Mastering internal arts

[system]

I know you are misquoting and think you are misinterpreting.

Bruce talks about how, before training, punching and kicking are just techniques. Then as you start to train, you find more in the punches and kicks than simple weapons. There is a good deal of sophistication.

Finally, you come to a point where the punching and kicking is, again, just punching and kicking. The fighting occurs through a different mechanism (which I could discuss, but would be presuming on what Bruce actually said) and the punches and kicks are again just tools, as they were in the beginning.

[system]

Bruce Lee read a lot about philosophy when he was an undergraduate at the University of Washington. That doesn’t mean he understood everything he read (particularly with English as his second language). Lee’s metaphor was borrowed from a Zen Buddhist phrase which in turn came from Dogen’s writings of the 1200s.

The Zen phrase can be applied to meditation on anything (a flower, your girlfriend), and simply refers to the process of deconstruction and insight that good Zen meditation aims at.