Mind Like Water

Over at the Isshindo blog, there was a post about Mizu no Kokoro, Mind Like Water. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Mizu no Kokoro (水の心), which translates to "Mind like Water," is a concept that originates from Zen philosophy and has been integrated into various martial arts, including Karate. It represents a state of mental clarity and calmness, akin to the nature of water.

Meaning and Symbolism:

- Water is often used in Zen and martial arts philosophy to symbolize adaptability, fluidity, and purity. Water is soft, yet powerful, as it can gently flow around obstacles or, with enough force, erode solid rock over time.

- Mizu no Kokoro refers to the mind that is free of attachment, distractions, or rigid thinking. It is a state of perfect balance, where the mind remains calm and responsive, able to adapt to any situation in a fluid manner, without being overwhelmed by emotions or external pressures.

How It Applies in Martial Arts:

1. Adaptability and Flexibility: Just like water adapts to the shape of its container, a martial artist with "Mizu no Kokoro" can adjust to the circumstances of a fight or conflict, responding appropriately rather than reacting out of fear or anger.

2. Calm in Chaos: In stressful or dangerous situations, the ability to remain calm and focused, as if the mind were as smooth as still water, allows for better decision-making and action.

3. Non-attachment: This state of mind involves not being fixated on winning or losing, but rather being present and fluid in the moment, adapting without being thrown off course by the outcome of the situation.

4. Effortless Action (Mushin): "Mizu no Kokoro" is closely aligned with the concept of "Mushin" (無心), or "no-mind," where the practitioner does not force or overthink actions. The mind remains open and free, allowing techniques to flow naturally, much like water moving over rocks.

Judo for Self Defense

 

One Mind

Over at the Isshindo blog, there was a recent post on Isshin, "one mind." An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Just when you thought you knew everything about Tatsuo-san’s “Isshin.” The following provides insight into the very foundation on which Isshinryu was built by Tatsuo-san, creator and founder of Okinawan Isshinryu Karate-jutsu!

"Isshin" (一心) is a Japanese term that translates to "one mind" or "single-heartedness." It represents a focused, undivided mind or spirit that is fully present and dedicated to a single purpose. The concept of Isshin is significant in many Eastern philosophies and martial arts, particularly in Karate and Zen Buddhism.

Key Elements of Isshin

1. Single-minded Focus: Isshin refers to the idea of total concentration on the present moment and task. In martial arts, this means that a practitioner focuses entirely on a strike, a movement, or a defense, without distraction or hesitation. Isshin represents the alignment of body, mind, and spirit toward a unified action.

2. Undivided Will: Isshin also refers to a state where one’s will or intent is not scattered across multiple thoughts or desires. This is important in both martial and spiritual practices where being fully dedicated to the present is critical for effectiveness.

3. Zen Philosophy Connection: In Zen Buddhism, Isshin is akin to the concept of mindfulness or shoshin (初心), a beginner's mind that remains open, clear, and free from distractions. It aligns with the Zen pursuit of living in the present moment without being hindered by the past or future, allowing for pure, unfiltered experience.

4. Practical Application in Martial Arts: In martial arts, Isshin embodies the idea of committing fully to each movement or technique. A martial artist must eliminate distractions, avoid hesitation, and devote their entire mind and energy to the execution of defense. In traditional Okinawan karate, Isshin contributes to "zanshin" (awareness of one's surroundings), helping practitioners stay focused and ready even after executing a technique.

5. Emotional Discipline: Isshin is also a mental and emotional discipline. It teaches practitioners to channel their energy toward a single purpose and to remain calm and composed under pressure. By focusing the mind, a person can control emotional responses, such as fear, anger, or anxiety.

Visiting Other Dojo Back in the Day

Over at Ellis Amdur's excellent Kogen Budo blog, there was a guest post about what it was like to visit other dojo back in the classical period and how should one conduct oneself when visiting today?. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

 

VISITING OTHER RYŪHA: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In the Edo period, unless one were a dignitary of a feudal domain, there were few reasons for a practitioner of a ryūha to visit another ryūha other than to make a challenge. Once safety equipment had been developed, this was not necessarily a hostile action, but it was, as I have described elsewhere, always potentially so. If one intended to ‘cross-train,’ this usually followed a match—the loser trained with the victor. Perhaps the most likely exception to this was if a young man became acquainted with a venerable warrior. An example of that is recorded in the internal records of Takenouchi-ryū.

. . . , the family lost its castle to an alliance of Oda Nobunaga and the Hashiba clan.[2] They fled to an adjacent valley in Owari in 1571, . . . . The Takenouchi were welcomed by the Shimizu lord, Shinmen Iga no Kami. Takenouchi Hisamori, the founder the ryū, then a seventy-eight-year-old man, became the guest of a thirty-one-year-old warrior, Shinmen Munisai Taketo. Takenouchi-ryū records state, “They did not see each other as competitors or enemies but instead paid each other respect as teacher and student.” Hisamori taught him kogusoku—in his school, close-combat, particularly incorporating the use of a dagger in grappling. Munisai was described as a diligent student. [Amdur, Old School, p. 174].

This, however, was not the norm. The idea of visiting another ryūha to observe their practice, with no intention of requesting an opportunity to enroll in the school, is a modern one. This is true even among dōjōs of the same ryūha. Were a student of a ryūha to travel: be it across town or to the next domain and request to train, it would very likely be viewed as an attempt to shame the ‘host school,’ to show that the visiting student, an exemplar of his teacher, was learning things better than what the host school had to offer.

That we are able to visit other schools in modern times, even being invited to practice for a day to experience the character of the school indicates a remarkable change in the nature of traditional schools. For the most part, we do not regard each other as enemies, even rivals. On the one hand, this is positive: knowledge shared can be for the benefit of all, and this is a phenomenon most likely in peaceful times. On the other hand, we run the danger of dulling the sharp edge of distinction, that which makes each school unique as a fighting art, an edge that is honed by adversity rather than amity.

VISITING FAMILY

Historically speaking,  ryūha exclusively headed by sōke, lineal headmasters who managed a single dōjō, was a rather unusual phenomenon. Instead, most koryū-bugei certified various individuals as licensed instructors. In this system, once one was certified, one left to set up one’s own school, no more beholden to one’s teacher than a PhD graduate is beholden to his or her graduate school advisor. They were independent, and they would establish schools in various locations under the same name, with no reference or communication back to a headquarters.  The idea of shibu-dōjō (支部道場, ‘branch schools’) under the aegis of a central authority was quite uncommon until modern times. This is true even in modern martial arts. The Aikikai, the mainstream organization of Ueshiba Morihei’s aikidō, allowed the opening of its first branch dōjō, the Kuwamori Dōjō, (where certified instructors of the headquarters were dispatched to teach) in 1951.

As I have discussed elsewhere, when one became the student of a teacher, one was bound by strict, universally understood rules, grounded in feudal culture. In such a culture, the idea of visiting other schools of the same ryūha, led by other teachers, either junior or senior to one’s own, would have been a fraught subject, even if done so bearing a letter of introduction from one’s own instructor. It might have been interpreted as an implicit message that the student found his own teacher lacking, and either the teacher was trying to get rid of him or wanted him humbled or, conceivably, that they were visiting as a kind of challenge, to throw down a gauntlet, so to speak, demonstrating that what they learned from their own instructor was superior. It should also be remembered that travel was not a simple matter in the Edo period; one needed official permission to leave one’s domain, so the idea of casually visiting another faction of one’s own school to augment one’s understanding of what one received from one’s own teacher was unlikely. In other words, a visit was always meaningful.

To be sure, in the late Edo and early Meiji period, when the bulk of training involved forms of freestyle competition, be it armored fencing with split bamboo sword replicas or jūjutsu matches, people frequently visited other schools, be they other ryūha or one’s own. Then, the challenge was explicit, but not always hostile. One might also stay and train, sometimes for long periods of time, because, for the most part, people were studying increasingly generic methods of martial arts practice. Competitive practice, which eventually became kendō and jūdō, began to create universal martial arts, quite different from sectarian, hermetic ryūha.

Withal, the old ryūha still survive, and they do so by maintaining an old, even archaic, perspective. With that in mind, how should one visit another dōjō within one’s own ryūha?

What is Your Style in a Real Fight?

Below is an excerpt from another thoughtful piece at the Budo Journeyman blog on Substack. The question being addressed is this: despite all of  your training, does your "style" go out the window when you are in a real fight?

It seems to me that a "style" is a training method, and that when the rubber meets the road, you'll express yourself through the filter of your training. Ideally, "no style."

I don't know.

The full piece may be read here.

This has been churning around in my head for a long time.

Years back I remember a magazine interview with a Western Tai Chi stylist who was recounting how he won an Asian ‘open’ full contact match many decades back, with the suggestion being that he fought his way to the top using his Tai Chi training. But, something didn’t quite sit right. There were a couple of still photos in the article that showed him wearing old fashioned, huge leather boxing gloves, like something from the 1940’s. Somehow, I couldn’t square Tai Chi with that way of operating. Maybe I was wrong in assuming so much on so little evidence?

Then, more recently came the new form Karate Combat, in which well-known points fighters used to WKF rules seemed to completely change their style to suit the format (which is understandable to a degree). But most noticeably, not only did the guard rise to almost solely protect the head, but all the energy generation also rose up into the shoulders. The punching just went wild (something that a good boxer would have really punished). These were haymakers that sometimes went so far past the target that the perpetrator was often knocking himself off balance.

To my mind, some of strengths of good karate is that power is created through the smallest of movement. People spend years trying to find a kind of explosiveness that doesn’t rely on a huge wind-up, and to create a skill-set where their footwork and body angling puts them in a great position to really capitalise on the opponent’s mistakes. But that’s just my opinion.

 

Example from Chinese Kung Fu.

Then, this came on to my radar:

 

I tried to find more info on this grudge match/duel between two Chinese masters in 1954 in Macau. The comments underneath said that the participants were; “White Crane representative Chen Ke Fu (陈克夫 or Chan Hakfu) and Wu Tai Chi representative Wu Gong Yi (吴公仪). Both were headmasters of their respective schools.”

I watched it several times trying to see something that would give them the benefit of the doubt. Was I perhaps missing something? Is this truly White Crane (the forerunner of Okinawan karate)? Or do I call it what I think it is; two guys having a desperate scrap, like you might see outside a bar on a Friday night? I see no hint at ‘mastery’, unless I dramatically misunderstand what ‘mastery’ actually means. All that windmilling and bottom kicking, then losing your balance and getting caught up in the ropes looks too much like slapstick comedy.

But it was 1954. I do find myself wondering if the information given in the YouTube page is actually verifiable though. I don’t take anything on the Internet these days at face value.

Does it always have to be like that?

In the early days of UFC there were ‘stylists’ who thought they’d ‘have a go’ and it always ended up badly. Whatever you think of the UFC and its embryonic origins; whether you believe it was rigged in the favour of the Gracie’s, or whatever, it did shine a window on all forms of martial arts activities and excited the interest in the flagging martial arts market place.

In addition, every match of ‘this style versus that style’ on YouTube and other media ends up as a massive disappointment; usually because the people involved are not solid representatives of what their style can produce. And besides, it’s a bit like how people with serious scientific credentials NEVER debate on forums on the Internet. The greater the expert you are in your field the less inclined you are to duke it out with people who have much much lesser knowledge, why waste your time? Just stay in the fast lane of what you do. For example; scientific experts in climate change do not engage in Internet forum punch-ups with climate change denying trolls.

 

Traditional vs Modern Karate

Below is a thoughtful piece from the Budo Journeyman blog on Substack, on the topic of traditional vs modern martial arts, specifically karate. 

My thought is that even the most "traditional" martial art was the new guy on the block at one time. 

The full post may be read here. 

‘Traditional’, call it a label of convenience; call it a handy pigeonhole to categorise what is done. You can even use it as a hallmark of quality, if you want. But how helpful is it, and who cares anyway?

Clearly some people care, or they wouldn’t keep using it. Some wear it as a badge of honour. To the detractors and critics it becomes yet another thing to take a swing at, a convenient target, their favourite strawman.

What does ‘traditional’ mean?

A key part of my college training was to look at the early history of advertising; selling through the message and labels were important. We were told that if you wanted to sell something to the Americans you attached the words ‘New Improved’ to it; but if you wanted to sell to the British you were better off using the word, ‘Traditional’. (‘Traditional Marmalade’ gets my vote every time).

I was listening to a political podcast recently in which ex-politician Nick Clegg was asked what it was like working in Silicon Valley (he has a top job with Meta). Clegg said that the interesting thing about the Valley was that everything is focussed on the future; because the industry has no past. He contrasted that with the UK where he was of the opinion that some of the Brits from the hard right were so sucked into a mythical image of Great Britain’s past (one that never existed in the form they assumed) that they seem unable to develop any forward-thinking future ambitions; other than turning it into some kind of warped image of a fictional England.

The past is not only ‘a foreign country’ (as L. P Hartley said) but it’s also inclined to be a toxic swamp.

So why, in martial arts, do we give ‘tradition’ so much kudos?

In the martial arts we make an assumption that it’s because the product was tried and tested, like some historical Darwinian quality control exercise. There is one obvious flaw with that idea; the assumption that the process is continued forward in an unbroken line.

The great crucible that was the hundreds of years of Japanese civil wars is a prime example. For the development of martial skills this wasn’t the steady civilised and disciplined refinements found later in the Edo Period, no this was a total meat grinder. (The battle of Sekigahara in 1600 had an estimated body count of 30,000). It was closer to chaos than it was to organised tradition.

What we know of the surviving Koryu (Old School Budo/Bujutsu), the majority of them were developed and coalesced in the later periods of peace, when they had the luxury of evolving their lineage and traditions, uninterrupted by warfare. This doesn’t lessen their fighting ability (unless the lineage is allowed to drift into decay, as has happened), if anything it gave them scope to really refine the skills and imbue them with a greater humanity – which is always paradoxical in martial arts.

The specific case of karate.

Karate as it is consumed in the West (and in Japan) is a modern thing. Can we attach the word ‘tradition’ to something that is so recent?

In Japan it’s classified as ‘Gendai Budo’, 現代武道 ‘Modern Martial Way’. A line is drawn at 1868; in the years before that it’s ‘Koryu’.

Karate jumped from the rural domain of Okinawan to mainland Japan in the 1920’s and underwent many changes; including elements of militarisation, modernisation and westernisation (consider the influence of the Olympic ideas of Baron De Coubertin which spread across Japan). So, although you might talk about the ‘Olympic tradition’, it would be odd to start referring to ‘Traditional Olympics’ because it would sound so retrograde.

Divergence and Unification in Martial Arts

 

The divergence and unification of martial arts is a topic that I find fascinating. Over at Ellis Amdur's excellent Kogen Budo blog, there was a guest post discussing this topic in the context of Shinkage-Ryu Kenjutsu.

Below is an excerpt. The full post may be read here.

In an earlier guest essay on Kogen Budō, I wrote:

It is important to draw a distinction between “military inspired” arts, practiced by a military class focused on unarmored dueling, versus military arts practiced by a professional class that drilled and maneuvered in mass formation, on exercises or expeditions.

This is a distinction, ill-considered in a lot of commentary, even though it concerns changes most all kobudō underwent during the Edo period, much less where we find ourselves well into the 21st century. Considering this, I will examine several arts with which I have a passing familiarity, and hypothesize about how their current, very divergent, incarnations could have been more closely related much earlier in time. I then describe some of the psychological considerations arise when undertaking an ongoing practice and, in my case, how I hope to practice sword methods as a form of mindfulness and self-cultivation without losing sight of the origins of the arts flowing down to the current day.

Katchu Kenpō

“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?”

— The Skeleton in Armor, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What we call koryū are practices surviving from combative training of several military castes (i.e., primarily bushi, but also gōshi and sometimes armed monastics) before 1868, when the Tokugawa Shogunate ended with the Meiji Restoration. Despite these antecedents, the majority you will find today are focused on unarmored single combat as opposed to armored combat in group formation.

Some groups still maintain skills at wearing armor to this day. When thinking of armored swordsmanship, Yagyu Shingan-ryū Heihōjutsu comes to mind, which regularly demonstrates wearing antique armor. Their movements, which can look a bit formalized when practiced in cloth uniforms, allow for the efficient use of the body while wearing armor. Another example is the Satsuma-han Heki-ryū koshiya kumiyumi, which practices in group formation in armor, with patterns of movement that allow for ranks of archers to cover each other as they draw and fire.

Most koryū, however, adapted during the Edo period to a focus on unarmored combat. Some schools may preserve older, armored, version of kata, but it is not clear to me they put the level of emphasis on armored combatives that Yagyu Shingan-ryū or Satsuma-han Heki-ryū do. Some branches of Owari Yagyu Shinkage-ryū and Hikita Kage-ryū maintain practices of field weapons such as odachi and have postures (kamae or kurai) that are based on how one might effectively move while armored. They also maintain older version of core kata that stress an armored style of movement. For example, a movement of cutting one-handed from long range while balancing on one leg in an advanced kata might be substituted for a closer range movement using two hands.

During certain festivals, members of Katori Shintō-ryū in Japan wear armor, but it is not clear to what extent wearing armor during practice is a regular occurrence. The first set of paired sword kata in Katori Shintō-ryū (Omote no Tachi) is meant to be katchu kenpō (armored sword methods) while the second (Gogyō no Tachi) is explicitly taught as suhada kenpō (unarmored sword methods), but many lines of the art practice the first set at such a rapid pace that the connection to armored combat is, at least to me, lost.[1]

This shift to primarily unarmored training is not surprising. The last large-scale battle before modern times was the Shimabara Rebellion of 1638. Aside from minor skirmishes in putting down peasant insurrections, the Edo period was peaceful, up until the Boshin War of 1868-69, which saw the end of the samurai. Most kenjutsu ryūha thus adapted to several hundred years of peace (Pax Tokugawa) and were not concerned with armored combat or combat en masse. Feudal domains often had official schools for bushi that taught several arts side-by-side. A bushi might then be licensed in those martial arts and this could include cognate instruction on group movement and military strategy, which would have been taught in an academic sense. Martial traditions that had no official domain imprimatur were less likely to preserve associated practices like how to wear and care for armor, how to maneuver while fighting along other bushi. Due to these shifts over time, even though koryū are associated to a military caste, I am not sure it is a good idea to call them “battlefield” arts, even when field weapons such as naginata or yari are employed.

The example of having different version of kata to explicitly work on armored patterns of movement seems logical, but the next step of taking the time to train in armor is rare. Were one to actually train to fight in armor:

• The easiest part of maintaining a connection to armored combat is understanding where to target on an opponent wearing armor. This kind of knowledge might survive quite well in a practice like Katori Shintō-ryū Omote no Tachi. However, as most people practice today, their pace of movement is too fast, their stances too upright, and their footwork and body maneuvers (tai-sabaki)are too large for use in armor.
• Understanding general patterns of movement that would not work well while wearing armor is absolutely requisite, but beyond that, there must be a focus on posture and moving in a way that would best keep the armor from incumbering one’s movement. Even unarmored, long field weapons such as the spear can become entangled in one’s clothing if used improperly.
• Martial skills such as how to don and remove armor properly, and how to care for it would also need to be cultivated. In previous era, the care and maintenance of armor would have been taught both in domain schools as well as within one’s family.

 

Bruce Lee's Fore Arm Workout

The Art of Manliness blog has had several posts about Bruce Lee. Most recently, there was one on Bruce Lee's fore arm workouts. Those fore arms didn't come about from simply punching Wing Chun dummies.

An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

If we’ve learned one thing this year about what the ladies find attractive in men, it’s forearms: forearms sticking out of rolled-up sleeves; forearms gripping steering wheels; forearms handling tools. Women love the look of a man’s well-developed forearms.

Strong forearms are functional too: they improve your throwing capacity and help you lift, carry, and hold things better.

If you’ve wanted to build bigger, stronger, more defined forearms, today we’ll get a tutorial on how to do so from someone who raised forearm development to an art: Bruce Lee.

A Dragon’s Forearms

Last month, we detailed the all-around physical training protocols Bruce Lee used to build his strong and chiseled physique.

But there wasn’t room in that article for delving into how Lee worked his forearms, an area of his body he was especially committed to developing. Lee believed that forearm strength was essential to punching power and grip strength, capacities that were fundamental to his life’s great goal: becoming the best martial artist in the world. And, as someone who desired to fully express the beauty of his body, he appreciated the aesthetics of muscular forearms as well.

Lee’s wife Linda called him “a forearm fanatic.” The martial artist Bob Wall remembered: “Bruce had the biggest forearms proportionate to anybody’s body that I’ve ever seen. I mean, his forearms were huge! He had incredibly powerful wrists and fingers—his arms were just extraordinary.” Another friend said that “If you ever grabbed hold of Bruce’s forearm, it was like grabbing hold of a baseball bat.”

The forearms include numerous muscles that can be broadly categorized into two groups: the flexors (on the underside of the forearm) and the extensors (on the top of the forearm).

To develop truly meaty forearms, you’ve got to do exercises that work both of these groups of muscles. As you do so, your forearms will not only develop in size, definition, and strength, but you’ll improve the stability, endurance, and stamina of your wrists and grip as well.

Lee only lifted weights three times a week, but he trained his forearms every single day, doing a variety of exercises that trained all of their muscles.

While Lee commissioned the creation of several special forearm-training apparatuses, most of the exercises he did, which we’ll detail below, can replicated by the average joe:

 

...

 

Bruce Lee performed a dedicated forearm workout every day. Here’s an example of one of his typical routines:

• Underhand Wrist Curl: 4 sets x 17 reps
• Overhand Wrist Curl: 4 x 12
• Leverage Bar Curl: 4 x 12
• Reverse Leverage Bar Curl: 4 x 12
• Reverse Curl: 4 x 6
• Wrist-Roller: 4 complete windings
• Leverage Bar Twist: 3 x 10

In addition to doing his daily dedicated forearm workout, Lee also did forearm exercises at random times throughout his day, whether he was at home or on a movie set. According to his wife Linda, he did Zottman curls whenever he had a spare moment, often performing them with one arm while he read a book with the other.

He also used a gripping machine he had designed and kept in his office and cranked out reps on it when he had moments of downtime in between tasks and squeezed his sponge gripper as he went about his daily routine. You can replicate these exercises by keeping a gripper (I like these from Captains of Crush) in your desk drawer and squeezing out a few reps whenever you have a chance.

With a little dragon-like passion and a dose of Lee’s dedication, you’ll be filling out your shirt sleeves in no time.

 

 

Bruce Lee's Reading List

The last article posted here was an excerpt from The Art of Manliness, which examined Bruce Lee's training regime and philosophy. In that article, there was a link to a list of books that Bruce Lee had in his library and that he had read.

I thought it would be worthwhile to post an excerpt from that list here. The full list may be read here.

From nearly the moment of his birth in 1940, Bruce was a fury of energy. As a youngster, he earned a nickname which translates to “never sits still.” And yet there was one thing that could calm him down and hold his attention for hours on end: comic books (especially of the kung-fu variety). From there, he graduated into reading Chinese wuxia — what biographer Matthew Polly calls “sword-and-sorcery martial arts novels.”

His spare time was consumed with reading and frequenting bookstores — before kung fu took hold of his life, he even dreamed of owning a used bookstore himself. Even though he had a great relationship with books, he was a pretty terrible student at school. Polly notes he was “a particularly poor student, one of the worst in his class,” even getting expelled once. Like many notable men throughout history, an aptitude for reading did not mean an excellence or even an interest in compulsory schooling.   

It was during college — as is the case for many of us — that Lee’s mind was opened up to new ideas and subjects. Even though he didn’t graduate, Lee took classes in philosophy and psychology that particularly piqued his interests (neither of those were his major — which was drama — but he interestingly later claimed that he studied philosophy in school). He would not only read, but copiously take notes, add neat underlining (sometimes even using a ruler) and marginalia, and transcribe his favorite passages into notebooks. He was not a mere consumer of texts, but actively engaged and wrestled with new ideas, letting the Great Conversation shape his own philosophy and thinking.

After college, reading became part of his regular daily routine. He never held a true 9-5 job, so his days were pretty free to be whatever he made them. In the mornings, he’d work out, running and doing a certain number of kicks, jabs, punches, etc. The afternoons were reserved for either reading or making social calls. And in the evening, he’d spend time with his family, lift weights a few times a week, or continue his reading. He cultivated both mind and body, every single day.

While he read broadly his whole life, there were periods of time where he dove deeply into a single topic, looking to achieve mastery, gain inspiration, and come up with new ideas. When developing his signature kung fu style — called jeet kune do — he devoured not only martial arts titles, but also hoards of fencing and boxing theory, combining ideas from multiple disciplines. Like all innovations, his kung fu was not born spontaneously from his head, but through an amalgamation of ideas from the course of physical exercise and self-defense history.  

Another time he did a deep dive was after he had been rebuffed by Steve McQueen on a kung fu movie project. Lee had an idea for a plot, but McQueen couldn’t commit to starring because he didn’t want anyone riding on his coattails (a classic move from the famously vain and self-centered actor). Lee was furious, and became determined to make his own destiny rather than rely on others to help him out. To that end, he delved into the classics of self-help, putting into practice Napoleon Hill’s advice to write down a specific goal and recite it out loud day and night. From then on, he would seek to make his own projects come to fruition and be in full control of their development.

Yet another instance of this is when he was laid up in bed due to a back injury sustained during one of his morning workouts. Given Lee’s famous energy, he was of course miserable being stuck in bed. He needed something to at least keep his inner self active, so he read the entire works of Indian mystic and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, which at the time was probably 30+ books.

In addition to books, Lee subscribed to the major fitness magazines of the day, becoming an innovator in that arena as well and working weightlifting into his regimen in a time where that was actually considered an unsafe and counterproductive practice.

If you have any doubt about the influence of books and reading on Bruce’s life, look no further than his headstone in Seattle, part of which is an open book carved from marble. As his wife Linda said, “Bruce carried a book with him wherever he went.” While he’ll always be rightly known mostly for his martial arts innovations and movie/TV projects, his reading was the foundation that shaped his remarkable life and kept him grounded and true to his deepest values.

Let’s now take a look at some of the titles and authors that influenced Bruce.

Bruce Lee’s Reading List

While Bruce’s library contained thousands of volumes, they were primarily centered in a handful of genres: philosophy (the vast majority), martial arts (and other fighting disciplines), and self-help. Below is but a sampling of Bruce’s favorite authors and most interesting titles.

Western Philosophy:

• Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
• Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
• The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung
• On Becoming a Person by Carl Rogers
• The Works of Bertrand Russell
• The Works of Plato
• Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian
• Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (and other Campbell titles)
• Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza
• Maxims and Reflections by Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

Eastern Philosophy:

• The Works of Jiddu Krishnamurti (whom Polly notes was “one of his more important influences”)
• Tao-Te-Ching by Lao-Tzu
• The Way of Chuang-Tzu
• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
• The Works of Alan Watts
• The Analects of Confucius
• Art of War by Sun-Tzu
• Bushido: The Soul of the Samurai
• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (and many other Hesse titles)
• Buddhism by Christmas Humphreys (and dozens of other Buddhism-related titles)
• The Chinese Classics compiled by James Legge (all 5 volumes)
• Living Zen by Robert Linssen (and many other Zen-related titles)