Legend has it he walks among us, even now.
A dreamer, alone in a world between dreams and reality.
Was he always a fighter?
Was he always a hero?
What do we make of…
The young Chuck Norris?

Can we talk about spirituality?

I do not refer to a politely equivocating spirituality, to the New Age patter so heartily embraced in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. No, I refer to a spirituality with sharp edges, one loathed by the pious and atheists alike. It is egalitarian, scientific, demonstrable and falsifiable—in other words, it is dangerous. Fundamentalists on all sides would prefer it did not exist.

Please take note: I am not asking you to believe this. Let’s just talk about it for a moment.

At a sufficiently high level, martial arts and spirituality are entwined. At the same time, spirituality is clearly a religious issue, and religion is a political issue. So…can we talk about politics too? [Read more →]

The full story of how Rhonda Byrne turned a positive thinking realization into “the greatest success story in the annals of viral marketing”-–to quote The American Spectator-–is only now emerging in court papers filed in the US and Australia, and from interviews with the participants. To Byrne, it’s the story of a small group of people bringing “joy to the world”; to some of those involved it’s a story of hypocrisy and ruthless double-dealing.

Like many of her public utterances, the message that Australia’s platinum-haired self-help guru Rhonda Byrne sent out last November to her millions of followers was a rhapsodic outpouring of goodwill. Thanksgiving Day was approaching in the United States, where Byrne now lives in a Californian celebrity enclave just up the road from Oprah Winfrey’s 17-hectare, neo-Georgian estate, and the creator of the New-Age blockbuster The Secret wanted to remind the world about the crucial importance of gratitude.

“Remember,” Byrne wrote, “if you are criticising, you are not being grateful. If you are blaming, you are not being grateful. If you are complaining, you are not being grateful.”

Those are worthy sentiments, but it was an odd time for Byrne to be expressing them because her lawyers had just sued two of the very people who were instrumental in launching her book and film The Secret to phenomenal success. [Read more →]

Where did Steven Seagal go wrong? His early movies—Hard to Kill, Out for Justice, Under Siege—reinvigorated the action genre, with their breathtaking displays of no-holds-barred Aikido.

His next two-dozen films weren’t so well received, or so I hear. I didn’t watch them myself.

It wasn’t the thin plots or dull acting that eventually turned me off Steven Seagal’s work; it was his characters, or rather his character. [Read more →]

How do you think Google established their complete dominance of Web search? Superior engineering? Nope. Shrewd business strategy? Guess again. They have a secret weapon…

Chuck Norris built Google’s first data center from a roll of barbed wire, a pallet of lumber, and a side of raw beef. The barbed wire was just for snacking.

A recent Google Health survey has identified the three most common medical diagnoses in the United States: Chuck Norris’ Right Leg, Chuck Norris’ Left Leg, and Other. [Read more →]

Don’t worry if a rule makes sense—the important thing is that it’s a rule. Arbitrary rules teach kids discipline: If every rule made sense, they wouldn’t be learning respect for authority, they’d be learning logic.

From I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert Sensei

Attention, busy parents: do you need an authority figure to enforce a set of arbitrary rules on your children? Visit your local dojo today!

Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Bruce Lee said it*—but did he actually do it? Did he flow like water? Judging by his performances in Enter the Dragon, Chinese Connection and Fists of Fury, I’d say: no, not at all.

Bruce Lee in The Chinese Connection

Maybe Bruce didn’t show his real kung fu skills on the silver screen. [Read more →]

Credit: Mark Hirschey

A Fake Interview with Real* Quotes

Martial Development: First of all, congratulations: a recent surge in Berkshire Hathaway’s stock price has made you the richest man in the world. $62 billion dollars, I hear. According to my estimates, you could literally buy up all the tea in China.

Warren Buffett: I drink Coca-Cola.

Martial Development: Fair enough. You know, kung fu is all about profitably investing time and effort. As one of the world’s greatest investors, I thought you might have some unique insights to share with us.

Warren Buffett: I’ve never even made a hostile acquisition! What do I know about kung fu?

Martial Development: More than you realize. [Read more →]

Steven Seagal reaches new heights of self-parody, in this scene from his latest movie Shadow Man:

Steven Seagal: So the idea of dim mak, or any kind of internal technique, is not to hurt others but to help others.  Dim mak can be used to heal people, it can be used to kill people.  This is the nature of chi.  Chi can be used in striking for just external, or internal.  If you go to the internal organs you’ll do great damage; external, you can just move them a little. [Applies ji posture to send Student 1 reeling backwards.]  Or, you can go internal. [Strikes watermelon held by Student 2, ruining lunchtime for everyone.]

[Read more →]

As a fan of Bruce Lee, you probably already know about his extensive library. Bruce’s collection reportedly spanned more than 2000 books on philosophy and martial arts. (In fact, much of the material in his “signature work”, the Tao of Jeet Kune Do—compiled and published posthumously from his notes—was copied from these primary sources.)

Bruce Lee was influenced by D.T. Suzuki, J. Krishnamurti, and many other teachers, but perhaps no author left a greater impression on him than Napoleon Hill. [Read more →]