SWORDDUELING.COM

Master Xun’s discourse on courtesy says, “Those whose view is life will inevitably die.”
This means the same as Wu Tzu’s “Those who are eager to live will die. On a field of battle, he who becomes absorbed in inevitable death will survive without trying to stay alive.”

Chuang Tzu’s chapter on belaboring the mind says, “Respond after sensing, move after being pressed.”

Sensing means being affected by feeling; it means the enemy’s murderous energy pierces your heart. Response means paying attention. This means that if you pay attention when an enemy’s killing energy makes an impact on your mind, then you can stop it before it sprouts. You strike out only when your opponent’s sword reaches your body; that way you can take advantage of the ending of the energy. This is also what is meant by the verse

Lu Shi’s sword
Responds to aggression,
Acts on sense,
Adapting endlessly,
Having no form.

Chuang Tzu’s chapter on the sword says, “A swordsman strikes out after the other but hits home before the other.”

The idea is to make your body bait to the enemy, slow to begin, so that the enemy cannot restrain himself from lashing out. If you take advantage of that to lash out with your own sword, you receive the end of the enemy’s momentum and cut him down with one blow. So even though you wait till after, it’s the same as getting there first.

It’s hard to express this idea in writing; you have to realize it yourself through personal practice and actual experience. If you understand it wrongly, you’ll be calculating whether to strike at seventy versus thirty or at forty versus sixty. How can there be any such thing in a situation where you can be cut asunder in a flash?

In the Nine Songs in the Elegies of Chu it says, “Though his head be severed, his heart has no regret.”

The word for regret here also means hurt, and it also means to be sorrowful. So it is not only regret. The idea is that even if your head is severed from your body, your spirit is never afraid or injured. If you don’t foster the warriors’ spirit like this, how can you do your best in the thick of battle?

In “Dragon Strategies,” in the section on the momentum of an army, it says, “The successful are decisive, not hesitant; therefore their thunder is so swift you don’t have time to cover your ears, their lightning is so fast you don’t have time to close your eyes. On the move they’re like a stampede, in action they’re like mad dogs. Any who try to stand up to them get broken, any who approach them perish.”

In the course of combat, if you have such certainty, you won’t be hesitating or shilly-shallying, you won’t be doubting or wavering, you won’t be shrinking back or entertaining reservations, you won’t be retreating or giving up. A song on foxes in the night says,

If a fleet creature looks back at its pursuers,
They catch it just like that, it is said.
If a slow creature looks back at its pursuers,
They stumble and don’t catch it;
So there are many ploys.

It should be understood through the sense of this song that if swordsmen show off affected techniques in swordplay, they all become afflicted with hesitation and doubt. Let the knowing be clean and free.

Wu Tzu’s chapter on encouraging soldiers says, “Now suppose a single outlaw ready to die is hiding in the fields, with a thousand men chasing him. All of them are looking around scared-why?

Because they’re afraid he’ll rise up violently and hurt them. This is how one man giving up on life is enough to throw fear into a thousand men.”

The sense of this is that if a single outlaw who’s expecting to die is hiding out in the plains, why would a huge force of a thousand men in pursuit be looking around scared? Because they’re afraid that the outlaw expecting certain death may emerge violently trying to cut them down. So the point is that one man can intimidate a thousand men if he’s expecting to die.

Considered from this point of view, in a context of two individuals, if one of them is reconciled to death, he can crush his opponent more easily than breaking dead wood. If one is thinking of successfully killing the other to gain a reputation, while the other moves in relentlessly considering the ground beneath his feet to be his grave, the difference between them is immense.

Wei Liaozi’s chapter on organization says, “If one armed man brandishes a sword in a marketplace, everyone will run away from him. It’s not that he alone is brave while everyone else is cowardly, but the aims of those certain of death and those intent on life are no match.”

In Han Fei’s initial interview with the king of Qin he said, “One man who will fight to the death can oppose ten, ten can oppose a hundred, a hundred can oppose a thousand, a thousand can oppose ten thousand, ten thousand can conquer the whole land.”

Master Lu’s chapter on intimidation says, “When Zhan Shu pledged to die for Lord Ttan, the whole state of Qi was scared. When YuRang determined to die for Xiangzi, the members of the Zhao clan were all afraid. When Cheng Xing went to his death for the king of Han, the people of Zhou were all intimidated.”

These all mean the same thing.

The biography of Kuai Tong in the Documents of Han says, “A ferocious tiger that hesitates does not compare to a stinging bee or scorpion. A hero in doubt does not compare to a boy reconciled to death.”

It’s not that tigers and wolves are not ferocious, and not that heroes are not brave, but if they hesitate and doubt and do not pounce right on their prey, that’s equivalent to fear. Then the stinging of bees and scorpions, or the thrust of a boy’s dagger, is more fearsome. This is a matter of whether or not you go ahead.

Warriors should realize that when the time comes that they are jousting or dueling in life-or-death situations, those who hesitate and backpedal, or who look back and shilly-shally, all stall here. So the flames of the energy of your will to kill never erupt, your concentration and psychic mass do not penetrate the enemy’s heart. You’re already in the realm of violence, yet you still hope to keep your fleeting life, cringing in the short shadow of a sword, trying to hide behind the thin shaft of a spear. The base cowardliness of this attitude isn’t even worth spitting on. This is getting beaten without making an effort, even leaving disgrace on your corpse. Let the warriors of my band get beyond this demon realm into the domain of the spiritual warrior.

From Thomas Cleary’s Training the Samurai Mind.