Читать книгу Bruce Lee Artist of Life - Bruce Lee - Страница 9
ОглавлениеPart 1
GUNG FU
When Bruce Lee returned to the land of his birth (America) from Hong Kong at the age of eighteen, be brought with him a vision of introducing the then little-known cultural art of Chinese gung fu to America.
Lee had at one time actually envisioned establishing chains of gung fu institutes all across America. However, as his knowledge expanded with age, and with it his philosophic and martial experiences, he no longer felt the need to extol the virtues of tradition—however venerated.
This is not to suggest that Lee ever abandoned his Chinese heritage and philosophy; he simply over time came to look for the common root of humanity, as opposed to nationality, to justify his belief system and actions. Even so, it is interesting to note that when he began to take control over the philosophy content of his films in 1972, the lessons he revealed were gleaned from the Eastern traditions.
These essays, dealing extensively with Chinese philosophy and martial art were written in the early 1960s. There are a wonderful reflection of a young Bruce Lee’s driving passion to introduce and share with Westerners the beauty of his Chinese culture.
1-A
THE TAO OF GUNG FU: A STUDY IN THE WAY OF THE CHINESE MARTIAL ART
Gung fu is a special kind of skill, a fine art rather than just a physical exercise or self-defense. To the Chinese, gung fu is the subtle art of matching the essence of the mind to that of the techniques in which it has to work. The principle of gung fu is not a thing that can be learned, like a science, by fact-finding or instruction in facts. It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from desires and emotions. The core of this principle of gung fu is Tao—the spontaneity of the universe.
The word Tao has no exact equivalent in the English language. To render it into the Way, or the “principle” or the “law” is to give it too narrow an interpretation. Lao-tzu, the founder of Taosim, described Tao in the following words:
The Way that can be expressed in words is not the eternal Way; the Name that can be uttered is not the eternal Name. Conceived of as nameless it is the cause of Heaven and earth. Conceived of as having a name it is the mother of all things. Only the man eternally free from passion can contemplate its spiritual essence. He who is clogged by desires can see no more than its outer form. These two things, the spiritual (Yin) and the material (Yang), though we call them by different names, are one and the same in their origin. The sameness is a mystery of the mysteries. It is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.1
In Masterpieces of World Philosophy: “Tao is the nameless beginning of things, the universal principle underlying everything, the supreme, ultimate pattern, and the principle of growth.”2 Huston Smith, the author of The World’s Religions, explained Tao as “The Way of Ultimate Reality—the Way or Principle behind all life, or the Way man should order his life to gear in with the Way the universe operates.”3
Although no one word can substitute its meaning, I have used the word Truth for it—the “Truth” behind gung fu; the “Truth” that every gung fu practitioner should follow.
Tao operates in Yin and Yang, a pair of mutually complementary forces that are at work in and behind all phenomena. This principle of Yin-Yang, also known as T’ai Chi, is the basic structure of gung fu. The T’ai Chi, or Grand Terminus, was first drawn more than three thousand years ago by Chou Chun I.
The Yang (whiteness) principle represents positiveness, firmness, masculinity, substantiality, brightness, day, heat, and so forth. The Yin (blackness) principle is the opposite. It represents negativeness, softness, femininity, insubstantiality, darkness, night, coldness, and so forth. The basic theory in T’ai Chi is that nothing is so permanent as never to change. In other words, when activity (Yang) reaches the extreme point, it becomes inactivity, and inactivity forms Yin. Extreme inactivity returns to become activity, which is Yang. Activity is the cause of inactivity and vice versa. This system of complementary increasing and decreasing of the principle is continuous. From this one can see that the two forces (Yin-Yang), although they appear to conflict, in reality are mutually interdependent; instead of opposition, there is cooperation and alternation.
The application of the principles of Yin-Yang in gung fu are expressed as the Law of Harmony. It states that one should be in harmony with, not in rebellion against, the strength and force of the opposition. This means that one should do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous; the important thing is not to strain in any way. When opponent A uses strength (Yang) on B, B must not resist him (back) with strength; in other words, B does not use positiveness (Yang) against positiveness (Yang), but instead yields to A with softness (Yin) and leads A in the direction of his own force, negativeness (Yin) to positiveness (Yang). When A’s strength goes to the extreme, the positiveness (Yang) will change to negativeness (Yin), and B can then take him at his unguarded moment and attack with force (Yang). Thus the whole process is not unnatural or strained; B fits his movement harmoniously and continuously into that of A without resisting or striving.
The above idea gives rise to a closely related law, the Law of Noninterference with Nature, which teaches a gung fu man to forget about himself and follow his opponent (strength) instead of himself; he does not move ahead but responds to the fitting influence. The basic idea is to defeat the opponent by yielding to him and using his own strength. That is why a gung fu man never asserts himself against his opponent, and never puts himself in frontal opposition to the direction of his opponent’s force. When being attacked, he will not resist, but will control the attack by swinging with it. This law illustrates the principles of nonresistance and nonviolence, which were founded on the idea that the branches of a fir tree snap under the weight of the snow, while the simple reeds, weaker but more supple, can overcome it. In the I’Ching, Confucius illustrated this: “To stand in the stream is a datum of nature; one must follow and flow with it.”4 In the Tao Teh Ching, the gospel of Taoism, Lao-tzu pointed out to us the value of gentleness. Contrary to common belief, the Yin principle, as softness and pliableness, is to be associated with life and survival. Because he can yield, a man can survive. In contrast, the Yang principle, which is assumed to be rigorous and hard, makes a man break under pressure (note the last two lines, which make a fair description of revolution as many generations of people have seen it):
Alive, a man is supple, soft;
In death, unbending, rigorous.
All creatures, grass and trees, alive
Are plastic but are pliant too,
And dead, are friable and dry.
Unbending rigor is the mate of death,
And yielding softness, company of life;
Unbending soldiers get no victories;
The stiffest tree is readiest for the ax.
The strong and mighty topple from their place;
The soft and yielding rise above them all.5
The way of movement in gung fu is closely related to the movement of the mind. In fact, the mind is trained to direct the movement of the body. The mind wills and the body behaves. As the mind is to direct the bodily movements, the way to control the mind is important; but it is not an easy task. In his book, Glen Clark mentioned some of the emotional disturbances in athletics:
Every conflicting center, every extraneous, disrupting, decentralizing emotion, jars the natural rhythm and reduces a man’s efficiency on the gridiron far more seriously than physical jars and bodily conflicts can ever jar him. The emotions that destroy the inner rhythm of a man are hatred, jealousy, lust, envy, pride, vanity, covetousness and fear.6
To perform the right technique in gung fu, physical loosening must be continued in a mental and spiritual loosening, so as to make the mind not only agile but free. In order to accomplish this, a gung fu man has to remain quiet and calm and to master the principle of no-mindedness (wuhsin). No-mindedness is not a blank mind that excludes all emotions; nor is it simply calmness and quietness of mind. Although quietude and calmness are important, it is the “non-graspingness” of the mind that mainly constitutes the principle of no-mindedness. A gung fu man employs his mind as a mirror—it grasps nothing and it refuses nothing; it receives but does not keep. As Alan Watts puts it, the no-mindedness is “a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.”7
What he means is, let the mind think what it likes without interference by the separate thinker or ego within oneself. So long as it thinks what it wants, there is absolutely no effort in letting it go; and the disappearance of the effort to let go is precisely the disappearance of the separate thinker. There is nothing to try to do, for whatever comes up moment by moment is accepted, including nonacceptance. No-mindedness is then not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked. It is a mind immune to emotional influences. “Like this river, everything is flowing on ceaselessly without cessation or standing still.”8 No-mindedness is employing the whole mind as we use the eyes when we rest them upon various objects but make no special effort to take anything in. Chuang-tzu, the disciple of Lao-tzu, stated:
The baby looks at things all day without winking, that is because his eyes are not focused on any particular object. He goes without knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself with the surroundings and moves along with it. These are the principles of mental hygiene.9
Therefore, concentration in gung fu does not have the usual sense of restricting the attention to a single sense object; it is simply a quiet awareness of whatever happens to be here and now. Such concentration can be illustrated by an audience at a football game; instead of a concentrated attention on the player who has the ball, they have an awareness of the whole football field. In a similar way, a gung fu man’s mind is concentrated by not dwelling on any particular part of the opponent. This is especially true when he deals with many opponents. For instance, suppose ten men are attacking him, each in succession ready to strike him down. As soon as one is disposed of, he will move on to another without permitting the mind to “stop” with any. However rapidly one blow may follow another he leaves no time to intervene between the two. Every one of the ten will thus be successively and successfully dealt with. This is possible only when the mind moves from one object to another without being “stopped” or arrested by anything. If the mind is unable to move on in this fashion, it is sure to lose the combat somewhere between two encounters.
The mind is present everywhere because it is nowhere attached to any particular object. And it can remain present because, even when relating to this or that object, it does not cling to it. The flow of thought is like water filling a pond, which is always ready to flow off again. It can work its inexhaustible power because it is free, and it can be open to everything because it is empty. This can be compared with what Chang Chen Chi called “Serene Reflection.” He wrote: “Serene means tranquillity of no thought, and reflection means vivid and clear awareness. Therefore, serene reflection is clear awareness of no-thought.”10
As stated earlier, a gung fu man aims at harmony with himself and his opponent. Also, being in harmony with one’s opponent is possible not through force, which provokes conflicts and reactions, but through a yielding to the opponent’s force. In other words, a gung fu man promotes the spontaneous development of his opponent and does not venture to interfere by his own action. He loses himself by giving up all subjective feelings and individuality, and he becomes one with his opponent. Inside his mind, oppositions have become mutually cooperative instead of mutually exclusive. When his private egos and conscious efforts yield to a power not his own he then achieves the supreme action, nonaction (wu wei).
Wu means “not” or “non” and wei means “action,” “doing,” “striving,” “straining,” or “busyness.” Wu wei doesn’t really mean doing nothing, but letting one’s mind alone, trusting it to work by itself. Wu wei, in gung fu, means spontaneous action or spirit-action, in the sense that the governing force is the mind and not the senses. During sparring, a gung fu man learns to forget about himself and follow the movement of his opponent, leaving his mind free to make its own countermovement without any interfering deliberation. He frees himself from all mental suggestions of resistance and adopts a supple attitude. His actions are all performed without self-assertion; he lets his mind remain spontaneous and ungrasped. As soon as he stops to think, his flow of movement will be disturbed and his opponent will immediately strike him. Every action therefore has to be done “unintentionally” without ever “trying.”
Through wu wei, a “reposeful ease” is secured. This passive achievement, as Chuang-tzu pointed out, will free a gung fu man from striving and straining himself:
A yielding will has a resposeful ease, soft as downy feathers,
A quietude, a shrinking from action, an appearance of inability to do.
Placidly free from anxiety, one acts
with the opportune time; one moves and revolves in the line
of creation. One does not move ahead but responds to the fitting influences.
Establish nothing in regard to oneself. Let things be
what they are, move like water, rest like a mirror,
respond like an echo, pass quickly like the nonexistent,
and be quiet as purity. Those who gain, lose. Do not
precede others, always follow them.11
The natural phenomenon which the gung fu man sees as being the closest resemblance to wu wei is water:
Nothing is weaker than water,
But when it attacks something hard
Or resistant, then nothing withstands it,
And nothing will alter its way.12
The above passages from the Tao Te Ching illustrate to us the nature of water: Water is so fine that it is impossible to grasp a handful of it; strike it, yet it does not suffer hurt; stab it, and it is not wounded; sever it, yet it is not divided. It has no shape of its own but molds itself to the receptacle that contains it. When heated to the state of steam it is invisible but has enough power to split the earth itself. When frozen it crystallizes into a mighty rock. First it is turbulent like Niagara Falls, and then calm like a still pond, fearful like a torrent, and refreshing like a spring on a hot summer’s day. So is the principle of wu wei:
The rivers and seas are lords of a hundred valleys. This is because their strength is in lowliness; they are kings of them all. So it is that the perfect master wishing to lead them, he follows. Thus, though he is above them, he follows. Thus, though he is above them, men do not feel him to be an injury. And since he will not strive, none strive with him. 13
The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition:
One who tries to stand on tiptoe cannot stand still. One who stretches his legs too far cannot walk. One who advertises himself too much is ignored. One who is too insistent on his own view finds few to agree with him. One who claims too much credit does not get even what he deserves. One who is too proud is soon humiliated. These are condemned as extremes of greediness and self-destructive activity. Therefore, one who acts naturally avoids such extremes.14
Those who know do not speak;
Those who speak do not know.
Stop your sense
Let sharp things be blunted,
Tangles resolved,
The light tempered
And turmoil subdued;
For this is mystic unity
in which the wise man is moved
Neither by affection
Nor yet by estrangement
Or profit or loss
Or honor or shame.
Accordingly, by all the world,
He is held highest.15
A gung fu man, if he is really good, is not proud at all. “Pride,” according to Mr. Eric Hoffer, “is a sense of worth that derives from something that is not organically part of oneself.”16 Pride emphasizes the importance of the superiority of a person’s status in the eyes of others. There is fear and insecurity in pride because when a person aims at being highly esteemed and achieves such status, he is automatically involved in the fear of losing his status. Then protection of his status appears to be his most important need, and this creates anxiety. Mr. Hoffer further states that: “The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. One is proud when he identifies himself with an imaginary self; the core of pride is self-rejection.”17
As we know, gung fu is aiming at self-cultivation, and the inner self is one’s true self. So in order to realize his true self, a gung fu man lives without being dependent upon the opinion of others. Since he is completely self-sufficient he can have no fear of not being esteemed. A gung fu man devotes himself to being self-sufficient and never depends upon the external rating by others for his happiness. A gung fu master, unlike the beginner, holds himself in reserve, is quiet and unassuming, without the least desire to show off. Under the influence of gung fu training his proficiency becomes spiritual, and he himself, grown ever freer through spiritual struggle, is transformed. To him, fame and status mean nothing.
Thus wu wei is the art of artlessness, the principle of no-principle. To state it in terms of gung fu, the genuine beginner knows nothing about the way of blocking and striking, and much less about his concern for himself. When an opponent tries to strike him, he “instinctively” parries it. This is all he can do. But as soon as his training starts, he is taught how to defend and attack, where to keep the mind, and many other technical tricks—which makes his mind “stop” at various junctures. For this reason whenever he tries to strike the opponent he feels unusually hampered (he has lost altogether the original sense of innocence and freedom). But as months and years go by, as his training acquires fuller maturity, his bodily attitude and his way of managing the technique toward no-mindedness come to resemble the state of mind he had at the very beginning of training when he knew nothing, when he was altogether ignorant of the art. The beginning and the end thus turn into next-door neighbors. In the musical scale, one may start with the lowest pitch and gradually ascend to the highest. When the highest is reached, one finds it is located next to the lowest.
In a similar way, when the highest stage is reached in the study of Taoist teaching, a gung fu man turns into a kind of simpleton who knows nothing of Tao, nothing of its teachings, and is devoid of all learning. Intellectual calculations are lost sight of and a state of no-mindedness prevails. When the ultimate perfection is attained, the body and limbs perform by themselves what is assigned to them to do with no interference from the mind. The technical skill is so automatic it is completely divorced from conscious efforts.
There are big differences between the Chinese hygiene and the Western hygiene. Some of the obvious ones are Chinese exercise is rhythmic, whereas the Western is dynamic and full of tension; the Chinese exercise seeks to merge harmoniously with nature, whereas the Western dominates it; the Chinese exercise is both a way of life and a mental cultivation, while the Western exercise is merely a sport or a physical calisthenic.
Perhaps the main difference is the fact that Chinese hygiene is Yin (softness), while Western is Yang (positiveness). We can compare the Western mind with an oak tree that stands firm and rigid against the strong wind. When the wind becomes stronger, the oak tree cracks. The Chinese mind, on the other hand, is like the bamboo that bends with the strong wind. When the wind ceases (that is, when it goes to the extreme and changes), the bamboo springs back stronger than before.
Western hygiene is a gratuitous waste of energy. The overexertion and overdevelopment of bodily organs involved in Western athletics is detrimental to one’s health. Chinese hygiene, on the other hand, throws its emphasis on conservation of energy; the principle is always that of moderation without going to the extreme. Whatever exercise there may be consists of harmonious movements calculated to normalize but not to excite one’s bodily regimen. It starts out with a mental regimen as a basis, in which the sole object is to bring about peace and calmness of mind. With this as a basis, it aims at stimulating the normal functioning of the internal process of respiration and blood circulation.
Source: Handwritten essay by Bruce Lee entitled “The Tao of Gung Fu: A Study in the Way of the Chinese Martial Art,” dated May 16, 1962. Bruce Lee Papers.
1-B
GUNG FU: THE CENTER OF THE ORIENTAL ARTS
Gung fu, the center of the Oriental arts of self-defense, is a philosophical art that serves to promote health, to cultivate the mind, and to provide a most efficient means of self-protection.
Its philosophy is based on the integral parts of the philosophies of Taoism and Ch’an (Zen)—the ideal of being harmonious with and not against the force of the opponent. Just as a butcher preserves his knife by cutting along the bones, a gung fu man preserves himself by complementing the movements of the opponent.
The word gung fu means “discipline” and “training” toward the ultimate reality of the object—be it health promotion, mind cultivation or self-protection. There is no distinction to make between the opponent and the self because the opponent is but the other complementary (not opposite) part. There is no conquering, struggling, or dominating, and the idea is to “fit” harmoniously your movement into that of the opponent. When he expands, you contract; when he contracts, you expand. Expansion then is interdependent with contraction and vice versa, each being the cause and result of the other.
Gentleness/firmness is one inseparable force of one unceasing interplay of movement. If a person riding a bicycle wishes to go somewhere, he cannot pump on both the pedals at the same time or not pump on them at all. In order to move forward he has to pump on one pedal and release the other. So the movement of going forward requires this “oneness” of pumping and releasing. Therefore, gentleness alone cannot forever dissolve away great force, nor can sheer brute force subdue one’s foe. In order to survive in any combat, the harmonious interfusion of gentleness and firmness as a whole is necessary, sometimes one dominating sometimes the other, in a wavelike succession. The movement will then truly flow, for the pure fluidity of movements is in their interchangeability.
So neither gentleness nor firmness holds any more than one half of a broken whole which, welded together, forms the true Way of martial art. The tendency to guard against is from getting too firm and stiff. Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind. This is why a gung fu man is soft yet not yielding, firm, yet not hard. The best example of gung fu is water. Water can penetrate the hardest granite because it is yielding. One cannot stab or strike at water and hurt it because that which offers no resistance cannot be overcome.
In actual application, gung fu is based on simplicity; it is a natural result of four thousand years of exhaustive experimentation and is of highly sophisticated complexity. All techniques are stripped down to their essential purpose without wastage or ornamentation, and everything becomes the straightest, most logical simplicity of common sense. The utmost is expressed and performed in the minimum of movements and energy.
The method for health promotion is again based on water, as flowing water never grows stale. The idea is not to overdevelop or to overexert but to normalize the function of the body.
Source: Bruce Lee’s handwritten essay on gung fu, untitled. Bruce Lee Papers.
1-C
A MOMENT OF UNDERSTANDING
Gung fu is a special kind of skill, a fine art rather than just a physical exercise. It is a subtle art of matching the essence of the mind to that of the techniques in which it has to work. The principle of gung fu is not a thing that can be learned, like a science, by fact-finding and instruction in facts. It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from emotions and desires. The core of this principle of gung fu is Tao—the spontaneity of the universe.
Burce Lee (right) and his only formal martial art instructor,Yip Man
After four years of hard training in the art of gung fu, I began to understand and felt the principle of gentleness— the art of neutralizing the effect of the opponent’s effort and minimizing the expenditure of one’s energy. All these must be done in calmness and without striving. It sounded simple, but in actual application it was difficult.
The principle of gung fu is not a thing that can be learned, like a science, by fact-finding and instruction in facts. It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from emotions and desires.
The moment I engaged in combat with an opponent, my mind was completely perturbed and unstable. And after a series of exchanging blows and kicks, my theory of gentleness was gone. My only thought at this point was “Somehow or other I must beat him and win!”
The moment I engaged in combat with an opponent, my mind was completely perturbed and unstable. And after a series of exchanging blows and kicks, my theory of gentleness was gone. My only thought at this point was “Somehow or other I must beat him and win!”
My instructor at the time, Professor Yip Man, head of the wing chun school of gung fu, would come up to me and say “Loong,18 relax and calm your mind. Forget about yourself and follow the opponent’s movement. Let your mind, the basic reality, do the counter-movement without any interfering deliberation. Above all, learn the art of detachment.”
“That was it!” I thought. “I must relax!” However, right then I had just done something that contradicted against my will. That occurred at the precise moment I said, “I must relax.” The demand for effort in must was already inconsistent with the effortlessness in relax.
When my acute self-consciousness grew to what the psychologists refer to as the “double-bind” type, my instructor would again approach me and say, “Loong, preserve yourself by following the natural bends of things and don’t interfere. Remember never to assert yourself against nature; never be in frontal opposition to any problems, but control it by swinging with it. Don’t practice this week. Go home and think about it.”
The following week I stayed home. After spending many hours meditating and practicing, I gave up and went sailing alone in a junk. On the sea I thought of all my past training and got mad at myself and punched the water! Right then—at that moment—a thought suddenly struck me; was not this water the very essence of gung fu? Hadn’t this water just now illustrated to me the principle of gung fu? I struck it but it did not suffer hurt. Again I struck it with all of my might—yet it was not wounded! I then tried to grasp a handful of it but this proved impossible. This water, the softest substance in the world, which could be contained in the smallest jar, only seemed weak. In reality, it could penetrate the hardest substance in the world. That was it! I wanted to be like the nature of water.
Suddenly a bird flew by and cast its reflection on the water. Right then as I was absorbing myself with the lesson of the water, another mystic sense of hidden meaning revealed itself to me; should not the thoughts and emotions I had when in front of an opponent pass like the reflection of the bird flying over the water? This was exactly what Professor Yip meant by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling was not sticky or blocked. Therefore in order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.
I lay on the boat and felt that I had united with Tao; I had become one with nature. I just lay there and let the boat drift freely according to its own will. For at that moment I had achieved a state of inner feeling in which opposition had become mutually cooperative instead of mutually exclusive, in which there was no longer any conflict in my mind. The whole world to me was unitary.
This water, the softest substance in the world, which could be contained in the smallest jar, only seemed weak. In reality, it could penetrate the hardest substance in the world. That was it! I wanted to be like the nature of water.
Source: Bruce Lee’s handwritten essay entitled “A Moment of Understanding,” from one of his courses at the University of Washington. Bruce Lee Papers. Subsequently published on pages 134–36 in Volume 2 of The Bruce Lee Library Series entitled The Tao of Gung Fu:A Study in the Way of Chinese Martial Art, written by Bruce Lee, edited by John Little, published by the Charles E.Tuttle Publishing Company, Boston, (c) 1997 Linda Lee Cadwell.
1-D
REFLECTIONS ON GUNG FU
Gung fu is so extraordinary because it is nothing at all special. It is simply the direct expression of one’s feeling with the minimum of lines and energy. Every movement is being so of itself without the artificiality with which we tend to complicate them. The closer to the true Way of gung fu, the less wastage of expression there is.
Gung fu is to be looked at without fancy suits and matching ties, and it remains a secret while we anxiously look for sophistication and deadly techniques. If there are really any secrets at all, they must have been missed by the “seeing” and “striving” of its practitioners (after all, how many ways are there to come in on an opponent without deviating too much from the natural course?). Gung fu values the wonder of the ordinary, and the idea is not daily increase but daily decrease.
Being wise in gung fu does not mean adding more but being able to remove sophistication and ornamentation and be simply simple—like a sculptor building a statue not by adding, but by hacking away the unessential so that the truth will be revealed un-obstructed. Gung fu is satisfied with one’s bare hands without the fancy decoration of colorful gloves, which tend to hinder the natural function of the hands. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity while halfway cultivation runs to ornamentation.
There are three stages in the cultivation of gung fu: namely, the primitive stage, the stage of art, and the stage of artlessness. The primitive stage is the stage of original ignorance in which a person knows nothing of the art of combat. In a fight he “simply” blocks and strikes instinctively without concern as for what is right and wrong. Of course, he might not be so-called scientific, but he is, nevertheless, being himself.
The second stage, the stage of art, begins when a person starts his training. He is taught the different ways of blocking and striking, the various ways of kicking, of standing, of moving, of breathing, of thinking. Unquestionably he is gaining a scientific knowledge of combat, but unfortunately his original self and sense of freedom are lost, and his action no longer flows by itself. His mind tends to freeze at different movements for calculation and analysis. Even worse, he might be “intellectually bound” and maintaining himself outside the actual reality.
The third stage, the stage of artlessness, occurs when, after years of serious and hard practice, he realizes that, after all, gung fu is nothing special and instead of trying to impose his mind on the art, he adjusts himself to the opponent like water pressing on an earthen wall—it flows through the slightest crack. There is nothing to “try” to do but be purposeless and formless like water. Nothingness prevails; he no longer is confined.
These three stages also apply to the various methods being practiced in Chinese gung fu. Some methods are rather primitive with basic jerky blocking and striking. On the whole, they lack the flow and change of combinations. Some “sophisticated” methods, on the other hand, tend to run to ornamentation and get carried away by grace and showmanship. Whether from the so-called “firm” or “gentle” school, they often involve big, fancy movements with a lot of complicated steps toward one single goal (it is like an artist who, not satisfied with drawing a simple snake, proceeds to put four beautiful and shapely feet on the snake).
When grasped by the collar, for example, these practitioners would “first do this, then this, and finally that”—but of course the direct way would be to let the opponent have the pleasure of grasping the collar (he is grasping it anyway) and simply punch him straight on the nose! To some martial artists of distinguishing taste, this would be a little bit unsophisticated; too ordinary and unartful. However, it is the ordinary that we use and encounter in everyday life.
Art is the expression of the self; the more complicated and restrictive a method is, the less opportunity there is for expression of one’s original sense of freedom. The techniques, although they play an important role in the earlier stage, should not be too complex, restrictive, or mechanical. If we cling to them we will become bound by their limitations.
Remember that man created method, and method did not create man, and do not strain yourself in twisting into someone’s preconceived pattern, which unquestionably would be appropriate for him, but not necessarily for you. You yourself are “expressing” the technique and not “doing” the technique; in fact, there is no doer but the action itself. When someone attacks you, it is not technique number one (or is it “technique number two?”) that you use, but the moment you’re aware of his attack you simply move in like sound, an echo without any deliberation. It is as though when I call, you answer me, or when I throw something, you catch it. That’s all.
After all these years of practice in the different schools I have found out this: that techniques are merely simple guide lines to tell the practitioner that he has done enough! Of course, different people have different preferences and therefore I will include different techniques of both the Northern and the Southern schools of gung fu. Observe closely the differences as well as the similarities of utilization.
Source: An article written by Bruce Lee that was never published, written on December 21, 1964, to illustrate the different techniques used by the different schools of gung fu. Bruce Lee Papers.
1-E
TEACH YOURSELF SELF-DEFENSE
What would you do if you were attacked by a thug? Would you stand your ground and fight it out? Or, if you will excuse me, would you say that you would run like hell? But what if your loved ones were with you? What then? That’s the all-important question.
You have only to pick up a newspaper to read of attacks made, not only on lonely commons, but also in built-up areas, to understand the need for self-defense. “To be forewarned is to be forearmed” is an old, reliable proverb, and the purpose of my notes on self-defense is not only to forewarn you, but to forearm you with practical knowledge about meeting any foe, regardless of his size and strength.
Some Tips on Self-Defense
Self-defense is not fun. You are liable to find yourself fighting hard to avoid serious injury and so you must expect to be hurt. The method of self-defense I am going to describe will not prevent your being hurt, but it will give you a very good chance of emerging the victor without sustaining any severe injury. You will have to accept this, and should a blow from your opponent break through, it is essential—at least for the time being—to ignore the pain and, instead of giving up, use [it] as a spur to counterattack and victory. (Bear this in mind: when being attacked by a thug the fact is that he has but a one-track mind, which is bent on your destruction, rarely considering what you can do. If your acts show him that he is up against something he did not expect, it will cut down his attacking ego over 50 percent and will neutralize his attack, in which case you always have the psychological advantage on your side.)
This may not sound very encouraging, but the chances of attack can be very greatly reduced when you are walking, especially alone at night or in lonely places, if you are always alert. Keep an eye on any person who appears to be following you or who approaches. Keep to the outside of the path or in the middle of a lane. Listen for approaching footsteps and watch shadows; that is to say, as you pass a street lamp you will see the shadow of anyone behind you thrown up on the ground in front of you. The same thing happens as the result of lights in houses and the headlights of passing cars. As soon as you see a shadow in these circumstances, immediately glance around and see who it is. Always, of course, avoid patches of deep shadow.
The main thing is to see the attack coming, which enables you to shout, scream, or just concentrate on dealing with the attacker. Make as much noise as possible as this naturally tends to frighten off lawbreakers.
In made-up but quiet streets, I repeat, walk on the outside of the pavement. This obviates the chance of anyone jumping out of a house or garden entrance at you to snatch your purse, handbag, or briefcase or worse. For exactly the same reason I suggest walking down the middle of a lane where there are no made-up paths and perhaps no street lamps. If you consider it advisable, you may even cross the road to avoid a person of whom you are suspicious. If he follows, he at least makes his intention fairly obvious. Although I am again repeating myself, I must emphasize that the success of an [assailant’s] attack depends on surprise, and if you’re sufficiently alert to prevent a surprise, your counterattack is already halfway to being successful. The main thing is to see the attack coming, which enables you to shout, scream, or just concentrate on dealing with the attacker. Make as much noise as possible as this naturally tends to frighten off lawbreakers.
I hope I have not frightened you and made you think it is not safe to walk along the streets. That is certainly not my intention, but newspaper reports lead one to believe that attacks on innocent people are increasing.
The Basis of Self-Defense
There is only one basic principle of self-defense: You must apply the most effective weapon as soon as possible to the most vulnerable point of your enemy. Although I say there is only one basic principle, it is better to break it into sections and look at it more thoroughly:
1. what is the most effective weapon
2. speed
3. the point to attack or counterattack
The Weapon
Given a choice I would always choose the leg. It is longer than the arm and can deal a heavier blow, and it is much more powerful. So, should anyone approach you, your kick would make contact before his punch, if both commence at the same speed.
Speed
There is no time to consider the type of defense or weapon to use. Obviously, if your kick does not commence, his punch will land first, and your defense is useless. Only training can produce results (I can help you with this). If you do not consider a few minutes’ training worthwhile, and you think the chance of assault is small, you are one of those people who encourage thugs to attack, and no one can help you should an emergency arise.
There is only one basic principle of self-defense: You must apply the most effective weapon as soon as possible to the most vulnerable point of your enemy.
The Point of Counterattack
Among the most vulnerable points for your counter if you are attacked by a man are the groin, eyes, abdomen, and knee.
Source: Bruce Lee’s handwritten essay entitled “Teach Yourself Self-Defense,” dated 1962. Bruce Lee Papers.
1-F
PSYCHOLOGY IN DEFENSE AND ATTACK
Size is never a true indication of muscular power and efficiency. The smaller man usually makes up for the imbalance of power by his greater agility, flexibility, speed of foot, and nervous action.
Bear this in mind once you go into action and grapple with an opponent: strive to keep him off balance, regardless of his size. So keep moving faster than he and pay absolutely no attention to his size, fierce facial contortions, or his vicious language. Your object is always to attack your opponent at his weakest points, which are mainly gravitational, throwing him off balance, and applying leverage principles so that his body, and the limbs of his body, are used to work toward his own defeat. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
In combating a man with your bare hands, you must learn to use your head, knees, and feet as well as your hands. The “crowding” act gives you every opportunity to use these parts of your body, especially your elbows.
In combating a man with your bare hands, you must learn to use your head, knees, and feet as well as your hands. The “crowding” act gives you every opportunity to use these parts of your body, especially your elbows. Another simple method while crowding with your opponent is to step on your opponent’s foot. It has unexpected results. The one point to bear in mind when you are being attacked by a thug is the fact that the thug has but a one-track mind. He thinks in but one groove, which is bent on your destruction, rarely considering what you can do, in which case you always have the psychological advantage on your side. With efficiency comes confidence and self-reliance.
Source: Bruce Lee’s handwritten essay from his pocket journal, entitled “Psychology in Defense and Attack,” circa 1961.
1-G
HOW TO CHOOSE A MARTIAL ART INSTRUCTOR
I sincerely give this advice to all readers who are about to take up martial art: believe only half of what you see and definitely nothing that you hear.
Before you take any lessons from any instructor, find out clearly from him what his method is and politely request that he demonstrate to you how some techniques operate. Use your common sense, and if he convinces you, then by all means go ahead.
How does one judge if an instructor is good? Rather, this question should be rephrased to read How can one judge if a method or system is good? After all, one cannot learn the speed or power of an instructor, but one can assess his skill. Thus the soundness of the system, and not the instructor, is to be considered; the instructor is merely there to point the way and lead his disciples to an awareness that he himself is the one and only one to give true feeling and expression to the system.
The system should not be mechanical and complicated, but simply simple, with no “magical power.” The method (which is ultimately no method) is there to remind one when he has done enough. The techniques have no magical power and are nothing special; they are merely the simplicity of profound common sense.
Do not, however, be impressed by instructors who have brick-breaking hands, invincible stomachs, iron forearms, or even speed, for that matter. Remember, you cannot learn his ability, but you can learn his skill. At any rate, the ability to break stones, to take a punch on the body, to jump so many feet off the ground are but stunts in the Chinese art of gung fu. Of primary importance are the techniques.
Breaking a brick and punching a human being are two different things: a brick does not give, whereas when being hit, a human being spins, falls, and so forth, thus dissolving the power of the blow. What is the use if one has no technique to bring home his so-called “killing stroke”? On top of that, bricks and stones do not move and fight back. Thus, the system should be the thing considered, and, as mentioned before, a system should not be mechanical, intricate, and fanciful, but simply simple.
What if the “master” does not wish to show you his style? What if he is “too humble” and firmly guards his “deadly” secret? One thing I hope readers should realize regarding Oriental humility and secrecy is that although it is true that highly qualified teachers do not boast and sometimes do not teach gung fu to just anybody, the fact remains that they are only human beings, and certainly they have not spent ten, twenty, or thirty years on an art in order to say nothing about it. Even Lao-tzu, the author of the Tao Teh Ching, and the man who wrote “He who knows does not speak. He who speaks, does not know,” wrote five-thousand words to explain his doctrine.
In order to be able to pass for being more than their ability, the honorable masters, professors, and experts (in America, especially) say little. They certainly have mastered the Oriental highest way of humility and secrecy, for it is definitely easier to look wise than to talk wisely (to act wisely is, of course, even more difficult). The more one wants to pass at a value above his worth, the more he will keep his mouth shut. For once he talks (or moves), people can certainly classify him accordingly.
The unknown is always wonderful and the “fifteenth-degree red belt holders,” the “experts from superadvanced schools,” and the “honorable masters” know how to gather around them a mysterious veil of secrecy. There is a Chinese saying that applies to these people: “Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant.”
Source: An essay from Bruce Lee’s handwritten manuscript for the book The Tao of Gung Fu, originally drafted in 1964 and reprinted in Volume 2 of The Bruce Lee Library Series entitled The Tao of Gung Fu: A Study in the Way of Chinese Martial Art, written by Bruce Lee, edited by John Little, published by the Charles E.Tuttle Publishing Company, Boston, (c) 1997 Linda Lee Cadwell.
1-H
THE UNITY OF GENTLENESS/FIRMNESS
Many times I have heard instructors from different schools claim that their systems of gentleness require absolutely no strength (strength has become an ugly word to them), and that with merely a flick of one’s little finger, one can send his 306½-pound helpless opponent flying through the air.
We must face the fact that strength, though used in a much more refined way, is necessary in combat, and that an average opponent doesn’t charge blindly with his head down (not even a football tackler will do that). Some instructors, on the other hand, claim that with their superpowerful system, one can smash through any defense. Once again we must realize that a person does move and change just as a reed of bamboo moves back and forth in a storm to “dissolve” the strong wind.
So neither gentleness nor firmness holds any more than half of a broken whole, which, fitted together, forms the true Way of gung fu. Gentleness/firmness is one inseparable force of one unceasing interplay of movement.They are conceived of as essentially one, or as two coexistent forces of one indivisible whole.
So neither gentleness nor firmness holds any more than half of a broken whole, which, fitted together, forms the true Way of gung fu. Gentleness/firmness is one inseparable force of one unceasing interplay of movement. They are conceived of as essentially one, or as two coexistent forces of one indivisible whole.
If a person riding a bicycle wishes to go somewhere, he cannot pump on both pedals at the same time or not pump on them at all. In order to go somewhere he has to pump on one pedal and release the other. So the movement of going forward requires this “oneness” of pumping and releasing. Pumping is the result of releasing and vice versa, each being the cause and result of the other. The movement will then truly flow, for the true fluidity of movement is in its interchangeability.
Any practitioner of martial art should consider both the gentleness and the firmness of equal importance, and not as being independent of one another. The rejection of either gentleness or firmness will lead to separation, and separation runs to extremes.
Gentleness and firmness are not isolated but are complementary as well as contrastive, and in their interfusion they make up the “oneness.” Always remember this fact, and if you do not favor so much on the side of either firmness or gentleness, you can then truly appreciate the “good/bad” of them. Gentleness versus firmness is not the situation, but gentleness/firmness as a oneness is the true Way.
Any practitioner of martial art should consider both the gentleness and the firmness of equal importance, and not as being independent of one another. The rejection of either gentleness or firmness will lead to separation, and separation runs to extremes.
Source: Bruce Lee’s handwritten notes entitled “The Tao of ‘Jeet Kune,’The Way of the ‘Stopping Fist,’ Chinese Boxing from the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute,” circa 1967, Bruce Lee Papers.
1-I
MY VIEW ON GUNG FU
Some instructors of martial art favor forms, the more complex and fancy the better. Some, on the other hand, are obsessed with super-mental power (like Captain Marvel or Superman). Still some favor deformed hands and legs and devote their time to fighting bricks, stones, boards, and so forth, and so on.
To me the extraordinary aspect of gung fu lies in its simplicity. Gung fu is simply the “direct expression” of one’s feeling with the minimum of movements and energy. Every movement is being so of itself without the artificialities with which people tend to complicate it. The easy way is always the right way, and gung fu is nothing at all special; the closer to the true Way of gung fu, the less wastage of expression there is.
Instead of facing combat in its suchness, quite a few systems of martial art accumulate a “fancy mess” that distorts and cramps their practitioners and distracts them from the actual reality of combat, which is “simple” and “direct” and “nonclassical.” Instead of going immediately to the heart of things, flowery forms and artificial techniques (organized despair!) are “ritually practiced” to simulate actual combat. Thus instead of “being” in combat, these practitioners are idealistically “doing” something about combat. Worse still, supermental this and spiritual that are ignorantly incorporated until these practitioners are drifting further and further into the distance of abstraction and mystery, until what they do resembles anything from acrobatics to modern dancing, but not the actual reality of combat.
All these complex messes are actually futile attempts to “arrest” and “fix” the ever-changing movements in combat and to dissect and analyze them like a corpse. Real combat is not fixed and is very much “alive.” Such means of practice (a form of paralysis) will only “solidify” and “condition” what was once fluid and alive. When you get off sophistication and whatnot and look at it “realistically,” these robots (practitioners, that is) are blindly devoting themselves to the systematic uselessness of practicing “routines” or “stunts” that lead nowhere.
Gung fu is to be looked through without fancy suits and matching ties, and it will remain a secret when we anxiously look for sophistication and deadly techniques. If there are really any secrets at all, they must have been missed by the seeking and striving of its practitioners (after all, how many ways are there to come in on an opponent without “deviating too much from the natural course”?). True, gung fu values the wonder of the ordinary, and the cultivation of gung fu is not daily increase but daily decrease. Being wise in gung fu does not mean adding more, but to be able to do away with ornamentation and be simply simple—like a sculptor building a statue not by adding, but by hacking away the unessential so that the truth will be revealed unobstructed. In short, gung fu is satisfied with one’s bare hands without the fancy decoration of colorful gloves, which tend to hinder the natural function of the hand.
Art is the expression of the self. The more complicated and restrictive a method is, the less the opportunity there will be for the expression of one’s original sense of freedom! The techniques, though they play an important role in the early stage, should not be too restrictive, complex, or mechanical. If we cling to them we will become bound by their limitations. Remember, you are “expressing” the technique and not “doing” the technique. When someone attacks you it is not technique number one (or is it technique number two, stance two, section four?) that you are doing, but the moment you are “aware” of his attack you simply move in like sound and echo without deliberation. It is as though when I call you, you answer me, or when I throw something to you, you catch it. That’s all.
Source: A typed essay of Bruce Lee’s entitled “My View on Gung Fu” that Bruce Lee handed out to members of the Oakland and Los Angeles chapters of his Jun Fan Gung Fu Institutes, circa 1967.
