Written by Tim Tackett, Essential Jeet Kune Do
This is a fable as told to Bob Bremer by Bruce Lee.
Once upon a time there was an old Chinese woodcutter. He was very poor. Everyday, he went out to the forest hoping to chop enough wood to sell in the town to make enough money to buy rice to feed his family. One day when he was deep in the forest cutting down a tree with his trusty axe, he heard a giant roar from behind on the other side of the clearing. He heard the roar again and saw that the trees were shaking as if there was a huge windstorm. Since the wind was calm where he was, he couldn’t figure out what was happening on the other side of the clearing.
He soon found out because a huge dragon suddenly appeared. The woodcutter immediately thought to himself, ‘If I could kill this dragon, I could sell it for so much money that I could feed my family for the rest of my life and never have to cut wood again.’ The woodcutter grabbed his axe and took a step toward the dragon.
The dragon then raised a claw with huge talons on it and said, ‘Hold it right there you SOB. I know what you want to do. You want to kill me with that axe so you can sell my body for a lot of money. Well, I’m telling you that if you take one more step, I’ll blow my fiery breath on you and burn you to a cinder.’
The woodcutter figured it was no use to try and kill the dragon so he turned back to chopping the tree down. The second time he went to chop the tree the axe slipped out of his hand and hit the dragon right between the eyes killing him.
End of story.