Tao of Jeet Kune Do

[curtis]

Hay App.

are you back? I havent seen any of your posting in a long time.

I agree the Art of war is a usefull resource,to any M/A.
another GREAT book is the Book of five rings.

I personaly would put these two books on the must read list.

take care. C.A.G.

[Odin of Wei]

Originally posted by Shaolin-Do
D@mn... Hey repulsive, what was feudal japan like?
Or was sun tzu chinese?

NO!

Sun Tzu is a common name for an Elf.

...you **** fool.

.....Oy Vey....

Originally posted by apoweyn


What if he is? While most scholars (hell, all scholars) would probably say that The Art of War is a better book, the Tao is going to be far more immediately useful to a martial arts student.

Yeah, the concepts in Sun Tzu are applicable to martial arts. But honestly, even you can recognize the difference in utility between "attack where the enemy fortifications are weakest" and "hit him where he's not guarding." Both are relevant. One is more accessible. So from a personally practical standpoint (as opposed to a literary or even strategic standpoint), the Tao is a perfectly valid choice over Sun Tzu.

And before you get all intellectual and snooty again, "whereas on the other hand" is redundant. Clever clogs.


Stuart B.

Some scholars arn't even sure if Sun Tzu was the real author.

Ts'ao Ts'ao (Cao Cao from the game) worte alot of stuff he thought was good...yet took out things he thought was irrelvent.
You just can never be too sure with old texts. But yet even business men read that book and use the tatics during the "battle of work".

[apoweyn]

Originally posted by curtis
Hay App.

are you back? I havent seen any of your posting in a long time.

I agree the Art of war is a usefull resource,to any M/A.
another GREAT book is the Book of five rings.

I personaly would put these two books on the must read list.

take care. C.A.G.

Hey Curtis,

I hang around the main forum most of the time. This one was very quiet for a long time. So I stopped showing up.

Seems to be picking up though, yeah?


Stuart B.

[PangQuan]

"Presently (2003?) in its twentieth printing and offered in nine languages, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, for well over a decade a bestseller, has lined the pockets of a few at the expens of misleading countless martial artists of all ages and levels of proficiency. Hopefully the day will come when the great masters whos writings are contained in the Tao of Jeet Kune Do will be honored, both in print and monetarily, for their work that has for too many years been wrongly and purposely credited to Bruce Lee. Perhaps the worst example of plagiarism occured in 2000 when the estate's author John Little wrongly attributed to Bruce Lee the writing ("The Passionate State of Mind") of renowned philosopher (and the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom) Eric Hoffer!"
~Tom Bleecker
Unsettled Matters
The life and death of Bruce Lee


I was going to put this in the "Other Related Arts" section, but I thought it would get better responses here.

Not sure how many of you actually read that entire biography that KF posted, written by Tom Bleecker, but this is near the end, and I feel is quite a valid concern in regards to the works that are in Tao of Jeet Kune Do that are plagiarised and NOT the original works of Bruce Lee.

Not to discredit any thing Bruce Lee had done in life, but as we all know, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, was not something Bruce Lee had done in life. Would BL have gone to the lengths of making much of this information and MA material appear as his original thoughts and concepts? Doubtful. Though its of no doubt that Bruce had developed his own thoughts, processes, concepts, ideals, etc. about martial arts, I for some reason would like to doubt that Bruce Lee would try to take another, past martial artists, credit for himself.

So, what can actually be done about this today. Can anything be done?

What are some of you're thoughts on this? Or do any of you even care? Possibly not.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Was there anything original in the TofJKD ???

[GeneChing]

That was one of my big issues with Little's Lee series for Tuttle. He pillaged Lee's notes but didn't do the research beyond that. Lee was a philosophy student. Many of the notes published in the series were clearly class notes, never meant to be published. The same problem pervades TofJKD, which despite what was depicted in Dragon, was also published posthumously. It really wasn't fair to Lee to publish his notes. However, given the legend that followed, it was understandable.

It's also very amusing to see JKD followers quote the gospel of Lee, not realizing that it's actually Buddha or Hoffer or whoever.

[sanjuro_ronin]

That was one of my big issues with Little's Lee series for Tuttle. He pillaged Lee's notes but didn't do the research beyond that. Lee was a philosophy student. Many of the notes published in the series were clearly class notes, never meant to be published. The same problem pervades TofJKD, which despite what was depicted in Dragon, was also published posthumously. It really wasn't fair to Lee to publish his notes. However, given the legend that followed, it was understandable.

It's also very amusing to see JKD followers quote the gospel of Lee, not realizing that it's actually Buddha or Hoffer or whoever.

Hence my question of originality.
When I read it and re-read it, I didn't see anything "new".

[lkfmdc]

There are two other books from which he copied a lot of passages that found there way into "Tao"; one an old boxing bood, the other an old fencing book.

On another note, as "Tao" and "Do" are the same character (in two different dialects), the title annoys me to no end

Tao of Jeet Kune Do

"way of jeet kune way?"

way of jeet kune way of jeet kune way of jeet kune way....

[sanjuro_ronin]

The Way of the Way of the Intercepting Fist.

The Way of the Intercepting Fist Way.

Eh...

[Scott R. Brown]

It is doubtful the information BL found valuable enough to collect was original to the sources from which he gleaned the information. So to be fair to the "original" sources one would have to go back into history to unnamed and unknown sources.

In order for the information to be considered plagiarized it would have to be directly copied from a published volume. In order for the information to be BL"s all it requires is rewording.

[lkfmdc]

I saw an article once that showed entite paragraphs, word for word, were taken from the two books and put into "Tao"

again, he was dead and gone when they did this, these were just his personal notes, the people responsible are his widow and the book company

[rogue]

Is that the green eyed monster I see in this thread. Great Sigung Lee was the most original thinker ever in the martial arts. He thought thoughts that no one else ever did, synthesized techniques in such a way to break the paradigm of the day, and if he did use an idea by someone else he extrapolated it into places that even today many are still trying to comprehend. But I guess it's easy to attack someone who has progressed onto the next plane of reality.






The Real Original Lucky Louie

[Firehawk4]

What about the Bruce Lee Books that M. Uharya authored called Bruce Lees Fighting Method the four books . are these also plagarized ?

[lkfmdc]

Is that the green eyed monster I see in this thread. Great Sigung Lee was the most original thinker ever in the martial arts. He thought thoughts that no one else ever did, synthesized techniques in such a way to break the paradigm of the day, and if he did use an idea by someone else he extrapolated it into places that even today many are still trying to comprehend. But I guess it's easy to attack someone who has progressed onto the next plane of reality.

I hope this is a sarcastic post.....

[TenTigers]

As stated before, Tao of JKD were simply a collection of his personal notes, and included quotes from many sources-especially Jack Dempsey's book on boxing.People have a tendancy of taking something and running with it, such as the term "Straight Blast" which is simply a slight re-naming of what Dempsey referred to as the stiff jolt-his mainstay jab.