Bruce Lee's Philosophy on Jeet Kune Do

[Idlethought]

Has anyone ever read this? The site is http://www.brucelee.com/jeet.htm

In it he talks about being a master of self and about adhering to no form, no mould, no system. He also talks about being a student and being a teacher and alot of really really deep stuff. One of the quotes from it that I think is great is this one:

A learned man once went to a Zen master to inquire
about Zen. As the Zen master talked, the learned man
would frequently interrupted him with remarks like,
"Oh yes, we have that too....", etc.
Finally the Zen master stopped talking and began to
serve tea to the learned man; however, he kept pour-
ing until the tea cup over flowed.
"Enough, no more can go into the cup!" the learned man
interrupted.
"Indeed I see," answered the Zen master. "If you do not
first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?"

So I ask you what are your thoughts on this? And on the entire document?

[Joe]

He's using parables, parables are flawed. At least in that example, Bruce had failed.

[Masa the Masta]

Be water, my friends. :p

[Myrsilus]

Eh I'm not going to read that right now... Got enough to read at the moment.

What I will say is I deeply respect Bruce Lee and his philosophies on martial arts. If anyone needs proof of his magnificence, watch him do the one-inch punch. I have tried continuously to replicate this technique, and it's just too damn hard...

I'll read it later.

[Jon885]

I might check it out later. I was always interested in Jeet Kune Do.

[that guy]

I took Jeet as a child. Naturally, we had to read a bunch of books and the like about his philosophy. We spent about a month discussing what he meant before even beginning any formal training. Being only eight at the time, I honestly did not give a damn. Once we finally got to the good stuff, I was irked by the fact that they made us practice forms repetitively -- even though true mastery comes from the complete absence of form. Obviously, I missed the point.

I bought one of his books (I am pretty sure it included that parable) on the subject a while ago. Now that I am older, I actually realize the wisom in his words.

I really wish that I paid more attention.

[Myrsilus]

Not too late. You should go back and read some of the literature on him and use whatever may still be encoded in your mind to help you grasp his ideas even more completely. Bruce Lee was an amazing man that harnessed great strength. I always wonder what else he could have done, besides making movies, if he had not left us so soon.

Want to learn about Bruce Lee and Jeet Kune Do? Read the Tao of Jeet Kune Do.

[Exclamatio]

He's using parables, parables are flawed. At least in that example, Bruce had failed.


expand please, it makes perfect sense to me :P

[akitaka]

Thanks for the reading material, Idlethought. Despite his bold approach on screen, his literature shows a level of dedication to understanding, as a whole. Unfortunately, the portrait that has been etched in his movies didn't quite reach the audience in a matter of which he wanted; namely, the overall look of a martial-arts b-movie. Time and time again, hollywood would have tried to type-cast him as an asian foreigner, with "karate" (and the like).

In any case, Bruce himself knew that his "techniques" were around long before he organised a system (before tossing it away, as JKD itself infringed on the philosophy of formlesness).

As for the parable, I think that it loses touch in how people percieve the message. It sounds like the supposed master was stating that the pupil "had filled his brain with too much to learn", but what I think is being stated is the pupil's ego; if he wishes to learn something different, then he shouldn't convince himself, and others, that he knows so much. Come to learn with an open mind.

[Exclamatio]

aye to me it means the guy aws too concerned with what he already knew, to learn knew thigns and the experiance a whole new perspective he must first put his knowledge to 1 side so that it does not get in the way

[CNagy]

To empty one's cup of tea so that it might be filled anew with water is an old zen principle that essentially means giving up preconceived notions. When a master poet looks to take up painting, for example, his progress in becoming an artist will only be hindered if he tries to apply a poet's mindset, at least according to Zen.

Jeet Kune Do is flawed, but it was the best way that Bruce Lee could communicate his ideas at the time. As a system, it is no better than any other system these days, because it encouraged the mixed martial arts form that has influenced all but the most traditional training halls. The idea is that any martial artist of a single form should know what it is that his form does not emphasize, and add at least a competent understanding of those techniques to his repetoire. That is why you have TKD clubs (Butokukan at UCF, for example) that can box quite well, despite the fact that TKD is traditionally leg reliant.

While this belief has led to well-rounded martial artists (as strikers add grappling to their abilities, vice-versa, and a thousand other mix and match styles) it has caused Point Tournaments to become exceedingly dull by reducing them to a game of speed tag.

[Idlethought]

If anyone wants I retyped the entire thing at home because i thought it was hard to read. I can email it/pm it to anyone once i get home just gimme a heads up.

[Invictus]

Bruce Lee was a genius in some aspects, but in others he was immature (i.e. not fully developed in his journey down the martial road) and full of crap. To use the tea parable, you can't make tea without a pot, and you can't serve tea without a cup. Complete formlessness just ends up with some tea leaves and water on the ground.

In one sense, Bruce was a revitalizer, as he reinvigorated the tradition of testing oneself against many different ideas and approaches to combat (and of course adapting one's personal approached based on the results). For a variety of reasons, this concept had somewhat fallen out of vogue among the classical systems (though thriving in Japan until rather recently as the idea of taryu-jiai, matches with other schools).

On the other hand, Bruce was extremely impatient. He quit the classical arts after only having tasted a tiny amount of what they had to offer, and as such never mastered their more long-term skills. He rejected the idea that devotion to one primary system was of any significant benefit (a view which may easily be repudiated by a study of historically able warriors), and particularly decried forms training as stilted and worthless. This is a valid criticism for many of the more modern martial systems, such as karate-do, but forms/kata have traditionally been a primary method of training the body to react and respond in a certain fashion, and almost every codified martial system contains kata in one or another form (even Jeet Kune Do, though they call it by other names and say it's not kata because it's "alive").

As for the one-inch punch... it's something that anyone with a decade or more of well-taught experience in internal martial art (Daito-ryu, hsing-i chuan, pa kua chang, etc.) should be able to do. In fact, the internal artists I've met can do one better, generating force without any space at all. I've met folks who can punch much better than Bruce could, to be honest...

In short, there's much we can learn from Bruce Lee, but he was not the world's best, wisest, or most correct martial artist.

[Idlethought]

well-said victus

[Myrsilus]

Yes, very good points. I will say this though...

Too much emphasis on kata is a huge mistake. They do help in many instances, and they are great for conditioning the body to perform various techniques. But I will not say they are so damn important. Not everyone will attack in a specific way and not everyone will react in a specific way. The kata, when cherished so deeply, can program a person to react to only certain types of attacks and lose the ability to react to anything else. I've seen it first-hand with martial artists using obvious kata techniques and then getting their face busted up by a street fighter who fights off of instinct and split-second reactions.

This isn't aimed to argue against you Invictus - I know you understand martial arts as well as others here, and even more so than most probably. What I want to get across is that when a martial artist puts so much emphasis on "recorded" movements, there is hardly any valuable progression made in training.

And the one-inch punch IS an amazing technique. I've seen plenty of so-called masters that can't do the technique. Of course, they probably did not have a proper understanding of body mechanics. Nevertheless, not everyone can perform the technique to the full potential, sometimes not even close.

[Invictus]

How you train kata is as important as how much you train kata. I practice Shinkage-ryu swordsmanship, and I can definitely tell you that my seniors have not had their sword skills calcified by too much forms practice. ;)

There's plenty of dead forms practice out there where folks just run through the motions and comply. In Shinkage-ryu, at least, if you don't react properly, you WILL get 'killed' repeatedly. Even a fukurojinai doesn't feel too good when smashing at full speed across your knuckles... :P

[Myrsilus]

Exactly. What I'm trying to get at, but didn't articulate as cleary as I wished, was that some people train in a very wrong method with kata. This is very common in the dime-a-dozen karate schools one encounters in little shopping centers. =\

Like me... When I was in TKD, we were taught to follow the kata to our death, and when that stray kick came along that we weren't used to dealing with, we floundered and bit the dust.

I personally practice kata so that my stances are more stable and I learn the components of the kata, that is, the techniques that make up the kata. But I promise you there will be a martial artist that will learn a kata and practice it over and over and wait for the right battle to unleash that same kata and when things go unplanned he will leave wounded.

The kata is great, but the usefulness tends to get misinterpreted. Know what I mean?

And I've felt bamboo on my knuckles. Scraped the skin right off many times, and I've gotten beaten all over my body plenty of times. When a shinai comes slamming into my knuckles, I find it very hard to want to continue fighting.

By the way, we should really talk sometime. Talk about battle wounds and shit. :p

[Exclamatio]

katas arnt really needed nowadays as much as they were anyway, we have better means of recording and passing on techniques

although at the same time repetition is so important why get rid of them?

personally i havnt practiced a single kata in over 8 years and i never will, but at the same time i do have set paterns i use over and over in my training, such as basic boxing combinations, kicking combination and such simply to give a focus to my training.
I dont feel the need personally to practice the katas that have been handed down over the years as they have no use for me or my students.

[CNagy]

One inch punch is a simple lesson in biomechanics. Give me no inches at all, and I can still put my first through a couple of oak boards. It's all in the whip motion. That said, give a guy an inch, and he can do remarkable things with it if he has the movement down. It doesn't take a decade of anything-- if your art incorporates the body whip (or dragon back) into its hand strikes, you can likely do a one inch (or no inch) punch with little or no practice.

[Cybren]

i've read the one inch punch is a fairly common wing chung technique, (one website even claimed bruce lee had never learned it properly, and he was imitating advanced students he watched while training with Yip-Min).
However, the criticisms of Bruce Lee's philisophy seems to stem from a lack of understanding of it.
Also, i'm suprised to see so many martial artists on this forum.

[Invictus]

CNagy, what martial system do you practice?

Exclamatio, you're absolutely right. If kata have no relevance to your practice, there's no reason to practice them. However, you'd be fiddling to a different tune if you practiced koryu bujutsu or a Chinese internal art. You can't really learn the physical, mental, and psychological skills of those systems without repeated and intense forms training... and lemme tell you, if taught by someone who knows what he's doing, you don't want to go up against those folks. :eek:

Fujin, we should chat sometime and trade war stories. I haven't been practicing martial art for too long, but I've still had some pretty interesting experiences and talked to some pretty interesting people. :)

EDIT: Cybren, the one-inch punch is not too common in wing chun... at least, not the wing chun that's largely prevalent in the States. It's also entirely possible that Bruce Lee didn't get it quite right, as his punch (based on a couple observations) seems based as much on his muscle as his biomechanics. It's pretty amazing when a slightly chubby 42-year-old guy can send you soaring up into the air with seemingly paltry effort.

As for an understanding of Bruce Lee's philosophy, it's really rather simple at its core. His basic idea (passing beyond technique) is right, but through inexperience he makes the mistake of assuming that folks before him hadn't already figured that out, and hence took the rather logically unsupportable step of tossing out every codified system as valueless. Every expert in hsing-i, aikido, kenjutsu, arnis de mano, etc. says the exact same thing about passing beyond technique... but they all use forms to give you a framework from which to understand the body before you ascend to using it fluidly.

[Myrsilus]

Of course kata is useful. I need to do kata to, at least, learn specific techniques altogether so I don't have to strain to learn everything one-by-one. There is a certain kata I practice with the bo that involves guarding against a swordsman and then either crushing the swordsman's face or damaging a lower part of the body (The end technique is a slamming of the bo onto the ground). Thanks to that kata, we are able to learn very advanced techniques rather quickly.

What I believe is that the kata is simply used wrong by those that do not understand the true practicality of the kata. It is not something you pull out in battle (And trust me, people believe this). It's something you do to train the body and perfect movements.

And Invictus, compared to other martial artists, I'm still a beginner. I haven't been able to stick with one art for too long (TKD was boring and my Isshin ryu karate instructor had to close down for a while). Even so, I'm sure I can share some stories with you, too. Maybe even some tips for one another. <nod nod>

And I'm also glad to see more people that are educated in martial arts. It's quite refreshing, really.

[Cybren]

As for an understanding of Bruce Lee's philosophy, it's really rather simple at its core. His basic idea (passing beyond technique) is right, but through inexperience he makes the mistake of assuming that folks before him hadn't already figured that out, and hence took the rather logically unsupportable step of tossing out every codified system as valueless. Every expert in hsing-i, aikido, kenjutsu, arnis de mano, etc. says the exact same thing about passing beyond technique... but they all use forms to give you a framework from which to understand the body before you ascend to using it fluidly.
I think his philosophy was a result of his contradicting what was the mainstream belief at the time. In the 60's and 70's, most of the martial arts community was held up by the belief that tradition was more important than progress. While martial arts originated bya darwinian form of martial arts evolution, by that time, many had become stagnant.

Not to mention, he wasn't criticising the practice of forms themselves, but how many schools would use them to teach. Not just forms, too. Some schools would teach you things like "If you're being mugged on a saturday while wearing steal toed boots, you can use this techniques. BUt if you're bearfoot, use this one".

[Invictus]

Exactly. He took his philosophy too far, though, by painting all systems in all places with the same brush. In doing so, he missed out on a lot of the benefits of an organized curriculum.

Not to mention, he wasn't criticising the practice of forms themselves, but how many schools would use them to teach. Not just forms, too. Some schools would teach you things like "If you're being mugged on a saturday while wearing steal toed boots, you can use this techniques. BUt if you're bearfoot, use this one".

I think every classical Japanese or Chinese martial artist worth their salt would agree that such is an extremely bad approach to combat. Fujin summed it up best... kata is a way of teaching your body to move, not typically a specific response to be used in combat.

[Komachi Angel]

Re. Kata - I was tought that although they use specific situations as their basis, each movement in them has a different role. Your goal is not to learn the situation so much as each movement and its purpose in the kata. Once you have done this, you can take and use each as needed in a variety of situations.

Sometimes, one may feel you can become a master of an art by simply learning the rules, but to me, it is much more than that. The kata we learn and the things we are taught are merely like laying down the rules of a game - to truly master an art, we need to take it to yet a higher level.

It's kind of hard to explain, but I feel I understand what Bruce Lee was trying to say.

[Myrsilus]

Indeed. What Cybren is talking about is mostly seen in those "dime-a-dozen" schools I mentioned earlier. Less emphasis is put on actually teaching a person to SURVIVE and more emphasis is put on making money while teaching the students a few cool moves.

Bruce Lee did make the mistake there Invictus. He had many good points, but like I've always thought, you take what the teacher gives you and interpret it in your own way. If Bruce Lee said kata was useless because it taught people to be synchronized dancers, then one could also take a different, yet ultimately linked lesson: Kata can be used the wrong way.

It's like my ninjutsu sensei says... "What you learn from me should not make you. While you study here, I want you to make your own form of ninjutsu... My form is perfect for me, and I want you all to develop what is perfect for you."

[Cybren]

Well that was the whole point. When Bruce Lee was around, a lot of martial arts were espousing that kind of thinking.

[Komachi Angel]

I generally like Ninjutsu sensei - the ones I have spoken with are all very level-headed about their work, and serious about training. Due to a somewhat nasty experience, I consider all my training very seriously, and I respect a proper attitude towards it. Ninjutsu is something I would definitely like to do given the chance.

[Myrsilus]

Ninjutsu is truly a great art... It incorporates so much into it that you learn so much more than you expect. It's one of the ultimate survival arts, in my opinion.

I've heard of and met some pretty pretentious ninjutsu sensei and practitioners, but among them you will always find the good ones - Good in skill and soul.

As a matter of fact... we actually study some JKD philosophies and techniques. Very effective stuff, I must say.

[CNagy]

CNagy, what martial system do you practice?
My core style is Moo Duk Kwan, though where I was practicing (UCF) incorporated alot of other aspects (pretty much everything but grappling) into their instruction. Tachi Troy Price came to teach us on occasion, when he was in the area, and it was from him that we learned of the dragon back technique (he showed us, explained it, and left us to figure it out;) simply put, a full back muscle whip used to add a great deal of force to normal hand strikes, especially when the whipping motion is continued through the arms.


In regards to traditional styles during the time of Bruce Lee when it came to competition: it used to be that you could tell what style a martial artist used just by the way he stood in stance. Martial artists would practice a single move over and over and over again, and that was what they pretty much scored with. Soandso might have a specific technique that he had mastered to the point that it could come out of nowhere, or out of anywhere. But how well rounded is a practitioner who focuses on one move? In a practical sense, many of the styles were stagnant.

[Overkongen]

Yes, ninjutsu for teh win. I study it myself. I pity the fool who goes up against the ninjas of Denmark.

[Druid]

"One is all, all is one" to quote. Let us say that our "self" is water. If one goes to far torward the structure, the water will freeze. If one searches for the formlessness, the water evaporate. One must flow. Not so much from one form to another, but from one movement to another. One must not "act", one must "react". One can only achieve unity through knowing ones self.

[Druid]

*poke* I don't do the karate...I only use swords....