourself go with disease, be with it, keep company with it--this is
the way to be rid of it.
An assertion is Zen only when it is itself an act and does not refer to
anything that is asserted in it.
In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and
nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're
tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will
understand.
Establish nothing in regard to onself. Pass quickly like the non-existent
and be quiet as purity. Those who gain lose. do not precede others, always
follow them.
Do not run away; let go. Do not seek, for it will come when least
expected.
Give up thinking as though not giving it up. Observe techniques as
though not observing.
There is no fixed teaching. All I can provide is an appropriate
medicine for a particular ailment.
