Jeet
Kune Do, ultimately, is not a matter of petty technique but
of highly developed personal spirituality and physique. It is
not a question of developing what has already been developed
but of recovering what has been left behind. These things have
been with us, in us, all the time and have never been lost or
distorted except by our misguided manipulation of them. Jeet
Kune Do is not a matter of technology but of spiritual insight
and training. The tools are at an undifferentiated center of
a circle that has no circumference, moving and yet not moving,
in tension and yet relaxed, seeing everything happening and
yet not at all anxious about its outcome, with nothing purposely
designed, nothing consciously calculated, no anticipation, no
expectation -- in short, standing innocently like a baby and
yet, with all the cunning, subterfuge and keen intelligence
of a fully mature kind. Leave sagehood behind and enter once
more into ordinary humanity. After coming to understand the
other side, come back and live on this side. After the cultivation
of no- cultivation, one's thoughts continue to be detached from
phenomenal things and one still remains amid the phenomenal,
yet devoid of the phenomenal. Both the man and his surroundings
ate eliminated. Then, neither the man nor his surroundings ate
eliminated. Walk on! One can never be the master of his technical
knowledge unless all his psychic hindrances are removed and
he can keep his mind in a state of emptiness (fluidity), even
purged of whatever technique he has obtained. With all the training
thrown to the wind, with a mind perfectly unaware of its own
working, with the self vanishing nowhere, anybody knows where,
the art of Jeet Kune Do attains its perfection. The more aware
you become, the more you shed from day to day what you have
learned so that your mind is always fresh and uncontaminated
by previous conditioning. Learning techniques corresponds to
an intellectual apprehension of the philosophies in Zen, and
in both Zen and Jeet Kune Do, an intellectual proficiency does
not cover the whole ground of the discipline. Both require the
attainment of ultimate reality, which is the emptiness or the
absolute. The latter transcends all modes of relativity.
In Jeet Kune Do, all technique is to be forgotten and the unconscious
is to be left alone to handle the situation. The technique will
assert its wonders automatically or spontaneously. To float
in totality, to have no technique, is to have all technique.
The knowledge and skill you have achieved ate meant to be '"forgotten"
so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.
Learning is important but do not become its slave. Above all,
do not harbor anything external and superfluous -- the mind
is primary. Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes
a disease when the mind is obsessed with it.
The six diseases:
1.The desire for victory.
2.The desire to resort to technical cunning.
3.The desire to display all that has been learned.
4.The desire to awe the enemy.
5.The desire to play the passive role.
6.The desire to get rid of whatever disease one is affected
by.
"'To desire" is an attachment. "'To desire
not to desire" is also an attachment. To be unattached
then, means to be free at once from both statements, positive
and negative. This is to be simultaneously both "yes"
and "no," which is intellectually absurd. However,
not so in Zen. Nirvana is to be consciously unconscious or
to be unconsciously conscious. That is its secret. The act
is so direct and immediate that intellectualization finds
no room to insert itself and cut the act to pieces. The spirit
is no doubt the controlling agent of our existence. This invisible
seat controls every movement in whatever external situation
arises. It is thus, to be extremely mobile, never "stopping"
in any place at any moment. Preserve this state of spiritual
freedom and non-attachment as soon as you assume the fighting
stance. Be "master of the house." It is the ego
that stands rigidly against influences from the outside, and
it is this "ego rigidity" that makes it impossible
for us to accept everything that confronts us.
Art lives where absolute freedom is, because where it is not,
there can be no creativity. Seek not the cultivated innocence
of a clever mind that wants to be innocent, but have rather
that state of innocence where there is no denial or acceptance
and the mind just sees what its. All goals apart from the
means are illusions. Becoming is a denial of being. By an
error repeated throughout the ages, truth, becoming a law
or a faith, places obstacles in the way of knowledge. Method,
which is in its very substance ignorance, encloses truth within
a vicious circle. We should break such a circle, not by seeking
knowledge, but by discovering the cause of ignorance. Recollection
and anticipation are fine qualities of consciousness that
distinguish the human mind from that of the lower animals.
But, when actions are directly related to the problem of life
and death, these properties must be relinquished for the sake
of fluidity of thought and lightning rapidity of action.
Action is our relationship to everything. Action is not a
matter of right and wrong. It is only when action is partial
that there is a right and a wrong. Don't let your attention
be attested! Transcend dualistic comprehension of a situation.
Give up thinking as though not giving it up. Observe the techniques
as though not observing. Utilize the art as a means to advance
in the study of the Way. Prajna immovable doesn't mean immovability
or insensibility. It means that the mind is endowed with capabilities
of infinite, instantaneous motion that knows no hindrance.
Make the tools see. All movements come out of emptiness and
the mind is the name given to this dynamic aspect of emptiness.
It is straight, without ego-centered motivation. The emptiness
is sincerity, genuineness and straightforwardness, allowing
nothing between itself and its movements. Jeet Kune Do exists
in your not seeing me and my not seeing you, where yin and
yang have not yet differentiated themselves. Jeet Kune Do
dislikes partialization or localization. Totality can meet
all situations.
When the mind is fluid, the moon is in the stream where it
is at once movable and immovable. The waters ate in motion
all the time, but the moon retains its serenity. The mind
moves in response to ten thousand situations but remains ever
the same. The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness;
only when there is stillness in movement does the universal
rhythm manifest itself. To change with change is the changeless
state. Nothingness cannot be confined; the softest thing cannot
be snapped. Assume the pristine purity. In order to display
your native activities to the utmost limit, remove all psychic
obstruction. Would that we could at once strike with the eyes!
In the long way from the eye through the arm to the fist,
how much is lost!
Sharpen the psychic power of seeing in order to act immediately
in accordance with what you see. Seeing takes place with the
inner mind. Because one's self-consciousness or ego-consciousness
is too conspicuously present over the entire range of his
attention, it interferes with his free display of whatever
proficiency he has so fat acquired or is going to acquire.
One should remove this obtruding self or ego-consciousness
and apply himself to the work to be done as if nothing particular
were taking place at the moment. To be of no-mind means to
assume the everyday mind. The mind must be wide open to function
freely in thought. A limited mind cannot think freely. A concentrated
mind is not an attentive mind, but a mind that is in the state
of aware- ness can concentrate. Awareness is never exclusive;
it includes everything.
Not being tense but ready, not thinking yet not dreaming,
not being set but flexible - it is being wholly and quietly
alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.
The Jeet Kune Do man should be on the alert to meet the interchangeability
of opposites. As soon as his mind "stops" with either
of them, it loses its own fluidity. A JKD man should keep
his mind always in the state of emptiness so that his freedom
in action will never be obstructed. The abiding stage is the
point where the mind hesitates to abide. It attaches itself
to an object and stops the flow. The deluded mind is the mind
affectively burdened by intellect. Thus, it cannot move without
stopping and reflecting on itself. This obstructs its native
fluidity.
The wheel revolves when it is not too tightly attached to
the axle. When the mind is tied up, it feels inhibited in
every move it makes and nothing is accomplished with spontaneity.
Its work will be of poor quality or it may never be finished
at all. When the mind is tethered to a center, naturally it
is not free. It can move only within the limits of that center.
If one is isolated, he is dead; he is paralyzed within the
fortress of his own ideas. When you ate completely aware,
there is no space for a conception, a scheme, "the opponent
and I;" there is complete abandonment.
When there is no obstruction, the JKD man's movements ate
like flashes of lightning or like the mirror reflecting images.
When insubstantiality and substantiality ate not set and defined,
when there is no track to change what is, one has mastered
the formless form. When there is clinging to form, when there
is attachment of the mind, it is not the true path. When technique
comes out of itself, that is the way. Jeet Kune Do is the
art not founded on techniques or doctrine. It is just as you
are. When there is no center and no circumference, then there
is truth. When you freely express, you are the total style.
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