FromIntroduction: Applying The Art of War

About 2,300 years ago in what is now North China, a lineage of military leaders put their collective wisdom into written form for the first time. Their text was to shape the strategic thinking of all East Asia. It offered a radically new perspective on conflict, whereby one might attain victory without going to battle. Though in the West their text is called The Art of War, in China it is still known as the Sun Tzu, named for the patriarch of their lineage.

Over the last half-century, this text has become a handbook for people all around the world seeking to transform their approach to conflict, whether in warfare, in business or simply in everyday life. When a squadron leader targets his objective or a boardroom falls under siege, when our neighbors join a zoning battle to protect local parkland, we may find modern-day warriors turning to the Sun Tzu. Clearly they have a conviction that its ancient wisdom has considerable value today. But how might we apply this Chinese text to our lives in a genuine manner? How can it teach us to work more effectively with conflict? These are the central questions of this book.

The answers lie within the Sun Tzu itself. The text shows how to conquer without aggression, whether our conflict is large or small, personal or national. One of its most famous couplets states:

One hundred victories in one hundred battles is not
    the most skillful.
Subduing the other's military without battle is
    the most skillful.

The wisdom of this book is a profound human knowledge, something to which every one of us has access. It does not belong to any proprietary group, Chinese or Western. It shows a way of working with conflict that is sane, kindly and effective. Though the Sun Tzu offers models of behavior, it does not suggest we copy them. Instead, it invites us to enter its teachings fully. When we do so, we find we come naturally to the same insights that are contained within its text.

The Sun Tzu begins with the understanding that conflict is an integral part of human life. It is within us and all around us. Sometimes we can skillfully sidestep it, but at other times we must join with it directly. Many of us have seen the destructive power of aggression, whether on a personal level or in the disasters of armed conflict. We know as well the limitations of most political and personal responses to that aggression. How can we work with it in a more profound and effective way?

The Sun Tzu recommends that our response to conflict start from knowledge, of ourselves and of the other. In chapter 3 it says:

And so in the military—

    Knowing the other and knowing oneself,
    In one hundred battles no danger.
    Not knowing the other and knowing oneself,
    One victory for one loss.
    Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself,
    In every battle certain defeat.

Self-knowledge in the Sun Tzu includes awareness of the full condition of our forces, but it begins with something far more intimate: knowledge of our own minds. People come to this knowledge in many ways. The contemplative practices offer one means of insight. More basic than any particular practice, though, is the openness of mind to which it leads. This openness can be present in all our activities. We find ourselves there when we experience a sudden moment of beauty. It is the unformed, creative source of the performing and plastic arts. Athletes know it as "the zone," and lovers do not even name it. It is where they are most at home and their actions most effective.

Why, though, would anyone wary of aggression's destructive force study a text about conflict? As the Sun Tzu says, it is essential to know ourselves, to know our own minds. But we also live in a world where aggression cannot be avoided. We must know the other in order to skillfully engage him or her. It is necessary, therefore, to learn to work directly with the conflict in our environment, not ignore it, submerge it, give up on it or try to deny its existence. However profound our individual wisdom, it will not survive in the world unless it is joined with some kind of power. Recognizing this seems especially important at the present time, when the consequences of human action can be so thoroughly devastating. This text, then, shows how we can work with conflict both within and outside ourselves.

The military lineage that brought The Art of War into the world traced itself back to a master strategist named Sun Tzu. According to legend, he had been celebrated for brilliant campaigns conducted around the time of Confucius, in the sixth century BCE. This work of military strategy was passed on to subsequent lineage holders, at first by memorization and laborious copying on bamboo strips. Gradually its wisdom became known to outsiders, and increasingly it circulated throughout ancient China. We know it was sought by early emperors, for the imperial library catalog of the first century BCE. lists a copy in its collection. The text's reputation spread from China throughout East Asia, and the figure of Sun Tzu came to represent the supreme model of strategic thinking.

Through what process, though, are we to make a genuine connection with this ancient work from so far away, learning to practice from the heart of its tradition rather than simply admiring or mimicking it? We are aided here by the example of the sage commander, the general to whom the Sun Tzu is addressed. He embodies the worldview of the text, and his example allows us to see the full range of its activity. Though when taken together his achievements may seem extraordinary, every one of his qualities is already present in each of us. Such abilities grow naturally from our native capacities to see, hear, think and interact with the world.

The English language still asks us to choose between masculine and feminine pronouns. Because Chinese generals have historically been men, we have adopted the convention of referring to the sage commander throughout as "he." It is central to our understanding, however, that the knowledge and action of the sage commander are the property of neither male nor female. The wisdom of the Sun Tzu applies not just to men in a military setting but to anyone seeking to work with conflict without aggression. We recognize the qualities of the sage commander in certain unusual women and men. They may have a remarkable calm about them, or they appear endlessly resourceful. At the same time, it is possible that such people have never heard of the Sun Tzu. Their examples demonstrate the way in which the wisdom found in this text is not a foreign import but is instead a natural flowering of common human faculties. If we seek the root of the sage commander's power, we discover that he is simply and genuinely himself, always comfortable with who he is. The more he relaxes, the greater the power associated with him. In some people such openness may arise quite spontaneously. Or they may develop it from a strong discipline, or out of the sharp and sudden experience of seeing through the hold that fear has upon the human mind.

From this fearlessness the sage commander develops an appreciation of the world around him. He no longer regards things as for or against him but sees them with dispassionate judgment.

He holds to no fixed position or identity. Thus his wisdom emerges in the moment, on the spot. The Sun Tzu repeatedly stresses that such wisdom is the root of skillful action. It is the first of the general's four qualities (chapter 1). It determines the difference between victory and defeat. Thus in chapter 10 the text says:

Knowing my troops can strike,
    yet not knowing the enemy cannot be struck.
This is half of victory.
Knowing the enemy can be struck,
    yet not knowing my soldiers cannot strike.
This is half of victory.
Knowing the enemy can be struck,
    knowing my soldiers can strike,
    yet not knowing that the form
    of the earth cannot be used to do battle.
This is half of victory.

This knowing begins with the visible details of troop strength and supply but develops through these to encompass the Tao-like complexity of events, which the great general also knows. It includes insight into the extraordinary and orthodox manifestations of battle and brings with it the ability to feel at home in chaos. How do we apply this knowledge? There are many opportunities for it, even in our most routine domestic life. A mother asks her child to go to bed. The child, no doubt for good reasons of his own, refuses. If the mother refrains from action, her son may not get the sleep he needs and may suspect that he can refuse all future commands. However, if she presses straight ahead, the mother only bolsters her son's resistance. What is the right course of action? How does she bring about the desired effect without creating a bigger war and a less workable home life?

First of all, we cannot expect to advise the parent in the abstract, except in the broadest sense. Skillful action emerges only from knowledge of all the details that go to make up the situation. In other words, we are on our own, as each new life situation arises. No person, no book, no external wisdom can tell us how to act. Even previously successful models cannot simply be laid over the unique realities of our present situation. As chapter 1 of the Sun Tzu says,

These are the victories of the military lineage.
They cannot be transmitted in advance.

Thus we must determine the means for victory now and here, since its conditions exist only in the moment. Furthermore, we all recognize a mother's feeling for her child, and each of us can see that our enemy is human, just as we are. This wisdom does not originate in some external source. Rather, it is insight we all possess. It requires no unusual talent, nothing that is not already ours. We need only our human intelligence, attention to the moment and openness to the world. At the same time, we can also develop all of these abilities. Approaching the Sun Tzu in this way, we see that its teachings are not limited to any single realm of activity. Its language can apply equally to the mother putting her son to bed and to a platoon commander resisting his superior officer's disastrous order to fight the wrong opponent. The Sun Tzu works at the level of the battle of ego or of warfare between nations, and everything between. Yet its specific application can only come from the uniqueness of a particular case.

This uniqueness has far-reaching implications for how one studies the text and practices it in real-life situations. It means that the present translation of the Sun Tzu can be only one part of a complex process. The text contains the words, and the words set out the nature of conflict, providing us with a host of models. But only when we have gone beyond its specific words, concepts and examples will we be free to respond openly and accurately to the life situation that is arising before, around and within us.

It is helpful to this process if we can identify the perspective of the Sun Tzu, seeing the world the way it does. Above all, this is the view of "taking whole." Taking whole means conquering the enemy in a way that keeps as much intact as possible—both our own resources and those of our opponent. Such a victory leaves something available on which to build, both for us and for our former foe. This is not merely a philosophical stance or altruistic approach. Destruction leaves only devastation, not just for those defeated, their dwellings and their earth, but also for conquerors attempting to enforce their "peace" long after battle has passed.

True victory is victory over aggression, a victory that respects the enemy's basic humanity and thus renders further conflict unnecessary. Taking whole begins with the ordinary details of our lives. It includes all of them. The mother trying to put her son to bed must know his habits, temperament and disposition as well as her own, how these vary throughout the day and what special factors are at play that particular evening. Sensing their configuration, her actions shift with and respond to these changing conditions. Throughout, she seeks a larger perspective.

That larger perspective is so powerful that it subtly brings other people around to a view they cannot initially see—her son, our enemy, our reluctant allies. It is both powerful and attractive because it includes them in a way they recognize, which is accommodating, beyond petty concerns, and respecting of their own intelligence and perspective. This is not simply about bringing the other person over to your side but bringing him or her to something larger than either side. This view is always there. It comes with considerable responsibility.

Taking whole is both a way of being and a way of seeing. Because our actions arise naturally out of it, it is also a way of acting. It does not preclude the use of force, but in using force, it seeks to preserve the possibilities—to keep the options open and include the welfare of the other. It leads ultimately to victory. One manifestation of taking whole is a victory that occurs without battle. But winning without fighting is not simply an alternative way to reach our objective, this time without expending valuable resources. It is a fundamentally different understanding of the ground of conflict. It resembles "win-win," in which each party gains what it needs. But victory goes beyond the particular desires of either side to a larger vision. Thus it applies both to friendly negotiations between equals and to unequal forces caught in bitter conflict. This victory carries tremendous power, since it owes no loyalty to smaller reference points. Victory embraces all aspects of the world. Rejecting parts of it means that we have given up on the workability of the situation and are left with force as the only option. That perpetuates the struggle, in ourselves and all around us. It solidifies a view of the other as our opposite and of conflict as win or lose. It makes us susceptible to defeat, since it captures our mind, closes off our perceptions of the world and prevents a full knowledge from arising.

However appealing this vision of victory, it is still true that the Sun Tzu was written very long ago by people whose world was vastly different from ours. If we wish to study their text, how can we find its essential teachings while still acknowledging that they arose at a unique time and place? We cannot simply ignore these differences and decide that their ideas mean whatever we would like. This is a question about linkage through time and space, between the foreign and the familiar. It is also about lineage. Once, the book belonged to certain people. Now, we are claiming, it can belong to us. A better understanding of the nature of how the text arose and what it meant in the world of its first users will help us see how the text could belong to our world today. Scholars believe that the Sun Tzu emerged from the oral tradition sometime in the fourth century BCE. at a time when Chinese models of governance, warfare, morality and social organization were experiencing extreme dislocation. Endemic warfare had destroyed confidence in the old ways. The widest variety of solutions was proposed, from revival of traditional forms to a hard-edged organizational efficiency useful to the formation of large armies and impersonal bureaucracies.

The response of the Sun Tzu was to emphasize that knowledge arises in the present moment. Any form could be helpful—but its application depends on insight into one's present circumstances, into the nowness of the situation. Such knowledge, the text argues, "cannot be transmitted in advance." Thus the Sun Tzu does not organize its thought into systematic procedures we might follow. Now, when we read a book, we often find it helpful to seek out its essential principles, extracting them and then generalizing from them, applying them skillfully to new situations. This can be an extremely powerful and efficient way to acquire and structure new knowledge. But though the Sun Tzu does contain a few principles, such as "not transmitted in advance," it mostly offers us examples that concretely embody the point of view from which it regards the world. It is a loosely linked set of observations and models, with only the barest argumentation connecting them. It does not develop its doctrines through logical demonstration. Rather, it teaches by analogy and metaphor.

We cannot simply pluck its insights and drop them into our already existing frameworks. We must develop new ways to use our minds.

Our book therefore offers a variety of approaches to the Sun Tzu. It is not necessary to read it straight through. Some readers may want to begin with the three essays in the middle that introduce its thought and practice. The first of these essays, "Taking Whole," presents the worldview of the text, showing its implications for working with the present moment. It develops the idea of Tao as a way of being, seeing and doing. The second, "The Sage Commander," gives a fuller vision of the central figure of the book, whom we have briefly described above. It suggests a view of this fully developed person in order to spark the recognition of these qualities in ourselves. The third, "Joining the Tradition," explores just how and why an ancient text has the possibility of meeting our current world. Part of the reason lies in the Sun Tzu itself and part in the fundamental remaking of the Western worldviews that has occurred over the last hundred years.