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Hesitation or the temporary and often minute cessation of motion should be eliminated from the performance.
Good form may be defined as the particular technique which enables the individual to attain maximum efficiency in the activity.
Above all things, remember this: If you tighten up, you lose the flexibility and timing which are so important to successful fighters.
The state of the athlete’s mind as he faces his event determines the degree of excess tension he will carry into the event. The athlete free from excess tension as he awaits his performance is typically self-confident. He has what is commonly known as “a winning attitude.”
If emotional control is not well-learned, critical moments in the fight when the emotional tension is highest will result in loss of skill by the fighter. His muscles suddenly must work against his own over-tense antagonistic muscles. He becomes stiff and clumsy in his movements. Expose yourself to various conditions and learn.
Extraordinary effort, highly emotionalized conditions or a true determination to win at all costs will release this extra energy.
Therefore, an athlete is actually as tired as he feels and, if he is determined to win, he can keep on almost indefinitely to achieve his objective. The attitude, “You can win if you want to badly enough,” means that the will to win is constant. No amount of punishment, no amount of effort, no condition is too “tough” to take in order to win. Such an attitude can be developed only if winning is closely tied to the practitioner’s ideals and dreams.
The real competitor is the one who gives all he has, all the time.
The real competitor is the one who gives all he has, all the time.
The real competitor is the one who gives all he has, all the time. The result is that he works close to his capacity at all times and in so doing, forms an attitude of giving all he has. In order to create such an attitude, the practitioner must be driven longer, harder and faster than normally would be required.
Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just a punch, a kick was just a kick. After I’d studied the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch, a kick is just a kick.
Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just a punch, a kick was just a kick. After I’d studied the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch, a kick is just a kick.
MENTAL CULTIVATION Krishnamurti Zen Taoism
MENTAL CULTIVATION Krishnamurti Zen Taoism
Pay particular attention to the development of relaxed tension. If you tighten up, you lose the flexibility and timing which are so important to successful punches.
Make up your mind that you’ll hit as hard as you possibly can with every ounce of your bodily strength, with every fiber of your mental determination, and also that you’ll keep on hitting harder and harder as you progress through the object.
All fighting should be done with speed and sudden economy in mind, as well as with power.
All fighting should be done with speed and sudden economy in mind, as well as with power.
Attain stillness while moving, like thy moon beneath the waves that ever go on rolling and rocking.
Attain stillness while moving, like thy moon beneath the waves that ever go on rolling and rocking.
Conserve your energy but attack decisively, confidently and with a single mind.
Conserve your energy but attack decisively, confidently and with a single mind.
The execution of the real attack must be done with proper timing, quickly, without break or hesitation. It must be a conscious, accelerated, determined and decisive movement.
Jeet Kune Do, ultimately, is not a matter of petty technique but of highly developed personal spirituality and physique. It is not a question of developing what has already been developed but of recovering what has been left behind. These things have been with us, in us, all the time and have never been lost or distorted except by our misguided manipulation of them. Jeet Kune Do is not a matter of technology but of spiritual insight and training.
The tools are at an undifferentiated center of a circle that has no circumference, moving and yet not moving, in tension and yet relaxed, seeing everything happening and yet not at all anxious about its outcome, with nothing purposely designed, nothing consciously calculated, no anticipation, no expectation — in short, standing innocently like a baby and yet, with all the cunning, subterfuge and keen intelligence of a fully mature mind.
Leave sagehood behind and enter once more into ordinary humanity. After coming to understand the other side, come back and live on this side. After the cultivation of no-cultivation, one’s thoughts continue to be detached from phenomenal things and one still remains amid the phenomenal, yet devoid of the phenomenal.
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.
With all the training thrown to the wind, with a mind perfectly unaware of its own working, with the self vanishing nowhere, anybody knows where, the art of Jeet Kune Do attains its perfection.
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 conditioning.
In Jeet Kune Do, all technique is to be forgotten and the unconscious is to be left alone to handle the situation.
The technique will assert its wonders automatically or spontaneously. To float in totality, to have no technique, is to have all technique.
The knowledge and skill you have achieved are meant to be “forgotten” so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction. Learning is important but do not become its slave. Above all, do not harbor anything external and superfluous — the mind is primary. Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes a disease when the mind is obsessed with it.
“To desire” is an attachment. “To desire not to desire” is also an attachment. To be unattached then, means to be free at once from both statements, positive and negative. This is to be simultaneously both “yes” and “no,” which is intellectually absurd. However, not so in Zen.
Nirvana is to be consciously unconscious or to be unconsciously conscious. That is its secret. The act is so direct and immediate that intellectualization finds no room to insert itself and cut the act to pieces.
Nirvana is to be consciously unconscious or to be unconsciously conscious. That is its secret. The act is so direct and immediate that intellectualization finds no ro...
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Seek not the cultivated innocence of a clever mind that wants to be innocent, but have rather that state of innocence where there is no denial or acceptance and the mind just sees what is.
Action is our relationship to everything. Action is not a matter of right and wrong. It is only when action is partial that there is a right and a wrong.
Don’t let your attention be arrested! Transcend dualistic comprehension of a situation.
Prajna immovable doesn’t mean immovability or insensibility. It means that the mind is endowed with capabilities of infinite, instantaneous motion that knows no hindrance.
Prajna immovable doesn’t mean immovability or insensibility. It means that the mind is endowed with capabilities of infinite, instantaneous motion that knows no hindrance.
When the mind is fluid, the moon is in the stream where it is at once movable and immovable. The waters are in motion all the time, but the moon retains its serenity. The mind moves in response to ten thousand situations but remains ever the same.
To be of no-mind means to assume the everyday mind.
The mind must be wide open to function freely in thought. A limited mind cannot think freely.
A concentrated mind is not an attentive mind, but a mind that is in the state of awareness can concentrate. Awareness is never exclusive; it includes everything.
A JKD man should keep his mind always in the state of emptiness so that his freedom in action will never be obstructed.
The deluded mind is the mind affectively burdened by intellect. Thus, it cannot move without stopping and reflecting on itself. This obstructs its native fluidity.
Jeet Kune Do is the art not founded on techniques or doctrine. It is just as you are.
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. Whether this being different results in dissimulation or a real change of heart, it cannot be realized without self-awareness. Yet, it is remarkable that the very people who are most self-dissatisfied, who crave most for a new identity, have the least self-awareness. They have turned away from an unwanted self and, hence, never had a good look at it. The result is that most dissatisfied people can neither dissimulate nor attain a real change of heart. They are transparent and their unwanted qualities persist
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Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not organically part of us, while self-esteem is derived from the potentialities and achievements of self. We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body or possessions. There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is sensitive and uncompromising.
Secretiveness can be a source of pride. It is a paradox that secretiveness plays the same role as boasting — both are engaged in the creation of a disguise.
