Jeet kune do—not a mass art
Of my art—gung fu and jeet kune do—only one of 10,000 can handle it. It is martial art. Complete offensive attacks. It is silly to think almost anyone can learn it. It isn’t really contemporary forms of the art I teach. Mainly that which I work with—martial attack. It is really a smooth rhythmic expression of smashing the guy before he hits you, with any method available.
On closing my schools
I was teaching martial art in the United States. I had three schools; one in Oakland, one in Seattle, and one in Los Angeles. And then later on I just closed them, you know, and just taught private lessons. I do not believe in “schools.”
I’ve disbanded all the schools of jeet kune do because it is very easy for a member to come in and take the agenda as “the truth” and the schedule as “the Way.”
The problem of styles
I do not teach because I do not believe in styles anymore. I mean I do not believe that there is such a thing as, like, “the Chinese way” of fighting or the “Japanese way” of fighting . . . or whatever “way” of fighting, because unless a human being has three arms and four legs, there can be no different form of fighting. But, basically, we only have two hands and two feet. So styles tend to separate man—because they have their own doctrines and the doctrine became the Gospel Truth that you cannot change! But, if you do not have styles, if you just say “here I am as a human being. How can I express myself totally and completely?”—now that way, you won’t create a style because style is a crystallization. That way (the opposite of style) is a process of continuing growth.
I mean “styles” kind of restrict you to one way of doing it and therefore limit your human capacity, you know?
A path and a gateway have no meaning or no use once the objective is in sight.
Let me give you a good example of why I don’t like cults or sects in the martial arts. Let’s take stances. Okay, now look at the way a crane just stands there on one leg. So suppose you have something like that invented by a cripple? In five thousand years everybody is a cripple.
Ah Sahm: Why do you do that?
Cord: Do what?
Ah Sahm: Chew twenty-one times on the left side of your jaw, twenty-one times on the right, before you swallow.
Cord: I was taught that in the monastery.
Ah Sahm: Does it serve a purpose?
Cord: It exercises the jaw. It prepares the stomach to receive the food. It extracts the essence of each mouthful.
Ah Sahm: Yet a hungry man, disciplining himself in this manner, might starve to death while still counting.
On why man is always more important than any established style
Man is always in a learning process. Whereas “style” is a concluding, established, solidified something, you know? You cannot do that because you learn every day as you grow on, grow older.
The way of “no way”
When there is a Way, therein lies the limitation. And when there is a circumference, it traps and if it traps, it rottens; and if it rottens it is lifeless.
Man is constantly growing. And when he is bound by a set pattern of ideas or Way of doing things, that’s when he stops growing.
The highest art is no art. The best form is no form.
In martial art cultivation there must be a sense of freedom. A conditioned mind is never a free mind.
Conditioning is to limit a person within the framework of a particular system.
To be bound by traditional martial art style or styles is the way of the mindless, enslaved martial artist, but to be inspired by the traditional martial art and to achieve further heights is the way of genius.
I’m telling you it’s difficult to have a rehearsed routine to fit in with broken rhythm!
Rehearsed routines lack the flexibility to adapt.
Jeet kune do is not a method of concentration or meditation. It is being. It is an experience, a Way that is not a Way.
Pure being
Jeet kune do is the awareness of pure being (beyond subject and object) , an immediate grasp of being in its “thusness” and “suchness” (not particularized reality).
Mind is an ultimate reality which is aware of itself and is not the seat of our empirical consciousness—by “being” mind instead of “having” mind (“no mind and no-mind”; “no form and no-form”).
Converge with all that is.
Do not seek it, for it will come when least expected.
Random thoughts on JKD
My JKD is something else . . . more and more I pity the martial artists that are blinded by their partiality and ignorance.
On what it all amounts to
Unless there is another group of beings on earth that are structurally different from us, there can be no different style of fighting. Why is that? Because we have two hands and two legs. The important thing is, how can we use them to their maximum [potential? This leads us to study our selves] in terms of [the potential] paths [our weapons can travel. And once we’ve analyzed that we discover that] they can be used in straight lines, curved line, up, round lines. The [round line, for example] might be slow hut, depending on the circumstances, sometimes that might not be slow. And in terms of legs, you can kick up, straight—same thing, right? [You’re studying yourself] physically, then, [which leads] you to ask yourself: how can I [learn to make my weapons become maximally efficient in a] very well coordinated manner? Well, that means you have to [train like] an athlete—using jogging and all those basic ingredients. And after all that, you [must] ask yourself, how can I honestly express myself at this moment? And being yourself, when you punch you really want to punch—not trying to punch [out of fear of being struck] or to avoid getting hit, but to really be in with it and express yourself. Now this to me is the most important thing. That is, how in the process of learning how to use my body can I come to understand myself ?
The trouble is that circumstances must dictate what you do. But too many people are looking at “what is” from a position of thinking “what should be.”
The “space” created between “what is” and “what should be.” Total awareness of the now and not the disciplined stillness.
More and more I believe in [the fact that] you have two hands and two legs, and the thing is how to make good use of yourself—and that’s about it.
PRINCIPLES
