Zen in the Martial Arts

I enjoyed this book, it has some zen wisdom sprinkled in and multiple interesting anecdotes by the author. The latter is the meat of the book and they are deli-sliced. The real entertainment in this book is going along for the ride with someone who is sincere about their experiences however mystical, how it made them feel, what they learned, and how certain other personalities had influenced their lives. However, there are a few pages of Ki hooey, fortunately, that is isolated to a few pages and a sentence elsewhere.
I picked this book up for under a dollar in a thrift store, so I definitely got my money's worth it was also an easy, very, very short read. I devoured this thing in less than an hour. All said I would recommend this book show more if you can snag it for anywhere under a couple of bucks. show less

My friend Dan told me this was the book that changed his life, or something to that effect. So I bought it. It was an easy read, short, concise, to the point and full of deep nuggets of wisdom pertaining to the practice of the martial arts and to life itself. Joe Hyam practiced the martial arts under a number of renown Sifu, the most famous of which was Bruce Lee.

This connection brought back memories of the time in my own past where I was obsessed with the Little Dragon. Even though it has been a few years since I have delved into his writings, much of it came back to life in my mind.

Of course Joe Hyam had more to say that just a sequence of Bruce Lee vignettes.

Foremost amongst them are the ideas of being in the flow and practicing show more the art with great concentration and vigor but also with singular attention of not trying. He also speaks of the kind of decision making that Daniel Kahnemann explores in his Thinking: Fast and Slow and Michael Lewis' The Undoing Project. I am now thinking on these themes and trying to piece all of the ideas together. For this I felt the book was a great find for me personally.

I was pleasantly surprised by his mention of the concept of flow and trying not to try, these are things that I had just read about in the past few years, yet in his crude but very concise way, Hyam was able to explain these concepts in a tiny book. I was actually quite impressed.

The elegant part of the book is that Hyam was able to put what he had to say in short 2-3 page chapters, he does so with great clarity and follows them up with pertinent quotes. This is a great book to keep with me as a reminder of the lessons.

I was also disheartened to read that Joe Hyam had passed away in 2008, this was an older book. show less

One of my favorite 'short reads'. Joe Hyams has a tendency to 'name-drop,' which is probably due to his background as an LA screenwriter, but he manages to pack a fair bit of interesting reading into this little book. For example, the "empty your cup" metaphor is often see in zen, but is illustrated very nicely in one of the early chapters.

I was required to read this book as part of a belt test in one of my martial arts classes. While some of the chapters were interesting, I felt the bulk of this book was simply the author bragging that he had the opportunity to train with Bruce Lee, one of the pre-eminent martial artists of our time. Many of the chapters seem to have a feeling of, "one afternoon I was training with Bruce Lee in his garden when one of us said something particularly deep and now my life is better."

There are a few good chapters that do relate a principle of martial arts to every day life. There are also a few chapters that seem to glorify the spiritual or mystical powers of martial artists that are, in fact, just plain bull. And then there are a lot of show more chapters that relate principles that are common sense.

In all, not a great book. If I wasn't required to read it, I probably wouldn't have finished it. show less

This was a book that I read very quickly, as it is possible to do. However, I am keeping it in my karate bag and I will go back to it often. I feel like many of the lessons in the book, although sometimes very blantantly spelled out, are integral to martial arts and to life in general. This is one book of mine that will be highlighted, underlined, margin-noted, and dog eared.

I highly recommend this book to serious martial arts practitioners of all levels, especially black belts. The only drawback is that I'm afraid it may be discouraging to beginners or non-practitioners because the author is always talking about how little he knows and how long it takes to understand. I hope that everyone comes to those conclusions often in their show more training, but maybe not till they have been doing it a little while; I wouldn't want beginners to get too discouraged! show less

There's not much to this book, but it has some nice insights. It's not something you want to sit down and read cover to cover; I read one anecdote per day, just to give me something to poner, and it worked well.

Loved this book. Short but sweet. Great stories and wisdom from various martial artists including Bruce Lee.