Artist of Life

I've been a fan of Bruce Lee since I was a child, one of my favorite books of his Bruce Lee Artist of Life, compiled and edited by John Little (I also like The Art of Expressing the Human Body a lot). Last night I was reading through some of it, I've read the book a bunch of times; it had been a while since I read any of it. Here are two passages from the book, the first is a poem that Bruce Lee translated.

"The Frost by Tzu-yeh

Young man,
Seize every minute
Of your time.

The days fly by;
Ere long you too
Will grow old.

If you believe me not,
See there, in the courtyeard,
How the frost
Glitters white and cold and
cruel
On the grass that once was
green.

Do you not see
That you and I
Are as the branches
Of one tree?

With your rejoicing,
Comes my laughter;
With your sadness
Start my tears.

Love,
Could life be otherwise
With you and me?" pg. 110

Here is another passage from a personal essay he wrote entitled In My Own Process: III

"However, the problem is one where some people have a self, but most people have a void, because they are too busy wasting their vital creative energy to project themselves as this or that-dedicating their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like rather than actualizing their ever-growing potentiality as a human being; a sort of "being" versus having-that is, we do not "have" mind, we simply "are" mind. We are what we are.

Once the intelligence issue is established, I wonder how many of us have really gone to the trouble of reexamining all these so-called ready-made intelligent answers that are constantly crammed down our throats ever since heaven knows how long. Maybe starting from our first sign of capacity to learn. Yes, we possess a pair of eyes, the function of which is to observe, to discover, and so forth. Yet many of us simply do not really see in the true sens of the word. I must say that when the eyes are used externally to observe the inevitable faults of other human beings, most of us are rather quick with ready-made condemnation.

For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes maybe a lifetime. To take responsibility for one's actions, good and bad, is something else. After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge." pg 230