The Message of Bruce Lee: 11 Masters Reveal the Most Important Lessons of the "Little Dragon"
Bruce Lee used to begin his jeet kune do classes with a short story to encourage his students to open their mind:“A learned man once went to a Zen teacher to inquire about Zen. As the teacher explained, the learned man would frequently interrupt him with remarks like, ‘Oh yes, we have that too,’ and so on.
Finally the Zen teacher stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man. He poured the cup full, then kept pouring until the cup overflowed.
‘Enough!’ the learned man once more interrupted. ‘No more can go into the cup!’
‘Indeed, I see,’ answered the Zen teacher. ‘If you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?’”
Lee believed that a martial artist could not learn anything new if he was already full of traditional and classical teachings. Claiming that the usefulness of the cup is in its emptiness, he encouraged his students to spill their cup so it could be refilled with his new and liberating approach to the martial arts.
Because of the enigmatic nature of Lee’s teachings and the ever-changing way he viewed combat, however, practically everyone in the modern jeet kune do (JKD) community has a different bit of Bruce in his cup. Black Belt decided to look up 11 of the most prominent first-generation Bruce Lee students and second- and third-generation JKD instructors to ask what they think the “Little Dragon” was really trying to say.
Finally the Zen teacher stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man. He poured the cup full, then kept pouring until the cup overflowed.
‘Enough!’ the learned man once more interrupted. ‘No more can go into the cup!’
‘Indeed, I see,’ answered the Zen teacher. ‘If you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?’”
Lee believed that a martial artist could not learn anything new if he was already full of traditional and classical teachings. Claiming that the usefulness of the cup is in its emptiness, he encouraged his students to spill their cup so it could be refilled with his new and liberating approach to the martial arts.
Because of the enigmatic nature of Lee’s teachings and the ever-changing way he viewed combat, however, practically everyone in the modern jeet kune do (JKD) community has a different bit of Bruce in his cup. Black Belt decided to look up 11 of the most prominent first-generation Bruce Lee students and second- and third-generation JKD instructors to ask what they think the “Little Dragon” was really trying to say.
Richard Bustillo“What originated as one man’s intuition of some sort of personal fluidity has been transformed into solidified, fixed knowledge, complete with organized, classified responses presented in a logical order. This knowledge is a holy shrine, but also a tomb in which they have buried the founder’s wisdom.”
—Bruce Lee
At age 24, Richard Bustillo began studying JKD under Lee at the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute in Los Angeles’ Chinatown area. Lee continuously emphasized the limitations of following a single established style, Bustillo says. Not only are those styles confining, or tomb-like, but they “keep men apart from each other, rather than unite them,” Lee would often preach.
Bustillo says Lee disliked labeling any kind of fighting as a specific style. Instead, when a person trains to fight, he should prepare himself to handle any kind of opponent, no matter what his style may be.
“From Bruce’s beliefs regarding established styles, I learned to train with an open mind,” Bustillo says. “Essentially, he allowed me to be free from being closed into one particular style.”
Lee used to tell his students that if they wanted to be able to defend themselves, they must examine other arts, Bustillo says. He remembers how the students in Lee’s academy would test their skills in the sparring ring. It was anything-goes: Techniques from boxing and muay Thai, as well as ground grappling, wrestling and long-range weapons, were allowed. By honing their skills in each art, the students learned how to effectively apply defensive techniques in real-life fighting scenarios, Bustillo says.
Gary Dill“I don’t know what you will do, but do it quick."
—Bruce Lee
Gary Dill is a second-generation student who trained under James Yimm Lee at the Oakland Jeet Kune Do School. He has taught JKD for more than 27 years and now serves as the chief instructor of the Jeet Kune Do Association.
Lee’s speed and power seldom go unmentioned, Dill says, and for good reason: The importance of those two attributes was ingrained in Dill’s head from day one. And fortunately for martial artists with less than Lee’s natural ability, both are learned skills.
Because Lee’s JKD was developed for street combat, speed always received the lion’s share of emphasis in the classes Dill attended. “A marital artist can be an excellent technician and can have perfect form, but if he cannot get a strike to hit its target, what good is he?” Dill asks.
Lee taught that knowing proper technique was not enough to become a successful marital artist, Dill says. Everyone should have the ability to expediently deliver strikes; and to develop that ability, the body must learn to relax.
Relaxation is essential for faster and more powerful punching, Lee wrote, and Dill agrees. That’s why he teaches his students to concentrate on keeping their upper-body muscles relaxed while executing techniques. If the chest and arm muscles remain loose when a punch is thrown, Dill says, the student is better able to focus on the impact. Tightening the muscles while punching is counter-productive because the muscles that would retract the arm must fight against the muscles that are extending it, Dill explains.
Ted Wong
“Leading with the forward hand, guarding with the rear hand, while moving to the side, makes negligible any opening that ordinarily results from a straight forward lead with the hand.”
—Bruce Lee
(Tao of Jeet Kune Do, Ohara Publications)
Ted Wong met Lee in 1967, when the JKD founder was opening his school in Los Angeles. Wong was impressed with Lee’s demonstration of JKD and grateful for the opportunity to enroll in his first class.
Wong says the most important fighting technique he learned is the leading straight punch. “It is absolutely crucial to jeet kune do because it is fast, easy to deliver and extremely accurate,” he says.
“Bruce would say that the leading straight punch is the backbone of all punching in jeet kune do,” Wong says. Although it is not the end-all of combat, the technique is essential to developing effective skills in any type of fighting, he says. And because the fist follows a straight path to its target, it stands a better chance of avoiding detection than do many other hand techniques.
Jerry Beasley“At best, styles are merely parts dissected from a unitary whole.”
—Bruce Lee
Jerry Beasley, Ed.D., began practicing the marital arts in 1966. Like Lee, he studied philosophy as well as fighting strategies and techniques. In 1982, Beasley started training with a former student of Lee’s, ex-full-contact karate champ and Black Belt Hall of Fame member Joe Lewis.
Beasley, who teaches a JKD course at Radford University in Radford, Virginia, claims Lewis did not emphasize any specific technique that he had learned from Lee; instead, Lewis focused on the importance of being free to choose whichever style works best for the student. Lewis encouraged Beasley to experiment with various styles to discover the most effective techniques of each one.
Beasley learned to think like a fighter, rather than think in one particular style. “I have learned to constantly change my strategy,” he says. “It evolves as I spar. I have learned to win by acquiring a superior mentality.”
Lee insisted that the opponent’s knowledge was also the martial artist’s knowledge, Beasley claims. On numerous occasions Beasley has applied this element in sparring sessions. “I was able to absorb my opponent’s energy to the extent that whatever he knew, I also knew,” he says. “You need to become your opponent. That is how you can best absorb the opponent’s energy, expression and tension.”
Herb Jackson“Please do not take the finger to be the moon or fix your gaze so intently on the finger as to miss all the beautiful sights of heaven. After all, the usefulness of the finger is in pointing away from itself to the light which illumines finger and all.”
—Bruce Lee
“Bruce Lee always sought excellence in whatever he was trying to accomplish,” says Herb Jackson, who met the master in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in December 1967 and became a student and close friend.
“For the last five years of Bruce’s life, he was not absorbed in individual techniques or in forming a set pattern of reactions to a situation,” Jackson says. That’s why he says the most important lesson Lee taught was to utilize the mind and body in an efficient manner.
Jackson learned that if a martial artist purposefully thinks about his kicks and punches, he controls his body’s actions and limits his self-expression. In essence, he restricts his own freedom.
Instead of restricting their freedom, Lee encouraged his students to condition their muscle pathways to ensure they could operate properly and apply energy efficiently during each phase of progressive expression and aggressive acceleration, Jackson says. In that way, they used exercise, training, visualization and intellectual and emotional input to achieve a sophisticated level of expression.
“That is quite an accomplishment,” he concludes. “It is a great feeling—almost an out-of-body experience because you are able to observe your own body in action.”
Christophe Clugston“In the eyes of combat there is no set course but the totality of action, and in this totality of action there is nothing to choose and nothing better or worse.”
—Bruce Lee
Third-generation JKD practitioner Christophe Clugston studied under Mike Sanmin and Carl James. The most important thing Clugston learned from them was the concept of totality. In other words, it is useless to analyze specific techniques because no single technique guarantees victory in a fight.
It is far superior to view a battle in its entirety, Clugston says. “The beauty of Lee’s teachings will not be unraveled until students stop looking at each technique as a part.”
Lee wrote: “To try to define JKD in terms of a distinct style—be it kung fu, karate, street fighting, Bruce Lee’s martial art, etc.—is to completely miss its meaning. Its teaching simply cannot be confined within a system. Since JKD is at once ‘this’ and ‘not this,’ it neither opposes nor adheres to any style. To understand this fully, one must transcend from the duality of ‘for’ and ‘against’ into one organic unity, which is without distinctions. Understanding JKD is direct intuition of this unity.” (Black Belt, September 1971)
From those words, Clugston has learned to see a fight as a whole, rather than as a sequence of individual techniques. “Looking at each part encourages too much analysis of what you are doing, instead of just flowing with whatever technique comes naturally,” he says.
Larry Hartsell“Style screws a guy up because he thinks he has to throw his punches and kicks at an exact path and rhythm. There’s no tested or practical theory behind the delivery. Just because someone centuries ago said that this is how it should be done, it may not necessarily be the best way. A style should never be gospel truth, the laws and principles of which can never be violated.”
—Bruce Lee
(Bruce Lee: The Incomparable Fighter, Ohara Publications)
Larry Hartsell trained with Lee from 1967 to 1970. “I learned that a person should not be bound by one martial art,” Hartsell says. “Instead, an individual needs to find his own truth as a martial artist.”
To help his students discover their own truth and develop their ability to implement it, Lee constantly changed his martial arts curriculum, Hartsell says. “He was always adding and deleting methods of cross-training.”
Hartsell learned that the key to freeing himself from a specific style was to build his speed and strength through plyometrics and fitness exercises. Speed and strength enable a martial artist to fight effectively against any opponent in any situation, he says.
Lamar Davis“The leading finger jab is the longest of all hand weapons as well as the fastest because of the little force needed. You do not need power to jab at an opponent’s eyes. Rather, the ability to seize an opportunity with accuracy and speed is the main thing in the efficient use of the finger jab. Like a cobra, your finger jab should be felt and not seen.”
—Bruce Lee
(Tao of Jeet Kune Do)
Lamar Davis is a second-generation JKD practitioner who trained under Steve Golden and Jerry Poteet from the Los Angeles Chinatown period, Leo Fong from the Oakland period and Patrick Strong and Joseph Cowles from the Seattle period. A 41-year veteran of the martial arts, Davis says the mandate to use the longest weapon to reach the opponent's nearest target is among the most important lessons of Lee.
That’s why Davis identifies the finger jab as the best JKD self-defense technique for the street. It puts the assailant at your mercy by completely disorienting him, he says.
The idea behind the finger jab is not to shove the attacker’s eye back into its socket, Davis insists, but to quickly tap it, which causes his eyes to water and his vision to blur.
Daniel Lee
“Look at any tool as an art. Remember, for a single tool to be a masterpiece, it must have totality, accuracy, speed and power. Until you have the ability to move your body and adapt to whatever the object happens to be in front of you as well as punch and kick from any angle, you still haven’t gotten your total efficiency.”
—Bruce Lee
(private conversation with Daniel Lee)
It has been 33 years since Daniel Lee trained with Bruce at the Chinatown school. “Studying with Bruce Lee was a life-changing experience,” Daniel Lee recalls. He says Bruce freed him from blindly following fixed fighting routines and from believing that traditional styles would actually protect him in a real combat situation.
Instead of letting his student continue along his traditional path, Bruce urged Daniel Lee to concentrate on boosting the quality of his punches and kicks—and his ability to combine them.
Taky Kimura
“The core of understanding lies in the individual mind, and until that is touched everything is uncertain and superficial. Truth cannot be perceived until we come to fully understand our potential and ourselves. After all, knowledge in the martial arts ultimately means self-knowledge.”
—Bruce Lee
Although Taky Kimura learned numerous physical techniques from Lee, he prefers to talk about the philosophical concepts Lee imparted. “I was introduced to Bruce at a very low point in my own life, and he was the person that was best able to help me,” Kimura says.
Lee taught Kimura to understand who he was as a human being. “Bruce encouraged me to conquer the insecurity within myself and to realize that I am a person, [that] I am no better or worse than anyone else” he says. “Having gone through other trials and tribulations, Lee was able to rekindle the fires in my belly, so to speak. I was finally able to realize that I needed to speak for myself.”
Lee taught Kimura that knowing himself and being comfortable with his self-image were essential to discovering the truth of the martial arts and the truth of life. “When you get up in the morning and you are shaving or brushing your teeth, that is where the truth emits itself,” Kimura says. “You have to be honest with yourself.”
Joe Lewis“The most pitiful sight is to see sincere students earnestly repeating those imitative drills, listening to their own screams and spiritual yells…. These poor souls have unwittingly become trapped in the miasma of classical martial arts training.”
—Bruce Lee
Former heavyweight champion Joe Lewis is one of the few martial artists to have exchanged punches with Lee. Nevertheless, Lewis chooses to focus on the visions Lee was able to create within all his students.
“Bruce Lee was very keen about integrating a sense of philosophy into training,” Lewis says. “This, coupled with his ability to provide students with a philosophy about life, created a sense of spirituality. I find that aspect lacking in other systems.”
Lewis says training with Lee was a unique experience because Lee helped him unleash the abilities that lay within. “He allowed me to gain an inner awareness and to be able to completely express my innermost feelings,” Lewis says. He also taught Lewis how to conceptualize his fighting tactics so he could meet the challenge defeating superior opponents.
“Without such a philosophy, there is no way you can control your execution of martial arts techniques,” Lewis adds. “Bruce Lee had a unique way of expressing that while being entertaining at the same time. There are instructors who are brilliant at times, and there are instructors who are on the cutting edge, but Bruce Lee had all that and more. His uniqueness was a rare gift in the martial arts.”
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