Number Thirty One War

31
the broken sword rusts
nestled in the Miner’s Lettice
and Poison Ivy


Lesson # 31

Do not cherish your weapons.
Any sane person
should hate to use them,
should pick them up
only as a last resource,
and should drop them
as soon as possible.
Victory through violence is bitter.
Wars lead only to mourning.
Those who find violence
entertaining, who enjoy watching
the suffering of others,
irreparably wound their own heart.

From: 81 Lessons from the Tao Te Ching


Number 31 War

The finest weapons of war
create the greatest fear
All living things should hate them

If we choose to walk the Path of Peace and Serenity
we must first lay our weapons down

People of Peace choose to be at peace
People of War must fight and win
Should a Person of Peace choose to fight
they pick up their weapons reluctantly
use them with calm moderation
and drop them as soon as they can

There are those who rejoice in victory
and feel a fierce aliveness when slaughtering their fellow humans

And there are those who feel grief
at the senseless slaughter of their fellow human beings
Those who see battlegrounds as funeral pyres
know there is no victory in war

NUMBER THIRTY ONE

The Master who is a Captain of soldiers
Does not give blessings with his weapons.
Soldiers’ weapons are hated by most men,
Therefore he who has the Tao gives them no place.
In the dwelling of the man of peace the left side is the place of honour.
In soldiers’ usage the right side is the place of honour.
A soldier does not give blessings with his weapons.
They are not the instruments of a man of peace.
A man of peace will not possess them, nor use them;
He gives the first place to calmness and repose.
If he conquers, he does not rejoice.
Without joy is he who wounds and kills men.
The Master who wounds and kills men
Cannot succeed in ruling his kingdom.
In time of joy, the left hand is preferred,
In time of mourning, the right hand is preferred.
In war, the second in command is placed on the left,
The first in command is placed on the right,
That is, he stands in the place of mourning.
He who has killed many men should weep with many tears.
He who has conquered in battle should stand in the place of mourning.

Isabella Mears, The Tao Teh King, A Tentative Translation from the Chinese, William McLellan, Glascow, 1916.


Number 31 (commentary) How can we deal with our love of violence?

Children, watching the three plus hours of media as they do every day, witness 10,000 acts of violence every year. By the time they are eighteen, they will have witnessed 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence, most of them unpunished.
As adults we enjoy watching violent sports (football, rugby, women’s basketball), we are fascinated with tweets of car wrecks and look forward to the next “action” movie, where the actions usually end up with many deaths.
Face your addiction to violent stimulation. Look around at our world. Look at what our addiction costs us.
Commit today to be a Person of Peace. Turn off violent media.
Play with your children and do not trust “Children’s Television.”
Dare to feel and to talk about the grief and sorrow that comes from violence and the tragic loss of life that comes from war.

Tangent and Tool #31, Noticing your reactions (Reflective exercise) Are you at war with your hand? Is your hand at war with you? Unless you have a degenerative nerve disease, these questions sound absurd. Your hand serves you loyally and faithfully to the best of its ability, without question. How does it do that? It listens to what you want and need and then goes forth to deliver that. So, listening is the first order in peacemaking. But it is a special form of listening, listening without commentary or reaction. Your hand just does it, whatever it is. To achieve that level of listening, you must first become aware of the barriers you erect. For 10 minutes a day, when you are in a social or job setting, pay attention to what goes on in your mind when you try to listen to another person. Observe the judgements, the reactions, the words you create in advance to use as your response as soon as that other person stops talking. End the war between your receptivity and your inner commentary. Breathe and try to let all this inner chatter sink into the background while you bring your full attention, and precious presence, to the person in front of you, the one who is talking to you.