Bruce Lee Podcast

The idea of True Flow comes directly from Bruce Lee’s physical study of martial arts and specifically from his art of Jeet Kune Do, which literally translated means "the Way of the Intercepting Fist." One of the core tenets behind Jeet Kune Do is that there are no separate movements of offense and defense, they can happen simultaneously and flow quickly together. This is an idea that can be applied to our movements in life, bridging the gap between happenings so that you can flow easier from one thing to the next. If we collapse the space between two separate movements, the result is flow--and when you’re in flow everything moves more quickly and smoothly without much effort. Forward movement becomes quicker when you don’t force or strain--you adapt and adjust in real-time, all the time. Gentleness and Firmness are also work together to bridge the gap. There is an interplay of movement between them, they are not separate motions or ideas. “Gentleness alone cannot forever dissolve away great force, nor can she

When Bruce talked about confrontation he was talking about it on two levels, physical confrontation and then confrontations between people in everyday life. As you become ore rooted and secure in yourself, the natural tendency is to feel that you can more easily avoid confrontation, that you don’t need to prove yourself. What Bruce has learned from being challenged is: What is your reaction to being challenged? How does it affect you? If you’re secure then you treat it lightly. Part of being able to handle confrontation is self-work. “Wisdom does not consist in trying to wrest the good from the evil, but in learning to ride them as a cork adapts itself to the crests and troughs of the waves.” “The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of an engagement, you ought not to be thinking whether it ends in victory or defeat.” A lot of times confrontation has nothing to do with you and has to do with the other person being wrapped up in something that triggers them. “A struggle of any nature can never be settled

Choiceless Awareness is a path to peace of mind. It means having awareness in the moment as things are unfolding but not making a choice or judgment one way or the other about whether it’s good or bad. Bruce talks about how, “There is an awareness without choice, without demand, an awareness in which there is no anxiety and in that state of mind there is perception and it's perception alone that will resolve our problems.” Choiceless Awareness is about being the objective observer, standing back from the situation a little bit and not assign any blame one way or the other. Just say, “Here’s what’s happening, I’m perceiving what’s happening, now what am I going to do?” This not easy because you have to battle the “shoulds”--what you think should or shouldn’t be happening in the situation. Remember, Bruce Lee used “No way as way.” “Just watch choicelessly, and in the watching lies the wonder. It is not an ideal end to be desired, but watching is a state of being already and not a state of becoming.” If in this

Often the immediate association with the word “Faith” is a religious one, but that’s not the type of faith we are talking about in this episode. The definition of faith in the dictionary is: "complete trust or confidence in someone or something." That’s how Bruce Lee interpreted “faith," to have trust and confidence in ones self and abilities. Bruce’s definition of faith is: the spiritual power of man’s will. Your will is your driver, something you can put effort into, but faith is the trust and confidence from the spirit. “Optimism is a faith that leads to success.” As is enthusiasm and as is confidence. Having optimism, enthusiasm and confidence means that you have a certain amount of faith in what you’re doing and who you are, and that things are going as they should. “True faith is faith back by action. Faith backed by action is applied faith.” Sometimes when we think of faith, particularly religious faith, we think about surrendering to a higher power. Which has its time and place, but in this instance B

We were overwhelmed with the responses for the Bruce Lee Podcast Challenge and found it impossible to pick just one winner, so we’ll be having several winners join us as guests on the podcast. This week we welcome our first Podcast Challenge winner, Kyoko @Jinjabrew! She lives in LA so Kyoko was able to join us in the studio for this special episode. Kyoko didn’t grow up watching Bruce Lee films, but discovered him through activism and research in Asian-American history and politics. While studying the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s, Kyoko wondered where the Asian Americans were in the movement. She started doing her own research by reading books by Fred Ho and learning about activist Yuri Kochiyama. It was a chapter in the book “Everybody was kung-fu fighting” by Vijay Prashad that introduced her to Bruce Lee’s influence on the Afro-Asian cultural connection and this made her want to find out more about Bruce Lee. At the time she was reading this book, she was moving from Boston to LA, driving solo and lo

“All knowledge ultimately means Self-knowledge.” For all of his adult life, Bruce Lee was on a journey to understand the truest essence of himself. We remember him as the ultra confident movie star with martial arts mastery but even Bruce Lee was a work in progress. Self-knowledge is not a static idea of “who I am” but it's a forward motion pursuit of understanding your root. It is lifelong pursuit of knowing yourself. “Know the cause of your ignorance.” “Instead of establishing rigid rules and separative thoughts, we should look within ourselves to see where our particular problems lie and our cause of ignorance.You see, ultimately all type of knowledge simply means self- knowledge. You must look for truth yourself and directly experience every minute detail for yourself.” Anytime in your life when you’re mired in confusion, uncertainty, or a recurring upset, you’re holding onto ignorance about something. It's a great place to start examining and learning about yourself. Often it's difficult to look at these

We had our first live taping of the Bruce Lee Podcast last Thursday, July 20th celebrating the podcast’s one-year anniversary and honoring the 44th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s passing. When we started the podcast a year ago, on July 20th, it was to commemorate that day with a beautiful remembrance of Bruce Lee and the gifts that he left behind for all of us. The podcast format allows us to discuss Bruce Lee’s philosophy more in-depth and share his legacy with everyone for free. Special guest Osric Chau joined us for the event and shared his experiences completing the Bruce Lee Podcast Challenge, shared his thoughts on Bruce Lee, and gave an #AAHA shout-out. Osric Chau was born in Vancouver, his father is from Hong Kong and his mother is Malaysian. He trained in Wing Chun for many years and wanted to be a stuntman, but was discovered and his first film was Kung Fu Killer (2008) with David Carradine. Since then he’s been in 2012, What Women Want, The Man with the Iron Fists, and was in recurring roles in Superna

We are having our first live event tonight, Thursday, July 20th, at 6pm at the Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles. It’s first come first serve with limited seating so try to be there by 5:30pm! This episode marks our one-year anniversary for the podcast! We created this podcast to honor and celebrate Bruce Lee's philosophy and share it with the world. Thank your for listening and going on this journey with us. We wanted to celebrate the one-year anniversary and recognize the 44th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s passing by completing the Bruce Lee Podcast Challenge for two weeks. When we shared the challenge, we worried that people might not participate, but so many of you completed it. We got such an overwhelming response to the challenge that it’s taking us much longer to go through all the entries, and we won’t be able to pick just one winner. Your accomplishments, roadblocks, and leveling up have truly astounded and moved us; you blew us out of the water. We applaud you Bruce Lee Podcast Community! Since w

Gentleness was key to Bruce Lee’s philosophy of life and practice as an artist. Bruce equated gentleness with his idea of emptiness, non-resistance internally, the place in which the moment can happen and where spontaneous action springs from. Gentleness equals life. Gentleness is strength. “The essential unity of the universe, the leveling of all differences, the relativity of all standards, and the return of all to divine intelligence and the source of all things – from all this naturally arises the absence of desire for strife and contention and fighting for advantage. A peaceable temper is bred in man that emphasizes nonresistance and the importance of gentleness.” Gentleness is the coming together, not the coming a part of things. “The assimilation of the tao has its foundation in tenderness and quietness.” Bruce Lee personally struggled with having a temper, but he researched his own experience. He was able to be neutral about examining himself and recognized that he needed to cultivate his gentleness.

What is the meaning of life? “The meaning of life is that is to be lived.” What he means by this is that life is meant to be engaged with, present in, taking action toward; it is not to be conceptualized or only thought about, but actually participated in. Water was Bruce’s metaphor for life, always moving, always changing, always flowing, and you want to be right in the flow of it. “You can never step in the same water twice, my friend. Like flowing water, life is perpetual movement. There is nothing fixed.” “Realize the fact that you simply live and not live for.” “Living exists when life through us- unhampered in its flow, for he who is living is not conscious of living, and in this is the life he lives.” It’s important to fully feel the bad or difficult experiences so that you can let it flow through you and you can let go the negative energy. If you don’t let it flow through you then you end up holding on to and internalizing that pain. “Be pliable, when a man is living he is soft and pliable, when he is

What does it mean to “hack away the unessentials”? “It is not daily increase but daily decrease, hack away the unessential. The closer to the source, the less wastage there is.” Bruce Lee applied this primarily to his martial art, but also in life, heading towards simplicity of movement, thought, and being. “Avoid the superficial, penetrate the complex, go to the heart of the problem, and pinpoint the key factors.” “Do not beat around the bush. Do not take winding detours. Follow a straight line to the objective; simplicity is the shortest distance between two points.” This doesn’t mean take the shortest route, but ask in real life what is unnecessary. “Scratch away all the dirt your being has accumulated and reveal reality in its nakedness.” We accumulate this dirt as protection and security, and it’s not easily shed. There are so many distractions clothed as things to make your life easier, but they distract and clutter instead. “It is not difficult to trim and hack off the nonessentials in outward, physica

The three stages are of learning, technique, and cultivation, have all been touched upon in previous episodes, but this week we dive deeper into each one. The three stages of learning: 1. A punch is just a punch 2. A punch is no longer a punch 3. A punch is just a punch Three Stages of Technique 1. Synchronization of self 2. Synchronization with opponent 3. Under fighting condition “Within all the training thrown to the wind, with the mind perfectly unaware of its own working, with the self-vanishing nowhere, anybody knows where, your art attains perfection.” Three Stages of Cultivation 1. Partiality 2. Fluidity 3. Emptiness “All technique is to be forgotten and the unconscious to be left alone to handle the situation. Technique will assert its wonders automatically or spontaneously. To float in totality, to have no technique, is to have all technique.” “Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not organically part of us. While self-esteem is derived from the potentialities and achievements of

Intuition is often described as your “gut feeling,” but Bruce Lee defined intuition in many different ways--as body feel, the root, the creative tide in us, natural instinct, guidance, and free movement of spirit. “What we are after is the root and not the branches. The root is real knowledge; the branches are surface knowledge. Real knowledge breeds “body feel” and personal expression; surface knowledge breeds mechanical conditioning and imposing limitation and squelches creativity.” “The superior man lets himself be guided.” “Don’t think – feel. Feeling exists here and now when not interrupted and dissected by ideas or concepts. The moment we stop analyzing and let go, we can start really seeing, feeling – as one whole.” A truly awake person is using their mind, body, and heart all at once. “Here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. If you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific; if you have another to the extreme, you become a mechanical man and no

Meditation has been around for thousands of years, but it’s recently become popular with a broad audience. Modern people need it to create peace from a frenzied world with unrelenting distractions and demands. Typically, mediation is thought of as the practice of sitting still in the crossed leg position, for an extended period of time to quiet the mind. Bruce Lee practiced meditation through movement, such as running, practicing punching, on his exercise bike, or just walking around his backyard in quiet contemplation. He used natural movement as a way to meditate and connect to himself. “It is not a technique of introversion by which one seeks to exclude matter and the external world, to eliminate distracting thoughts, to sit in silence emptying the mind of images, and to concentrate on the purity of one’s own spiritual essence. Meditation is not a mysticism of “introversion” and “withdrawal.” It is not “acquired contemplation.” To think that this insight is a subjective experience “attainable” by some kind

The Art of Soul is about living the artist’s life and mastering the art of living as a whole human being. “The ultimate aim of the artist is to lay hold of the art of living. Be a master of living for the soul creates everything.” Bruce had a clear vision about what it took to be an artist of life: “Requirement to be an artist – purity of heart.” “The aim of art is to state in aesthetic creation the deepest psychic and personal experiences of a human being.” “An artist’s expression is his soul made apparent. Behind every motion, the music of his soul is made visible.” Bruce Lee believed that we are each artists of our own lives. We don’t have to create creative artifacts or achieve the status of an artist in society in order to be an artist. “Art is the way to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities – thought, feeling, will – to the life rhythm of the world of nature.” This is about co-creating your life with

The six diseases of the mind are obstacles that you will confront on your path to wholeness and fluidity. The Six Diseases: The desire for victory The desire to resort to technical cunning The desire to display all that has been learned The desire to awe the enemy The desire to play the passive role The desire to get rid of whatever disease one is affected by All of these diseases occur when we seek outside validation. The desire for victory is the desire to win at all costs, usually at the cost of someone else. Wanting to win is not a bad thing, but when it overtakes you and blinds you to everything else is when it becomes a problem. It becomes not about the victory itself, but about coveting and becoming attached to that outcome. The desire to resort to technical cunning is the desire to outsmart, to be overly clever, to the exclusion of other tools of success. This is being showy, flamboyant and attached to form. The desire to display all that has been learned this is the desire to appear super knowledgeab

“The mind is a fertile garden – it will grow anything you wish to plant – beautiful flowers or weeds. And it is with successful, healthy thoughts or negative ones that will, like weeds, strangle and crowd the others. Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind, for they are the weeds that strangle confidence.” Bruce Lee had a really strong practice of planting seeds of beautiful flowers in the fertile mind. Often we have people come into the office to look through Bruce’s journals and they wonder where his writings on his doubts and struggles are, and Shannon tells them that these don’t exist. Bruce had a regimented practice of keeping his mind on the things that he wanted instead of the things he didn’t. Bruce would turn anything that did not feel like success into a learning moment, converting it into something that would lead towards success. He would keep focused on the things that he wanted saying: “You will never get anymore out of life that you expect.” Optimism takes effort, it is a practice, es

Bruce Lee often carried notes to himself or affirmations on notecards in his wallet. One of these read: “Be aware of our conditioning. Drop and dissolve inner blockage.” “Inner to outer – we start by dissolving our attitude not by altering outer conditions.” We are all raised in a culture, whether it is a family, community, or national culture. We all have a way we view the world depending on how we entered or experienced it as a child. When Bruce says, “Be aware of our conditioning,” he is saying that it is good to acknowledge and be aware that we are not bias free. Drop and dissolve inner blockage by freeing yourself from things having to be a certain way. This returns to the concept: “Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.” We start by dissolving our inner attitude, not by altering our outer conditions. “Do not have an attitude; Open yourself and focus yourself and express yourself. Reject external form that fails to reject internal reality.” One of our current dominant cultures is the wo

This week we sit down with journalist Charles Russo, author of “Striking Distance: Bruce Lee & the Dawn of Martial Arts in America.” His book covers Bruce Lee’s early years as a young martial artist in San Francisco and his polarizing effect as a brash upstart in the Bay Area martial arts scene of the 1960’s. Charles Russo’s interest in Bruce Lee started with his fascination of the history of the Bay Area (San Francisco, CA.) Russo was sitting in his photojournalist class and another student was sharing images of Chinatown, including a picture of the Chinese Hospital stating that that was the hospital where Bruce Lee was born. Russo says, “It blew my mind…how come no one had every told me that Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco?” It instantly made San Francisco that much cooler and interesting, but he was indignant that no one was celebrating that fact. So he decided to look into that story. Once Charles started looking into the story of Bruce Lee and San Francisco, he found a treasure trove of forgotten

Bruce Lee often carried around philosophical ideas written on small index cards as reminders throughout his day. One of these was: “Inwardly, psychologically, be a nobody.” To him, this meant, get the ego out of the way, have some detachment, and be a blank slate--a human being first. That way you can approach each situation anew with fresh eyes. Be as neutral as you can be. “Establish nothing in regard to oneself. Let things be what they are. Move like water, rest like a mirror, respond like and echo, pass quickly like the nonexistent, and be quiet as purity.” As an active person with big goals, Bruce often encountered obstacles throughout his day and quotes like this helped center him and maintain his flow. “I must give up my desire to force, direct, strangle the world outside of me and the world within me in order to be completely open, responsible, aware, alive.” This is not to say you should not exercise your willpower, it’s to say that your willpower should be connected to your essence and your heart. “