Bruce Lee - Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living

Art

Art is the expression of the self - Art is really the expression of the self. The more complicated and restricted the method, the less the opportunity for the expression of one's original sense of freedom.

Art and choiceless awareness. - Artists in all fields must learn to observe choicelessly, to digest their observations, and to express them in their work.

Art begins with feelings. - Art must originate with an experience or feeling of the artist.

Art and emotion. - Art is communication of feelings.

Forget your mind and become one with the work. - If [one] has any idea at all of displaying his art well, he ceases to be a good artist, for his mind "stops" with every movement he goes through. In all things, it is important to forget your "mind" and become one with the work at hand.

Art requires creativity and freedom. - Art lives where absolute freedom is, because where it is not, there can be no creativity-art has no ego rigidity.

Art is not decorative. - Art is never decoration, embellishment; instead it is work of enlightenment. Art, in other words, is a technique for acquiring liberty.

The aim of art. - The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world without.

The artistic requisite. - Requirement to be an artist: purity of heart.

Art is transcendent. - Art is an expression of life and transcends both time and space.

Art is the music of the soul made visible. - Behind every motion is the music of his soul made visible. Otherwise empty motion is like an empty word; no meaning. Postures without proper channeling of your emotions behind them are dead movements.

Art demands whole-hearted action. -Art demands only immediated, honest and whole-hearted action. Through art our own souls are what we must employ to give a new form and a new meaning to Nature or the world.

Art is psychic understanding. - Art reveals itself in psychic understanding of the inner essence of things, and gives form to the relation of man with NOTHING, with the nature of the absolute. Creation in art is the psychic unfolding of the personality, which is rooted in the Nothing. Its effect is a deepening of the personal dimension of the soul.

Art is developed by soulful reflection. -Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.

Artless art is the art of the soul. - "Artless art" is the artistic process within the artist and its meaning is "Art of the Soul." All the various moves of all the tools mean a step on the way to the absolute aesthetic world of the soul.

Artistic skill must radiate from the human soul. -Artistic skill, therefore, does not mean artistic perfection. It remains rather a continuing medium or reflection of some step in psychic development, the perfection of which is not to be found in shape and form, but must radiate from the human soul. The artistic activity does not consist in art itself as such; it penetrates into a deeper world in which all art forms of things inwardly experienced flow together, and in which the harmony of soul and cosmos in the nothing has its outcome in reality.

The task of art. -The task of art is so to state in aesthetic creation the deepest psychic and personal experiences of a human being [so] as to enable those experiences to be intelligible and generally recognised within the total framework of an ideal world.

Art reflects the soul. - It is the art of the soul at peace -like moonlight mirrored in a deep lake.

An artist must be an artist of life. -The ultimate aim is to use his daily activity to become a past master of life, and so as to lay hold of the art of living. Masters in all branches of art must first be masters in living, for the soul creates everything.

Art leads to the essence of life. - Art is the way to the Absolute and to the essence of human life - creative action, with sensitivity, that positive state of innocence.

Art is the perfection of nature. -Art is the perfection of nature and life through the artist, who has supreme control of technique and is thereby liberated from it.

Art opens all human capacities. - The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul, and the senses, but the OPENING of all human capacities - thought, feeling, and will - to the life rhythm of the world of nature: so will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.

Immediacy in art. -Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!

If we cling to any artistic technique it can limit our artistic expression. -Art is the expression of the self; the more compli-cared and restrictive a method is, the lesser the opportunity for expression of one's original sense of freedom. The techniques, although they play an important role in the earlier stage, should not be too complex, restrictive, or mechanical. If we cling to them, we will become bound by their limitations.

Seamless art is perfect art. -The perfection of art is to conceal art.

Pseudo-art is the result of insincerity. - Much pseudo-art comes from insincerity or the attempt to create a work of art which does not grow from an actual experience or feeling.

The four postulates of effective art. - Adequate form [in art] requires:

Individuality rather than imitative repetitiousness

Brevity rather than bulkiness

Clarity rather than obscurity

Simplicity of expression rather than complexity of form.

Art requires soulful commitment. - There are simply not enough soulful characters who are committed, dedicated, and at the same time professional.

True art cannot be handed out. - I insist and maintain that art - true art that is - cannot be handed out. Furthermore, art is never decoration or embellishment. Instead it is a constant process of maturing (in the sense of NOT having arrived!).

Art is a means of acquiring personal liberty. - Art, after all, is a means of acquiring "personal" liberty. Your way is not my way nor mine yours.

The way of the artist. - With all the training thrown to nowhere, with a mind (if there is such a verbal substance) perfectly unaware of its own working, with the "self" vanishing nowhere, art attains its perfection.

The true artist has no public. - The true artist has no public; he works for the sheer joy of it, with an element of playfulness, of casualness. Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.

The last step of art is simplicity. - Simplicity is the last step of art and the beginning of nature.

Where art abides. - Art lives where ABSOLUTE FREEDOM is, because where it is not, there can be no creativity.

On the point of art. - The point is to utilise the art as a means to advance in the study of the Way.

In search of a dedicated artist. - As in the combative arts, to train a deliverer and make him ready, mentally and physically, is difficult enough, and to find one with just that right appropriateness and that rare quality of a dedicated artist, can happen once in a blue moon.

Conditioning

The individual and the what should be. - Why do you as an individual depend on thousands of years of propaganda? Ideals, principles, the "what should be" leads to hypocrisy.

Be born afresh. - Drop and dissolve inner blockage. A conditioned mind is never a free mind. Wipe away and dissolve all its experience and be "born afresh."

Keep your mind uncontaminated by past conditioning.