What does "Don't think! Feel!" in Bruce Lee's Gospel "Enter the Dragon" mean?

"Enter the Dragon" most famous words

The twists and turns of the production of ``Enter the Dragon'' are detailed in many research books and audio commentaries, so please refer to them. Just to give you a rough idea, it's " Burn! " Warner Bros., which had continued to turn away projects such as "Kung Fu " (1973) and " Silent Flute " (1977), turned its back on Bruce after he became a big star in Asia. As a Hollywood production, it wasn't a huge budget project, so ``Enter the Dragon'' was made with almost complete control over Bruce.

Therefore, in many scenes, Bruce's intentions were filmed exactly as Bruce intended. Words that would normally have been cut out at the producer's discretion, such as difficult Zen questions and answers, were left intact. Among his remaining words, perhaps the most famous is ``Don't think! Feel!''.

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Bruce trains a boy in the garden of Shaolin Temple. Bruce tries to kick him many times, but he finally manages to land a kick that convinces Bruce. When I asked the boy how he felt about this, he hesitated and said, ``Let me think about it...'', even though he didn't know how to answer. At that moment, the words "Don't think! Feel!" come out.

He continues, "It's like a finger pointing to the moon. If you focus on your finger, you'll never reach the glory that lies ahead!"

At first glance, it seems to be a recommendation for improvisation: ``stop thinking and just feel things.'' However, this word has many backgrounds and scenes, and without knowing them, we cannot reach its true meaning.

finger and moon

The latter half of the passage, about the fingers and the moon, is said to have its origin in the words of Dogen, the Zen master who spread the Soto sect, a type of Kamakura Buddhism, in Japan (probably because he studied it in China). Arou Zhuangzi is even more original.).

When a practitioner asked Dogen to tell him about a certain book, he asked, ``I can't read, so I'd like you to read that book to me.'' When the practitioner asked, ``Do you understand the meaning even though you can't read?'' Dogen apparently replied as follows.

"There is no relationship between The Truth and words. If The Truth is the moon, then words are the fingers. The fingers can point to the moon, but if you are fixated on the fingers, you will not be able to see the moon."

To echo the words of ``Enter the Dragon,'' it would be something like ``If you're fixated on thinking, you won't be able to feel.'' So, what does it mean to "feel without thinking"?

True theory: “Don’t think! Feel it!”