Alan’s notes – Be water, my friend, by Shannon Lee

page 7 – … the practice of martial arts, which we will use as a metaphor throughout this book for living one’s most engaged life. But most important for me, the idea of being like water is to attempt to embody the qualities of fluidity and naturalness in one’s life

page 7 – For me, it is the height of my ability as a human to be self-expressed, powerful and free

page 8 – Keep in mind that my father’s philosophy, and more specifically, the “Be Water” principle, is really an ecosystem that encompasses the entirety of existence

Page 10 – After all, this is really supposed to be about finding what you love, what energises you, what your dreams are, and who your most essential self really is

Pages 11 and 12 – When you have mastery in combat, you not only meet a fight with composure and skill, you become an artist of movement, expressing yourself powerfully in the immediate unfolding present with absolute freedom and certainty

Page 16 – At its essence, water flows. It finds its way around – or even through – obstacles. My father would call this having “no limitations”. Water is present to its circumstances and surroundings and therefore ready to move in any direction that allows it passage. That openness and pliability means it is in a constant state of readiness, but a natural readiness because it is simply being wholly itself. To be like water, then, is to realise your most whole, natural and actualised self where you are living as much as possible in the slipstream of life as you forge your own path forward

Page 19 – If we want to fulfil our human potential, then we can’t let ourselves be complacent or stopped either. We have to find our way forward and keep being replenished again and again. And in order to find our way, we need to be paying attention. We need to be aware of what is happening all around us

Page 19 – My father has a quote that I love, which reads “to grow, to discover, we need involvement, which is something I experience every day, sometimes good, sometimes frustrating”. You might think “well, isn’t everyone involved in their own lives?” The truth of the matter is that while, yes, we are involved in the sense that we are alive, as in breathing and doing things, many of us are not fully tapping into our consciousness, our self-awareness and ultimately our potential. We are not proactively directing the course of our lives and paying attention to and working with our energy and the environments and relationships we find ourselves in. For many of us, life happens to us. We get trapped in unconscious patterns of living and forget that there are, in fact, many choices and many ways to be fully involved in the creation of our lives. To say it another way, we want to be fully alive versus merely subsisting. And to do that, we have to be paying attention.

Page 21 – cultivating a Bruce Lee water practice is one of heightening our awareness and acquiring and sharpening our tools so that we have the capacity to encounter life and whatever life throws at us with as much skill, consciousness and grace as possible while finding our ultimate way

Page 21 – If I am paying attention, then I can see what’s happening all around and within me, and only then am I free to choose how I want to participate. You can’t choose a response if you can’t even see that there are choices to be made.

Page 24 – Yip Man encouraged young Bruce to train hard and then to forget about himself and instead follow his opponent’s movements. To be like water is to adapt in response to your environment and your opponent. In other words, it is to be pliable

Page 24 – Being like water means to be, in flow, first be present and aware, then adaptable and mobile. In life, wouldn’t being able to maintain awareness in order to then flow around your problems be helpful when navigating what life throws at you?

Page 35 – What it means is that you should try to meet each conversation, each interaction and each experience with a willingness to consider something new without the burden of your judgment in the process.

Page 38 – The notion of choiceless awareness from Krishnamurti

Page 38 – The idea is to have awareness of all that is happening around you and within you without judging it, without making a choice or creating a story about it while maintaining full awareness of it. See it purely for what it is. Experience it fully so that you can have a total experience rather than a partial and therefore limited one

Page 43 – So stop trying to come up with a magic one-size-fits-all solution. There is no flawless preconceived roadmap for life. Within all our grand notions and ideas there is only ever the right here and the right now

Page 53 – We in the West think of nothingness as a void, a non-existence. In Eastern philosophy and modern physical science nothingness, no-thingness, is a form of process, ever-moving

Page 83 – What my father means by emotional content is really context – being in current and appropriate relationship with the situation, feeling and sensing the energy of the present setting, i.e. what’s happening in the moment

Page 167 – Bruce Lee – “And when he contracts, I expand. And where there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself”