To be is to be related.
I heard this quote on episode 57 of the Bruce Lee podcast.
"To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self–revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself. To be is to be related.”
Also online via Goodreads as:
"Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself - to be is to be related."
This is a direct quotation of Jiddu Krishnamurti:
"Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be is to be related; to be related is existence. And you exist only in relationship; otherwise, you do not exist, existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are that you come into existence. You exist because you are related, and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict."
Context: The Mirror of Relationship: Love, Sex and Chastity, Conversation 305, Benares, India, 20 February 1949
Online source via jkrishnamurti.org.
"To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self–revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself. To be is to be related.”
Also online via Goodreads as:
"Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself - to be is to be related."
This is a direct quotation of Jiddu Krishnamurti:
"Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be is to be related; to be related is existence. And you exist only in relationship; otherwise, you do not exist, existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are that you come into existence. You exist because you are related, and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict."
Context: The Mirror of Relationship: Love, Sex and Chastity, Conversation 305, Benares, India, 20 February 1949
Online source via jkrishnamurti.org.
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Nice find. The idea that our existence is a matter of relationships with others is also a central tenet of phenomenology. Check out Sartre's "The Look" section of Being and Nothingness. It wouldn't surprise me if this is where Lee first encountered the idea since this is a common passage in an intro to existentialism course.
ReplyDeleteYour sleuthing is not quite complete. All of this was taken from Krishnamurti's book, "The First and Last Freedom", which Bruce Lee owned. I'll show you how Bruce cobbled it together below:
ReplyDelete[To know oneself is to study oneself in action, which is relationship.] The difficulty is that we are so impatient; we want to get on, we want to reach an end, and so we have neither the time nor the occasion to give ourselves the opportunity to study, to observe. (page 32)
[Relationship is a process of self-revelation], and, without knowing oneself, the ways of one’s own mind and heart, merely to establish an outward order, a system, a cunning formula, has very little meaning. (page 107)
[Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be is to be related; to be related is existence.] (page 104)