Monday, August 11, 2008

Sun Tzu on the Art of War

"If you know the enemy
and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will
succumb in every battle.
"

~Sun Tzu, _The Art of War_

...wondering if the enemy is the ego............. however, it is likely that the enemy is really any obstacle that needs to be overcome in one's life.

"We can form a single united body, while the
enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will
be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole,
which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few.
"

I don't need to say much about that, for I'm sure you know what it means.

"Sun Tzu said: In war, the general receives his
commands from the sovereign.
"

"War" does not have to be taken literally, here. Although it can be.

http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html

More later. Maybe.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great series of posts!

I look forward to meeting your special someone.

Anonymous said...

Ego could be defined as a collection of all of the thoughts of a particular person. These thoughts appear to be a single entity because they all have the same name.

Some thoughts are sometimes helpful, some are neutral, and some are harmful. In general they form imaginary pictures of the self that steal away the attention needed for awareness of (and from) the real Self.

Even these thoughts that I write now are trying to displace Self.

There is only so much attention available. If we want to have more attention for Self then we must take attention (the noun) away from the ego. This does seem like a battle.

Sophia said...

I remembered someone once mentioning a quote from this book some years ago. I was reminded about it while searching for classic audio books on iTunes. So I quickly read it as it is very short. Four years ago I didn't see the deeper meaning to it that I see now.

I don't know the special someone very well yet. We were just introduced.

If we didn't use our egos, there would be no communication at all, so to a point it seems as if ego is necessary for survival.