Читать книгу Jeet Kune Do - Teri Tom - Страница 9

Before we get into the nitty gritty of technical explanations, a few points require clarification. As I discussed in my last book, over the last 30 years, there has been rampant misrepresentation of Bruce Lee's art. A lot of the philosophical notes published in the Tao have been taken out of context and twisted to serve a purpose for which they were never meant. Phrases like "using no way as way,"¹ "circle with no circumference,"^{2, 3} "the best form is no form",⁴ and "learning gained is learning lost"^{5, 6} have been used as justification for haphazardly throwing any technique from any other art and mislabeling it as JKD.

What these pseudo JKD instructors aren't telling you is that these philosophical statements have their origins in Zen Buddhism,⁷ and placed in that context, they take on an entirely different meaning. One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that the physical cannot be separated from the spiritual. It's fine to spew philosophy but if you do not have a physical, tangible vehicle through which to test and express it, it is utterly meaningless. Zen is both principle and physical experience. You cannot divorce one from the other. D.T. Suzuki explains this beautifully in Zen and Japanese Culture:

"But we must know that it is not enough just to see what the Mind is, we must put into practice all that makes it up in our daily life. We may talk about it glibly, we may write books to explain it, but that is far from enough. However much we may talk about water and describe it quite intelligently, that does not make it real water. So with fire. Mere talking of it will not make the mouth burn. To know what they are means to experience them in actual concreteness. A book on cooking will not cure hunger. To feel satisfied we must have actual food. So long as we do not go beyond mere talking, we are not true knowers."⁸

The problem with our charlatan JKD "masters" is that they never really bothered to learn the physical aspects of JKD. This demonstrates not only a blatant lack of respect for Bruce Lee but a complete misunderstanding of the message he was trying to convey. Levels of transcendence cannot be reached unless you have something to transcend. This is the vehicle by which you practice Zen—be it swordsmanship, tea ceremony, or JKD. But you first must learn the rules before you can transcend them. This is the trouble with saying that JKD is anything you want it to be. If this were the case, then there is no discipline to learn! And with no discipline, there is no way to practice Zen or to understand the philosophical underpinnings of JKD.

There are those who argue that there is no structure to JKD. But once again, this is Bruce Lee taken out of context. Lee himself wrote:

"People often mistakenly [believe] that JKD is against form. I don't think I'll go into detail on that, as other paragraphs will clarify that. One thing we must understand: that is, there is always a most efficient and alive manner to carry out a movement (and that the basic laws of leverage, body position, balance, footwork, and so forth, are not to be violated). However, alive, efficient form is one thing; sterile classical sets that bind and condition are another. Aside from the above mentioned, one must also distinguish the subtlety between 'having no form' and having 'no-form.' The first is ignorance, the second transcendence."⁹

You cannot move from ignorance to transcendence without first learning the "basic laws," and yet, this is exactly what so many would-be JKD masters are preaching. Now it could be argued that counterfeit JKD is its own discipline because techniques are taught. But it is not JKD. And it most certainly has nothing to do with Bruce Lee. There's no crime in investigating other arts or techniques. And it is certainly admirable to spend time and energy in the pursuit of excellence in any endeavor.

But I've said this before, and I will continue to say it until my dying day—you cannot throw in techniques from any art you please and call it JKD. Nor can you take an art like wing chun and mislabel it as JKD. To do so is disrespectful to both Bruce Lee and to wing chun masters, or to any other art from which techniques are pilfered and then mislabeled. It also contributes to the destruction of one man's entire life's work. There are indeed basic physical techniques and laws that comprise the art that Bruce Lee spent his lifetime developing.

The technical evidence for what JKD really is, is outlined in The Straight Lead, where it is apparent through Bruce Lee's own writings that JKD's origins are in Western boxing and fencing and that Lee was, in fact, looking to develop an art that was a complete departure from wing chun.

You will notice that there are no grappling techniques in this book. There is a reason for this. As Ted Wong knows firsthand, it was not something that Lee emphasized in his own training. With the exception of a few wrestling diagrams and references to joint locks, which have been published, there are hardly any notes on the subject in Lee's personal writings. This is not to say that grappling is not something Lee would have further explored. The sad truth is that he died before we had a full picture of the art.

I feel that close range skills are essential, but I will not be writing about them under the banner of "JKD." It is not for us to assume what would have been. We cannot guess at what direction Lee would have gone and presume to label it as JKD. We must trace everything back to the evidence that was left behind—his writings. Again, there is nothing wrong with exploring other techniques, but do not cite elements that you cannot trace to Bruce Lee and mislabel them as JKD.

The "conceptualization" of JKD really runs counter to everything that Bruce Lee was about. What is so offensive about this blatant misrepresentation is that it flies in the face of Bruce Lee's own writings which tell us to "daily minimize instead of daily decrease,"¹⁰ and to "simply simplify,"¹¹ In reality, JKD consists of about 5 punches, 3 kicks, and a few ground techniques. The reason for this is incredibly simple. When the pressure's on, you cannot be rifling through a large library of techniques. You need enough techniques to cover all your situations, and then that's it. Everything must be simplified so that in the moment, you do not think. This is the essence of Zen—mushin ("no mind").

Unfortunately, many JKD "instructors" have sold Bruce out in the name of profit. To keep their schools running, they teach technique after technique after technique. Even as early as the 1600's, legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi knew the folly of this approach when he wrote the following:

"Teaching people a large number of sword techniques is turning the way into a business of selling goods, making beginners believe that there is something profound in their training by impressing them with a variety of techniques. This attitude toward strategy must be avoided, because thinking that there is a variety of ways of cutting a man down is evidence of a disturbed mind. In the world, different ways of cutting a man down do not exist. Whether you are an accomplished adept or a non-initiate, a woman or a child, the ways (michi) of striking, slapping, and cutting down are not all that numerous. Apart from these movements, there are only those of stabbing and slashing broadly on the horizontal. Because what is primarily at issue is the way (mishi) of cutting someone down, there cannot be many differences."¹²

There may be few ways of cutting a man down, but to perfect those ways, to know how and when to use them, requires an understanding that would allow students to find answers for themselves. Many instructors have not taken the time and effort to develop such an understanding and so are unable to pass this on to their students, and so they keep their students in the dark—and paying the bills—by not giving them the tools that would make them self-sufficient. So the tradition of mediocrity masquerading as mastery continues into the 21st century.

The reason I've gone into this rather lengthy explanation of Zen is that we are about to embark on a journey through the JKD arsenal. You will notice there are only a few techniques, as promised. But we are going to go into each in great detail, explaining the whys, hows, and whens of each. For those who do not understand the Way, this will seem unnecessarily thorough. They will argue that you can go straight from ignorance to transcendence. They are missing a very important step, the most important step—learning. Again, you must learn the rules before you can transcend them.

When Bruce Lee said to discard technique once you've learned it, he didn't mean that you could just forget about it or that you'd never use it again. Nor did he mean that being an artist meant being undisciplined in jumping from technique to technique—or worse, from art to art.

No, in line with Zen philosophy, "discarding" technique would mean that once you've mastered the technical skills, you no longer have to think about them. It is there when you need it. Your body simply reacts. Your mind and body are one, and conscious thought no longer interferes with physical execution. Hence the line from Enter the Dragon: "I do not hit. It hits all by itself."

Among Bruce Lee's personal papers, there is a note indicating that Lee intended to write three volumes, each based on a different stage of learning. The note was written in 1970 and read, "Have three volumes, each one corresponding to the three stages, leading to the highest." These "three stages of cultivation" were called "The Stage of Innocence," "The Stage of Art," and "The Stage of Artlessness"¹³ The first level, of course, is that of the absolute beginner. Learning is devoid of all self-consciousness and driven by instinct. During the Stage of Art, the student is in the process of technical, physical training. He is learning the nuts and bolts of the art. Because he is consciously programming his body at this stage, his conscious mind will sometimes be at war with his body and hinder performance. As he begins to master the technical aspects of the art, though, he enters the Stage of Artlessness. This is referred to in both Zen literature and Lee's writings as "Prajna Immovable."^{14, 15} This is where the natural "no-mindedness" of the master's state is reunited with that of the beginner's. The circle is now complete.

Each of Lee's stages corresponds to the same stages of learning referred to throughout Zen literature. Takuan Soho, as translated by D.T. Suzuki, combined the stages of Innocence and Art into a single category, the stage of Ignorance and Affects. Again, this encompasses the beginning levels through the development of technical knowledge and skill. And the Stage of Artlessness is Prajna Immovable.¹⁶

The problem with JKD is that everyone talks about Prajna Immovable. Everyone wants to get there. But very few "JKD instructors" are willing to put in the hard work required to understand the Stage of Art before they can get to Artlessness. They're missing the nuts and bolts, the very vehicle that is necessary to understand the philosophy of Zen or JKD.

For all the emphasis on mushin, even Takuan Soho reminded us that you cannot achieve it without technical training:

"But training in detailed technique is also not to be neglected. The understanding of principle alone cannot lead one to the mastery of movements of the body and its limbs. By practical details I mean as such as what you call the five ways of posing the body, designated each by one character. The principle of spirituality is to be grasped—this goes without saying—but at the same time one must be trained in the technique of swordplay. But training is never to be one-sided. Ri (li) and ji (shih) are like two wheels of a cart."¹⁷

So it is at the stages of Innocence and Art that this book comes in. These are the nuts and bolts of JKD. Again, there aren't a lot of techniques—there aren't supposed to be—but we've gone into quite a bit of detail on the mechanics. Obviously, you are not going to be thinking about mechanics in the heat of battle. But knowing why and how to perform a technique a certain way will give you a technical advantage. As you progress through the Stage of Art, knowing how something works and putting that knowledge into practice will make you faster, more powerful, and better at reacting with the appropriate response. It places you closer to the stage of Artlessness.

Bruce Lee wrote that "The highest art is no art. The best form is no form."¹⁸ You can see how, if taken out of context, yes, it sounds like he is arguing against the rules of technique. But we know from the passage we quoted earlier that JKD is not against form—that Bruce Lee believed there are, in fact, "basic laws of leverage, body position, balance, footwork" that are "not to be violated."¹⁹ These are the laws presented in this volume.

And now that we've outlined some of the basic principles of Zen philosophy, we can see that the statement "the highest art is no art" comes from the stage of Artlessness. That the "circle with no circumference" isn't just an amorphous nothing existing in a void. No, you must complete the circle, starting from the stage of Innocence and ending at the stage of Artlessness. But first you have to travel through the stage of Art. You cannot just proceed from the stage of Innocence straight to the stage of Artlessness.

There are those who will argue that it is futile to invest so much time perfecting so few techniques in such detail. But this, again, runs in direct opposition to what Zen and JKD stand for. To be truly proficient with any skill requires willingness to simplify to a degree that the majority of modern society, with its fascination with novelty, might find pathological. You must refine, refine, refine until you think you think you can do no more—and then refine some more. If you know all of your techniques in such depth, there is no need to look for new ones. With a few tools at your disposal, you must find the answers yourself. You certainly won't find them by jumping from art to art or from teacher to teacher. On this kind of simplicity, Bruce quoted the following from Roger Crosnier:²⁰

"Simplicity is the height of cultivation and partial cultivation runs to ornamentation. Thus, the closer to the true Way of gung fu, the less wastage of movement. Being good in gung fu does not mean adding more but to be able to get off with 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 unobstructed— artlessness."²¹

In Zen and Japanese Culture, Suzuki quotes Georges Duthuit, who describes how one comes to know Prajna Immovable through the perfection of a single, simple act, the painting of bamboos:

"Draw bamboos for ten years, become a bamboo, then forget all about bamboos when you are drawing. In possession of an infallible technique, the individual places himself at the mercy of inspiration."²²

And so with this volume, I've given you the tools to develop an infallible technique, as they were developed and practiced by Bruce Lee—and later handed on to me from Sifu Ted Wong. To emphasize the research, methodology, thought, and care that went into Lee's development of his art, I've also outlined the scientific, bio-mechanical reasons for why these techniques work. I've done so in the hope that you will be able to someday place yourself at the mercy of inspiration.