'Are you afraid of this happiness?'

The art of the physical becoming; the teachings of Bruce Lee, with his daughter Shannon Lee.

It’s time to share another title from the Resource List in my book Weather Report. This time it’s Shannon Lee’s book, Be Water, My Friend: the true teachings of Bruce Lee, on her famous father, the renowned martial artist and actor, Bruce Lee, who died when Shannon was only four years old. Yet she writes in the introduction to this book that despite not having concrete memories of him, I know his love, his energy signature. Many of his fans will equate his ‘energy signature’ with his prowess in martial arts, his film roles, his public life. But Shannon shares here the inner life and discipline, that tireless search for ways to work on all aspects of his mind and body, that she discovered in notebooks and journals he had left behind, material that revealed his dedication to seeking out ways of being, ways of living that underpinned his dedication to excellence in all that he undertook. This search and his practices are what made him the phenomenon, Bruce Lee.¹

Featured book: "Be Water, My Friend: The True Teachings of Bruce Lee" by Shannon Lee

TO MAKE ONESELF EMPTY

Bruce Lee was a diligent practitioner of everything that was of importance to him, not only his martial arts skills but as his daughter Shannon Lee writes, ‘…at shaping his mind, educating himself, evolving his practices, developing his potential.’ (p. 5)

There are times when I find myself going through the motions, when routines become a drudge or worse, no doubt many of you will relate to this. Beside my desk, high on the wall I have printed out the question, Are you afraid of this happiness?, which I, rightly or wrongly, attribute to the Buddha. But whatever its source, when I reconnect again with the question it is enough to remind me of the ultimate purpose of any of my routines or practices - to make me more fully human on this earth, to be able to participate, to contribute. And what stops me, hobbles me? Most often, fear. Or even FEAR! Very often that fear is heavily disguised by well-worn and old narratives that I mistake for truth and that keep me stuck. Bruce Lee articulates that process of building enthusiasm and joy, that sense of aliveness that I wish for, as ‘the art of the physical becoming’.

“I must give up my desire to force direct, strangle the world outside of me and within me in order to be completely open, responsible, aware, alive. This is often called “to make oneself empty,” which does not mean something negative, but means the openness to receive.” (p. 39)

THE MEDICINE (p. 154)

In the section, The Medicine, Shannon Lee writes of grief as an accumulation… she describes her experience of the shock of her brother’s death, the actor Brandon Lee, her only sibling, and how grief compounds.

I had been thrown into the maelstrom of chaos and had become rigid, so gripped by my pain that I could barely breathe I was resisting life while pretending at life, because I couldn’t believe that life could be good anymore. How could life be good again with a dead brother on top of a dead father? (p. 155)

In common with many of you reading this I have known the surprising physicality of grief. When my dad died, unexpectedly, after living a long and good life I too learned that grief is, in addition to being physical, also cumulative². The early death of my mother, that underground and unarticulated loss of childhood, came roaring back through the decades and knocked me and my siblings for six, most intensely over that first year after our dad’s death. We did not know what had hit us, and, to follow the water metaphor of this book’s title, I felt that I was caught up in swift and terrifying currents. Currents that had been held back for far too long had burst their banks.

Shannon Lee quotes her father, “With adversity you are shocked to higher levels, much like a rainstorm that is so violent, but yet afterwards all the plants grow.” and she continues:

By taking my healing into my own hands and searching unrelentingly for wholeness, I had come to discover his truth and make it my own. I had made it through the rainstorm and discovered a whole new life on the other side that was in full bloom… And life started to disclose its secrets to me.³

OBSTACLES

Having experienced several obstacles this past year myself, all unexpected and one heartstopping (literally), the truth of what Lee writes below is more relevant today than it might have been when I first read it a couple of years ago. How do we react, what do we draw on, when life pivots 180 degrees?

“Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles, big or small, and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle. I have learned that being challenged means one thing and that is what is your reaction to it?” (p. 42)

Photo by Charlein Gracia on Unsplash

ENTHUSIASM IS GOD

Lee writes,

‘My father said, “Enthusiasm is the godhead within us and instinctively becomes the art of the physical becoming.” When we are enthusiastic, we are inspired by life. We are in joy; we are eager. If true confidence is lacking in you at the moment, let curiosity give way to enthusiasm, for it will translate naturally into a desire for engagement, a desire to play⁴, and that desire will lead to action and that action to aliveness and that aliveness to moments of profound joy and confidence.’ (p. 164)

We owe a debt to Shannon Lee for bringing us in this book the teachings of her father Bruce Lee, for whom enthusiasm was god, and our challenge is to find ways to cultivate it. We might begin, as the great Bruce Lee suggests, with simple curiosity, with dropping our preconceptions, with an emptying of our cup.⁵ Are you afraid of this happiness? Am I?

1. This post links very well with my post on the work of Jerzy and Aniela Gregorek and their development of The Happy Body programme, informed by Stoic philosophy. The Happy Body practice teaches the importance of both strength and flexibility, and emphasises the importance of becoming a master rather than a fatalist. I love it so much I became a mentor with The Happy Body .

2. I have written something about this in a post for Father’s Day 2023, The View from Here is Love.

3. You might like to read, Grief and Grace, the origin story of ‘Weather Report’.

4. See also this post on John Berger and his maxim that ‘the world is doubled by play’.

5. Or remind ourselves of the directive from The Little Prince, to be attentive, to ‘look again at the roses’. Another favourite title of mine is, ‘The Answer to How is Yes’, by Peter Block.