Sensei's Blog

It is my hope that this new blog will help each student and their families widen their understanding of the martial arts, and of their application in every day life.  And so I think it’s fitting that in my first post, I introduce you to the foremost of my martial arts heroes.

Anyone who has been studying with me for any time has heard me talk about how Bruce Lee’s contribution to the martial arts goes light years beyond the almost superhuman feats recorded on film.  Bruce Lee was an innovator, the likes of which rarely come around in any field.  He was among the first, when every martial arts master jealously declared their particular style to be the very best, to proclaim that each style had something to offer, and something to discard.  The true martial artist, he argued, was the person who could adopt the best of each style to their own selves (it’s just this very philosophy of absorbing the best of different styles that caused me to set my sites on kempo mastery, after a long time dabbling in different forms).  Perhaps Bruce Lee’s greatest contribution was to methodically record every success and failure in his experimentation as he strove to bring arts thousands of years old to a whole new level.  Whether it was in the area of fighting technique, fitness training, nutrition, or spirituality, he kept extensive records the way a scientist does when they are researching a medical breakthrough.

Still, I imagine that if I could suggest to Bruce (in my imagination, I call him “Bruce”) my theory that he was in many ways a martial scientest, he would reject it outright.  Time and time again, he proclaimed that in pure fighting skills, as much expression of the human spirit could be found as in any other art form.  His insistence that “Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul” is a perfect bookend to my other favorite quote on the role of the spiritual in martial arts: “Where the hand works without the spirit, there is no art.”  The latter comes from Mr. Da Vinci (or “Leo” as I call him in those imaginary conversations).  These two masters understood that technical proficiency, while crucial to the creation of great art, is only part of the equation.  Bruce Lee often called martial arts “the expression of the human body” (I highly recommend a compilation of his writing bearing that title).  His belief was that through diligent mastery of the martial arts, we could achieve a true understanding of ourselves.

You can imagine my pleasure when a student of ours, David Sculley, forwarded an article from Cincom Expert Access, an e-zine for corporate executives, entitled  “Top Ten Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee for Business or Life”.  Taken in any context, the observations Bruce made about achieving one’s fullest are universal truths.  Read it.  As a bonus, there are a lot of great quotes from the Master, many of which you’ll recognize from the dry erase board at the front of the dojo.  It’s a great thing that few of us will ever be called upon to use our training to stop an attacker from hurting us or our loved ones.  But every day, and in every challenge, is the opportunity to express our true selves and reach our fullest potential.