{"id":1319,"date":"2015-09-04T17:12:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-04T17:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.english-culture.com\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2018-04-25T16:34:19","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T16:34:19","slug":"bruce-lee-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.english-culture.com\/bruce-lee-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Lee reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bruce<\/a>
Bruce Lee reflections, thoughts and wise words<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Three Stages of Cultivation \u2014 The first is the primitive stage. It is a stage of original ignorance in which a person knows nothing about the art of combat. In a fight, he simply blocks and strikes instinctively without a concern for what is right and wrong. Of course, he may not be so-called scientific, but, nevertheless, being himself, his attacks or defenses are fluid. The second stage \u2014 the stage of sophistication, or mechanical stage \u2014 begins when a person starts his training. He is taught the different ways of blocking, striking, kicking, standing, breathing, and thinking \u2014 unquestionably, he has gained the 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 calculations and analysis, and even worse, he might be called \u201cintellectually bound\u201d and maintain himself outside of the actual reality. The third stage \u2014 the stage of artlessness, or spontaneous stage \u2014 occurs when, after years of serious and hard practice, the student realizes that after all, gung fu is nothing special. And instead of trying to impose on his mind, he adjusts himself to his opponent like water pressing on an earthen wall. It flows through the slightest crack. There is nothing to try to do but try to be purposeless and formless, like water. All of his classical techniques and standard styles are minimized, if not wiped out, and nothingness prevails. He is no longer confined.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

Liberate yourself from concepts and see the truth with your own eyes. \u2014 It exists HERE and NOW; it requires only one thing to see it: openness, freedom \u2014 the freedom to be open and not tethered by any ideas, concepts, etc. … When our mind is tranquil, there will be an occasional pause to its feverish activities, there will be a let-go, and it is only then in the interval between two thoughts that a flash of UNDERSTANDING \u2014 understanding, which is not thought \u2014 can take place.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love.<\/span>
\nThe happiness that is derived from excitement is like a brilliant fire \u2014 soon it will go out.<\/span>
\nThere is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That\u2019s the end. That\u2019s when the coffin is closed. I believe in sleeping.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996)<\/span><\/p>\n

The happiness that is derived from excitement is like a brilliant fire \u2014 soon it will go out. Before we married, we never had the chance to go out to nightclubs. We only spent our nights watching TV and chatting. Many young couples live a very exciting life when they are in love. So, when they marry, and their lives are reduced to calmness and dullness, they will feel impatient and will drink the bitter cup of a sad marriage.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course you\u2019re there. Death is always there. So why was I afraid? Your leap is swift. Your claws are sharp and merciful. What can you take from me which is not already yours? . . . Everything I have done until now has been fruitless. It has led to nothing. There was no other path except that it led to nothing \u2014 and before me now there is only one real fact \u2014 Death. The truth I have been seeking \u2014 this truth is Death. Yet Death is also a seeker. Forever seeking me. So \u2014 we have met at last. And I am prepared. I am at peace. Because I will conquer death with death.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

I have come to discover through earnest personal experience and dedicated learning that ultimately the greatest help is self-help; that there is no other help but self-help\u2014 doing one\u2019s best, dedicating one\u2019s self wholeheartedly to a given task, which happens to have no end but is an ongoing process. I have done a lot during these years of my process. A swell in my process, I have changed from self-image actualization to self-actualization, from blindly following propaganda, organized truths, etc. to searching internally for the cause of my ignorance.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed.<\/span>
\nIf nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.<\/span>
\nWe have finally come back to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who said everything is flow, flux, process. There are no “things.”<\/span>
\nWhat IS is more important than WHAT SHOULD BE.<\/span>
\nTaoist philosophy … is essentially monistic. … Matter and energy, Yang and Yin, heaven and earth, are conceived of as essentially one or as two coexistent poles of one indivisible whole.<\/span>
\nThe all illuminating light shines and is beyond the movement of the opposites.<\/span>
\nTrue thusness is the substance of thought, and thought is the function of true thusness. There is no thought except that of true thusness. Thusness does not move, but its motion and function are inexhaustible.<\/span>
\nKnowledge will give you power, but character respect.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality \u2014 to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

In Science we have finally come back to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who said everything is flow, flux, process. There are no “things.” NOTHINGNESS in Eastern language is “no-thingness.” We in the West think of nothingness as a void, an emptiness, an nonexistence. In Eastern philosophy and modern physical science, nothingness \u2014 no-thingness \u2014 is a form of process, ever moving.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

If thought exists, I who think and the world about which I think also exist; the one exists but for the other, having no possible separation between them. Therefore, the world and I are both in active correlation; I am that which sees the world, and the world is that which is seen by me. I exist for the world and the world exists for me. … One sure and primary and fundamental fact is the joint existence of a subject and of its world. The one does not exist without the other. I acquire no understanding of myself except as I take account of objects, of the surroundings. I do not think unless I think of things \u2014 and there I find myself.<\/span>
\nBruce Lee<\/span><\/p>\n

Bruce Lee quotes<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Quotes by authors<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Quotes by arguments<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Three Stages of Cultivation \u2014 The first is the primitive stage. It is a stage of original ignorance in which a person knows nothing about the art of combat. In a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[161,202,33,230,180,182,240,187,143,146,11,190,16,194,217,171,90],"tags":[1425,410,1426,1427,203,1428,1429,1430,183,1431,165,87,1432,1433,17,1434,1410,983,1206,177,1435,1436],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aphorisms","category-creativity","category-education","category-freedom","category-friendship","category-happiness","category-health","category-ideas","category-language","category-life","category-literature","category-love","category-philosophy","category-power","category-psychology","category-quotes","category-spirituality","tag-bruce-lee","tag-chinese","tag-concepts","tag-cultivation","tag-death-2","tag-earth","tag-energy","tag-happiness","tag-heaven","tag-ideology","tag-life-2","tag-love","tag-matter","tag-mind","tag-philosophy-2","tag-practice","tag-reflections","tag-thoughts","tag-time","tag-world-2","tag-yang","tag-yin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t