THE NEW EDITION: WHY YOU WANT IT ON YOUR BOOKSHELF

Black Belt Magazine’s expanded edition of Bruce Lee’s  Tao of Jeet Kune Do offers numerous improvements over the original edition:

• Digitally enhanced hand-drawn illustrations from Bruce Lee’s notebooks make it easier to understand the principles as well as the techniques of JKD.
• Sidebars offer quotes from Lee that serve to illuminate his philosophy and practice of the martial arts.
• Short commentaries provide invaluable insights from those who knew Bruce Lee well including his widow Linda Lee, his daughter Shannon Lee, Diana Lee Inosanto (daughter of Bruce Lee’s close friend and disciple, the ever popular Dan Inosanto), Yori Nakamura and Richard S. Bustillo.

HOW TAO OF JEET KUNE DO MAKES YOU BETTER A  MARTIAL ARTIST

The Tao of Jeet Kune Do will not turn you into an overnight martial arts master. As Bruce Lee himself pointed out, “the martial arts are based upon understanding, hard work and a total comprehension of skills. Power training and the use of force are easy, but total comprehension of all of the skills of the martial arts is very difficult to achieve.”

Yes, Bruce Lee’s private notebooks will teach you the basic concepts and principles behind the art of Jeet Kune Do.
But it will teach you so much more.

“The Tao of Jeet Kune Do has no real ending. It serves,” as editor Gilbert L. Johnson observes, “instead as a beginning.”

THE TAO OF JEET KUNE DO: A STATE OF MIND

The Tao of Jeet Kune Do will teach you why mindset is just as important as technique, why philosophy without practice is useless and practice without philosophy is blind. JKD is ultimately a way of thinking not just about the martial arts but about life as a whole. It is not a mere compilation of techniques but a path to self-development and personal growth. Yes, it is about bujutsu but even more importantly about budo.

Jeet Kune Do is the enlightenment. It is a way of life, a movement toward willpower and control, though it ought to be enlightened by intuition.

Bruce Lee brought philosophical depth and breadth of vision to the martial arts. He roused martial artists from their dogmatic slumbers and blind adherence to empty traditions.

He read widely. He knew his Confucius, Lao Tzu and Buddha. He read widely in modern and contemporary philosophers such as Spinoza and Krishnamurti. He reflected carefully on what he read and made it his own. His philosophy and his practice of the martial arts formed an integral whole.

Like the notebooks of Aristotle, Leonardo DaVinci and Nietzsche, Bruce Lee’s notes will always be subject to interpretation and reinterpretation and even misinterpretation.

So, too, the writings of martial arts masters like Miyamoto Musashi and Sun Tzu.

As Gilbert L. Johnson points out, “There is no right way to read the Tao of Jeet Kune Do. The divisions of the books are meant only to facilitate, not dictate, understanding the message of the book.”

Linda Lee, makes a similar point when she says the Tao of Jeet Kune Do was intended to be “a record of one man’s way of thinking and as a guide, not a set of instructions.”

The bottom line?

There will never be a definitive, once-and-for-all interpretation of any of the Tao of Jeet Kune Do.

It is hard to imagine that Bruce Lee would have wanted it any other way.

WHY EVERYONE SHOULD READ THE TAO OF JEET KUNE DO

If you are a veteran adult martial artist, then you already know why every martial artist should read the Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Precisely because there will never be a definitive interpretation, Bruce Lee’s work will serve to refresh and reinvigorate your martial arts perspective and practice.

If you are beginning adult martial artist, then Tao of Jeet Kune Do is even more of a must read. The sooner you read it, the better a martial artist you will be. You’ll find it will help to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to martial arts and self-defense training.

Wherever you are in the martial arts community, whatever your martial passion, you want to get your copy of the expanded edition of Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do.

And, don’t forget…

Absorb what is useful, discard the rest.