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"Receive What Comes, Follow What Goes"
This principles means that when an attack comes in, you meet it and stick with it. The attacking arm falls into your trap. Once you have made contact, the arm can't escape. If the opponent withdraws the arm, you follow it back to the opponent with a hit. If the opponent retreats you use your footwork to follow.
What does this really mean?
For ten years I was very happy with the explanation above. An arm comes in and you apply some technique like Pak sau or Lap sau or Bil sau or Bong sau. You stay sticking with the arm after that and if the guy withdraws his arm you stick with the arm.
Then I visited Kenneth Chung in San Francisco. Although he refers to himself just as "Ken", he is a true master of the art. I had a private lesson with him. When he threw a punch I applied a Pak sau or a Bong sau or a Bil sau, just my normal Wing Chun stuff. He told me that what I was doing wasn't Wing Chun at all. He said it may look like Wing Chun shapes but the concept was all wrong. He said when I applied the Pak sau, I was pushing his force away like I was scared of it and didn't want the force. He said in Wing Chun the principle is "to receive the force" and not to push it away. Well that made instant sense to me of course. I just never gave this enough of a thought before. Likewise when I applied the Bong sau and Bil sai, they were also wrong. I noticed Ken really did receive my forces. They seemed to fall into emptiness and then I couldn't get out without getting hit.