No Style. Did Bruce Lee Invent It?
One of our evolving martial artists, Arnuld, commented in response to our Bruce Lee Mythology post. He asked if Bruce Lee invented the ideas of having no style and formless technique. Here are some thoughts:
Lee’s Influence
Bruce Lee was influential in modernizing traditional martial arts through his Jeet Kune Do philosophy. He was innovative, though not original, in his modern expression of ancient Chinese thoughts. As an iconoclast, Lee was critical of orthodox secrecy and exclusiveness, anachronistic training methods, forms and lack of realistic sparring. While he popularized martial arts, Lee used more creative rearrangement than invention.
Wu Men, Wu Pai: No Style
Bruce Lee was an avid reader of Chinese martial art pop fiction, known as knight errant tales (wu xia xiao xuo). A common theme is a mysterious swordsman who appears out of nowhere to save the day, with unorthodox fighting referred to as “wu men, wu pai.” This translates as “no style, no system”. The master is expressing the Daoist idea of the martial art zenith, beyond form, system and technique. It is the ability to move naturally and spontaneously in the way (the Dao) of movement. This may have influenced Lee.
Wu Xing: Formlessness
All of Bruce Lee’s “modern” ideas are rooted in ancient tradition. They are taken from Zen Buddhism and in particular, his ideas echo Daoism, China’s spiritual philosophy of nature. The motto of JKD, “use no way as your way and to use no limitation as your limitation” is classic Daoist thought. When Lee expounds on being shapeless and formless (wu xing) and to “become like water” as a metaphor for expressing technique and strategy, he is paraphrasing famous verses from Lao Tzu’s 2,500 year old text, the Dao De Jing.
Dao – The Way
Daoism teaches mastery of life and all of its disciplines through the discovery of, and adherence to, the Way (Dao). The Way means taking a path that follows natural laws. According to Lee’s interpretation of the Dao, this meant that both forms and styles are unnatural and unnecessary. While traditionalists would agree that the ultimate goal is transcendence of form, forms are first taught as an essential foundation — believing that you cannot transcend what you have not experienced.
To Lee, this ultimate stage of having no style justified his rejection of classical systems and form training, the very methodology of kung fu. Lee’s philosophy, though subjective, has liberated the arcane elements of classical martial arts. It brings to mind that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Or in this case, under the Dao.
What do you think about this question and our answer? You can read Arnuld’s comment under our Bruce Lee Mythology post. And visit his website
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Good post here, I agree with you, that he probably didn’t come up with the idea. But, I’m sure Bruce would agree that every move is original when done by a practioner. It’s all about how the person in the moment does it, and whether or not it flows together without thought and how it expresses what the person is feeling at the time. So even though he might not have thought of it first, he was the first and last to try to put it together the way he did.
Sincerely,
Scott Buendia
Certified:
Jeet Kune Do instructor
Filipino Martial Arts instructor
Shamrock Submission Fighting Instructor
http://www.realistictrainingworks.com
Yep. Bruce Lee was a modern martial arts pioneer.
It seems that you aspire to be a complete martial artist as Lee advocates. Considering his open minded approach to all systems, it is interesting that he never adapted any animal techniques common to Cantonese styles that he was exposed to.
Have you ever explored animal techniques to augment boxing and grappling?
TanDao
Along with “be like water” I was also impressed with his other findings (which I myself found even before hearing them from Bruce Lee or anywhere):
1) Absorb what is practical, discard the rest.
2) You know I can pull out some fancy hand-movements and stunts. I can be cocky but that is not the truth. To be true to yourself, not lying to oneself, is the expression of human body. To be true to yourself is hardest thing to do my friend.
These words were spoken by Bruce Lee himself. You can listen to the “Bruce Lee – The Lost Interview” on YouTube.
Now I have also found the same thing, before I heard Bruce Lee and these 2 things came from my own personal experience as a growing man in this life. But from where these words are getting generated, what is the source of this thinking. The source is being Natural. You don’t be true to yourself just because Bruce Lee said it or your JKD instructor told you so. You follow it because you believe in Nature, you believe in the path that follows Natural Laws. When you learn JKD (or any Martial-Art) you don’t duplicate Bruce Lee, you try to be true to yourself. Why you try to be true because you found that following the true you, the Natural you, removes any arrogance and self-glorification, any anger from you, being the Natural you, being true to yourself, liberates you from this artificial world and its phenomenon and puts you in one with Nature itself. And when you find this truth, you no longer bound to any form or anyone but to true you only.
Now what I explained is what I have experinced myself but this is also explained in ancient Chinese thought as “The Dao”, so I guess Bruce Lee took it from there and put it in real-life perpective along with his own experience in Martial-Arts and result was JKD.
I really wonder why Bruce Lee did not adapt any of the animal techniques in JKD. May be this was because of his background in Wing-Chun (not in Black Tiger Kung-Fu, of which I am impressed very much). Bruce Lee adapted ideas from western boxing and fencing instead. If you look at how Tommy Carruthers practices JKD, all you will see are these words “Pure and Practical Practice” and nothing else. Try these 2 videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV6JdzCbXFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBTM6_l-Gdk&feature=related
[...] kung fu, Martial Arts, Tao te Ching, The Dao, Wing Chun — arnuld @ 1:44 pm As explained at Tan Dao that Bruce Lee actually modernized the ancient Chinese thought. Majority of Martial-Arts [...]