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Collective Subtlety
Though The Art of War was written as a military
treatise about 500 B.C., the principles in this book can be applied to the
martial arts as well as to military strategy. This is true because what
applies to the individual often can be applied collectively. In the Tao
Te Ching, Lao Tzu refers to the "gateway to the Collective Subtlety"
in the very first passage entitled "The Beginning of Power." What
he seams to mean is that through individual power and enlightenment there
evolves a collective power able to increase the boundary of reality.
The Art of War is one of the most famous books ever written on military strategy and its principles are generally applicable to modern warfare. Marshall Liu Bocheng, a leading military figure in China during the 1950s, was an authority on Sun Tzu. He noted that the treatise taught to defeat the enemy without force when possible. It also teaches that you must try to know your enemy very well and be honest with yourself and your own limitations. It talks about the need for political gestures and statesmanship as means of avoiding war. Finally, it emphasizes the need to surprise your enemy, be unpredictable, and attack fiercely when it is the necessary alternative.
It's easy to see how each of these principles can apply to the development of Ninjutsu and of the mind and body through martial arts. We have seen that martial arts had considerably more benevolent roots than most Westerners are aware. The precept of defeating your enemy without force is well embedded in Eastern religion and tradition and in the idea of action by inaction. It is much better to persuade or use the opponent's energy than to expend unnecessary energy.
One of the laws of thermodynamics states that every process tends to increase disorganized energy. This state is more chaotic. Therefore, the use of energy creates a certain state of uncertainty and chaos and may lead to disaster. Nonaggression tends to maintain a more stable state.
Knowing the enemy well means learning all of the subtleties as well as the obvious; it means calculating possibilities and realizing that the appearance of things may not always reflect the reality of a situation. "When all the world knows beauty as beauty, there is ugliness "(the Tao). Knowing your limitations is an intricate part of knowing your enemy. The martial arts helps one to see his limitations and to expand his horizons by overcoming them.
The need for avoiding conflict is as meaningful to the martial artist as to the general of an army. Therefore one skilled in the martial arts should also be skilled in diplomacy and psychology. He should be sensitive to the behavior of an opponent and try to be as flexible as possible. Often times, the individual can learn quite a bit by this added flexibility which not only avoids conflict, but may save him from disaster at some future date. On a macro level, this is the reason nations engage in treaties and respect each other's boundaries. Remember the earlier discussion about how Sun Tzu was the first proponent of deterrence.
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