The Art of War it important to note, is usually thought of due to its title as a book on how to wage war or a book on how to dominate and overcome your enemy. On the surface these perceptions may be true. But its secrets like most things are not on the surface. Its author Master Sun or Sun Tzu wrote the book with Daoist lens. That is one of the good things of the Thomas Cleary translations as this is mentioned in comparison to the Lionel Giles translation. Sun Tzu’s writing are more than simple aphorism and one should dissect them. For the more your re-read the text, the more is revealed.

In addition, the book is written in the contest that war is chaos and a disease and if it can be avoided (winning before there is war) that is the route take. He mentions that the most superior general treats the patient (the nation) before symptoms are easily spotted by one’s eye. Just like sickness, war will always arise. The writings are also written to those who familiar with Daoist thought, understand basics like the yin-yang concept. The book is essentially about peace as Sun Tzu draws on the horrors of war, and how the superior general’s high strategy avoids all of this before the outbreak.

War is chaos and the general is an agent of balance, one may not read the Art Of War, but its teachings are embedded in Chinese Martial Arts or Martials Arts with a Chinese root, like the other arts practiced in other neighbouring Asian countries like Karate for Okinawa, Japan. A martial art with roots that takes one to the southern Chinese Martial arts. Some martial arts like Goju Ryu whose lineage lead one to White Crane Kung Fu. Internal styles like Xingyi Quan, or Tai Chi Chuan, put to practice Sun Tzu’s words bringing them alive with their strategies and tactics.