Fighting without fighting - martial arts and Bruce Lee

This is probably one of the easiest, best, and profoundest ways to understanding martial arts.

One of the greatest martial artists of all time, Bruce Lee, in his posthumous and yet most successful films, Enter The Dragon, is asked in one scene by an arrogant bully on board a boat “What is your style of fighting?”, to which Bruce Lee’s calm and nonchalant response, in typical Bruce Lee fashion is, “The art of fighting without fighting.” The bully unconvinced and undeterred challenges Bruce Lee to a fight. Bruce responds by saying that as there isn’t enough room on board the boat, they should take the smaller life boat, and paddle to a nearby island and fight on the beach. The bully is so determined, he hastily climbs aboard the lifeboat — but Bruce being Bruce, unties the small boat and leaves the man stranded, with the crew and passengers looking on in laughter at the arrogant bully.

Legend has it that the Bruce Lee scene was itself inspired by a famous historical encounter related in “The Arts of War in Time of Peace: Swordsmanship in Honcho Bugei Shoden”, between a samurai named Tsukahara Bokuden (1489-1571), and a young upstart. Tsukahara Bokuden was himself an early contemporary of the great Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), the greatest sword saint of Japan. In much the same way, Bokuden enrages the young bully and upstart, by proclaiming and teasing him that his art of fighting is about defeating an opponent without hands. In the same vein as the Bruce Lee scene, legend has it Tsukahara Bokuden left his arrogant challenger stranded on a boat.

But what exactly did both men mean by this, and why is it probably one of the most instructive descriptions of martial arts that we have?

Bruce Lee: the man and legend

Before we can answer all this, we need to know a little more about the man behind these famous words, Bruce Lee (1940-73). Also, we can merely speculate if Bruce Lee was familiar with the Tsukahara Bokuden story. Most likely yes, as Bruce was by all accounts a prolific reader and life-long student.

Bruce Lee came to be known as an actor, director, and writer, but primarily he would have considered himself a martial artist. He even passionately proclaimed that martial arts had given him everything. He was a philosopher and spiritual guide to the students he taught, and the people around him. He was a pioneer of training methods and revolutionised martial arts by inventing the art of Jeet Kune Do, a unique art of fighting without fixed positons that led to modern MMA (mixed martial arts). As to being a student, Bruce Lee enrolled to study acting, philosophy, and psychology, at the University of Washington, having spent his early years in Seattle, Washington. Though after dropping out he continued to be an autodidact — his philosophical bent can be felt and seen in his films. sayings, and writings. And while in Seattle, Bruce opened his first martial arts school, the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute.

Thanks to his parents being travelling actors and performers, Bruce was born in America and thus gained US citizenship. Thus, when his parents returned to Hong Kong, when we was a baby, years later Bruce Lee could and did return to America as a US citizen. And we may also speculate that it was thanks to his parents that Bruce forged his career as an actor and film maker.

He went onto establish his second martial arts school at his subsequent home in Oakland, California with his devoted wife Linda Lee, who he had met while a student in Seattle. Linda went on to be a just as passionate martial artisit and practitioner of Jeet Kune Do. It is very likely that Bruce wouldn't have achieved all that he did without the unconditional support of Linda Lee. Their children, Brandon and Shannon Lee, both went on to be martial artists, and his son even followed in his father's footsteps as a martial arts actor, until his tragic death on the set of The Crow. Further still, James Jim Lee helped Bruce run his school, his senior by 20 years, he was also an important teacher, mentor, and friend to Bruce Lee, and proves the point that behind every great person their are great guides and inspirations.

Brandon Lee literally following in his father's footsteps.

Many famous actors and individuals in the sixties came to train with Bruce looking for that same blend of teaching and guidance, including the most famous names in acting and sport of the 60s and 70s, such as James Coburn, Steve McQueen, Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Chuck Norris. They came not necessarily to become martial artists, but to find guidance from Bruce Lee on how to master their expression through the art and movements of fighting and martial arts.

Bruce Lee was remarkable and ahead of his time in so many ways. One such way was his vision in creating an art of fighting that was by all accounts formless. Traditional martial arts, such as Wing Chun Gung Fu, and others most people are familiar with such as kung fu, karate, judo, etc rely heavily on learning and rehearsing fixed positions and forms. Bruce Lee’s ground breaking vision was to create a way of fighting that was without fixed positions, stances, and forms, and came to be know as Jeet Kune Do (The way of the intercepting fist). Apart from transforming the world of martial arts as we know it, Bruce Lee went on to star in many TV shows and films, and wrote and directed many of the films he starred in. And all of this he achieved before his untimely and mysterious death at only 32.

It’s emblem contains characters in Chinese that read “Using no way as way”.

Thanks to his creation of Jeet Kune Do and his philosophy of training and fighting, Bruce Lee is universally acknowledged as the godfather of modern MMA, which has become a global phenomenon since his death. Bruce not only transformed martial arts, but also transformed the way people trained and ate as fighters, introducing pioneering training methods, and being one of the first to incorporate protein drinks into his daily regimen. For those who knew him, from his wife Linda Lee, to his daughter Shannon Lee, and his now deceased martial artist son Brandon Lee, and the many celebrities and friends that came to know him, there was a universal admiration and respect for the man and all he achieved. That alone is reason enough to take seriously his philosophy of martial arts and his way of life.

Using no way as way

This is a classic Bruce Lee Zen Buddhist koan-like paradoxical way of at once encapsulating the very nature of martial arts and at the same time teasing the reader to meditate on the idea of just how one can fight by using no way as the way.

And this is where we enter the heart, or as Bruce might have said, the dragon of the matter. 'No way' here means, no form, no stance, no positions, just energy in motion. Energy in motion is directionless, it is everywhere and nowhere all at once. This carries more weight nowadays, knowing what we know about the quantum perspective of energy. Energy doesn’t move along any prescribed or defined way. Yet, energy always ends up being and being where it needs to be.

In much the same way, the energy of human existence, must be given free rein. Bruce Lee believed the art of fighting was all about the true expression of the self. It was a question of putting all one's emotion into a movement. For some this can be misinterpreted as the idea of putting all one’s anger and frustration into a punch or kick. But this is not what Bruce Lee meant. Rather it is the idea that once a person reaches a heightened level of self-awareness and mastery, one is able to hold in awareness the passionate intensity of one’s emotions, and use that psycho-emotive energy to animate and express a movement. Bruce can be seen demonstrating this in one of his only surviving, and incredibly powerful, interviews.

One of the only surviving interviews with Bruce Lee.

To reach the way of using no way as way, in the same interview he describes how one must train every fibre of one’s being. This is where Bruce’s training philosophy came into its own. He was a profound believer in training and discipline as the way to self-mastery. It was essentially a leave-no-stone-unturned approach to training and martial arts. It was a breathe-and-live philosophy of martial arts. And he became the living embodiment of the idea that if one trains every fibre of one’s being, for any possibility, then there can be no excuse for not being ready for any eventuality. And the self-knowledge that comes with knowing, gives a person stoical readiness. This is the essence of confidence for a fighter and human being. A knowing readiness yet a plain ease of being.

Yet, this must also coupled with the Zen Buddhist and Taoist philosophies that Bruce was a great admirer of and disciple. It is here we get the spirit that guides Bruce Lee’s whole philosophy and system. Zen and Taoist teachings can be best understood as giving us the whole idea of cultivating a detached spirit, letting go, and simply being.

Having a detached spirit is not about being emotionless, cold, or without feeling towards the world. It’s is rather the opposite, it is cultivating the capacity to commune deeply with one’s emotions and passions, to commune deeply with the world and people, and yet to be detached from seeking emotional gratification from that around us, letting go of expectations and outcomes, and simply being, given what one is and one knows. It is nothing more nor less.

The art of detachment is the art of being without trying to be.

All knowledge is ultimately self-knowledge

Bruce was fond of saying this, and is possibly one of his most famous quotes.

In the context of understanding martial arts, and Bruce’s philosophy of fighting, thanks to the notion of no way as the way, we can make sense of how he envisioned martial arts. It was a vision of fighting not for the sake of violence or fighting per se, nor for the glorification of violence and power, nor for the glory of winning, or dominating opponents, or impressing people with feats of strength, speed, or agility.

Ultimately, martial arts was a way, a way of how to be, in every sense, a martial artist, actor, husband, father, human being. Martial arts was a guide to Bruce Lee, and Bruce Lee in his turn used the guide of martial arts to guide others. He himself had been guided by a great master in IP Man, a great Wing Chun Gung Fu master. IP Man in his turn was guided by his great master Chan Wah-Shun, and so on it goes. That was the ancient way of passing down martial arts through and over the generations.

The beauty of Bruce Lee’s way was that the knowledge gained thanks to the marital arts, and Bruce Lee’s philosophy, would be transformed to self-knowledge for any follower of his philosophy, since to practice this knowledge was the act of transforming knowledge to self-knowledge. Once one has self-knowledge, one can be in the world without trying to be, ultimately self-knowledge allows one to be in harmony with the world. Knowledge is external, self-knowledge is internal, and when these two states align, when there is no tension, then one can be said to be in harmony in the flux, in the chaos of life, this is literally order arising from chaos. In essence this is what the yin-yang sign of Chinese philosophy conveys. A harmony of cosmic forces of light and dark, male and female, order and chaos.

The arts of war

And Bruce Lee was certainly onto something in all this, for the martial arts have a long, rich precedence in human cultures, and are near to universal.

The word itself derives from the Roman god of war ‘Mars’. Warring and conflict as far as history and the ethnographic record shows us, are also nearly universal for human cultures, and an essential part to human intra-tribal dynamics. This is no coincidence. The universal nature of conflict and war coincides perfectly with the prevalence of martial arts.

Humans thanks to their profound cultural and practical wisdom, were able to come to the realisation that warring behaviours without discipline and order were good for nothing. Human aggression, violence, dominance, were much better directed once disciplined in the individual. The disciplining of warring behaviours also made the teaching and transmission of such arts more practical, and also permitted them to be passed on from generation to generation. In some cultures, martial ways are an extension of the skills and art of hunting, in other cultures, they are an art in their own right, and yet in other cultures they are codified competitive sports. At their zenith, martial arts became the foundations for the most disciplined and effective armies around the world, from the Spartans to the Romans. Modern armies in many respects are a direct by product of martial arts down the ages. Thus the reach and influence of martial arts is extensive and unarguably profound.

Martial arts are a living cultural artefact that let us see back into the ancient past and plough the rich soil of ancient wisdom.

Communing with the past

To this day, an initiation into martial ways, is a deep communing with this rich past and our past lives as humans. By entering into the rites and rituals of a martial arts culture, we experience the transformative qualities of rules and practices that were embodied by our forefathers.

One could argue that it isn’t so important as to which martial art one practices, but rather the way one practices it and the martial philosophy one adopts. It would have been very interesting to have heard Bruce’s personal taken on this, as surely he would have been well aware that not everyone would have been able to practice Jeet Kune Do, since a large part of practicing a martial art is about the master from whom we learn - the point being, that there were, and still are, simply too few Jeet Kune Do masters to learn from.

With all this in mind, when we practice a martial art with the idea of imbibing the customs, values, and traditions that come with martial arts, we enable ourselves to experience a deep communion with the past, ancient rites, and ways. This communing much like religious communion, is a human way of sanctifying human experience, transcending our ordinary day-to-day lives, and in our moments of practising and living a given martial art to feel and sense harmony with the world and people around us.

To search for harmony through fighting troubles most people — this is not a surprising reaction.

But it’s just that — a reaction. Greater understanding and preferably embodied understanding, helps us recognise that harmony comes from confronting all that is negative and positive, not simply from averring and avoiding what is negative. Harmony comes from walking through light and dark, chaos and order, accepting and embracing the masculine and feminine cosmic energies.

Fighting without fighting - the way forward with no way

So where did Bruce leave us all?

First of all, he left an undeliable mark on our cultural lives through his mere presence, teachings, and films. Yet it was as a visionary of martial arts that he truly left his mark, to such an extent that people are still deciphering, imbibing, and trying hard to embody his teachings and way.

Undoubtedly the idea of fighting without fighting may seem a little hollier than thou, considering how his films were a literal kick-ass fest. But this could be argued to be all in the spirit of what Bruce taught, and ultimately the films were motion entertainment as he was fond of saying. Like all great pioneers, visionaries, and teachers, Bruce Lee leaves us thinking long after he has left.

Like with all wise words, wise ways, and philsophies, there is an undeniable take home message, which we can live out with little doubt or hesitation, and so it must be, since if that were not the case, then a guide would be good for nothing. Yet, all the same, wise ways also continue to pose and welcome their own questions from their followers and admirers. And wherever there are questions, there can't be dogma or ideology. Rather there is the flow of thought, ideas, and energy.

So even when we sit and ponder on the idea of fighting without fighting, particularly for those who continue to follow a martial arts way of life, may find themselves unknowingly living out those wise words, as a martial arts fighter will rarely ever engage in physical combat outside of sport or competiton.

But deeper still, those who follow in the footsteps of such a philosphy, fighting without fighting runs deeper, as a Buddhist-Taoist way of life, of endeavouring to live with detachment, thus without the need for constant emotional gratification, unconscious expectations, and the constant comfort of certainty. It is leading a life without tension.

Without tension, there can be no fight, without fight, one can live, yet if tension does arise, thanks to the fighting without fighting philosophy, one can trust that the tension will be resolved without ever having to kick-ass Bruce Lee style, since that trust will come if one trains every fibre of one's being in body and mind.