Daily Increase

Bruce Lee once said (and I am paraphrasing here) , "Jeet Kune Do is not the daily increase but the daily decrease of knowledge." This saying can be applied equally to any art you practise be it Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu, Karate, Aikido etc. I have noticed that most people who cite this quote tend to forget a big and major point of contention. Which is that before you can get to a point of cutting down you have to unequivocally build it up. If you have nothing to begin with then how can you start the process of hacking away the inessentials? Even if you have started off then how can one you immediately begin the downsizing process when you have very little to begin with? The idea is to build up your arsenal and then start cutting away. You will observe this happen quite naturally as well; as we grow skilled at something we start to find ways that suit our working style and leave those ways that we can't work with which is essentially the hacking process Bruce was talking about. Be careful when you apply this principle. You need to build up your skill first and one you reach a point where you feel you are skilled enough than you can start the hacking. But before you even do that there is something more important that you must possess. That is honesty to yourself.