“I must relax!” However, right then I had just done something contradictory against my will. Let your mind, the basic reality, do the counter-movement without any interfering deliberation. Forget about yourself and follow the opponent’s movement. 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, relax and calm your mind. My only thought at this point was “somehow or other I must beat him and win!”
Water sifu podcast series#
And after a series of exchanging blows and kicks, all my theory of gentleness was gone. The moment I engaged in combat with an opponent, my mind was completely perturbed and unstable. It sounded simple, but in actual application it was difficult. All these must be done in calmness and without striving. The core of this principle of gung fu is Tao-the spontaneity of the universe.Īfter 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.
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It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from emotions and designer. The principle of gung fu is not a thing that can be learned, like a science, by fact-finding and instruction in facts. It is a subtle art of matching the essence of the mind to that of the techniques in which it has to work.
“Gung Fu is a special kind of skill a fine art rather than just a physical exercise. Bruce’s epiphany on the nature of water shifted his perspective forever on both gung fu and life. During his training his teacher Yip Man continually tried to get Bruce to be more in tune with nature and his opponent instead of being so concentrated on winning. Being a teenager, Bruce was filled a fiery dragon energy, and was set on beating his opponents.
When Bruce was 18, he had been studying wing chun gung fu with his sifu Yip Man for about four years. When Bruce first had his epiphany on water he was 18 and this essay is him reflecting back on that time. “Be water, my friend.” This is one of Bruce Lee’s most famous quotes, but how did the idea first come to Bruce? In this episode we share and discuss an essay that Bruce wrote around his epiphany on the nature of water.
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