Reading Challenges
Reading Challenges Overview
Not Modern Nonfiction
Not
a Modern Textbook
The Specific Meanings
The Multiple Meanings
The Rigorous Meanings
The
Secrets of Sun Tzu
The Multiple Meanings
Each Chinese character of the
key concepts in Sun Tzu's work requires an essay to explain. Put a number of
those characters together, and you get complex formulas. Because of the depth of meaning in each
character, every line in The Art of War
has a wealth of useful applications, just like each value in a mathematical
formula has a wealth of implications.
Look at these two lines:
Know the enemy and know yourself.
Your victory will be painless.
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War 10:5.15-16
One simplified meaning of that
stanza is as follows:
If you have highly accurate information (to know) about your and your opponents'
relative strengths and weaknesses (the enemy and yourself), you can only meet that enemy either when
you are both ready to join together as allies or when you overmatch that enemy
to such an obvious degree (victory) that he will surrender without a fight
(painless).
However, another simplified but accurate interpretation of this line
is also possible:
If you have avoided self-deception and accurately
interpreted the motivations (to know) behind your opponent's moves
(your enemy), you can find a place (yourself) where you will invest
much less in winning a dominant position (victory) than the position is
worth in terms of its tangible rewards (painless).
Other different interpretations would bring
to light the various other aspects of the deeper meaning of these terms. All
these interpretations are useful in terms of applying the methods of
classical strategy to a specific situation.
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