Sublime

As Machiavelli noted, the best strategy is often the one that no one believes you will undertake because it is either so high risk or so destructive that it is hard to imagine anyone actually implementing it. But sometimes, there is no alternative.

The Chou’s overall campaign and tactics (particularly if the Book of Documents and the Six Secret Teachings preserve any reliable material) approached the conflict from a new perspective—abandoning ritualistic, formal combat for effective revolutionary activity.37 Attaining the objective of dynastic revolution required perfecting themselves in the

‘The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.’

He knew the potential cost—having beaten many of his most awesome opponents simply by disrupting their flow or throwing them off-balance, by arriving late, by acting strangely, by choosing, in one case, to fight with a long wooden oar instead of a sword to the complete befuddlement of the warrior trying to kill him.

LU HUI-CH’ING says, “To win means to defeat one’s enemies. To win without being arrogant about one’s power, to win without being boastful about one’s ability, to win without being cruel about one’s achievement, this sort of victory only comes from being forced and not from the exercise of force.

Even the peerless sword master Miyamoto Musashi entered the fighting square to learn as much as to teach.