Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
A few quotes from the Man:
Turn into a doll made of wood: it has no ego, it thinks nothing, it is not grasping or sticky.
The struggle between for and against is the mind's worst disease.
Wisdom does not consist of trying to wrest the good from the evil butlearning to ride them as a cork adapts itself to the crests and troughs of thewaves.
Establish nothing in regard to oneself.
Observe techniques as though not observing.
Eliminate not clear thinking and function from your root.
To understand it, one ought to throw away all ideals,patterns, styles; in fact, he should throw away even the concepts of what is or isn't ideal.
It is easy to teach one to be skillful, but it is difficult to teach him his own attitude
Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Do not be concerned with your escaping safely-lay your life before him.
Not to look backward once the course is decided upon.
While being trained, the student is to be active and dynamic in every way. But in actual combat, his mind must be calm and not at all disturbed. He must feel as if nothing critical is happening.
No change taking place in his expression, nothing betraying the fact that he is engaged in mortal combat.
The tools, your natural weapons, have a double purpose:
1. To destroy the opponent in front of you
2. To destroy your own impulses caused by the instincts of self-preservation.
Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere.
Each man belongs to a style which claims to possess truth to the exclusion of all other styles.
Discipline must conform to the nature of things in their suchness.
Truth is outside of all patterns.
Knowledge is fixed in time, whereas, knowing is continual.
One can function freely and totally if he is beyond system.
To fit in with an opponent one needs direct perception. There is no direct perception where there is a resistance, a “this is the only way” attitude.
If one is anchored to a particular view, one will not be able to follow the swift movement of what is.
Truth is relationship with the opponent.
One can never be the master of his technical knowledge unless all his psychic hindrances are removed and he can keep his mind in a state of emptiness (fluidity), even purged of whatever technique he has obtained.
The more aware you become, the more you shed from day to day what you have learned so that your mind is always fresh and uncontaminated by previous condition.
The knowledge and skill you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.
Becoming is a denial of being.
Seeing takes place with the inner mind.
To be of no-mind means to assume the everyday mind.
A limited mind cannot think freely.
The wheel revolves when it is not too tightly attached to the axle.
When you are completely aware, there is no space for a conception, a scheme.
When there is no centre and no circumference, then there is truth. When you freely express, you are the total style.
If people say Jeet Kune Do is different from "this" or from "that" then let the name of Jeet Kune Do be wiped out, for that is what it is, just a name. Please don't fuss over it.
