The Scroll Rack
Forward
I understand that this may seem a reproduction of one of the great books such as The Art of War or The Book of Five Rings; and rightly so, for it is written in much the same fashion. This I excuse, for I am a student of such teaching and it is impossible not to use some of my learning. However, this is alike but by no means the same, for even the aforementioned books were alike but written thousands of years apart and from different countries. This book does not reproduce the writings found in any book I have read, these are my own thoughts on many subjects, though mostly war. True my thoughts are influenced by my studies, however these are unique and in some ways oppose my own teachers.
On Strategy
First off, I suggest before you study my thoughts on this subject, read Sun Tuz's Art of war first, because these tactics are very odd to most ways of thinking, which is why they work.
Many have said that there is safety in numbers; however, this is only part of the truth. I propose that there is safety in aloneness. How? After all cannot ten men over power one man easily? I say first, it depends on the man though I concede that it is a normally a true statement, second, they can only over power a man that they can find. If they never know that he is there how can they fight him? If you doubt me try this test. Find a place with a few people in it, and then try to get from one point to the other without being seen, hard? Now try doing the same thing with ten friends. Use your brain, which has the best chance of succeeding? The one man.
In response to the last statement you think, "What if I am trying to attack the enemy, not avoid him." I would respond, that if two equal bands of warriors fight on equal ground, what is the result? Both bands perish, and the average kill of the warriors is about one kill each. Alone, the odds are on the side of the foe, therefore if you wouldn't attack without an advantage with a force of men, certainly you wouldn't attack without an advantage alone. Therefore it makes sense to create an advantage. First, you have the element of surprise, being one, you can attack from any side, have no need for a chain of command at all, and you have no weaknesses. "No weakness?" You ask, yes, for when you are alone, anything you can do or think is strength, with the exception of fear. True you enemy may be much stronger than you, and dwarfs your strength, you still must count anything you can. When you have a band of men any strength that is less than the rest is a weakness; a man falls asleep on duty, is a weakness that may kill everyone in camp. If you fall asleep, nothing changes in fact, you may wake stronger! If one man in many is hurt, he slows down everyone else, cutting down their power, while the weapons of your enemies may weaken you, you can't slow yourself down. And while you live you threaten your enemies, the threat your enemies on the other hand may be broken without killing everyone of them.
Ki
Ki has been described as the energy force of a person. It is also one of the most highly debated concepts of the Martial Arts, some say it is the end all of fighting, while others say it simply doesn't exist. For those that believe in it, it is a force that comes from the center of your being (centered around your belly button) and when your being is whole, the energy is strong. Ki also travels through the body by way of the nerves. Others believe that Ki is simply nervous energy that slightly affects other things simply because of the small electric charge.
After study and experimentation I have decided that of the three main options that people have to believe, none are correct.
The following is my theory: People seem to regard the person to be split into two parts, the mind and the body. By that way of thinking, Ki must come from one of the two, however that is not the case. I have split it into three parts: Mind, Body, and Soul. Mind is the brain, the place knowledge comes from. The Body is tangible part, and the physical strength comes from here. The soul is life, and inspiration for life; it's what makes us better than vegetables.
By themselves each is useless, Data by its self is meaningless, strength without direction is wasted, and life can't continue in this world without the body.
Ki is the force of the Soul, which I also call the power of heart; it can be developed into a healing force or into a destructive force. Not to say that part of it is bad, a hand can help or hurt as well, it depends on the intent. What if a person has never trained in Ki? Does that mean that their flow isn't strong? Not at all, have you ever tried to pick up something to heavy for you? You can't do it. Yet later, when you really want to, you are angry or have to move quickly, you seem to posses extra strength, and I don't mean adrenaline, for that only kicks in a few seconds later, that is the power of heart. When a loved one is threatened, why can you fight even harder than for your own life? For love is power of the heart, not Ki, but when your love is threatened, your soul releases that love in the form of Ki, to attack your foes. Why? Because in that moment of danger, you are united, your mind races to find anything that could help, your body forgets pain and fatigue, and places every cell at your disposal, and your soul drives mind and body to un-reached heights, overriding what your mind has been taught, forcing your body to give everything it has, and then to give more, and it does this and uses its own power, Ki to help. At this point you have completed the triangle, and are whole, logic, fatigue, and feelings are forgotten, and your power is complete. After the ordeal, no matter if you win or lose, your body, mind, and soul, will each be hurt and weakened in their way. Which is why a person can't think etc, after a battle.
Now, why train if Ki can be produced in such a manner? Simple, a weak person may become stronger, but he remains a weak person. If a strong person grows stronger, he has more chance of winning. The other reason is, who wants to wait for an emergency for inner strength?
The main trouble with this or any other training is a very simple fact. Place your hands straight out in front of you, place your thumbs together, do the same with your first finger, what happened? You formed a triangle. What is in the center? Nothing. I call this the Void. Every great fighter that has recorded his feelings on fighting has spoken of it. Musashi, in his writings, the book of five rings he wrote this, "To attain the way of the warrior you must fully study other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your soul settled accumulate practice day-by-day, hour-by-hour. Polish twofold spirit, mind When your spirit is not the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true Void. Then you will come to think of things in a wide sense you will see the that the Way as void." He had said this after he had become the most powerful warrior in the world. Because he had mastered himself, he saw that there was nothing left, because he was empty. If he had known the true God, he wouldn't have been empty, and so would have increased his power greatly. The center of man is empty, God fills that void, some times we don't see the void until we reach our limit and master ourselves, then we see that it was in vain.
Ki must be worked and trained like any other art or study. In this case st strengthen your soul in order to increase your Ki flow. How? By placing doing things that make you want to quite then continuing by sheer force of will, exercises, meditation, study. What is more, as you train your mind and body, your soul gains to, and as you train your soul, your body and mind will increase. Then, focus your efforts into summoning your Ki to a certain place in your body. I have found that it is easier to focus it in your hands. This is done placing your hands together palms against each other (which brings your heart points over one another) and bending your thoughts on bringing forth your Ki and by pressing with everything you have (continue breathing through the whole thing). I found it helpful to look in a mirror. When you feel your hands began to grow heavy and your skin turns red, you have focused you Ki.
On Fate
To those of you that do not believe it fate I ask you this question, "Did you chose when you would be born? Did you chose where or how, or to who?" The answer of course it no, none of us have power over these things. I have another question, how many chose the day that they die? Now, I am not saying that we have no control over our lives, for from this ability to chose comes the ability to sin, and to do right. If we are puppets on strings, then we have no choice over our actions, and there for no good or evil, only the role we have to play in this pitiful movie called life.
However, this is not the case. Then you ask me, "If you just proved that we have no control over our lives, and that we must have control over our lives to do right, how does one take control of ones life" This is simply asked and simply answered, you ask the person that is in control. By saying this, I mean God. He is in control of everything and it is his gift to us that we can control our lives. Now, he doesn't release his power over time completly, he has a plan that will be carried out in time, though the people that carry it out may not be his first choice. To the Christians out there, don't stone me just yet. Look at the Jews wondering in the desert of 40 years, God was about to kill them many times, yet wasn't it God's plan to make a great people out of them? Think about what he said to Moses, I will distroy them, but I will make a great country of you. So we don't have to do God's will but someone will if we don't. Now don't get me wrong, God can do anything he wants, but he doesn't need anyone. I will write more about this when I get time for it is a very deep issue that I need to write about.
Love
Who understands love? To a point we all understand it, and at the same time we are totally in the dark. How can I write on the subject? Perhaps it is because since I am a stranger to most love I can see it clearly. Love is a powerful force. It can be destuctive, or healing. There are no more powerful forces in this world the Love and Hate, some of the worst things in the world have been done through them, and some of the best. A prisoner will some times carry on, and cling to life because of the love he carrys, or he my defy death itself because of the hate that burns in him.
Human love between friends or a man and woman is based on respect before all other things. If there is the lack of respect, there is a lack of real love. Attraction might remain, but that is hardly love. The strength of the love is in proportion to that of the respect. Now in saying all of this, I am not saying that there is nothing more to love then respect, but it is impossible to have one with out the other.
Now that said, you will notice that in a relationship, when one person lets the other down, the love can remain, despite the fact that the level of respect have dropped. But that shouldn’t be used as an argument that respect and love aren’t deeply tied. It is like a table is love, and the legs are respect. While at dinner the legs of a table are suddenly removed. A person might be able to hold the table up, and keep the dinner from spilling on the floor, but only for so long. So when a person loses respect, if he doesn’t make up for it within a certain amount of time, love will come crashing down to nothing. The strength of the person who is holding up the love determines the time limit, not the level of love you had.
A man commonly makes the mistake of expecting to gain strength from his wife (or girlfriend) and is, has been, and will always be disappointed. A man can truly only gain that sort of strength God and to a lesser degree, other men. So he tries to transform this woman into a man! He puts the same weights and demands that are expected of him, thinking that marriage etc, is a 50/50 deal. The woman might even try her best to transform, but such a thing cannot happen, not if the relationship is expected to last. For the woman will always be defeated in her quest to be something she was not created to be, and the man will always be disappointed. Then at a certain point the woman has had enough, and stops trying, and so resents the man (while still loving him) and the man feeling betrayed decides to shoulder the whole burden (where it should have been in the first place) and becomes hollow on the inside. Thus the husband and wife start looking elsewhere (or no where) for the source of strength and understanding. It is easy to see the problems this could lead to, but in no matter what, it leads to having two people living alone together.
The moral? Men shouldn’t try to make men out of women, and second, Men shouldn’t try to derive their strength from women, it puts an unfair strain on them. Women shouldn’t try to make women of their men. Sounds easy doesn’t it?
On Honor
Many have written about honor, and many more have used honor as a centerpiece of other ideas. Most of us understand honor, but I have yet to hear honor clearly defined and so have taken it upon myself to finally describe it. Honor is very simply an almost tangible objective deontological system of personal value. To explain, honor serves two purposes, the first as the universal code of ethics, which should in no ways be confused with mere morality or something as exalted as holiness. Morality for most common people consists of the knowledge of and avoidance of wrongdoing. Holiness of course includes honor but goes farther, reaching pure human perfection. Honor does not require perfection, and since such is impossible on this plane, can be achieved at least in part by humans. It is more then mere morality because it goes beyond wrongdoing and continues into active duty that forces certain actions on the part of the honorable. As I said, it is nearly tangible since it can raise and fall, be gained and lost. This sounds confusing at first but if disbelief in this paradox is suspended for the moment it might make more sense. If a man has honor, then that is a statement about his ethical standing, however at the same time another man may be more honorable then the first. How is it that two men can both possess the same “honor” and yet one be greater and one lesser? Simply that how deeply the honor is embedded within the man and how deep his understanding of it changes the value of the man in terms of honor. Consider this example, you have two pieces of money printed on paper. Both are made from the same paper, and both use the same amount of the same type of ink, but on is valued at $1 and one at $5. The honor dictates the value of the man. For this same reason, a man can increase his value as he becomes more honorable, and as he forsakes his honor, he looses his value. A common example from stories is one of a man saying “I give you my word of honor.” This phrase makes little sense unless honor is as described above. The man is putting up his honor’s value as collateral, and as such, if he were to break his word, would dishonor, or devalue himself. And once devalued enough, it is difficult to ever regain what was lost. As with many other things, everything is simple to understand, it is within the explanation that the complexity lies.