Bruce Lee, Innovator?

 Suzuki also wrote about Zen as it applies to swordsmanship:

To state it in terms of swordsmanship, the genuine beginner knows nothing about the way of holding and managing the sword...when the opponent tries to strike him, he instinctively parries it.But as soon as the training starts, he is taught how to handle the sword,...and many other technical tricks- which makes the mind 'stop' at various junctures. For this reason whenever he tries to strike the opponent he feels unusually hampered; [he has lost altogether the original sense of innocence and freedom].But as days and years go by, as his training acquires fuller maturity, his bodily attitude and his way of managing the sword advance toward 'no-mind-ness,' which resemble the state of mind he had at the very beginning of training when he knew nothing, when he was altogether ignorant of the art. The beginning and the end thus turn into next-door neighbors.

John Little in his 1996 book, The Warrior Within, wrote that Lee "...drafted a fascinating philosophical treatise, which he called The Three Stages of Cultivation." Little wrote that Lee had said:

The first stage is the primitive stage. It is a stage of original ignorance in which a person knows nothing about the art of combat...he simply blocks and strikes instinctively...The second stage- the stage of sophistication or mechanical stage- begins when a person starts his training. He is taught the different ways of blocking, striking,...Unquestionably, he has gained the scientific knowledge of combat, but unfortunately his original self and sense of freedom are lost, and his action no longer flows by itself...his mind tends to freeze at different movements...The third stage- the stage of artlessness or spontaneous stage- occurs when, after years of serious and hard practice, the student realizes that after all, gung fu is nothing special...

TKDTutor: It appears that Lee’s “original” treatise was not so original after all.