“Realize the fact that you simply ‘live’ and not ‘live for.'”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 3)
Archives
“I seek neither your approval nor to influence you. So do not make up your mind as to ‘this is this’ or ‘that is that.’ I will be more than satisfied if you begin to learn to investigate everything yourself from now on.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 2)
“To [Bruce] Lee’s way of thinking, any answer he could provide is worth nothing to any other individual, unless that individual has come to see its validity as a result of his own independent thought on the matter.”
John Little, via Striking Thoughts (Page xxiv)
“[Bruce Lee’s] answer to problems was to turn a stumbling block into a stepping stone. For instance, when he was confined to bed rest for six months because of a back injury, he used that opportunity to compile his training methods and his philosophical thoughts into several volumes.”
Linda Lee Cadwell, via Striking Thoughts (Page xvii)
“A teacher is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself. A good teacher is merely a catalyst.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page xvi)
“Accomplished people have an obsession with completing tasks. Once a project falls into their horizon, they crave, almost compulsively, to finish it. […] It’s this constant stream of finishing that begins, over time, to unlock more and more interesting opportunities and eventually leads to their big scores.”
Cal Newport
“[Bashō] prized sincerity and clarity [in poetry] and instructed, ‘Follow nature, return to nature, be nature.’ He had learned to meet each day with fresh eyes. ‘Yesterday’s self is already worn out!'”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 191)
“[Bashō’s] fundamental teaching remained his conviction that in composing a poem, ‘There are two ways: one is entirely natural, in which the poem is born from within itself; the other way is to make it through the mastery of technique.’ His notion of the poem being ‘born within itself’ should under no circumstances be confused with its being self-originating. A fundamental tenet of Buddhism runs exactly to the contrary: nothing is self-originating.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 190)