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Shadow Tiger
11-08-2000, 09:07 PM
Am I the only one who seem to think this? Serious I'm glad there is a Jeet Kune Do Forum but does anyone know/remember Bruce Lees statement that "should Jeet Kune Do be compared to this or to that it should be forgotten."

apoweyn
01-02-2001, 11:14 PM
Shadow Tiger,

You make an important point. But remember that Bruce Lee said and did a lot of things, some of them contradictory. And the fact remains that he himself discussed JKD. He spoke about it, wrote about, filmed it, and discussed it with a great many recognized martial artists.

I agree that Bruce Lee would not support all the fussing that goes on regarding JKD. But I also believe that he'd regard the opportunity to discuss martial arts as a good thing.

Besides, Bruce Lee coined the term. But the notion that he wouldn't have liked this forum is no reason to say it shouldn't exist. Maybe that would have been his opinion. Maybe not. But at the end of the day, it's just that. An opinion. If he wanted to maintain absolute control over whether or not JKD was discussed, he would have kept it to himself. That's the only way to ensure such a thing.

Scott
01-05-2001, 07:34 AM
Hey Apo, I like your outlook on things =) I am a Wing Chun practicioner, and while I don't have anything against JKD in particular, I can't stand when JKD people worship Bruce like a god and hide behind his words and explanations and not their own (turning JKD into a traditional system, I might add.)
Its very refreshing to hear a JKD person finally say that Bruce's opinions are just that =)

-Scott

"You have to consider the possibility that god does not like you; he never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. It is not until we have lost everything that we can do anything."

apoweyn
01-07-2001, 08:23 PM
Thanks Scott. I appreciate that.

I don't really consider myself a JKD practitioner, though one of my most influential instructors is from the Inosanto lineage. I think I got turned off by all the infighting, to be honest. Like you, I certainly don't have anything against diehard JKD practitioners. I just don't really view myself that way.

I agree that people tend to view celebrities as larger than life, so that everything that celebrity says becomes doctrine. (And I don't mean, by calling Bruce Lee a celebrity, that he was nothing more than a movie star. In my opinion, he was clearly far more than that. But still, he was a man.)

Bruce Lee espoused a certain philosophy, partly drawn from other philosophies and partly his own. I suspect that every philosophy goes through a stage like this. But philosophy is an ideal and people are people. When ideals and people clash, the idiosyncracies of people generally prevail.

I've got no problem with Bruce Lee espousing his philosophy. I think it's very valuable. But I think it's important to remember that an ideal is something we aspire to rather than attain. So when Bruce says, "Be like water, my friend", are we to take it that every day of his life, Bruce managed to flow like water? No, of course not. I'm sure he got ****ed about things just like the rest of us. But does that make his point any less profound or important as an ideal? No, certainly not. An ideal, to my mind, is like a target. Sure, we'd like to hit a bullseye every time, but if we miss by a bit, that's fine. We're better for the effort.

But that aside, Bruce's philosophical point here (and the Daoist principle upon which it's based) is, to my mind, being exaggerated. When he says that "should Jeet Kune Do be compared to this or to that it should be forgotten", I don't think he's being literal. He lectured frequently on how his theory differed from traditional thinking. So he's already in contradiction. But that's fine. To my mind, the point is not that we're not allowed to discuss JKD in relation to other arts, but that we simply not get hung up in it. Ultimately, the name Jeet Kune Do and the lectures that led to and followed the name are just a man's best attempts to express an idea. And what he's saying with this quote, in my opinion, is simply a plea for us to bear that in mind. He had an idea, an ideal tied within a living human being, with all the limitations that entails. The name, the lectures, the curricula, and everything else can only be indicators of that idea. They aren't the idea themselves. The idea itself is something that can never aptly be communicated. It can only be experienced as a uniquely individual understanding.

I suspect that's the way with any art form. Certainly, the individual mechanical techniques can be passed down from one to another. But how you reconcile a set of movements (kicks, painting strokes, word choices, whatever) with a living human being... that's the ideal.

A bit vague, I realize. But there you have it. That's my idea of his idea, expressed as well as I can manage at the moment.

Cheers.

Stuart