a message to the martial artists on this forum

[mr goodcat]

This guy just admit that he's mindless?
I guess that's a start.

History of philosophy...??? Okay.
Where'd you get your BA from? Masters? PhD?
...okay? How 'bout a degree in Asian Studies? no...???
Have you ever studied daoism/taoism formally? (that means under a religious leader...)
Ever trained JKD from anyone directly related to Sigung Lee's line? no??

okay, then kindly be quiet, sit in back, and let the people with actual backgrounds on these topics make the judgements...m'kay.

no im sorry thats not how my cookie crumbles. so go ahead, study your solid martial art, and its fixed doctine, study it til you know everything in the doctrine then when that day comes when u have ''mastered'' it you can feel proud, then you will gradually stop learning, because there is no room for infinate process of learning in a fixed doctrine of whats permitted and whats forbidden, go ahead and allow some sensai to tell you what u can and cannot do and practice only what he teaches as the ''right'' way. go ahead and feel powerful among your club of mindless enslaved martial artists, ending up as another mold in the ' traditional ways, unchanged for centuries. thats now i am, no i am a free thinker, thusly i cannot follow a doctrine or any sense or teacher or instructor, i have 2 arms, and 2 legs and i will learn to use them efficiently, in order to see beyond whats traditional you must train like an athlete, incorporated running and anything else not to achieve max effiency in martial arts because it is the only way to continue on the path to learning--- really i dont get why you insist on arguing with me i felt this way for years, bruce lee didnt change it

[Garland]

who am i? oh im just a drifter that knows a lot. mainly. about no mind, since no mind is the right mind, i feel compelled to a life of learning outside the mold. i read the tao te ching and it has enlightened me somewhat, and i have my history with philosophy, but you can call me brian

This guy just admit that he's mindless?
I guess that's a start.

History of philosophy...??? Okay.
Where'd you get your BA from? Masters? PhD?
...okay? How 'bout a degree in Asian Studies? no...???
Have you ever studied daoism/taoism formally? (that means under a religious leader...)
Ever trained JKD from anyone directly related to Sigung Lee's line? no??

okay, then kindly be quiet, sit in back, and let the people with actual backgrounds on these topics make the judgements...m'kay.

[joe360]

Jeet Kune Do is an art that basically takes effective techniques that Bruce Lee found effective to him and he could use to maximum effect.

Bruce Lee didnt want people to study one art only, hence Jeet Kune Do has techniques from so many martial arts that Bruce Lee integrated into one art that fit his needs.He didnt want people to study one art only, he wanted people to take what they needed from martial arts and use it for themselves.

[Tim McFatridge]

If you ask me Mr. Goodnight sounds alot like Ashtanga reincarnated.

[ciscodog]

It amazes me every time i read these posts how confusing people make simple concepts. Bruce was an advocate of using what works at that moment, regardless of what style the technique is from. No style has all the answers, so dont limit your learning to one style thinking it is the answer for all situations, period. Not all techniques work the same for all people, why, because not all people are the same. Were all different heights, weight, power, flexibility etc. Well if we are all diffrent, then how can the same technique work for everyone the same way. As far enlightment....the"spirit of the thing"(to quote Mushashi) is the same wether you are a potter, painter martialist, whatever you seek to become better at, with practice, will reveal itself. You no longer think about what your doing, but rather you just do it without thought, just reaction, like walking. You dont think about walking, you just go. Thats the "spirit of the thing" im my opinion.

[eXcessiveForce]

by the way, you post about other people doing side kicks incorrectly, doing them high. You do realize this is a JKD forum don't you. Do you know what a JKD side kick looks like? Hell do you know how to do it? How about a TKD side kick? Kind of hard to enlighten when you don't know the way yourself.

so you want to talk about no mind, or void, fine, we will put aside that those terms are japanese origin for the moment, Bruce talked about hitting with no intention,

You read the Tao Te Ching, great it's a book on Taoism (the way and the power) but it is not specifically a martial arts book. Have you also read the I-Ching? the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, A book of five rings, Sun Tzu's Art of War? The Art of Expressing the Human Body? Hagakure? Even better can you practically apply the principles in the books?

Martial arts is not "thinking of doing"

[eXcessiveForce]

While I agree in principle that belts are not all that important.


You were asking for help on throwing a side kick. Which is fine, i'm all for people learning how to do things correctly. But many people on the forum have been "Training" for over 20 years, myself included. some have been training 30-40 years. You may feel enlightened but you aren't telling us anything we haven't heard or don't already know.

Some will even disagree with your interpretation. I remember a junior instructor of mine who I had read a book of five rings. This was a mistake, he completely missed the concepts I was trying to get him to gain and misinterpreted many parts because he had not yet learned by doing.

Reading and thinking are good, but they are not a substitute for training and doing.

[jubaji]

who am i? oh im just a drifter that knows a lot. mainly. about no mind, since no mind is the right mind, i feel compelled to a life of learning outside the mold. i read the tao te ching and it has enlightened me somewhat, and i have my history with philosophy, but you can call me brian

.................

[mr goodcat]

You seem to have lost more than your purple belt...

Never mind. The philosophy major thing explains all I needed to know, except how you can be a major of anything and still not know how punctuation and capitalization works...

are you inferring something about philosophy? if you respect it then fine but if u think philosophers are a bunch of self delusional escaped mental patients as well then why do you practice martial art? dont you know its a philosophy as much as it is an art?

[mr goodcat]

Do you also self-medicate?

I'm just joking, mr. goodcat.

You're obviously into the JKD concept of absorbing what is usefull.

Belt systems are usefull too in the sense that they require a set of standards to be met before a student can move forward. They aren't useless.

never called them useless. i have my belts from tae kwon do. except i lost the purple one

[Tom Yum]

now i self- train

Do you also self-medicate?

I'm just joking, mr. goodcat.

You're obviously into the JKD concept of absorbing what is usefull.

Belt systems are usefull too in the sense that they require a set of standards to be met before a student can move forward. They aren't useless.

[mr goodcat]

You can't diagnoses a pulled hamstring, but you are going to tell us about martial arts. You aren't a blackbelt, but you will tell us what we need to know.


LMAO.

Well you have balls, if not brains.

a black belt is nothing more than a trophy to represent the effort you put into a certain martial art at a dojo. i have what i have to be proud of, i built my counter defence, now i self- train

[eXcessiveForce]

You can't diagnoses a pulled hamstring, but you are going to tell us about martial arts. You aren't a blackbelt, but you will tell us what we need to know.


LMAO.

Well you have balls, if not brains.

[mr goodcat]

You have confirmed my belief that you are a self-delusional escaped mental patient. My friend, everything you have typed here has been a verbatim reprint of some Bruce Lee quote. You've just lost all support from this forum, and I would hazard a guess that you've lost all support from its moderators as well.

If you want to be Kwai Chiang Caine, go do it to a less educated crowd. Nitwit.

what ever makes you happy. im just here to share my knowledge and to give and get tips, lost all support? as if u willingly give it out to all new members i just joined yesterday buddy. hazard a guess is not the correct way to say it. im heading toward a philosophy major so im not delusional im sorry, i had many talks with buddhist monks and nuns and practiced buddhism for months, so im far from delusional, infact im spiritual, but if calling me delusional makes you happy then so be it. no i dont think im bruce lee, no i never met anyone who knew bruce lee, or his wife or daughter, but i always had a mind similar to his, since many years back, i was always able to control my emotions as well as he, in times when i saw everyone else lose it, my anger is never expressed in public, this my friend is not something learned over night or realized magically after watching some martial art movie but it is a gift, expressing yourself totally and completely and not lieing to yourself, but expressing yourself. now that is very hard to beat. no im not a black belt but i have trained in a dojo before. i quit because i directly saw where styles head you in, the direction you take. under a doctrine of ''permitted and prohibited'' moves, how can you possibly express yourself? you cant, expression comes with freedom, to go about doing it as you please. in the best efficient way, '' anything'' goes. hands, feet, elbow, knee. anything. im not restricted to any set of moves therefore my prcoess of continual growth lies with me.

[mr goodcat]

Mr Goodcat,
No offense, but everyone here has read the same books, and when you show up quoting the Tao of JKD and the Pierre Burton interview, it comes across as somewhat condescending. There are a lot of people here who have spent decades in pursuit of their martial art. As Excessive pointed out, some trained with Bruce Lee himself, and many of us trained with Dan Inosanto, Larry Hartsell, and other first generation students. While it's admirable that you've taken an interest in JKD and you're doing your research, I think you'll find that none of what's written means as much as what's been experienced. In my younger years, I read Bruce Lee's writing like an addiction. And while it was easy to see the wisdom in his words, I can promise you with 100% confidence that you will never understand a syllable of it without experiencing what he said, and when you've done that, you no longer need the words.

I guess what I'm saying is, try and share something a little more substantial than the quotes and phrases copyrighted by the Lee Estate. If you want to earn the respect of this board, share some experiences instead.

martial art is not to be done but felt '' emotional content''. you arent suppose to just do your work outs. you must feel them. in other words your mind should exist in the present, the action being performed but its not an actor, yet an act which performs itself which we want to reach too. i mean to have no thought, it should be done, felt. and nothing more. a hand should come up to block without being cued in the mind to do so. , the right mind is no mind. i dont read often. martial art, like any art is a scientific process, by which we observe, learn, improvise and perform. we act out, then simply we see where it will take us, i meditate, sometimes. but i dont read much, i read the critique of judgement by immanuel kant and spend most of my time thinking and observing life around me to find relations of my thoughts, people often ridicule what they dont understand. by the lee estate? im sorry but these quotes came from me, no i never knew bruce lee in person but i understand him and where he is going with his teachings.