unarmed combat. And then there were the notes! Whether on an airplane at 35,000 feet above the ground, in a car traveling down a bumpy dirt road in the Indian Desert, or in the privacy of his own study, when Lee wasn’t training or reading, he was writing. And his mind was constantly active, triangulating new viewpoints on techniques, technique efficiency, and training methods to realize novel ways of improving each.
Lee also made extensive notes on Eastern philosophy and (believe it or not) Western psychotherapy (and the two disciplines are not so diverse as one might initially think), among other subjects. Bruce Lee held that “there is no such thing as an effective segment of a totality,” and in keeping with this belief, he held that life itself was the totality, and all aspects of martial art, philosophy, physical fitness, nutritional science, reading, talking, teaching, learning, and so on, were simply facets that served to make up this totality. Further, from this viewpoint, Lee concluded that art was a bridge to higher learning; that is, the higher up the ladder of martial art mastery one climbed, the clearer the view became that art was simply a metaphor for life itself and that, as Blake once said, it was indeed possible to “see the world in a grain of sand,” and for one who had truly mastered a martial art to be availed of a new and wonderful insight into the human condition. There were and are no opposites, only interconnected facets of the existence of which all of us are a part.
Lee once made the comment, “All knowledge ultimately means self-knowledge,” and his writings reflect the depth of his search within. When he severely injured his lower back in 1970, the medical community made the conclusion that he would never be able to perform martial arts again. Lee, however, realized that with the correct application of his will he would not only be able to rehabilitate himself, but actually surpass his previous level of martial ability. And he did just that. While he may have been bedridden for six months, Lee, unable to train his body, began to train, his mind as never before, reading voraciously and taking copious notes that would fill seven separate volumes on the art and science of combat. Many of those notes were gathered up and published collectively in the book The Tao of Jeet Kune Do (Ohara Publications, 1975) under the auspices of his widow, Linda Lee Cadwell. However, there was much material that was left out of that book. So much so, in fact, that it has filled the bulk of this book (along with his reading annotations, additional notes on combat, and excerpted interview materials). To obtain a more complete picture of the thought process and depth of Bruce Lee and the martial art and philosophy he created, I would strongly recommend that you read The Tao of Jeet Kune Do in addition to any other books that feature authentic writings of Bruce. Lee. Don’t bifurcate into an “either/or” situation; take in the whole picture. “But who was to be the ultimate arbiter of which information was more important?” some of you will ask. Holding to Bruce’s philosophy of there not. being any effective segments of a totality, it is my belief that while this book holds an important segment of the totality that was Bruce Lee, you can only obtain the full picture by doing your homework and broadening your research.
Still, within the pages of this book you will find many of Bruce Lee’s never-before-published insights into the world of martial arts. There is much wisdom in these words, gleamed from written and recorded sources not available previously. These “commentaries on the martial way” (the subtitle of this book was actually taken from the title he gave to his seven volumes of personal writings) will serve to provide you with additional insights into the totality of the man’s soul, his thoughts on martial art, on the creation of his own martial art and philosophy of jeet kune do, as well as many of his personal, private, and public lesson plans that he implemented for the correct teaching of his art during his lifetime.
It has taken this author over three years to research all of the existing materials of Bruce Lee (although in truth, I’ve been studying Lee and his writings for well over two decades), and another year to edit them into the manuscript that became this book. I have kept my own thumbprint off the body of the text, so that, apart from this prefatory material, it is only Bruce Lee’s words that you will be reading, recorded here exactly as he spoke or wrote them. Where Lee simply jotted down a thought or a sentence, it has been left to stand exactly as he wrote it in the hopes that the spirit of his intention will be fully preserved.
Lee was in the habit of sitting down and writing whatever came into his head. He didn’t do this as a flight of fancy, but rather in an attempt to get in touch with his real feelings on various issues, without the guise of public celebrity or self-image, but simply the honest expression of his innermost thoughts and feelings in a completely spontaneous and unedited fashion. He once wrote:
I have to say I am writing whatever happens to be popping into my mind. It might be incoherent to some but, what the heck, I don’t care. I’m just simply writing whatever wants to be written at the moment of its conception. If we communicate, which I sincerely hope; it’s cool. If not, well, it can’t be helped anyway.
And again at another sitting:
I don’t know what I will be writing but just simply writing whatever wants to be written. If the writing communicates and stirs something within someone, it’s beautiful. If not, well, it can’t be helped.
It is my sincere hope that this volume of Bruce Lee’s personal writings will indeed “communicate” and “stir something within someone” reading this book, to the point that it will serve to help that someone in their own process of becoming both a better martial artist and, more importantly, a better person. That, dear reader, would be a very “beautiful” thing, indeed.
—John Little
INTRODUCTION
Martial art, like any art, is an expression of the human being. Some expressions have flavor, some are logical (perhaps under certain required situations), but most martial arts are the mere performing of a sort of mechanical repetition of a fixed pattern.
This is most unhealthy because to live is to express and to express you have to create. Creation is never merely repetition. Remember well my friend that all styles are man-made and man is always more important than any style. Style concludes. Man grows.
So martial art is ultimately an athletic expression of the dynamic human body. More important yet is the person who is there expressing his own soul. Yes, martial art is an unfolding of what one is—his anger, his fears—and yet under all these natural human tendencies (which we all experience, after all) a “quality” martial artist can—in the midst of all these commotions—still be himself.
And it is not a question of winning or losing but it is a question of being what is at that moment and being wholeheartedly involved with that particular moment and doing one’s best. The consequence is left to whatever will happen.
Therefore to be a martial artist also means to be an artist of life. Since life is an ever-going process, one should flow in this process and to discover, to actualize, and to expand oneself.
—Bruce Lee
Part 1
COMMENTARIES ON THE MARTIAL WAY
REFLECTIONS ON COMBAT
Martial art—a definition
Martial art includes all the combative arts like karate, judo, Chinese gung fu or Chinese boxing, aikido, Korean karate—I could go on and on and on. But it’s a combative form of fighting. I mean, some of them became sport, but some of them are still not. I mean, some of them use, for instance, kicking to the groin, jabbing fingers into eyes, and things like that.
An animal jumps at every sound . . . a leaf responds to every push of air . . . but an enlightened man in combat moves only when he chooses—only when necessary—actually, the movement before it is necessary. He is not tensed but ready, he is never set but flexible.
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