Bruce Lee Podcast

This topic comes from an essay that Bruce Lee wrote about how to choose a martial arts instructor, but the advice can be applied in general to mentors, teachers, or guides. “I sincerely give this advice to all who are about to take up martial arts. Believe only half of what you see and definitely nothing that you hear. Before you take any lessons from any instructor, find out clearly from him what his method is and politely request that he demonstrate to you how some techniques operate. Use your common sense and if he convinces you, then, by all means go ahead.” Full notes at BruceLee.com/podcast Help support the Bruce Lee Podcast and check out our Podcast Bundle on the Bruce Lee Store! Follow us @Brucelee & write us at hello@brucelee.com

The invention of an empirical self that observes itself Viewing one’s thoughts as a kind of object or possession, situating it in a separate, isolated part of itself – I “have” a mind The striving to wipe the mirror These three faults are the mistakes and obstacles that we make in our seeking for consciousness. Fault 1 is about ego-consciousness and our identification with our egos and our intelligence. Fault 2 is about giving too much power to our thoughts and our cleverness. Fault 3 is about believing we can attain enlightenment through outwitting reality and possessing an empty mind. Join Shannon and Sharon as they discuss the Three Faults, and how they affect our journey towards enlightenment. Full notes at BruceLee.com/podcast Help support the Bruce Lee Podcast and check out our Podcast Bundle on the Bruce Lee Store! Follow us @Brucelee & write us at hello@brucelee.com

As we have mentioned before, Bruce Lee was an avid reader and pursuer of knowledge. Bruce had a passionate intensity around his desire to learn. He had an extensive library and would annotate many of his books. After reading these books, Bruce would write journal entries about what he had read. Bruce would read these books and synthesize the ideas, he would take the bits he liked, and you’ll notice that he used similar language in his own writings. Now we have those books as a part of the Bruce Lee Archive. This week we share another book from the Bruce Lee Library, Commentaries on Living 1st Series by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Jiddu Krishnamurti (11 May 1895 – 17 February 1986) was a philosopher, speaker and writer. His subject matter included psychological revolution, the nature of mind, meditation, inquiry, human relationships, and bringing about radical change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought abo

“Gung fu is so extraordinary because it is nothing at all special, it is simply the direct expression of one’s feeling with the minimum of lines and energy. Every movement is being so of itself without the artificiality with which we tend to complicate them. The closer to the true way, the less wastage of expression there is.” What did Bruce mean by the extraordinary being nothing at all special? Join Shannon and Sharon as they discuss the ordinary day and what is “Nothing Special.” Full notes at BruceLee.com/podcast Help support the Bruce Lee Podcast and check out our Podcast Bundle on the Bruce Lee Store! Follow us @Brucelee & write us at hello@brucelee.com

“The true gung fu master aims his blows at himself, and when successful, he may even succeed in knocking himself out. The primary function of one’s tools is really revealed when they are self-directed and used to destroy greed, fear, anger and folly. Manipulative skill is not the goal. After years of training, one hopes to achieve a vital loosening and equability of all powers.” “In every day life the mind is capable of moving from one thought to one object to another. However, when one is face to face with an opponent in a deadly contest, the mind tends to lose its mobility and get sticky and stopped. This is a problem that haunts everyone.” “Purposelessness”, “empty-mindedness” or “no art” are frequent terms used to denote the ultimate achievement of a martial artist. According to zen, the spirit is by nature formless and no “things” are to harbored in it. When anything is harbored there, psychic energy loses its balance, native activity becomes cramped, and the spirit no longer flows with the stream. When

“In the long history of martial art, the instinct to follow and imitate seems to be inherent in most martial artists – instructors and students alike. This is due partly to being human and partly due to patterns of styles. Ever since the establishment of institutes, academies, schools and their instructors, the need for a “pointer of the Way” is echoed.” “Each man belongs to a style that claims to possess the truth to the exclusion of all other styles, and these styles become institutes with their explanations, dissecting and isolating the harmony, establishing forms as the encyclopedia of their particular techniques.” “All goals apart from the means are therefore an illusion. Becoming becomes a denial of being. By an error repeated throughout the ages, truth becomes law or faith and therefore places obstacles in the way of knowledge. Method, which is in its very substance ignorance, encloses truth in a vicious circle. We should break such circles not by seeking knowledge but by discovering the cause of our i

“The void may be said to have two aspects: It simply is what it is. It is realized; it is aware of itself. And to speak improperly, this awareness is “in us,” or better, we are “in it.”” Void = Nothingess = Emptiness = The Origin of Things = Tao The first form of the Void where ‘it simply is what it is,’ is to cultivate an acceptance of reality as it is; to engage in simplicity and everyday mind; to simply be with acceptance and without force.  The second form of the Void is aware of itself – this is a more developed sense of emptiness, an emptiness where we are “of it” or “we are it.” Join Shannon and Sharon as they discuss the practice of finding your path, knowing yourself, and freeing yourself. We’d love to hear from you! Email us at hello@brucelee.com or tag us @brucelee on social media with #bruceleepodcast. Full notes at BruceLee.com/podcast Help support the Bruce Lee Podcast and check out our Podcast Bundle on the Bruce Lee Store!

This episode is a follow up to episode #87 Becoming a Warrior. In this episode, we revisit what it is to Become a Warrior, Shannon shares her progress on Becoming a Warrior, discusses different self-experiments she’s trying, and what it’s like to develop your own warrior code. “The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus.” We would love to hear about your path to becoming a true warrior! If you would like to share your own stories about your path to becoming a true warrior email us at hello@brucelee.com or tag us @brucelee on social media with #bruceleepodcast. Full notes at BruceLee.com/podcast Help support the Bruce Lee Podcast and check out our Podcast Bundle on the Bruce Lee Store!

This week we have a special episode where Shannon and Sharon share wisdom from Bruce Lee Podcast listeners. We asked for our listeners to share their #BruceLeeMoments and we’ve gotten emails from around the world!  Shannon and Sharon love reading the stories about how Bruce Lee has affected so many people’s lives. It is wonderful when listeners share their wisdom and insights they’ve gained from listening to the Bruce Lee Podcast. By implementing Bruce Lee’s philosophy into their lives, people are staying present, being in flow, and living life authentically. Thank you to all of our listeners for sharing your wisdoms and insights! We appreciate you and support you in your journey towards self-actualization. Be water, my friend. Go to our show notes to read in full the wisdom and insights shared in this episode. Full notes at BruceLee.com/podcast Have a #BruceLeeMoment or insight you’ve gained from listening to the podcast? We’d love to hear from you! Please write to us at hello@brucelee.com or tag us on socia

“Fluidity of mind – the moon in the stream – where it is at once movable and immovable.” Your mind is the moon and all the thoughts and awareness that move through it is the stream. The goal is to cultivate a mind that is both still, but also able to move and take in everything at the same time. Bruce Lee thought that the mind was endowed with infinite mobility. “The mind itself is endowed with infinite mobilities that know no hindrances.” Bruce had a story about the many-armed Kwan Yin. All of her arms are holding and doing different things, and if she stops to think about what one arm is doing then all of her arms stop. This is because she is no longer in flow as she has drawn back to question if she can operate all of these things at once. This is the idea of the moon and the stream, as applied to our mind. We can take in all manner of input and still have a point of view. “Moving and yet not moving, in tension and yet relaxed, seeing everything that is going on and yet not at all anxious about the way it

“An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind. It is not satisfied with explanations, with conclusions; nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion. An intelligent mind is one which is constantly learning, never concluding – styles and patterns have come to conclusion, therefore they have ceased to be intelligent.” Bruce Lee trained his mind as diligently as he trained his body. An intelligent mind is a curious mind that is constantly learning. “Knowledge is the past; learning is the present.” In the past, memorizing facts was what was considered intelligent and not everyone had access to educational resources. Now, we have computers, the internet, and smart phones that give us wide access to information, so having an intelligent mind is about how we use that access to information. “Not “what” to think but “how” to think.” There are all kinds of intelligence, not just intelligence based on how much you know or how many facts you can recall. “Intelligence is the understanding

  “The conformer seldom learns to depend upon himself for expression; rather he faithfully follows a pattern. As time passes, he will probably learn some dead routines and be good according to his set patterns, but he has not come to understand himself.” If you follow patterns in life to seek approval and to be “good” you can be shutting down your true essence. This is just going through the motions of living life, and then we do things we do not want to because we are trained to please. In the business and career world, there is a lot of focus on productivity and efficiency. This can create dead patterns that are automatic responses to situations in order to achieve a certain level of efficiency. When we follow dead patterns we miss out on connecting with people. To be a complete human, you show up in the full aliveness of your experience, you show up with the availability of all your attention to engage in an intimate and real way.  It can be scary to move away from the prepared pattern and be fully present

It’s the 100th episode of the Bruce Lee Podcast! For this monumental episode Shannon and Sharon discuss freedom. Freedom, both what it is and how we can work towards it, was very important to Bruce Lee. Within freedom rests peacefulness and harmony, and Bruce wanted to live in harmony. What freedom feels like will be different for everyone because it is based on what makes you personally feel at peace. “Although I can tell you what is not freedom, I cannot tell you what is because that you must discover for yourself.” Freedom has to do with the practice of researching your own experience, self-knowledge, understanding oneself, and self-actualizing at a deep level. “Free equals the absence of a feeling of constraint. Different people feel free in different ways, so the question is “how free are you?”” Where are you feeling constraint in your life and how can you examine that? You have to observe what your normally practice without condemning it. Having freedom in its primary sense is to be not limited by attac

“Somehow, one day, you will hear, “Hey, now that is quality. That is someone REAL.” I would like that.” We are still drawn to Bruce Lee and his performances are so magnetizing because there is authenticity and energy emanating from him. It was Bruce’s ultimate goal that he be known for quality and realness. In order to achieve realness Bruce had to really know himself and not get distracted by performing a fake image or shortcuts in life. It was a big part of Bruce’s life work to stay in the realness of himself. It is exhausting to constantly project a false image of yourself. “In life, what can you ask for but to be real; to fulfill your potential instead of wasting energy on actualizing your dissipating image, which is not real and expends your vital energy.” In our modern society, social media has made a mass market of projecting an image of our lives. People work to project a perfect image of their lives through their social media even if their reality is different from that. With social media there is a

Bruce Lee was a prolific reader; we have around 1,700 books in the Bruce Lee Archive. In the Bruce Lee Library series we will explore different books from Bruce’s library, sharing his annotations and underlined passages, and discussing how these books contributed to Bruce’s philosophy and life. Bruce Lee was extremely well read, his library had a range of topics on things he was interested in from philosophy to fighting techniques to self-help to acting and directing. The first book that we will be sharing from the Bruce Lee Library is the Tao Te King by Lao Tzu Interpreted as Nature and Intelligence by Archie J Bahm. Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese text written some time during the 5th or 4th century BC and its author Lao Tzu (Old Master) was an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer, and the founder of philosophical Taoism. The book itself is only 81 sections and it’s very poetic. The Tao Te Ching has been translated into Western languages over 250 times. Full show notes at Brucelee.com/podcast Please wr

This week we have a special guest on the podcast, Shannon’s mom Linda Lee Cadwell! Linda joins us to share her firsthand stories of Bruce and their life as a family. She talks about Bruce’s back injury, how Bruce was better than her at English grammar, and how Bruce charmed his way up to first class with the Cha Cha. It is always a pleasure to have Linda on the podcast, and we love that she was able to join us for this episode. Thank you Linda for sharing your stories with us! We’d love to hear from you! Please write to us at hello@brucelee.com or tag us on social media @BruceLee #BruceLeePodcast. Help support the Bruce Lee Podcast and check out our Podcast Bundle on the Bruce Lee Store!

Five Ways of Flow The highest truth is inexpressible. Spiritual cultivation cannot be cultivated. In the last resort nothing is gained. There is nothing much in the teaching. In throwing punches and moving, therein lies the wonderful Tao. 1. The highest truth is inexpressible. The highest truth, your truth, is an experience, a knowing, it is a reverberation in the soul and heart of man. “When both the man and his surroundings are eliminated, neither man nor his surroundings are eliminated – Walk On!” “Between enlightenment and knowledge, in the latter a contrast exists between the knower and the known, whereas in the former, there is no such contrast.” 2. Spiritual cultivation cannot be cultivated. After spiritual cultivation you return to the ordinariness of life but filled with the extraordinariness of life; gratitude; acceptance; allowance; flow; a return to effortlessness. “After the completion of cultivation, one remains amid the phenomenal yet devoid of the phenomenal.” “The aim is not the one-sided p

“A struggle of any nature can never be settled satisfactorily until the absolute fact is touched. Where neither opponent can affect the other – not neutrality, not indifference, but TRANSCENDENCE is the thing needed.” The dictionary definition of Transcendence is: Extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience; transcending material existence; universally applicable or significant  The 19th century movement of Transcendentalism had the core belief that there is an inherent goodness of people and nature. Transcendentalists also believed that society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual and they have faith that people are at their best when truly self-reliant and independent. They believed that man was one with nature, emphasized personal freedom, and also attempted to embrace the empiricism of science. (Some famous Transcendentalists are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.) Parts of the movement of Transcendentalism align with Bruce Lee’s philosophies. In marti

Help support the Bruce Lee Podcast and check out our Podcast Bundle on the Bruce Lee Store! Any item is 15% off and if you buy the entire bundle it is 20% off. A portion of all proceeds go to support the Bruce Lee Foundation and the Podcast Bundle helps support the Bruce Lee Podcast! “Centering is the reconciliation of opposites so that they no longer waste energy in useless struggle with each other but can join in productive combination and interplay.” Often we waste energy by engaging in the struggle between two opposing things. But if you can take these two opposing things and join them into a productive combination and interplay then you can use their energy instead of waste it.  “We are vortices whose center is a point that is motionless and eternal but which appears in manifestation as motion which increases in velocity in the manner of a whirlpool or tornado. The nucleus is reality whereas the vortex is phenomenon. Hold to the core!” If you are centered, then your power is the center of the storm and t

“A man is born to achieve great things if he can conquer himself.” Last episode we talked about the things with which we shackle ourselves, and this episode we discuss the keys that will unlock our fetters and liberate us. “True mastery stems from mastery of oneself.” Although you can apply this idea to the mastery of a skill, this quote is really about the knowing and the freeing oneself. But in mastering a skill, knowing oneself masterfully, will only make one more artful in that discipline. True mastery is built up through the mastery of oneself. The fetters were: Fear Ignorance Self-consciousness Laziness The keys are: Know Yourself (Self-knowledge) Optimism Self-Awareness Learning Remain Neutral Taking Action “Action is a high road to confidence and self-esteem. Its rewards are tangible. The cultivation of the spirit is elusive and difficult and the tendency toward it is rarely spontaneous, whereas, the opportunities for action are many.” Sometimes we use action as a distraction technique, doing the smal