The Art of War

INTRODUCTION

The Art of War is one of the world’s oldest living books. Added to, commented upon, re-translated, and tinkered with for nearly two and a half millenia, it is also as widely read a book as there has been in human history, exceeded in this regard perhaps only by texts like the Tao te Ching, the Koran, and the Bible. In its early days, it was a manual on the practices, perils, price, and philosophy of warfare that was intended only for a small, elite cadre of political leaders and professional military officers. Most ordinary people in the time and place in which these teachings were first recorded were neither literate nor solicited for opinions as to how the state and its military campaigns ought to be run.

Over time, however, the words attributed to Sun Tzu have become a source of strategy, inspiration, and provocation for a remarkably diverse assortment of human beings. Military personnel the world over comb them constantly for insights and stratagems. Business people and athletes mine the book for a competitive advantage. Spiritual seekers appeal for guidance to its simple but profound Taoist heart.

I refer to the teachings as “attributed to Sun Tzu” because the thirteen chapters we now call, somewhat grandly, The Art of War (a more literal translation would be simply “Soldier’s Manual”) is not the work of one old master — “tzu” — named Sun. Just as with a related classic, the Tao te Ching, every reliable historical indication is that these teachings were the work of a number of people over the course of centuries. As with Lao Tzu and the Tao te Ching, Sun Tzu’s name does not appear in conjunction with The Art of War until long after it first began to circulate in written form.

Its provenance, in short form, is thus: From roughly 475 to 221 B.C., seven feudal states competed for predominance and resources in what we know today as China. Called the Warring States Period, this time witnessed dramatic changes in the practice of warfare as an instrument of politics and what might be thought of as “business interests”. Weaponry became more sophisticated and deadly, the sizes of armies increased dramatically, and the kings of the various states enthusiastically embraced the notion of conducting aggressive military campaigns to achieve their territorial and economic ambitions.

It was in this historical context that the Art of War teachings were assembled. Initially they were orally traded instructions on practical matters of warfare — how to manage an army over varieties of terrain, for example, or at what point it is ideal to attack an adversary crossing a river. People began recording them in written form after some decades, and over the coming centuries they came to be supplemented with advice on matters as widely varied as ethics, philosophy, the economic implications of war on a nation, what the best times of the month are for burning people alive, and the proper oversight of an intelligence community. Little wonder we find them fascinating today.

But curiosity is not the central component in the story of humanity’s enduring relationship with The Art of War. Because or in spite of its unusual admixture of the practical and the celestial, when read as a whole, the collection works on the mind and spirit in remarkable and often unanticipated ways. The general who approaches the book seeking a strategic military advantage may instead find herself in an unexpected bout of ethical self-inquiry. The athlete hoping to bank his martial fires could be overwhelmed by an almost mystical awareness of the musical rhythms of his sport. A spiritual student in search of the ethereal might receive instead a gritty lesson about the lengths humans will go to in order to satisfy a lust for blood, dominance, or riches.

There is, in my view, a subtle magic to these teachings. Properly translated for our time and place, consumed quickly in bites or more leisurely as a full meal, they enter us and alter us. Like the timeless advice of other Taoist texts like the I Ching and Tao te Ching, they descend deeply into the well of our minds and souls. The ripples that are felt as they land can be profound and sometimes puzzling, and almost always go on both longer and in directions we never could have anticipated when we opened the book.

In my translation of the I Ching, I wrote that

the qualities that the Book of Changes counsels us to embody in our lives are modesty, awareness, acceptance, adaptability, compassion, restraint, innocence, perseverance, tolerance, reticence, devotion to inner truth, patience, openness, detachment, conscientiousness, balance, and inner independence.

It is my belief that the whole of that great, mysterious, oracular text — one which sometimes stretches to many hundreds of pages in translation and commentary — comes down to that tiny handful of concepts and qualities. To fully embody them, though, is to manifest in one’s life the resplendently beautiful, intoxicatingly simple state which people refer to as enlightenment or realization. They are the most concentrated and practical manual I know for leading a good and wonderful life.

Over the decades of my relationship with the soldier’s manual of old master Sun, I have come to view it in something of a similar fashion. There’s a great deal here — practical information on how to keep from being ambushed in a box canyon, road signs of caution about what becomes of families and nations when you keep marching their children off to war, and sage advice about the spiritual benefits of flowing like water and not disdaining that which is modest. It is as wise a guide for leaders of nations, and for citizens examining the practices of their leaders, as has ever been written. It is one of the world’s most time-honored field handbooks for soldiers of high rank and low about how to successfully get in, get a mission accomplished, and get back home with a minimum of harm to oneself and maybe even others. Virtually no serious military person fails to study it closely in his or her career.

The Art of War is something equally profound and essential, yet perhaps more mysterious and undefinable, for spiritual aspirants. It is, to borrow the exquisite phrase of the Kashmiri mystic poet Lalla in describing her own state of consciousness, “a somewhat something moving dreamlike down a fading road.” For me, that essence is the thing. And thus the form of this book: those looking for a scholarly account of trade and weaponry through Chinese history, an ornate “biography” of the almost completely hidden Sun Tzu, or extensive commentary on what these teachings “really” mean will not find them here. What you will find here are the thirteen chapters generally recognized as The Art of War, rendered both as accurately and in as distilled a fashion as I know how. These timeless words are followed by a brief comment about war in our world in the early days of the twenty-first century. I hope that readers will find the latter provocative and the former both poetic and profound. If not, the fault is my own. That, or the printer got sauced like old Buddha and mixed up some words.

I have endeavored, as in all my books, to keep things simple. Yet no doubt these teachings could be concentrated even further, distilled into a handful of words as I mentioned doing with the I Ching. I leave that to the reader this time around. In fact, I can’t think of a better way to try to understand and to be changed by this book than to read it again and again, to contemplate it forward and backward and upside down, until it comes out of your own mouth or pen in your very own dozen or twenty words. Help yourself, and may you find something of benefit here, be you soldier, sovereign, seeker, or spy.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27