How Bruce Lee’s Daughter Is Sharing His Philosophies With The Digital Generation
Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, is holding open a tiny, leather-bound planner for me to take a photo. She says it's from 1968 and it shows her martial arts superstar father transforming into the sculpted fighter with the bulging batwing muscles that were later showcased in his classic film, Enter the Dragon.
Scrawled in neat cursive penmanship, here's just a single day's worth of notes from Bruce Lee's journal: One thousand punches on the right, 500 on the left. Eight sets each of side bends, sit-ups and leg raises. Two miles each of running and cycling. Wife Linda Lee's birthday party. The All American Open Karate Tournament at Madison Square Garden. Two thousand more punches. A spar with “Ted.” A Jeet Kune Do demonstration for “Lewis.” James Coburn's new phone number and address with his birthday. The Kalidasa poem reading, “Look to this day, for it is life, the very life of life, and within its brief span lies all the verities and realities of your existence.”
Shannon corrects me when I call his entries “fragmented.”
“They're fluid,” she says, “'Be like water,' right?”
While most know Bruce Lee from his badass fight scenes in kung fu movies, such as Fist of Fury, The Big Boss and Way of the Dragon, Shannon says that too few realize he was also a writer and philosopher, adapting ancient Chinese wisdom with his own accessible, modern phrasing. He wanted everyone to find enlightenment, not just the philosophers.
Shannon says her father — who died in July 1973 — was in life the same man of honor he was in his films. And he saw those films as a mechanism to share his philosophy. Shannon raises her eyebrows with a smile. “My father was an entertainer, and he knew what he was doing.”
