The Art of Dying

“In memory of a once fluid man crammed and distorted by the classical mess.”

From the Bruce Lee Podcast with Shannon Lee:

When Bruce Lee spoke about the Art of Dying, he did not mean dying in the literal sense, but as a metaphor for letting go of the past and things that limit you, so you can be a fluid human in the present moment.

“Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose, to accept defeat, to learn to die is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes, you must free your ambitious mind, and learn the art of dying.”

Bruce was constantly practicing this idea of dying because to him it meant returning to beginners mind and neutrality. He even had an art piece tombstone created which stated, “In memory of a once fluid man crammed and distorted by the classical mess.” This was a physical reminder to let go of anything that keeps you rigid or limits growth. “To understand and live now, there must be a dying to everything of yesterday, die continually to every newly gained experience be in a state in choiceless awareness of what is.”

Dying in this instance is more about living in the moment and being able to continue to be the student and learn.

“Drop and dissolve inner blockage, a conditioned mind is never a free mind. Wipe away and dissolve all its experience and be born afresh.”

“We live in clichés in patterned behavior, we play the same role over and over again. To raise our potential is to live and review every second refreshed.”

“People try to hold on to sameness, this holding on prevents growth.” You try and hold onto the sameness because it offers security, but it prevents real connection to others, yourself, and the world around you and hinders your personal growth.

“Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win, but never to learn the way to lose. To accept defeat, to learn to die, is to be liberated from it. Once you accept this you are free to flow and to harmonize. Fluidity is the way to an empty mind. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying.”

Learning to change how you hear criticism or how to lose will help you move gracefully through the bigger defeats in life such as losing the game or your job while keeping the lessons learned from those defeats. “To desire is an attachment. to desire not to desire is also an attachment. To be unattached then means to be free at once from both statements. In other words it is to be simultaneously both yes and no, which is intellectually absurd.”

Our minds are so linear that it’s hard to hold on to duality, when the answer might be both yes and no.

When you are following a pattern then you only understand the pattern, and if you are only focused on the pattern you are not looking at yourself or understanding yourself. So many of the patterns we follow or create are based on what “should be” according to societal pressures. We have to let that go in order to be free and fluid. “Escape the pointless endeavor to trap life in a metaphysical net instead of simply living it.”

There is a way to be in the world that also allows everyone else to be in the world. Harmonious individuality: you can exist in the world as yourself and others can exist in the world as themselves. “If when you’re being knocked down, you can stop and say ‘Why am I being knocked down?’ then if you can examine that in that way then there’s hope for your growth.”

Take Action: Practice being in the present moment and letting go. Where are you being rigid in your life? Where can you bend more? Where do you have a firm attachment to an idea or position? If you can identify the attachment and create a little bit of space between you and the attachment then you are on your way to freeing yourself from that attachment.

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