Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee

Partiality is where most of us start, and this is unconscious behavior.

Right View Bruce Lee (BL) Translation: You must see clearly what is wrong.

To be like water is to adapt in response to your environment and your opponent. In other words, it is to be pliable.

Partiality Fluidity Emptiness Jeet Kune Do

martial arts is a perfect metaphor for life. There are few disciplines where the stakes are so personal and so high as in a fight. Proficiency in martial arts is the practice of keeping centered and skillfully responsive under the direst of circumstances: the threat of physical harm.

“I cannot and will not scoff at faith when reason seems to be such a barren thing.”

Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles, big or small, and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself.

I’ve always been buffeted by circumstance because I thought of myself as a human being influenced by outside conditioning. Now I realize that I am the power that commands the feeling of my mind from which circumstances grow.

It is not to deny or bury or go around your feelings or your thoughts about those feelings. It is to feel them, acknowledge them, and work with them—to understand what they are trying to tell you about you, about the situation—to let them show you where there is more work to be done without letting them overwhelm, unbalance, or trap you.