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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Bruce Lee

"Empty your mind, be shapeless, like water"

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"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle... Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend... When the opponent expands, I contract, when he contracts, I expand, and when there is an opportunity, I do not hit, it hits all by itself... [Success is] not being tense, but ready... not being set, but flexible, liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come."

One of the greatest fighters of history, Bruce Lee offered his martial art as a natural expression of ancient Eastern wisdom.

In the West, the big macho-man - size, bulk, brute power - is sought for; but in the East, these elements are turned into virtual disadvantage and used against an opponent.

There is so much insight packed into Bruce's statement above. For our purposes, however, I will focus on one small aspect.

it becomes the cup, it becomes the bottle

As raw sensory data of the world enters our minds, none of it remains in detached, amorphous state; instead, the data "becomes the cup and bottle."

With "x-ray vision" we would see that water inside a cup takes the exact shape of a cup; it now looks like a cup; so, too, with water in a bottle, it now looks like a bottle.

And if fear and terror run our lives; if the selfishness and mean-spiritedness of the Small Ego controls our thinking, then, the raw sensory data of the world, as it enters the mind, will take the shape of our fears and ego-centrism.

I will continue this discussion in the next sub-article featuring the work of Kant.

However, I would like to draw special attention to Bruce's climaxing advice:

'[Success] is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.'

All of the great mystic teachers, in this world and the next, speak of the primacy of awareness and consciousness. There will be no lasting success, in this world or the next, without becoming "wholly and quietly alive and alert."

Notice the great contrast - this Eastern precept of the mind as "quietly alive, alert, and ready" with that of Western Big Religion with its "infallible one true doctrines and one true church" concepts.

This latter mental rigidity takes us exactly in the wrong direction, the antithesis of "being aware and alert, ready for whatever may come." Those who arrogantly presume to know everything, infallibly yet, see no need to become "aware, alert, and ready" because they believe that nothing more is coming.

"Be water, my friend."

Bruce and Eckhart

In terms of extracting the essence of Eastern teaching, what Bruce did for martial arts, Eckhart has done for personal growth and development. The work of each of these men represents deep wisdom and high art-form.