Thread by @ThyConsigliori

John Minford, #SunTzu 6: 24 & 25 "24) Weakness stems from preparing against attack. 25) Strength from obliging the enemy to prepare against an attack."

Today's focus is #SunTzu 6: 24.

The attack is coming. We know it is. We clearly see it in its mighty force. We're hugely aware of our own weaknesses, and wrongly, we project that forward onto the enemy as if he knew our weakness as well as we do. He doesn't, but we feel like he does. Doom, the drums of doom.

It is impossible to prepare for attack without a vision of potential defeat. If I don't reinforce here, the enemy will break through. Better get more men over to the left flank. This is possibly true, as far as it goes. But you cannot win in battle by defense alone.

Preparing for attack, you are envisioning defeat, the defeat you MUST stave off. The original problem is a failure of strategic defense. You did NOT make yourself invulnerable from attack to begin. Ignorant of true defense, now, too late, you prepare against the coming attack.

Exactly as the great difficulty for the modern mind to master that being formed is bad, and formless is good, so also the idea of strategic defense is a brain breaker. Yes, you are positioning yourself so as to be invulnerable. That's defense. You hide under the ninefold earth.

We need #SunTzu 4: 7 here: "A Skillful Defender hides beneath the Ninefold Earth; a Skillful Attacker moves above the Ninefold Heaven."

Strategic defense gives us the time to NOT prepare against attack, but rather, the time to discover the moment when we attack our enemy.

The entire point of the word 'strategic' in 'strategic defense' means that your defense empowers you to prepare, not for your enemy's attack but rather for your own attack against your enemy. An invulnerable defense empowers an inexorable offense. You become the tide.

No one can stop the tide. It comes in. Try to stave it off if you will. You will fail. That is what strategic defense empowers. It gives you the time to choose when you release the tide of your unstoppable attack against the enemy.

Tactically, the first moment you realize you're preparing against the enemy's coming attack, you must realize you have already lost. So, stop. Retreat. Evade. Avoid battle. Slip away. Void. Don't prepare for the enemy's attack, escape away from it. You always can.

I've shared many times that, as an 'athlete,' a swordsman, I am at true klutz. I trip over my own feet. I swing my sword too hard, and spin right round, or even fall down, humiliated in my lack of grace or attributes of might, my lousy balance. Accidentally, however, I learned.

In the face of a attack from a superior swordsman, I can just fall down. Do you have any idea that there is an art to falling down? The key is rolling, rolling around. Naturally, I just fall hard, get hurt, and land stuck and weak. A little bit of guile though, is possible.

Actually off balance, I can flow with it. I can fall and roll away from the attack. The key is getting back up again. I suck at that, no kidding, but it's possible. With a little luck, rising, my enemy is sometimes surprised a bit. Time to attack.

The key is to practice falling, rolling, getting back up, instantly finding the opening in my enemy's position, and moving from defense to offense so that he must now prepare against my attack. Cool, powerful, well fit, graceful enemies are often surprised by such.

I confess, I've not had many such moments over the years, just a few. But when I read Master Sun's verse today, I know the look in my enemy's eye when he shifts from his attack against me to his preparation against my coming attack. I can see his inner vision of fear, viscerally.

The power of fear is to control your thinking. You MUST prepare for the coming attack. It takes over your options. The moment you notice, pause. Do not believe the fear. Pay attention, yes. But do not believe the vision of defeat driving it. It may not turn out that way.

But if you believe your fear-inspired vision of defeat, then you'll absolutely do the things that make your fear come true. Master Sun will forgive you, and so will I. We all do it. But we must know, our fear-based reactive preparations are often precisely what our enemies wish.

134 verses completed, 288 to go.

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