{"id":398,"date":"2016-05-22T20:08:33","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T20:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/?p=398"},"modified":"2025-09-07T17:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T17:01:09","slug":"be-water-my-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/?p=398","title":{"rendered":"Be Water, My Friend&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I can tell you, almost to the minute, when I became in my heart a true martial artist. It was around 40 minutes into the premiere episode of\u00a0 the TV series <em>Longstreet<\/em> which aired at 9:00 PM on September 16, 1971 on the ABC network.\u00a0 It happened when Bruce Lee articulated the core philosophy of what the world would soon know as his martial art, <em>Jeet Kune Do<\/em>:<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 580px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-398-1\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BWMF.m4v?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BWMF.m4v\">http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/BWMF.m4v<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>I vowed in that moment to live my life by those words.\u00a0 And I have failed miserably almost every day since.\u00a0 But Bruce, I am told, also lived by many another Taoist aphorism, including &#8220;Fall down nine times, rise up ten.&#8221;\u00a0 In my case, I would have to multiply it by a factor of at least a thousand, but you get the drift.<\/p>\n<p>I include here the text of this version, which is my favorite among many:<\/p>\n<h2>&#8220;Empty your mind&#8230;\u00a0 Be formless&#8230;shapeless&#8230;like water.\u00a0 Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.\u00a0 Put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.\u00a0 Now water can flow, or creep or drip or <em>CRASH<\/em>!\u00a0 Be water, my friend&#8230;&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p>I recommend that you seek out and watch the entire episode, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1_C6wKGL_ug\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><em>The Way of the Intercepting Fist<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, which can currently be seen on YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can tell you, almost to the minute, when I became in my heart a true martial artist. It was around 40 minutes into the premiere episode of\u00a0 the TV series Longstreet which aired at 9:00 PM on September 16, 1971 on the ABC network.\u00a0 It happened when Bruce Lee articulated the core philosophy of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csnorris.com\/magus\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}