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Source: Bruce Lee’s handwritten essay entitled “Living:The ‘Oneness’ of Things,” circa 1963. Bruce Lee Papers.

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THE UNITY OF FIRMNESS AND SOFTNESS

Firmness (Yang) and gentleness (Yin) are two complementary and interdependent facets in the art of gung fu. It is because one singles out firmness and looks at it as distinct from softness that the idea of “opposite” is formed. Once a distinction is made about something, that certain something will suggest its opposite.

On the surface, softness and firmness appear to be opposites, but in reality they are inter-dependent—the complementary parts of a whole.

On the surface, softness and firmness appear to be opposites, but in reality they are inter-dependent—the complementary parts of a whole. Their meaning (softness/firmness) is obtained FROM each other, and they find their completion THROUGH each other. This “oneness” of things is a characteristic of the Chinese mind. In the Chinese language, events are looked on as a whole because their meanings are derived from each other. For example, the Chinese character for “good” and the Chinese character for “not good,” when combined together will reflect the “quality” of something (whether good or not good). Likewise, the Chinese character for “long” and the Chinese character for “short,” when brought together mean “length”; or the character for “buying” when combined with the character for “selling” forms the new word “trade.”