Jeet Kune Do. Teri Tom

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СКАЧАТЬ to joint locks, which have been published, there are hardly any notes on the subject in Lee's personal writings. This is not to say that grappling is not something Lee would have further explored. The sad truth is that he died before we had a full picture of the art.

      I feel that close range skills are essential, but I will not be writing about them under the banner of "JKD." It is not for us to assume what would have been. We cannot guess at what direction Lee would have gone and presume to label it as JKD. We must trace everything back to the evidence that was left behind—his writings. Again, there is nothing wrong with exploring other techniques, but do not cite elements that you cannot trace to Bruce Lee and mislabel them as JKD.

      The "conceptualization" of JKD really runs counter to everything that Bruce Lee was about. What is so offensive about this blatant misrepresentation is that it flies in the face of Bruce Lee's own writings which tell us to "daily minimize instead of daily decrease,"¹⁰ and to "simply simplify,"¹¹ In reality, JKD consists of about 5 punches, 3 kicks, and a few ground techniques. The reason for this is incredibly simple. When the pressure's on, you cannot be rifling through a large library of techniques. You need enough techniques to cover all your situations, and then that's it. Everything must be simplified so that in the moment, you do not think. This is the essence of Zen—mushin ("no mind").

      Unfortunately, many JKD "instructors" have sold Bruce out in the name of profit. To keep their schools running, they teach technique after technique after technique. Even as early as the 1600's, legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi knew the folly of this approach when he wrote the following:

      "Teaching people a large number of sword techniques is turning the way into a business of selling goods, making beginners believe that there is something profound in their training by impressing them with a variety of techniques. This attitude toward strategy must be avoided, because thinking that there is a variety of ways of cutting a man down is evidence of a disturbed mind. In the world, different ways of cutting a man down do not exist. Whether you are an accomplished adept or a non-initiate, a woman or a child, the ways (michi) of striking, slapping, and cutting down are not all that numerous. Apart from these movements, there are only those of stabbing and slashing broadly on the horizontal. Because what is primarily at issue is the way (mishi) of cutting someone down, there cannot be many differences."¹²

      There may be few ways of cutting a man down, but to perfect those ways, to know how and when to use them, requires an understanding that would allow students to find answers for themselves. Many instructors have not taken the time and effort to develop such an understanding and so are unable to pass this on to their students, and so they keep their students in the dark—and paying the bills—by not giving them the tools that would make them self-sufficient. So the tradition of mediocrity masquerading as mastery continues into the 21st century.

      The reason I've gone into this rather lengthy explanation of Zen is that we are about to embark on a journey through the JKD arsenal. You will notice there are only a few techniques, as promised. But we are going to go into each in great detail, explaining the whys, hows, and whens of each. For those who do not understand the Way, this will seem unnecessarily thorough. They will argue that you can go straight from ignorance to transcendence. They are missing a very important step, the most important step—learning. Again, you must learn the rules before you can transcend them.

      When Bruce Lee said to discard technique once you've learned it, he didn't mean that you could just forget about it or that you'd never use it again. Nor did he mean that being an artist meant being undisciplined in jumping from technique to technique—or worse, from art to art.

      No, in line with Zen philosophy, "discarding" technique would mean that once you've mastered the technical skills, you no longer have to think about them. It is there when you need it. Your body simply reacts. Your mind and body are one, and conscious thought no longer interferes with physical execution. Hence the line from Enter the Dragon: "I do not hit. It hits all by itself."

      Among Bruce Lee's personal papers, there is a note indicating that Lee intended to write three volumes, each based on a different stage of learning. The note was written in 1970 and read, "Have three volumes, each one corresponding to the three stages, leading to the highest." These "three stages of cultivation" were called "The Stage of Innocence," "The Stage of Art," and "The Stage of Artlessness"¹³ The first level, of course, is that of the absolute beginner. Learning is devoid of all self-consciousness and driven by instinct. During the Stage of Art, the student is in the process of technical, physical training. He is learning the nuts and bolts of the art. Because he is consciously programming his body at this stage, his conscious mind will sometimes be at war with his body and hinder performance. As he begins to master the technical aspects of the art, though, he enters the Stage of Artlessness. This is referred to in both Zen literature and Lee's writings as "Prajna Immovable."^{14, 15} This is where the natural "no-mindedness" of the master's state is reunited with that of the beginner's. The circle is now complete.

      Each of Lee's stages corresponds to the same stages of learning referred to throughout Zen literature. Takuan Soho, as translated by D.T. Suzuki, combined the stages of Innocence and Art into a single category, the stage of Ignorance and Affects. Again, this encompasses the beginning levels through the development of technical knowledge and skill. And the Stage of Artlessness is Prajna Immovable.¹⁶

      The problem with JKD is that everyone talks about Prajna Immovable. Everyone wants to get there. But very few "JKD instructors" are willing to put in the hard work required to understand the Stage of Art before they can get to Artlessness. They're missing the nuts and bolts, the very vehicle that is necessary to understand the philosophy of Zen or JKD.

      For all the emphasis on mushin, even Takuan Soho reminded us that you cannot achieve it without technical training:

      "But training in detailed technique is also not to be neglected. The understanding of principle alone cannot lead one to the mastery of movements of the body and its limbs. By practical details I mean as such as what you call the five ways of posing the body, designated each by one character. The principle of spirituality is to be grasped—this goes without saying—but at the same time one must be trained in the technique of swordplay. But training is never to be one-sided. Ri (li) and ji (shih) are like two wheels of a cart."¹⁷

      So it is at the stages of Innocence and Art that this book comes in. These are the nuts and bolts of JKD. Again, there aren't a lot of techniques—there aren't supposed to be—but we've gone into quite a bit of detail on the mechanics. Obviously, you are not going to be thinking about mechanics in the heat of battle. But knowing why and how to perform a technique a certain way will give you a technical advantage. As you progress through the Stage of Art, knowing how something works and putting that knowledge into practice will make you faster, more powerful, and better at reacting with the appropriate response. It places you closer to the stage of Artlessness.

      Bruce Lee wrote that "The highest art is no art. The best form is no form."¹⁸ You can see how, if taken out of context, yes, it sounds like he is arguing against the rules of technique. But we know from the passage we quoted earlier that JKD is not against form—that Bruce Lee believed there are, in fact, "basic laws of leverage, body position, balance, footwork" that are "not to be violated."¹⁹ These are the laws presented in this volume.

      And now that we've outlined some of the basic principles of Zen philosophy, we can see that the statement "the highest art is no art" comes from the stage of Artlessness. That the "circle with no circumference" isn't just an amorphous nothing existing in a void. No, you must complete the circle, starting from the stage of Innocence and ending at the stage of Artlessness. But first you have to travel through the stage of Art. You cannot just proceed from the stage of Innocence straight to the stage of Artlessness.

      There are those who will argue that it is futile to invest so much time perfecting СКАЧАТЬ