redirected from Main.DontThinkFeel
alt title(s): Dont Think Feel
Lee: "What was that? An exhibition? We need emotional content. [
Dramatic Pause] Try again."
[student attempts a kick]
Lee: "I said emotional content.
Not anger! Now try again, with meaning!"
[student attempts one kick, then another]
Lee: "That's it! How did it feel to you?"
Student: "Let me think...."
Lee: [smacks student] "Don't think! Feeeeeel. It is like a finger pointing a way to the moon."
[student looks up at Lee's finger and promptly gets smacked again]
Lee: "Don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory."
But y'all can see me now cos you don't see with your eye
You perceive with your mind
That's the inner
So I'ma stick around with Russ and be a mentor
To put it bluntly, this is when a very wise mentor tries to teach the hero
Serious Business and the lesson is not about how to do something, but
how to do something (we tropers are very helpful at explaining, aren't we?).
"You have to feel the power in yourself - try to see your connection to everything. You shouldn't resist... let the flow go through you and out at the other side. You feel impatience... try to focus on what's really important."
This makes sense if the art that is taught here is mystical and very much not real (like, say,
Supernatural Martial Arts). After all, doing awesome stuff surely doesn't feel
Mundane.
But this can get nauseating when
viewers are treated as too narrow-minded to
understand. They say stuff like: "Please, no more! I don't want to communicate with
The Life Stream; I want to see plot happen!"
There have been times in
Real Life when people have in fact embraced this notion wholeheartedly; the so-called
Romantic movement
, for instance, was highly characterized by artists and philosophers critical of the Enlightenment's philosophies that (among other things) often shoehorned nature in as a sort of mechanical automaton and people as beings perfectly capable of using the power rational thought to solve any problem.
Of course, this trope isn't truly about perfectly reasonable Romantic philosophies (
Henry David Thoreau may have mused often on shovels and living off the land and not changing your clothes, but he still had food to eat and got his book published). It is about applying some emotional content as some sort of substitute for practical training (such as learning weak points on the body that one should aim for when attacking, or how to look for and hide behind cover in a firefight, or how to make money between episodes); in this sense, taking a real approach to it can just as easily end up as some
Info Dump unless you do something creative with it.
However, in the end, it is very important in action-oriented disciplines to have, well, discipline. Paradoxically, letting your emotions run and feeling your instincts guide you are not one and the same... but we're not going to pretend that's logical. Maybe these mentors simply suspect that their students
are already driven by serenity rather than negative feelings but that their role is to guide that along.
See
Ice Cream Koan for pseudo-profound riddles.
Your Eyes Can Deceive You is a useless lesson in blind fighting. See
Wax On Wax Off for a training that feels like being mocked. For
Aesops lashing out against "thinking" in general, see
Straw Vulcan and
You Fail Logic Forever.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- It was a bit like this when Gohan taught Videl to fly in Dragonball Z.
- Subverted in Samurai Champloo. An old hermit tries to teach Jin a lesson by using fishing as an example. The lesson: Going with the flow. If you do, the fish will come to you. He then attempts to catch a fish this way and... fails. "Well... Some fish are going to slip by anyway." May be a Double Subversion, as the advice was still useful.
- When Rossiu from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann asks Kamina how to move the Gurren, he just answers with "do whatever feels natural!".
- Naturally for someone who sees Bruce Lee as his spiritual instructor, Spike offers this sort of instruction to a a very persistent kid that chased him down after an incident on a stellar flight - after he finally broke down from being pestered enough. It included the famous "be like water" Mantra that Bruce espoused when it comes to Martial Arts.
- On Keitaro and Naru's first date in Love Hina, they go to see an action movie. The only scene we see is the caption "Don't think - feel."
Film
Live Action TV
Literature
Tabletop Games
- In the Planescape campaign, the entire faction of the Transcendent Order, also know as the Ciphers, follow this principle in everything. They're consequently called the 'Ciphers' because it's impossible to figure out their rationale — they don't have one since they act on impulse.
Video Games
- In Soul Nomad And The World Eaters, Gig uses a speech of this type to get Revya to tap into his power — of course, he's not trying to train the protagonist but to goad Revya to accept his Deal With The Devil, in which case it's doubly important for him that you don't think too much over it.
- One of Chie's victory quotes in Persona 4. Given her interest in kung-fu flicks, she's likely quoting Enter The Dragon.
- Since he's essentially Bruce Lee with the serial numbers filed off, Fei Long has a take on this in Street Fighter IV — "Don't contemplate...perceive."
Web Original
- Parodied in the lonelygirl15 video "Mission Alpha":
Spencer: All right, this one is about centering your qi. Now, we're gonna do it like this! Ready? [stands balanced on one leg]
Jonas: I got it. I got it. It's like The Karate Kid. [adopts a one-legged karate pose]
Spencer: No, no! No, no, no, no, no! Not The Karate Kid!
- Don't think. Feel and you'll be tanasinn.
Western Animation
- Avatar The Last Airbender has many, many of these lessons for whenever someone learns a new bending technique.
- The thing is, for Aang, learning each bending discipline requires a certain amount of letting go of what the previous one taught. Airbending? Go with the flow, let loose. Waterbending? Go with the flow, but never let it control you. Earthbending? Stay in control. Keep aware of everything around you. Firebending? Stay aware of the life and danger of fire - and know when to let loose. They're all more intuitive than not, but each one intuiting a different instinct and acting on that.
- Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends parodied it in "The Big Leblooski", when Mac acquired a mentor in bowling who talks like this about feeling the ball instead of knowing it. Turns out "Bowling Paul" only thinks he knows how to bowl, and was feeding Mac a line the whole time.
- Doesn't stop him from scoring a strike though.
- Played surprisingly straight on The Simpsons when Lisa is teaching Bart how to play miniature golf using Zen Archery-like methods.
- In Beast Machines, Optimus Primal does (and teaches the others) to do this. It helps if The Lifestream is tangible. Unfortunately, a guru who goes on a crusade for the mysterious Oracle is not the Boss Monkey we know, and there's the "Please, no more! I don't want to communicate with The Life Stream; I want to see plot happen!" factor.
