Be Water: Bruce Lee’s Spiritual Teachings & a Daughter’s Legacy with Shannon Lee

Alex Ferrari 0:00
You trying to find your place in the world by by the giant shadow that Bruce left behind, your dad left behind.

Shannon Lee 0:08
He changed the landscape globally for Asian representation. But my father's philosophy is, you know, don't go out and try and find a successful person and copy that, but actually figure out how to be yourself. I wasn't looking for help, but I wanted it so desperately, and I didn't know how to get it. Death is an incredible teacher of life. What I do have far and away as the strongest memory of him is of his presence.

Alex Ferrari 0:44
As you were talking that whole story, I'm whole. I'm trying to hold back tears,

Shannon Lee 0:48
trying to figure out what he was doing wrong, and he got really frustrated, and he.

Alex Ferrari 1:03
I'd like to welcome to the show Shannon Lee. How you doing, Shannon?

Shannon Lee 1:06
I'm good. How are you?

Alex Ferrari 1:08
I'm doing fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show. When I reached out to you, I something told me. I think it was after my trip to Seattle when I got to got to visit your father's resting spot and your brother's resting spot? Something inside me said, "Reach out, see if she'll come on the show." Because I've always, I've been a fan of yours, believe it or not, for a long time. Even when I know now we're gonna, this is a deep cut. This is a very deep cut. I'm gonna go deep here.

Shannon Lee 1:37
Okay.

Alex Ferrari 1:38
When I was in film school in the '90s,

Shannon Lee 1:41
Yes,

Alex Ferrari 1:42
I went to film school in Orlando.

Shannon Lee 1:45
Okay, keep going. Okay,

Alex Ferrari 1:52
You were the host of a show, some martial arts. Like I don't even remember the show, but I remember that you were the host of it. Is that correct?

Shannon Lee 2:00
That is correct. The show was WMAC Masters.

Alex Ferrari 2:04
Yes, that was the one. Yes, and I wasn't. I wasn't on the lot when you were shooting it, but I was in town. I already graduated, so I wasn't. I was in the back lot anymore, but I was in town. Like I think you took over the stage that we were on in in Universal Studios. You were in Universal, right? Yeah, you were shooting in Universal, if I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I always remember that. I can't. I just remembered that as we started. That's a deep cut.

Shannon Lee 2:29
Yeah, for real. Yeah, that was a lifetime ago.

Alex Ferrari 2:33
What's a deep cut? But I've been, I've been a fan of yours, and honestly, not only a fan of of you, but what you've taken on as as the daughter of Bruce and the brother of Brandon Lee, and the the protective nature of what you do, and to honor not only honor their legacies but also protect their legacies, which I I find so respectful. And you took that on. No one asked you to do it. It's something that you decided to do because it was the right thing to do. So for that, I honestly applaud you and send you love for that. Because thank God someone's doing it. Obviously, your mother as well has done a lot of work over the years as well. But you've taken up the mantle.

Shannon Lee 3:17
I've been stewarding my father's legacy now for 26 years, and because it was 2000 when I when I sort of officially stepped in, and and the truth of the matter is the reason that I decided to do that is because I have found great great benefit in my father's teachings personally, like mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and I just felt like people needed to know more about who he was as a human being, and as a philosopher, and as a creator and all of the things that sometimes you don't get to see when the when the kung fu is happening.

Alex Ferrari 4:09
And and to be honest with you, I mean, obviously, I've been I'm a huge fan of his of the of his films. I've seen all the films. I've seen every documentary I can imagine. Anytime there's a Bruce Lee documentary on. I'm like, oh, time to watch that. And I've seen the Soden Store. I love the Dragon, the movie The Dragon. I watched back in the day, which I know you guys worked closely with. Did you guys work at all or consult on that? You did, right?

Shannon Lee 4:32
Well, the the movie they had optioned my mom's book, Bruce Lee, the Man Only I Knew, for the underlying rights for that movie, and I happen to have a small little cameo in the movie. But I was in college when that started up, and so I was not. I was not really involved in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex Ferrari 4:55
Got it. But so I obviously I'm a huge fan of of his of his film. Making work and as a filmmaker, studying what he did in the editing process, in how he told his stories, his independent film kind of background, his I mean, the hustle is beyond anything I can imagine. What he was able to do, not being taken seriously, really starting a genre. On all of that, obviously, I'm a huge fan. But what really drew me was into him was his spirituality, his philosophies. That is that is such deeper waters for me when I think about Bruce's work, and I just was such a just such a what was the the book that he he wrote? The one that he wrote. I forgot.

Shannon Lee 5:44
The Tao. You mean the Tao of Jeet Kune Do?

Alex Ferrari 5:47
Yeah the Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Shannon Lee 5:48
Or you or do you mean Chinese Gong Fu: The Art of Philosophical Self Defense? The Philosophical Art of Self Defense.

Alex Ferrari 5:55
Both of them. Yes, both of them. But the Tao of Jeet Kune Do was the one that brought me in, and in the Tao of Jeet Kune Do, if I remember, it's been years since I read it. But there's a lot of philosophy hidden, a lot. It's like hidden. It's like in the under, it's underlining really, you know, because it's like he used the kung fu as a vehicle to spread his teachings, essentially.

Shannon Lee 6:19
Yeah, I mean, martial arts for my father was his passion. He was his absolute passion. Like he loved it, and he used it as a vehicle for understanding himself, and for understanding the world, and for life, and and and and life. And he had this quote where he said everything that I've learned about life I've learned through martial arts, and so it was sort of like his deep passion is deep study. I mean, you think of anybody who's a craftsman or a creator or master of their particular medium. His happened to be martial arts,

Alex Ferrari 7:01
Yeah, without without question. I mean, and we've all seen that clip of him in that interview with the Be Water, my friend, which is now a T-shirt and a tagline. It's it's such a but it's such a powerful philosophy, and he was talking about that stuff in what the 50s in the not 60s in the 60s,

Shannon Lee 7:23
In the 60s, yeah. And you know, he had his whole sort of because he wrote an essay about it. He he had his whole sort of epiphany about water as a teenager, actually, in Hong Kong. Yeah, you know, he was famously the student of Ip Man, right? And which, if you're into martial arts, you know who that is.

Alex Ferrari 7:50
Of course,

Shannon Lee 7:51
A very renowned Wing Chun Gong Fu master in Hong Kong, and my my he was always sort of giving a Taoist perspective on martial arts and kung fu, and and telling my father, you know, you have to tap into your gentleness. You have to you have to follow your opponent. You have to be more like the bamboo than the oak tree. You know, be flexible, adaptable, all this sort of stuff. And my dad, being a teenage boy, was was just like always trying to win, right? Like, oh, how do I win? How do I win? And his instructor got actually very mad at him and said, "Stop! I want you to go away for a week. Don't come to class. Don't practice. I want you to think about what I said, and my dad was like, "What? What do you mean? Don't practice martial arts?" He said, "Don't even practice at home. I just want you to think." And of course, you know he he didn't do that. He he practiced on his own because he just can't help couldn't help himself. But eventually, he found himself down by the water in Hong Kong, and he took out a small boat, and he was in the harbor, sort of on the boat, thinking about all of this and trying to figure out what he was doing wrong. And he got really frustrated, and he punched the water. He just sort of like punching the water, and in that moment, like he got it, and he was like, "Oh, oh, he wants me to be like water. I punch the water; the water moves out of the way. I grab the water; it runs through my fingers. You know, like oh, I'm. This is what it means. It means to be in complete relationship with your opponent, with everything around you, to be to be able to move and adapt and flow around whatever obstacles in your way. And then he like had this sort of almost like talk about a spiritual. Moment, like when he's writing about it, he said, and then I just I looked up and I saw a bird flying over the water, and I and its reflection was cast on top of the water as it flew by, and I thought, oh, this is what my mind is supposed to be like in combat, like just like the reflection of the bird on the water, like letting my thoughts pass and remaining present to to my current circumstance. And he described like feeling at one with the Tao in that moment. And this is when he was 17.

Alex Ferrari 10:39
He was he's he was a lot deeper than I was at 17. I can tell you that probably deeper than you were when you were 17 as well.

Shannon Lee 10:46
100%.

Alex Ferrari 10:48
So so it sounds like he had a lot of influence from Taoism. Were there any other spiritual philosophies or paths that he kind of drew upon? Because he drew from martial arts, he drew from all martial arts. He was the original mixed martial artist, you know. Before MMA became a thing, he was the original MMA. How about on the spiritual side? Did he pull from different philosophies?

Shannon Lee 11:16
100%. I mean, I think you know, as a young man growing up in Hong Kong sort of his his father was Buddhist his mother was Catholic and so he had some interesting influences there I think he would say he grew up himself without like adopting any sort of religious view but he had a lot of Taoist and Buddhist thought sort of sprinkled around him all the time, and I think that is where things started for him. But as he got older, and you know, when he was 18, he came over to the United States, and he got his GED, and he ultimately enrolled in university, and I think the thing about my father was that he was in he had an insatiable curiosity, and he was the kind of person who always wanted to know, like, well, why is this like this, and how should I be, and what you know, like he just insatiable, and he was a a rabid reader. So he loved books. He, I have his personal book collection. It's over 2800 books. Wow! For a man who lived to the age of 32, right? And so, and who probably didn't start collecting books until he was, you know, in his

Alex Ferrari 12:48
Had money, yeah, a little bit of money, a little had a little bit of money, yeah, a little bit of money,

Shannon Lee 12:51
Yeah. And so, and so, it was when he was in university, his advise, he was asking his advisor a bunch of questions, and his advisor said, "You know, you are asking me all of these questions, and you always want to know, well, why this, and why should I do this, and what about this?" And he said, "You know, maybe you ought to study philosophy, because that is the study of like why existence, right? So

Alex Ferrari 13:24
Deep thoughts, deep thoughts, deep thoughts,

Shannon Lee 13:26
And so and so. It was then that he sort of formally started studying philosophy, but he very quickly started looking into modern day and ancient philosophers. You know, he loved Miyamoto, Musashi, he and the Book of Five Rings. He loved Marcus Aurelius, right? He loved Krishna Murthy. He loved Alan Watts. He loved you know all of these people who were really deeply thinking about Existence and like how their specific path informs the human path in a deeper way, right? And so, and the Dao De Jing, of course, and you know all of these sorts of and Buddhist texts and all sorts of things. So yes, he believed, and I think this was one of the very deep keys to his success, was that anything that he wanted to know about, he would go and find books about and read. You know, and yeah,

Alex Ferrari 14:38
From what I understood, when he was when he was learning filmmaking when he was in Hong when he went back to Hong Kong after the Green Hornet, and started to make his own movies. He taught himself how to direct. He taught himself how to edit. When there was no YouTube videos on how to edit, you know, not everybody was editing like crazy. He actually taught himself how to edit and. He actually took it away from, if I remember correctly, in my understanding, his first movie is it fist is it fist of fury the first one?

Shannon Lee 15:07
Well, they have to in Hong Kong, so big boss, big boss.

Alex Ferrari 15:11
Thank you, the big boss. He kept directing over the director and like like basically took the movie away essentially, and then took it away in editing. If I may, if I'm please correct me if I'm wrong, but he had a big hand in creating crafting that film.

Shannon Lee 15:25
Yes, I mean, I think I think the way he would put it, way that they would put it, was that he was constantly fighting with the director, just you know, constantly, constantly at odds and fighting with the director over what he thought was the way that the fight scenes should be done and the fight scenes should be shot and all this sort of thing. But that, but that was the thing about his reading was that he actually called it prescriptive reading. It was like reading is I'm prescribing myself reading based on what it is I want to know, and yes, in his book collection, it's almost entirely nonfiction. There's some poetry. There's some like wuxia graphic novels from back in the day and stuff like that, but it is there are books about how to direct, how a camera, how to act, how to like, how to use a camera, like all of these things. He learned them by reading about them, and the same is true. His like almost, I think in his book collection, it's got to be. I don't know if this is true, but one of the foremost collections in the country, if not the world, of combat and training texts. Like he has every training manual from every faction of the military, the Boy Scouts of America, every every style of art, yoga, like kinesiology. You know, just everything.

Alex Ferrari 17:03
Yeah, he seemed to have been again. From what I've seen, he seemed to be really on the cutting edge of human anatomy and human performance. He was doing things back then that people are still trying to catch up to, as far as like electric electric stimulation to his muscles and the way he ate. I mean, he crafted his body in a way that, I mean, he. I was watching Stevesto Stallone is doing a whole bunch of runs right now because of the Rocky book and the new movie coming out and all that stuff. And they, he said, like, yeah, you know, in Rocky three, I got down to like 2.6% body fat, which he's like, and you can hold that for about a minute before you die, and he did it for like for scenes in that movie. But your dad looked like he was at that all the time in a time when was there protein shakes? Where there's no understanding of amino acids. There's no understanding of, you know, creatine. Like there was no understanding of any of that out there. Bodybuilding wasn't even a thing really, just yet. Arnold hadn't really started yet.

Shannon Lee 18:11
Yeah, I mean, it it was definitely a thing. It just wasn't mainstream yet.

Alex Ferrari 18:16
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shannon Lee 18:16
My dad again, like he treated his existence, which we all do, but he was he he was very conscious about it, which is the difference. He treated his existence like his own experiment, right? Like, what happens if I do this? You know, what happens if I eat this or drink this or work out this way, and and it was all very intentional. He, you know, he had a friend who was an amateur bodybuilder, who he got him to show him a weight routine and all that. And when he first started, he noticed that his muscles were getting very bulky, and that that slowed him down a little bit as a martial artist. So he had to learn how to adapt his weight training to build the type of muscle and muscle twitch and all of that that he that was best for him as a martial artist, you know, which back in those days, martial artists did not cross train; they practiced their techniques. That's what they did, you know.

Alex Ferrari 19:33
That was it. Yeah, if you watch the first Ultimate Fighter, the the Gracies, they were they were not in shape. They just knew their technique very well, and then the moment down the down the road, a couple years, few years later, when their techniques got out and you added conditioning,

Shannon Lee 19:49
Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 19:49
They weren't they they couldn't hang anymore. They didn't have that element in it. But your dad was doing that in a time that that really truly didn't exist, especially for martial artists. No, he was really dear friends with Chuck, Chuck Norris.

Shannon Lee 20:03
Yeah, yeah,

Alex Ferrari 20:05
And he was and and Chuck was a real world champion.

Shannon Lee 20:09
Yeah, and Chuck trained with my dad, and and was in Way of the Dragon, famously, of course, obviously. Yeah, you know, my dad was like we had one of the first commercial juicers in our house, he would do stuff like eat organ meat for the mineral density and all that sort of stuff. Like he was very focused on figuring out what made his body, which was his instrument, the the most functional that it could be.

Alex Ferrari 20:44
What I find fascinating is that your father, in his his pursuit of being an experiment, his own guinea pig, if you will, he was he was honing the mind, the body, and the spirit together, which is the trinity of of what you need to do as a human being on this planet, where most of us I know people who are very spiritual who ignore their bodies and ignore their minds, but they are very spiritual. They meditate a lot. They do all this, but they don't grow mentally or with knowledge. It's just weird, you know. You can't obviously through meditation, you know, absorb, you know, download, if you will, like your dad did with the water situation. You know, but he was able to bring it all together. And as a, to in all honesty, I mean, his body was his. I mean, you look at those images back in the day, you're like, I just don't understand it. Like he honed his body into this into this almost perfection of of his time, and then his his spirit was such a deep and profound man, and then his mind 2800 books. It's it's it's he's such a rare combination of those things, and also the the the charisma just spills off the screen, you know. Yeah, it's it's pretty remarkable. It really, really is.

Shannon Lee 22:08
I think the thing that gets overlooked a lot about him that made him different and made him stand out was the quality of his mind actually,

Alex Ferrari 22:17
Right, because they only think about the kung fu stuff, which was amazing and revolutionary, but he was, as they say, wicked smart. I mean, to do what he did, you can't be a dumb person. Like what he was able to do, how he was able to do it, went over to Hong Kong, did all the stuff came back wrote philosophy. I mean, you did teach. It was pretty remarkable. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm gushing. I'm a huge fan, but I'm just. But he's one of those. But he's one of those figures in history that you look at and just like, wow, man, like you know, applaud him for the what he did in so many feel. I look at him almost upon like someone, you know, like and in different obviously worlds, but like a Walt Disney who affected the world and Steve Jobs who affected the world. Bruce Lee is on that list, you know. He changed the planet.

Shannon Lee 23:15
Yeah, he did. I think a lot of people don't often recognize or understand how influential he was to culture and society globally, but he really was. I mean, he changed he changed the landscape globally for martial arts. He changed the landscape globally for action cinema, he changed the landscape globally for Asian representation. You know, I mean, he and you know, I think we're just starting to catch up to how he has changed the landscape globally for thinking and being in the world as a human being, I feel like my my connection to my father is in that realm. Yes, I've trained in martial arts and I did for many years, but I was never the that was never my like passion. My passion has always been more in the sort of mental, emotional, spiritual conveyance of his teachings and how they can help you as a human being. I wrote a book, "Be Water, My Friend," all about his core teaching of water and how to use that in your life. Like you don't have to be a martial artist, you don't have to be a Bruce Lee band, but I think there's so much to offer in terms of how to shift your perspective, how to work with this, you know, this mind, body, spirit. That we all have

Alex Ferrari 25:00
Now, Shannon. I wanted to ask you because I mean, you are your life's journey, your soul's journey in this life, is a very interesting one. Obviously, being born to your parents, having your brother, all of that. But before we get to your brother, I wanted to go back to like when you were growing up, and obviously you do remember. I hope you, I hope you have some memories of him when you were young. Yeah, and obviously the tragedy when he passed at such a young age. You trying to find your place in the world by by the giant shadow that Bruce left behind, your dad left behind. I there's very few human beings have dealt with that. I know actors and rock stars and and other big giant people like you know film directors like you know who things like that who are very famous and they and they cast a very large shadow. How did you navigate that at a young age? Because it seems like it's taking you a minute to get where you are right now. You know, you were trying to figure out like, what do I do? You know, how do I do this? And then, till you finally decided, no, I'm going to be the, I'm going to, I'm going to protect this legacy and pass it on. And you did that 26 years ago, and you finally made that decision. But on a psychological level, on a spiritual level, on a mental level, how did you process your journey after his passing? Because how old were you when he passed?

Shannon Lee 26:29
I was four.

Alex Ferrari 26:30
Yeah, so you were you were a child. So and then all the all the stories you must have heard, all the people you must have met. Every time someone meets you, they go, "Oh my God!" Like you know, I'm trying to trying not to be that dude, but I imagine just you on a daily basis walking around life when someone finds out who your father was, dealing with that energy. How do you process? How did you process it growing up, and how do you still process it today?

Shannon Lee 26:56
Yeah, I mean, I think what I would say is that it's an ongoing relationship. You know, like yes, I've worked, you know, I've gone through the various stages and levels, but um, but it's it's ongoing. It's especially as I change in age and I um, you know, evolve my thinking evolves alongside that. My way of being in the world evolves alongside that, and you know, when I the interesting thing is that you know my dad died when I was four. My strongest by far memory of him, I do have some memories of like playing with him at our house, or you know, but they're these like they're they're these brief glimpses, right? Like it's not like oh, and then he walked in and he told me this story, and I just remember it was so profound. Like I don't have any of that because I was a baby, right? But what I do have far and away as the strongest memory of him is of his presence, is of his the feeling of him, and for many many years I carried with me this weird sense, and it and it really confused me for a long time. It took me a long time to figure it out. But this weird sense that I knew him, like I knew him as a being. I understood him. I understood his energetics. I understood sort of who he was at an essential level. And it took me a really long time to understand that that was the quality of his focus and attention, and the quality of his love that I absorbed as a you know as a child, which you know because he cared for us kids and loved us dearly, and I think what's interesting is that it's the same quality of focus and attention and energy that you feel sort of like jump off the screen at you from his movies, but like IRL, you know, and and as his child, and as and as someone he cared and loved deeply, you know, cared for and loved deeply. So it took me a really long time because I was like, why do I feel like I know this person when, by all societal accounts, I shouldn't know him, right? Because we believe that our memories are based primarily in what we can recall in our minds, but our memories are also and more profoundly impacted by what we feel. Right, and so as a young child. You experience the world through your senses because your critical thinking is not developed yet. Your memory, your long-term memory, is not that developed yet. But you are sensing everything around you, and so in the beginning, I felt you know after my dad died, both my brother and I actually shied away from the martial arts because it was very hard to be around all of his students and friends, and with the whole world on fire around Bruce Lee and Kung Fu and being Bruce Lee's kids, it just was a lot. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, and so we stayed away from it, but then both of us, at different times in our lives, came back to it because we knew it was so, it was so elemental and essential to who my father was as a human being, and he'd created his own martial art. It was like if you want to know this person, you need to train in what he found so valuable and what he created, and understand it on whatever level you can. And so, I think the best thing about my father's legacy is that it is wildly positive for the most part. People are excited and inspired by Bruce Lee, and so, like most people are, you know, 99.9% of people are excited, you know, when they know who I am, and they're like, "Oh my God, your dad's the best.

Shannon Lee 31:41
I know you hear this a lot, but you know because of him, I da da da da da, or I loved him, or my dad loved him, and I have such a special relationship with my dad around your dad, and you know all these sorts of things. Like it's beautiful. It's beautiful, and it can be a lot at times, especially as you're as a person who's trying to establish their own way in the world as a human being. To, you know, I I spent many years, even though his philosophy would tell us the exact opposite. I spent many years feeling like there was a high bar that I somehow had to meet, or

Alex Ferrari 32:32
Yeah, of course,

Shannon Lee 32:34
Rise to. And but my father's philosophy is, you know, don't go out and try and find a successful person and copy that, but actually figure out how to be yourself. You know,

Alex Ferrari 32:49
Which is which is much scarier.

Shannon Lee 32:50
Much scarier. Nobody knows how to do it except you.

Alex Ferrari 32:59
You can get cues from other people like I'm going to be like Bruce Lee. I'm like, you can't, not because of yeah. I can't be Shannon either. You know, I can only be Alex.

Shannon Lee 33:07
Yeah, 100. And I think that's why I don't worry when people are like, oh, who's the next Bruce Lee? Who's the next? There is no, there is no next Bruce Lee. Like he did it so expertly. He was himself so expertly and uniquely, you know.

Alex Ferrari 33:26
You know, I I find it fascinating that there are figures in history, in in pop culture specifically, and in films, and in movies, and books, and even in any every walk of life. But there are always these figures that they come on to the planet, and they leave a mark, as as Steve Jobs would say, they dented the universe. And some of them are here for a short time. You know, some very famous actors like James Dean, and they they just came in. They did a few movies, and they're out. But their impact ripples to this day. And your dad was one of those things because he. I mean, I I have to ask you, what do you think he would be like now if he was if he was old man Bruce Lee, right now? Like, where do you think he like? How would he look at the world? Where do you think his opinion would have been? I mean, I'm sure he would have gotten into MMA at one point or another. Like, he would have been fascinated with that whole rise of of mixed martial arts, and what would have he had done in cinema, like in the '80s, like like what Chuck did and John Claw did and those kind of people did. What would have Bruce done in the '80s with film technology and things like that? Would he still be directing? I'm just curious. What if you've ever? I'm sure you've sat down and thought about like what would it be like now.

Shannon Lee 34:42
Sure, I mean obviously we can never know, but but given the trajectory he was on and the person that he was, I think that you know I think in the 70s and 80s he would have gone on to continue to make. Films and direct, I think he would have made a greater mark in Hollywood. You know, his intention was always to bring his culture and his art to the West, and Enter the Dragon was the vehicle that helped to do that. And he wanted, you know, he he went back to Hong Kong to make the movies in order to in order to get recognized. You know, like, but his goal was to was to have that recognition be in the West and and therefore global, right? And which is why *Under the Dragon* as a project was so important to him, and why he fought so deeply for the changes to that movie that that he made. And the goal was always to move back to Los Angeles, and and and he would probably have been one of these first East West global international stars who would have gone back and forth between Hong Kong and Hollywood to make movies, but he preferred living in the West because there was more space, more privacy. Hong Kong is a very crowded place. The press there is the British tabloid was the British tabloid press was very difficult. He didn't love living there, so I think he would have gone on to make more films and amazing films, and to direct more and to write more. I mean, one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is that he wrote a lot of his own film and TV ideas. He didn't get to make very many of them, but but he did he did that, and I think he was always trying to figure out a way to express his philosophical thoughts on martial arts and life, and I think he would have gone on to do that in a much more direct and profound way. The book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, that we were talking about earlier, was actually published posthumously.

Alex Ferrari 37:16
Oh, I didn't know that.

Shannon Lee 37:18
Yeah, it was published posthumously because my father, he was always trying to figure out a way to write a book about his martial arts and his way of thinking and his way of practicing, and he shot many photos and wrote many pages, but he could never bring himself to publish it because, in his lifetime, because he was he thought of his art as a as a living art that it that when undertaken correctly and appropriately, it was a journey with no end. And what he was afraid of was that if he published a book and said, "Here are the techniques. Here are the things that people would go. Okay, this is it. Like this is, and concretize it, and say, this is what I have to do. I have to follow these steps. I have to do it exactly this way, and that they wouldn't go on their own expansive evolutionary journey. And and so when the Tao of Jeet Kune Do was published, it was published specifically in a very sort of loose way, so that you couldn't exactly say it was a how-to book. Right?

Alex Ferrari 38:38
Yeah. There's not step by one. It's not step one, step two, step three. There's none of that in there.

Shannon Lee 38:41
No, it's more like this is how you should think about movement. This is how you should think about combat. This is how you should consider these ideas around speed and flexibility and adaptability and attack and you know all these sorts of things. And it does have some technique in it, but it's not a straightforward book, and many martial artists have been like, "How do I use this book?" And that was sort of the point of the book, which is, yeah, figure out how to use it for yourself.

Alex Ferrari 39:13
Beautifully said. Now, around your around your father, there has been just a few myths, a few legends of things. The one-inch punch obviously is one big one. Are there any out there that you've heard that is in the zeitgeist? You're like, that didn't happen, or one that they don't know that happened?

Shannon Lee 39:42
Well, there are many that didn't happen for sure.

Alex Ferrari 39:48
He never, he never actually did a. There's a story about him and Chuck Norris getting into a fight one day or something like that. Chuck never said anything like that.

Shannon Lee 39:57
No, no.

Alex Ferrari 39:58
Actually, Chuck had a great amount. Respect a tremendous amount of respect for your father.

Shannon Lee 40:02
Yeah, you know, I, I, and before I answer that question, just briefly, I do want to say one thing about what I think he would have done. I think he would have gone on to be a really amazing thought leader, and and probably have some sort of spiritual philosophical expression that that would have been very helpful for humanity today. So I just also aside from continuing to make awesome movies and write books,

Alex Ferrari 40:31
Exactly.

Shannon Lee 40:34
You know, I think there's a lot of talk about my father could do some amazing feats. The one-inch pun she could absolutely do. He could do all sorts of feats of strength, speed, and agility, such as like tricks where he, you know, he would tell somebody to hold a a nickel in their hand, and he would try to grab it from their hand, and someone would go to reach and grab it, and they'd close their hand, and they'd go, "I still have it," and he'd go, "Oh, do you open your hand and look?" And they'd look, and it would be a quarter instead of a nickel. Like he was so fast, he could like literally take it and replace it with something else. Like that is those types of things were actually true. He did those things. He could do two finger, one arm push ups. He could do extended push ups, extended arm push ups just on his thumbs. He could do all sorts of amazing things like that. But he was not into like These more fringe gung fu things like the dim mock, the death touch, and that kind of stuff. Like he was, he was not into sort of the more mystical side of martial arts. He was very concrete in terms of and practical in terms of like honing himself and his skill and his mental state to a place that was actionable and practical within the world, right? And but he did have a really an ability to touch deeply into meditative universal spaces and understand how, but but then extract them and understand how to apply them practically. I think he was an excellent. He he was able to to synthesize ideas and apply them across disciplines in a way that most people weren't able to do, and you know what what couldn't he do? He could not play ping pong with nunchucks. He could not do that. That is not a real thing. You know, he couldn't. He couldn't do the death touch. He was not. You know, I'm trying to think. Like, what else? He was not like caught up with like you know a lot of gangs and triads and you know all of that sort of thing.

Alex Ferrari 43:30
Feel that if he would have if he would have continued on his life's journey, I think eventually he would have had those Chuck Norris jokes. It would have been Bruce Lee jokes. Chuck wouldn't have gotten it. Someone would have started doing it with Bruce. I think at that point, Shannon, did he meditate? Do you know if he ever meditated? Is that part of his process?

Shannon Lee 43:50
Yes, 100%. Yes, he meditated. He meditated in a number of different ways. We actually, he actually would, you know sit and meditate? He would also do moving meditation, so he would walk and meditate. Like sometimes he would just walk in a circle around our backyard, deep in thought, you know, and sort of, and you know he was. I again, like I, I really can't stress enough that what I think made him different from other martial artists and many martial artists was the the quality of his mind, his ability to look at his mind as Not just a thinking machine, but a an expanse that could encompass reality in a way that a lot of people don't consider actually, and the fact. Laid the foundation for the impact he was able to make.

Alex Ferrari 45:04
I wanted to touch upon your brother a little bit. That you know he was. I was in college. It was it was in the early nine mid 90s when I was in college, and of course the film that his his final film. I actually watched Rapid Fire in the theater back in the day. I was a fan of Rapid Fire and and Showdown of Little Tokyo. I just watched it recently. Actually, I it aged really well. He was so funny in that movie, but his but his film, the one that really people remember him very fondly about, was The Crow. And I was in college literally when it happened. When I did my first short film, I dedicated to him because he had such a profound impact on that movie. Had such a profound impact on me, and obviously you weren't four when that happened. You were a little bit older. I wanted just to touch, if you don't mind, how you dealt with not only one huge grief in your mind, which you were too young to really process at the time. I'd imagine I'm just assuming, but your brother's grief you had to process in a much deeper way. I'm asking this question as a as a hope that it will your answer will hopefully help others who are going through deep grief as well with a loss, because yours was so public for you and your mother was so public. So, if you remind me, if you don't mind, could you tell us a little bit about that?

Shannon Lee 46:30
I would say that it was the most, one of the most, if not the most, and I would imagine the it is the most like difficult and challenging things that I have experienced in my life. It he was killed right before my 24th birthday, and right before like weeks before his wedding, And

Alex Ferrari 47:04
I know that's right.

Shannon Lee 47:05
And I will say that it took me probably easily about seven years to figure out how to move through That, um, that occurrence in my life, um, which is why, like, when I hear people who are grieving and they're like only one year in or three years in, I'm like, yeah, it's it's a process. Like, like when people are like, "Well, it's been a year," it's like, you know, what is a year? Like, I'm sorry, that's not a long amount of time at all for that kind of significant loss in your life. I think that, in a way, while it was the most challenging thing, I do find that when we agree to attempt to face our challenges, there can be amazing gifts that we can take from those things, and I think that death is an an incredible teacher of life, and but it requires you to face some really deep debilitating Grief and feel it, and move through it, and figure out how to move through it. How to figure out how to figure out how to accept that death is a truth that we that it is a truth of life, and that it will always be the case. And how, um, and I and I will say, like one of the gifts of my brother's death was that it helped me to understand that I had been grieving my father's death for a very long time internally. I was as a teenager and as a kid, like I was always kind of quiet and reserved. Carried a lot of like inner angst and pain, and I was mildly depressed. Like I think my entire childhood, and that that was a subconscious effect of my father's death that I was carrying in internally, but unaware that that is what it was, you know, and thinking as we all. As human beings, thinking that my experience is everyone's experience, you know, like, well, I find this particularly uncomfortable and painful. Other people must find this really uncomfortable and painful. But then you grow up and and you realize, oh, we're all carrying these experiences that are unique to ourselves, and at the same time, not unique to humanity, and that we have to understand that you know the way we perceive the world is through our own lenses, and you know the story that I tell is that when my brother died, I was in such deep soul level pain, I was I was non functioning. Like I was I was functioning out in the world as you do. I was trying to have an acting career of all things, which is crazy. And but privately, I was non functioning. I was so depressed, like hard to get out of bed, hard to do in Haley. Drive around to L.A. and cry in my car, and like it was just, you know, I was not living. And I, but I, I knew that I, I had to figure out how to live, but I couldn't figure it out, and I just kept thinking in my mind, like, please, I need help. Like, I wasn't asking for help, I wasn't looking for help, but I wanted it so desperately, and I didn't know how to get it. And at the time, this is about two or three years after my brother's death, there were some books of my dad's writings that were going to be published, and so I was given photocopies of his writings, and I started looking through them, and I came across this quote that I had never heard before, and it said, "It's a little bit long, but it said, "The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning, but I didn't take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it until this moment. And now I see if I want to find the light, I must be like a candle and be my own fuel, consuming myself.

Alex Ferrari 52:31
Oh, oh!

Shannon Lee 52:33
And I like I read that, and it just like hit me in the chest like so hard, and I was like the medicine for my suffering. I have it. It's here. I just have to like crack. I just have to crack myself open. I have to like digest the pieces of myself that are suffering and understand where that suffering is coming from, and and and find my own cure essentially, and in that moment, I became a student of my I became a much deeper student of my father's philosophies, and I started reading voraciously. I started going to find help. I went to every from energy healers and medicine women to therapy to all of these different things to try and figure out how could I alleviate myself from this suffering that I was feeling internally that that was mine to heal, you know. Instead of asking for the outside world to solve it somehow, it's like no, it's an inside job.

Alex Ferrari 53:51
Yeah, and you know what's fascinating about first of all, thank you for sharing that. What I find fascinating about that is, it's one of the things that I talk about, teach, and and really dive into on the show is that the power is within you. I haven't heard that. That quote is very, very profound and powerful because it's on a soul level. It's it's true in ways that people can't really wrap their head around, where the illness is coming from within. The phone call is coming from inside the house. Yeah, essentially, you know, and but also the medicine is also within as well, and that is the powerful concept that your soul puts you through these things if you want to go down that road, yeah, and but it also gives you the medicine to deal with it, or gives you the the ammo or whatever you want to call it, to be able to process it if you acknowledge it and look for it and ask for the help on a steep spiritual level, Shannon has. You've been talking like as you were talking that whole story. I'm whole. I'm trying to hold back tears. I'm like I'm literally like I feel you. I feel you in a very deep level. I'm I'm I'm like processing. I don't know how it is if there's this weird energy connection as this conversation is going. But I'm like, why am I tearing up? Like I'm inside. I'm like I'm sure this is her. Like what's happening to me? Is she a witch? I don't understand. 100%, I am. But go ahead. But no, it's it's fascinating because I'm feeling it, and I'm like, why am? And I'm literally, why am I? This is not about me. Why is this? Why am I tearing up? But I'm feeling your your pain, your energy, and what you're trying to put out there in the world. So I, from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you going to those places and sharing your journey with us in regards to the grief that you've gone through. Because it's, you know, I can't imagine what you've gone through. It's not. I, I can't.

Shannon Lee 55:59
Yeah, I mean, we can't imagine that for anyone else, you know what I mean. And I think the thing was is that once it took me, as I said, about seven years to like really process and come out the other side. And and it's not to say that I don't still carry grief for my brother's death. I most definitely do. It's still. It's been 33 years, and it still sneaks up on me occasionally. You know, and gets me. It depends. Like if something's going on, and I'm just really missing him, then you know, it just it just comes up. But I think the thing that it taught me more. One of more of the things that it taught me was that that it is possible to hold grief and joy at the same time. That life is like this, you know, and there are going to be times that are great, and there are going to be times that are challenging. I think it's taught me when I face challenge to look for what do I need to face as a result of this challenge, and what do I need to learn as a result of this challenge? What do I need to process as a result of this challenge? It's made Me, when I am having difficulty in life or in a relationship or anything, rather than saying like, "Why is that person the way they are?" I turn around and ask myself, "Why am I reacting the way I'm reacting?"

Alex Ferrari 57:41
Yeah, what are they triggering ? What are they triggering in me?

Shannon Lee 57:45
Yeah, exactly. And how can I look at that for myself? Because you know, I mean, you've heard there's so many like stereo stereotyped quotes, but they're that for a reason because they're true. It's like you change the world by changing yourself. That's that's what you do, you know.

Alex Ferrari 58:04
Yeah, yeah, without question. Is there anything about Brandon you would like people to know?

Shannon Lee 58:11
Oh, Brandon, you know Brandon was so such a such a Bright light and an energy like he was a romantic at heart. Like he loved poetry, loved writing, he loved reading. He would do all these romantic things for Eliza, his fiance. He. He he loved nature. He would he would go camping by himself, like he had a motorcycle, and he would just drive up to the wilderness and and hike in and go camping by himself. He. Um, he was uh also wicked wicked smack wicked smack.

Alex Ferrari 59:09
He's wicked smack like goodwill, like goodwill hunting. Wicked smack.

Shannon Lee 59:14
He was um he carried addiction. He was an avid reader. He loved fiction probably more than nonfiction, but any word he didn't know the definition of, he would look up in a dictionary. So he had this insane vocabulary, and he he just loved the arts. He wanted to be an actor from the time he was a little boy, and he kept his sights on that and went directly for that, and he lived his life like really fully, and I think that I think that this is something for people to hold. Like when you see somebody kind of doing something ostentatious, like when he made his first big amount of money, which was on like rapid fire. Or you know Showdown or one of those two movies, he went out and took a chunk of it and he bought an Acura NSX, and everybody was like, "Why are you spending your money on a sports car? You should save it, you know." Like and and then when somebody dies when they're 28 years old, you go, man, I'm really glad he got to own a sports car and drive that. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:32
Oh wow, yeah, yeah. That's that's that's that's he he he had this he had something very similar to your father, he definitely had charisma.

Shannon Lee 1:00:42
Yeah,

Alex Ferrari 1:00:43
And you could see it in the in you know where I see it the most. I mean, obviously the Crow is a whole other level. I mean, he he really really took that movie and and did a lot with it. Yeah, but what he did, like when I saw Showdown in Little Tokyo, he's so funny. I just I literally watched it probably a month ago. I was on my 90s. I was going through all of them. I'm like, man, I remember I remember watching that movie. I was working at a video store in high school when that movie came out, and I watched it. I hit rewind, and I watched it again. I loved that movie when I was in high school. It was like one of my favorite movies, But

Shannon Lee 1:01:23
I'll tell you, it's a Lee family trait. Like my dad was funny, my brother was funny. I can be funny also. But I'll tell

Alex Ferrari 1:01:33
You got moments.

Shannon Lee 1:01:34
Here's the thing, like when you live with a lot of seriousness, like when you are have serious going on,

Alex Ferrari 1:01:46
Yeah,

Shannon Lee 1:01:47
And serious challenge. You, your humor and your ability to shift, and to look at life. Like for me, I can like look at like situations where I'm like, this is so messed up, and just and just have to laugh because there's there's not another better way to deal with it. You know what I mean? So I think it's interesting how a certain amount of innate seriousness leads to a certain amount of personal humor,

Alex Ferrari 1:02:21
Without question. How do you think? Do you? I'm sure you've spoke about it over the years, but how did your brother deal with your your father's passing over the years? Like the same way you dealt with your grief. How did he deal with his? If you don't mind me asking.

Shannon Lee 1:02:37
Yeah, you know, I don't know that we ever got the opportunity to have really deep and meaningful conversation about it because he was four years older than me, and so as I was going into high school, he was leaving high school. As I was going into college, he was already into his professional career. But we did get to spend some time together. I was actually his assistant on Rapid Fire, and I got to also observe him and watch him grow and change. And I think that you know, initially as a kid, When our father died, he was such a light in our lives. It was highly traumatic, and I know that it was highly traumatic for my brother. He he kind of shut down and didn't speak for a little while after that. But I think that there was this innate and intense sense of I am going to live my own life, and I am going to create whatever art I want to create, and I am going to do whatever I think is I feel compelled to do. I think in a way that was a form of honoring my father and processing his life was to lean deeply into, which I did much later, into his philosophies and who he was as a human being. So my brother was a prankster and a jokester, and he got expelled from high school. And he, you know, like all of these things, he was sort of larger than life in that way. And I think that was also a form of processing grief.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:40
Now let's talk about your new book that's coming out. It's called the The Mark of the Warrior, but it's but it's a it's a it's fiction, correct?

Shannon Lee 1:04:50
Fiction, yeah.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:51
So why did you go down the fiction path versus going down the nonfiction path? Because that's a perfect name for a nonfiction book as well.

Shannon Lee 1:05:01
It is well. So I have written a nonfiction book. My first book is nonfiction. Be water, my friend, and I love that book. I I am a person who loves fiction and nonfiction fairly equally. I love to read fiction, and I love to read nonfiction. So so both are a part of my soul. Nonfiction was where I went first, but I've also always loved the creativity of fiction. I actually think fiction can be just as healing as nonfiction, and so I I had this idea, you know. I spoke earlier about my father had all these creative ideas for film and TV that he had written, and I had this idea that I wanted to take those ideas and those characters and some of those themes, and I wanted to weave them into one coherent world, and so I created this long treatment that that created this fantasy universe that wove together a lot of these philosophical themes and ideas that my father was trying to express, And because I had never written fiction, and because it's such a huge undertaking, I even though I have the desire to write fiction on my own, I sought a co-author, and I found a wonderful co-author for this project in Fonda Lee, who is an amazing fiction writer and who is a martial artist and in real life and so a wonderful like somebody who had an affinity for the material was already a fan of Bruce Lee and I let her read some of my father's writings and this treatment that I'd written, and then together we decided to write these two books. So there are two books in the series. The first one came out last year. It's called Breath of the Dragon, and the second book comes out October 27, and it's called Mark of the Warrior, and it's the Breath Mark series, and so if you if you look at this, if you read these books, and you're Bruce Lee fan, you will find 10,000 Easter eggs in there. If you read these, and you are not a Bruce Lee fan, you will just find an amazing story about a warrior, and so it and and you can find yourself in that journey as he you know makes his way through the tragedies that he suffered in his own life and the people that he meets along the way.

Alex Ferrari 1:07:58
Beautiful. Now, where can people find out more about you and the amazing work you're doing in the world, Shannon?

Shannon Lee 1:08:04
So many places. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at the Real Shannon Lee. You can follow Bruce Lee on where pretty much where all through all social media channels at Bruce Lee, you can look at brucelee.com. You can look at my work that I my my work that I do through the Bruce Lee Foundation in youth mental health and supporting youth mental health using martial arts and my father's teachings at bruceleefoundation.org. I have you can listen to many episodes of the Bruce Lee podcast. There's like 200 something episodes of the Bruce Lee podcast that I've done.

Alex Ferrari 1:08:47
And what is real quick? What is the Bruce Lee podcast like? What like are you who are you are you like what is it? I have yeah. I'm assuming it's not like Bruce is not interviewing anybody. So Bruce is not on Zoom. You know, if not, that'd be a heck of a trick. So, what does that mean?

Shannon Lee 1:09:04
The Bruce Lee podcast. So, we're not we're no longer doing episodes right now, but there's like 200 some odd episodes of backlog. It started out co-hosted with a friend of mine whose name is Sharon Lee. So, Shannon Lee and Sharon Lee, very confusing, and it is an applied philosophy podcast, so breaking down my father's philosophies, what they mean in like modern day vernacular, and how you can use them in your own life. And then over time, about have about 100 and some odd episodes in Sharon moved and and we and I transitioned it to an interview style podcast and I've interviewed actors and athletes and comedians and all sorts of people but it's still a philosophy podcast because first we talk a little bit about what their connection is to Bruce Lee. But then we talk about their own lives, their own approach, their philosophies, how they navigate, what lessons they've learned, that kind of thing. So, so that's what the Bruce Lee podcast is. Okay. And I have a short form podcast that I put out every Saturday as well called A little leeway, and

Alex Ferrari 1:10:23
I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Very nice, very nice. I see what you did there.

Shannon Lee 1:10:28
Thank you. And it's the episodes are super short. They're like two to 10 minutes in length, and it's just like a little something for you to chew on and ponder throughout your week as you navigate life, so

Alex Ferrari 1:10:44
That's beautiful.

Shannon Lee 1:10:45
Yeah, and then is

Alex Ferrari 1:10:48
And then and did you and you have your own website as well?

Shannon Lee 1:10:50
I do have my own website, although I don't I don't take that good care of it. But leewaymedia.com is my own website as well, and I have my own teachings like that. I have played around with here and there. I've done some teachings through a friend of mine and collaborator. She has an organization called High Karma. Her name is Wasvia Nazreen. She and I have collaborated on delivering some teachings together and stuff like that. So it's all a work in progress, you know. And I'm producing film and TV. I executive produced Warrior, which is on HBO Max.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:30
Warrior, the the the mixed martial art movie, or which Warrior?

Shannon Lee 1:11:33
Warrior. It's a TV series.

Alex Ferrari 1:11:36
Oh, the TV series. Yes, I know the TV. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shannon Lee 1:11:40
Three seasons, yeah. It's based on one of the treatments that my father wrote, and there's a whole there's a whole lore around that show and that series. So it's based on a treatment that he wrote, and it is three seasons. It takes place in 19th century San Francisco Chinatown, and it it takes place with during the historical period of the Tong Wars in San Francisco Chinatown, and during the historical period of the Chinese Exclusion Act. So you have this warrior who shows up looking for his sister, gets indoctrinated into the Tongs, you know, goes up against the the industrialists who love the cheap Chinese labor and the politicians who are trying to drive the Chinese out and the Irish labor versus the Chinese labor. It's a very rich world, and it's got tons of kick-ass action. And so I'm I'm constantly developing film and TV projects as well. So I got a lot going on.

Alex Ferrari 1:12:42
You got a lot of you got a lot of going on. Two last questions I have for you. One is there something you would like the world to know about Bruce that isn't something that most people know about him?

Shannon Lee 1:12:54
I think on a personal level, I want people to know that he was an exceedingly. Caring human being, like he really loved and took care of the people around him, and he had a deep desire for humanity to be in a good place and to let go Of harmful thoughts and actions toward one another, and I think on a more wide and broad level, I want people to know that the legacy of Bruce Lee has something for you in it. Actually, you don't have to be a martial arts fan. You don't have to be an action cinema fan. You don't have to know anything about him. But if you start to really look into his his philosophies and his teachings and who he was as a human being, he has something for you. And I think that I want people to know that, and I want to try. It is, you know, made it my mission to try to deliver what that is because I think at my at my core, my goal would be to help alleviate some of the suffering in the world.

Alex Ferrari 1:14:17
Amen, amen. With that, and finally, what's the one thing someone should do this week from your father's teachings?

Shannon Lee 1:14:28
There's so many things.

Alex Ferrari 1:14:31
There is. There is.

Shannon Lee 1:14:32
I think you know. In my book, Be Water, My Friend. One of the very first things that I say is, if you can get out of your thinking and judging and assessing mind, and just be present to whatever situation you find yourself. And whatever person you find yourself with, whatever environment you find yourself in, and don't think of that environment, that person, that situation in terms of good and bad, or right or wrong, but just be fully present for the experience. Then you can change your life immeasurably.

Alex Ferrari 1:15:25
And with that, Shannon, I thank you so much for this conversation. It has been an honor and a privilege speaking to you today. And I really do hope that this conversation helps people around the world and really helps them on their journey. I think that is the mission your father started so many years ago. Brandon picked it up in in his way, and now you have picked it up in your way to continue it. So this this is a a stone that was dropped in the pond many many many years ago, and it's still rippling to this day. So Shannon, thank you again so much for being here, and thank you for all the work that you're doing to help awaken this planet, so thank you.

Shannon Lee 1:16:03
Thank you, Alex. I really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation. Thank you.