Denma Translation Group interview
Since 2001, Sonshi.com has listed the Denma Translation Group's Art of War version as #1 on the recommendation page. Although initially hesitant to review yet another new translation of the Art of War, we were pleasantly surprised as to the superior quality of their work. Their character-by-character translation set a new standard to which almost all subsequent translations emulated. As the saying goes, imitation is the best form of flattery.
The Denma Translation Group includes Dr. Kidder Smith, James Gimian, Hudson Shotwell, Grant MacLean, Barry Boyce and Suzann Duquette. They worked together on the translation over a ten-year period. Kidder Smith and James Gimian served as general editors of the book and wrote the essays and commentary. Hudson Shotwell, Grant MacLean and Barry Boyce contributed to this writing in many ways. Grant MacLean composed the military history section of the essay "Joining the Tradition."
Dr. Smith teaches Chinese history at Bowdoin College, where he also directs the Asian Studies Program. He is senior author of Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (Princeton, 1990) and has written on the military texts of ancient China. James Gimian is publisher of the Shambhala Sun magazine and a publishing consultant. The other members of the group have worked professionally in the writing, editing and publications fields.
Dr. Kidder Smith and James Gimian responded to the questions in this interview. Enjoy!
Sonshi.com: For our readers' edification, would you mind sharing with them what Denma means, and why you decided on that name?
Denma Group: Denma was a general of Gesar of Ling, the mythic warrior-king of Tibet. He is known as a skilled archer and master strategist. The Denma Translation Group was formed in 1991 to translate the Sun Tzu, but members of the group had already been studying the work for a decade. Each had received training in a contemplative discipline called the Dorje Kasung, which had been created by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche for western students. This practice draws on the meditative and monastic traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, the Shambhala vision of an enlightened society, and some forms of the western military traditions.
The Sun Tzu served as ideal study material for this discipline, as it showed how to attain victory without battle. In this training we engaged the principles of the text in life-like, intensified situations placed within a protected contemplative environment. Contemplative practice and the Art of War represent two very different traditions and disciplines. Yet both share the view that true victory is victory over aggression. We believe that it is the joining of these two disciplines that gives our translation its particular orientation.
Sonshi.com: Tell us more about the contemplative discipline Dorje Kasung and your involvement in it. If you do not mind, please describe the most important concept(s) of Tibetan Buddhism.
Denma Group: "Dorje Kasung" is the formal name for the meditation-in-action practice created by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. "Dorje" is Tibetan for adamantine, diamond-like or indestructible. "Ka" is the first letter in the Tibetan alphabet and implies "sacred word." "Sung" means "protector." Thus the basic meaning of Dorje Kasung is "the indestructible protector of dharma teachings."
When Trungpa Rinpoche arrived in North America in 1970, the United States was still involved in an unpopular Southeast Asian war. Seeking an antidote to the aggression they felt all around them, many young people had adopted Asian spiritual practices that taught peace, love and bliss. Within this culture Trungpa Rinpoche developed a meditation-in-action practice for his students that created a cadre of uniformed guards who performed their duty in public, complete with salutes and a command hierarchy. Rather than cooling out aggression, side-stepping it, or ignoring it, he had his students work directly with it. Their motto: "Victory Over War." Thus Trungpa Rinpoche brought his students into the heart of aggression, showing them how to turn that fierce energy into a means of liberation. His military teachings are applicable everywhere conflict arises--internationally, interpersonally and within our own being.
In developing the Dorje Kasung, Trungpa Rinpoche created a military form of Buddhist training. Like the monastery, it employs uniform dress, regimented activities, and a strong discipline of awareness. As a form of meditation in action, it sets us out into the world, continuously on the spot. As a practice of compassion, it affords multiple opportunities for putting others' welfare above our own, as when we provide good order at a public talk, carry a visiting teacher's suitcase, or tame our own minds.
Tibetan Buddhism is one of the many rich traditions of Buddhist practice. As such, it teaches wisdom and compassion. The Dorje Kasung discipline, designed to bring greater mindfulness and awareness, follows the path of the three yanas, or vehicles, presented in Tibetan Buddhism. The three yanas are the hinayana - working with one's own suffering and applying individual discipline; the mahayana - seeing the emptiness of oneself and all phenomena, and putting the well-being of others before one's own; and the vajrayana - recognizing indestructible wakefulness and working directly with the basic energies that make up the world. These three approaches are not purely a sequential process of development, but rather three disciplines that are also practiced simultaneously.
Sonshi.com: For uninitiated Art of War readers, you have an entire section that explains each verse, along with three comprehensive essays. For advanced readers, the book is a godsend because your minimalist translation allows them to fully extract the true meaning of the text. What is your aim or intention when you all first decided to write "yet another Art of War book."
Denma Group: When we first read English-language versions of the Sun Tzu in the 1970s, we were convinced, like many others, that it contained enormous power. Yet we were frustrated, since its wisdom often seemed concealed in paraphrase. Going to the original Chinese, we were astounded by its simplicity, clarity and bluntness. It stopped one's mind mid-thought. We had a definite conviction that it should be possible to reproduce these qualities in English. It was also clear why other translations had filled in many words and explanations: the text could be extremely difficult, sometimes confusing even its Chinese commentators.
Our translation, then, aims to preserve the naked quality of the text, to reproduce the sound and feel of the Chinese and thus capture the moment when the Sun Tzu was first emerging from the oral tradition. To do so, we have forged a lithic, unadorned English, halfway between prose and poetry. Its simplicity encourages a reader to approach the book without undue reliance on concept, allowing its sounds and patterns to seep into the mind. As we remove the filters between ancient text and modern reader, the Sun Tzu begins to reveal itself directly to us.
As we worked with the Art of War, we were surprised to continually uncover deeper layers. Sentences that we had read multiple times suddenly opened to new meanings. We felt that readers would be greatly aided in their own process of discovery if they had some initial guidance in approaching the text. We therefore wrote a commentary and essays to show an initial set of pathways into the text. But because our own experience of reading was so importantly unpredictable, we wanted to protect advanced readers from any interpretive gestures on our part, which is why the translation at the front of the book looks so bare. That way, as readers' own acquaintance with the Art of War grows, new meanings will be able to present themselves in an unhindered way.
Sonshi.com: Please explain the process you all went through in writing the book, e.g., translating a sentence. Yes, even the heated discussions!
Denma Group: In the translation process we relied on the kind of material that is now available on our web page, www.victoryoverwar.com. It contained the Chinese words of the text, their pronunciation, and one or two English synonyms for each. Because Chinese and English word order is very similar, it was possible for non-Chinese speakers to follow the text in both languages. At first only Kidder Smith knew Chinese. Gradually, however, the group became familiar with a core of key words. These recurred often enough, and in varying contexts, for a set of highly nuanced understandings to emerge.
We argued over every word. What was its range of meaning in Chinese? To what extent was the proposed English word equivalent? Did the two have the same antonyms, and were they on the same level of formality? Above all, how much elasticity did the English language possess, that we could shape it into something that reflected the tone, style, cadence and pacing of the original Chinese? A few sentences of translation might require several hours of deliberation and reflection before a consensus was hammered out.
Kidder Smith reports, "For example, the word 'light' occurred several times as an English equivalent to a Chinese word in the text. My co-translators wanted to know, was this word 'light' the opposite of 'heavy,' or the opposite of 'dark'? Did it carry with it a sense of brightness and illumination, or was it primarily associated with daylight, since the Chinese character was made up of the words for sun and moon? Did it as well have any connotations of enlightenment? The answer to the last question is tricky, since the word 'light' was indeed used by Buddhists later in the Chinese tradition to speak of their enlightenment experience. But Buddhism was not yet present in China when the Art of War was written. Thus a Chinese reader in later dynasties might be tempted to understand the term in a Buddhist context, but a contemporary of Sun Tzu would have not understood such a concept at all.
"The vocabulary of key terms in the Art of War is limited. Thus, as important words recurred in the translation process, all six of us in the Denma Translation Group developed an environment for each term, built from their previous usage. By the third or fourth repetition we had begun to find a complex understanding of the possible ranges of a single Chinese term across this military text. In that sense, each of us was learning Chinese, though in a specialized way, and the broader experience of the text could come to bear on each of the translation decisions we were making individually."
Jim Gimian reports,"We didn't argue about the meaning of the Chinese, since only Kidder had real access to that information. We argued about the absolute best English rendering of every Chinese word in the particular spot that it occurred in the text. Because we decided early on that we would choose just use one English word for a Chinese word and use it consistently throughout, in each occurrence we would discuss how that particular usage worked. What were its limitations, and what were its strengths? On more than one occasion we changed our choice of the single English word for the Chinese equivalent because we hit upon a place in the text where the one we had previously chosen didn't carry the right meaning. So we went back and tested our new English word choice in all the spots that the Chinese appeared, and if it was better, it became the choice.
"The other thing that we argued about was the exact best English word choice from the equally acceptable options available for each Chinese word. Each of us had developed a strong sense of the meaning of the text from our study of existing editions over the previous ten years. So even when an English equivalency was acceptable by dictionary standards for the Chinese word, we would reject it if we felt that it was not the right one for conveying the actual meaning of the text as we understood it from our years of study. Some members of the Denma Translation Group had had years of western military training and study, and, on that basis, some English word choices were clearly not appropriate."
Sonshi.com: As you know, your Art of War translation continues to be Sonshi.com's top pick. The reasoning behind our ranking is based on various factors, but there were two significant breakthroughs we saw with your book. First, you separated into two sections the text by itself and the text with commentaries. This is extremely useful as the reader progresses along in his or her understanding of the book. Second, there is little paraphrasing in your translation of The Art of War. A concern with most serious readers is the translator changing the rendering to suit his personal bias and thus tainting the work. Please give your feedback regarding these two improvements and/or other improvements.
Denma Group: First of all, thank you for your appreciation and support of our work. Indeed these two points are highly significant to us. It's very gratifying when someone understands your intention just by reading your work.
Our translation seeks to make the Sun Tzu as immediate and evocative for the English-speaking reader as it was for its Chinese lineage holders. Wherever possible, we have therefore recreated the experience of reading the Sun Tzu in Chinese. The qualities of a text are more than words. They are also rhythm and structure, pacing and alternating patterns of obscurity and clear vista. To convey these we have reproduced qualities of the Chinese language that do not usually survive transposition into English.
The Sun Tzu is full of repetitions, parallel phrases, and lists, phenomena that modern prose seeks to avoid. These suggest that the text had only recently emerged from the oral tradition. We retained all these features, even when parallels in the text caused us to extend the common meaning of English words or to invent new ones, such as vincibilityas the opposite of invincibility. These allowed us to better represent the thought processes of the original authors, their sense of the world's structuring. To do otherwise would distort the text in the guise of clarification, reducing it to some generic "clear meaning," like a prose translation of complex poetry. We therefore maintained the obscurities of the original, its compressed logic, its ambiguous connectors, and its abrupt switches of point of view from "enemy" to "us."
Sonshi.com: The overall theme of your book seems to revolve around "taking whole." If there are one or two major concepts you want your readers to learn after reading your book, what would they be?
Denma Group: You're quite right that "taking whole" is a major theme in our understanding of the Art of War. But it's important to note that the Art of War is not put together as an argument that must be followed theme by theme if we are to understand its meaning. Instead it offers us a larger view, on the basis of which we can act effectively in the world.
Most simply said, that larger view sees the world as whole. Beginning with the minutest details of our life, and continuing on through the largest principles, all things are interconnected. Effective action depends on our ability to understand the constantly shifting patterns of this world. Taking this view of the whole allows us to meet the challenge of conflict and chaos wherever we encounter it. Though the Art of War was originally written for the military, it applies to all aspects of our lives.
We are therefore convinced that this text isn't just a historical artifact but an excellent articulation of commonly held, accessible human wisdom. This wisdom does not originate in some foreign source. Rather it is insight we all possess. It requires no unusual talent, nothing that is not already ours. We need only our human intelligence, attention to the moment, and openness to the world. At the same time, we can also work to develop all of these abilities further.
Approaching the Sun Tzu in this way, we see that its teachings are not limited to any single realm of activity. Its language can apply equally to the mother putting her son to bed and to a platoon commander resisting his superior officer's disastrous order to fight the wrong battle. The Sun Tzu works at the level of the battle of ego, or for warfare between nations, and everything between. Yet its specific application can only come from the uniqueness of a particular case. Through deep study we can come to a genuine, direct connection with this text.
Sonshi.com: Tell us more about the latest offering from the Denma Translation Group -- The Art of War Box: Book and Card Deck.
Denma Group: The Art of War Box: Book and Card Deck includes a paperback edition including the translation and essays from our book, fifty slogan cards, and an introduction to the use of the cards. Each of the cards contains a passage from the Sun Tzu, along with brief commentary. Though any one card contains only a small piece of the book's wisdom, each is a portal to its larger vision.
The project was originally proposed by our publisher. We were a bit surprised at first, because our relationship with the book always stressed the way all of its parts worked together. We realized, however, that there were more ways into the text than we had ourselves imagined. For example, some people work extremely well with smaller, slogan-like sections of the text, which they then contemplate very deeply. As we've said, the Art of War is not constructed linearly. Thus each point of entry can immediately connect readers to all the rest. The card deck allows them to do that, and the commentary on the reverse of the card affords inexperienced readers some guidance in their initial encounters with the book.
It's important to note how the text developed. Long before it was written down, the Art of War was the oral property of a lineage of Chinese strategists. It was the way that a clan shared its wisdom with future members. So the text had to be simple to memorize and to pass on; it had to be repetitive. In our translation we worked to retain that feeling. Insofar as we're successful, readers can experience a fuller meaning of the Art of War, letting its sounds seep into their being.
Contemplation of the slogan-like nature of a particular passage allows its meaning to get in underneath inquisitive mind. As it does that, it works on our brain from the inside out and begins to shape how we see all situations. The repetitive quality of the text re-views the basic principle of taking whole from many different angles, giving us a larger view. And in the end, understanding the Art of War is all about view. If we see the world the way the text does, then we understand that interconnectedness, the web of life, that wholeness. Then the skillful action of the Art of War becomes effortless and automatic.
[End of interview]
The Denma Translation Group includes Dr. Kidder Smith, James Gimian, Hudson Shotwell, Grant MacLean, Barry Boyce and Suzann Duquette. They worked together on the translation over a ten-year period. Kidder Smith and James Gimian served as general editors of the book and wrote the essays and commentary. Hudson Shotwell, Grant MacLean and Barry Boyce contributed to this writing in many ways. Grant MacLean composed the military history section of the essay "Joining the Tradition."
Dr. Smith teaches Chinese history at Bowdoin College, where he also directs the Asian Studies Program. He is senior author of Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (Princeton, 1990) and has written on the military texts of ancient China. James Gimian is publisher of the Shambhala Sun magazine and a publishing consultant. The other members of the group have worked professionally in the writing, editing and publications fields.
Dr. Kidder Smith and James Gimian responded to the questions in this interview. Enjoy!
Sonshi.com: For our readers' edification, would you mind sharing with them what Denma means, and why you decided on that name?
Denma Group: Denma was a general of Gesar of Ling, the mythic warrior-king of Tibet. He is known as a skilled archer and master strategist. The Denma Translation Group was formed in 1991 to translate the Sun Tzu, but members of the group had already been studying the work for a decade. Each had received training in a contemplative discipline called the Dorje Kasung, which had been created by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche for western students. This practice draws on the meditative and monastic traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, the Shambhala vision of an enlightened society, and some forms of the western military traditions.
The Sun Tzu served as ideal study material for this discipline, as it showed how to attain victory without battle. In this training we engaged the principles of the text in life-like, intensified situations placed within a protected contemplative environment. Contemplative practice and the Art of War represent two very different traditions and disciplines. Yet both share the view that true victory is victory over aggression. We believe that it is the joining of these two disciplines that gives our translation its particular orientation.
Sonshi.com: Tell us more about the contemplative discipline Dorje Kasung and your involvement in it. If you do not mind, please describe the most important concept(s) of Tibetan Buddhism.
Denma Group: "Dorje Kasung" is the formal name for the meditation-in-action practice created by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. "Dorje" is Tibetan for adamantine, diamond-like or indestructible. "Ka" is the first letter in the Tibetan alphabet and implies "sacred word." "Sung" means "protector." Thus the basic meaning of Dorje Kasung is "the indestructible protector of dharma teachings."
When Trungpa Rinpoche arrived in North America in 1970, the United States was still involved in an unpopular Southeast Asian war. Seeking an antidote to the aggression they felt all around them, many young people had adopted Asian spiritual practices that taught peace, love and bliss. Within this culture Trungpa Rinpoche developed a meditation-in-action practice for his students that created a cadre of uniformed guards who performed their duty in public, complete with salutes and a command hierarchy. Rather than cooling out aggression, side-stepping it, or ignoring it, he had his students work directly with it. Their motto: "Victory Over War." Thus Trungpa Rinpoche brought his students into the heart of aggression, showing them how to turn that fierce energy into a means of liberation. His military teachings are applicable everywhere conflict arises--internationally, interpersonally and within our own being.
In developing the Dorje Kasung, Trungpa Rinpoche created a military form of Buddhist training. Like the monastery, it employs uniform dress, regimented activities, and a strong discipline of awareness. As a form of meditation in action, it sets us out into the world, continuously on the spot. As a practice of compassion, it affords multiple opportunities for putting others' welfare above our own, as when we provide good order at a public talk, carry a visiting teacher's suitcase, or tame our own minds.
Tibetan Buddhism is one of the many rich traditions of Buddhist practice. As such, it teaches wisdom and compassion. The Dorje Kasung discipline, designed to bring greater mindfulness and awareness, follows the path of the three yanas, or vehicles, presented in Tibetan Buddhism. The three yanas are the hinayana - working with one's own suffering and applying individual discipline; the mahayana - seeing the emptiness of oneself and all phenomena, and putting the well-being of others before one's own; and the vajrayana - recognizing indestructible wakefulness and working directly with the basic energies that make up the world. These three approaches are not purely a sequential process of development, but rather three disciplines that are also practiced simultaneously.
Sonshi.com: For uninitiated Art of War readers, you have an entire section that explains each verse, along with three comprehensive essays. For advanced readers, the book is a godsend because your minimalist translation allows them to fully extract the true meaning of the text. What is your aim or intention when you all first decided to write "yet another Art of War book."
Denma Group: When we first read English-language versions of the Sun Tzu in the 1970s, we were convinced, like many others, that it contained enormous power. Yet we were frustrated, since its wisdom often seemed concealed in paraphrase. Going to the original Chinese, we were astounded by its simplicity, clarity and bluntness. It stopped one's mind mid-thought. We had a definite conviction that it should be possible to reproduce these qualities in English. It was also clear why other translations had filled in many words and explanations: the text could be extremely difficult, sometimes confusing even its Chinese commentators.
Our translation, then, aims to preserve the naked quality of the text, to reproduce the sound and feel of the Chinese and thus capture the moment when the Sun Tzu was first emerging from the oral tradition. To do so, we have forged a lithic, unadorned English, halfway between prose and poetry. Its simplicity encourages a reader to approach the book without undue reliance on concept, allowing its sounds and patterns to seep into the mind. As we remove the filters between ancient text and modern reader, the Sun Tzu begins to reveal itself directly to us.
As we worked with the Art of War, we were surprised to continually uncover deeper layers. Sentences that we had read multiple times suddenly opened to new meanings. We felt that readers would be greatly aided in their own process of discovery if they had some initial guidance in approaching the text. We therefore wrote a commentary and essays to show an initial set of pathways into the text. But because our own experience of reading was so importantly unpredictable, we wanted to protect advanced readers from any interpretive gestures on our part, which is why the translation at the front of the book looks so bare. That way, as readers' own acquaintance with the Art of War grows, new meanings will be able to present themselves in an unhindered way.
Sonshi.com: Please explain the process you all went through in writing the book, e.g., translating a sentence. Yes, even the heated discussions!
Denma Group: In the translation process we relied on the kind of material that is now available on our web page, www.victoryoverwar.com. It contained the Chinese words of the text, their pronunciation, and one or two English synonyms for each. Because Chinese and English word order is very similar, it was possible for non-Chinese speakers to follow the text in both languages. At first only Kidder Smith knew Chinese. Gradually, however, the group became familiar with a core of key words. These recurred often enough, and in varying contexts, for a set of highly nuanced understandings to emerge.
We argued over every word. What was its range of meaning in Chinese? To what extent was the proposed English word equivalent? Did the two have the same antonyms, and were they on the same level of formality? Above all, how much elasticity did the English language possess, that we could shape it into something that reflected the tone, style, cadence and pacing of the original Chinese? A few sentences of translation might require several hours of deliberation and reflection before a consensus was hammered out.
Kidder Smith reports, "For example, the word 'light' occurred several times as an English equivalent to a Chinese word in the text. My co-translators wanted to know, was this word 'light' the opposite of 'heavy,' or the opposite of 'dark'? Did it carry with it a sense of brightness and illumination, or was it primarily associated with daylight, since the Chinese character was made up of the words for sun and moon? Did it as well have any connotations of enlightenment? The answer to the last question is tricky, since the word 'light' was indeed used by Buddhists later in the Chinese tradition to speak of their enlightenment experience. But Buddhism was not yet present in China when the Art of War was written. Thus a Chinese reader in later dynasties might be tempted to understand the term in a Buddhist context, but a contemporary of Sun Tzu would have not understood such a concept at all.
"The vocabulary of key terms in the Art of War is limited. Thus, as important words recurred in the translation process, all six of us in the Denma Translation Group developed an environment for each term, built from their previous usage. By the third or fourth repetition we had begun to find a complex understanding of the possible ranges of a single Chinese term across this military text. In that sense, each of us was learning Chinese, though in a specialized way, and the broader experience of the text could come to bear on each of the translation decisions we were making individually."
Jim Gimian reports,"We didn't argue about the meaning of the Chinese, since only Kidder had real access to that information. We argued about the absolute best English rendering of every Chinese word in the particular spot that it occurred in the text. Because we decided early on that we would choose just use one English word for a Chinese word and use it consistently throughout, in each occurrence we would discuss how that particular usage worked. What were its limitations, and what were its strengths? On more than one occasion we changed our choice of the single English word for the Chinese equivalent because we hit upon a place in the text where the one we had previously chosen didn't carry the right meaning. So we went back and tested our new English word choice in all the spots that the Chinese appeared, and if it was better, it became the choice.
"The other thing that we argued about was the exact best English word choice from the equally acceptable options available for each Chinese word. Each of us had developed a strong sense of the meaning of the text from our study of existing editions over the previous ten years. So even when an English equivalency was acceptable by dictionary standards for the Chinese word, we would reject it if we felt that it was not the right one for conveying the actual meaning of the text as we understood it from our years of study. Some members of the Denma Translation Group had had years of western military training and study, and, on that basis, some English word choices were clearly not appropriate."
Sonshi.com: As you know, your Art of War translation continues to be Sonshi.com's top pick. The reasoning behind our ranking is based on various factors, but there were two significant breakthroughs we saw with your book. First, you separated into two sections the text by itself and the text with commentaries. This is extremely useful as the reader progresses along in his or her understanding of the book. Second, there is little paraphrasing in your translation of The Art of War. A concern with most serious readers is the translator changing the rendering to suit his personal bias and thus tainting the work. Please give your feedback regarding these two improvements and/or other improvements.
Denma Group: First of all, thank you for your appreciation and support of our work. Indeed these two points are highly significant to us. It's very gratifying when someone understands your intention just by reading your work.
Our translation seeks to make the Sun Tzu as immediate and evocative for the English-speaking reader as it was for its Chinese lineage holders. Wherever possible, we have therefore recreated the experience of reading the Sun Tzu in Chinese. The qualities of a text are more than words. They are also rhythm and structure, pacing and alternating patterns of obscurity and clear vista. To convey these we have reproduced qualities of the Chinese language that do not usually survive transposition into English.
The Sun Tzu is full of repetitions, parallel phrases, and lists, phenomena that modern prose seeks to avoid. These suggest that the text had only recently emerged from the oral tradition. We retained all these features, even when parallels in the text caused us to extend the common meaning of English words or to invent new ones, such as vincibilityas the opposite of invincibility. These allowed us to better represent the thought processes of the original authors, their sense of the world's structuring. To do otherwise would distort the text in the guise of clarification, reducing it to some generic "clear meaning," like a prose translation of complex poetry. We therefore maintained the obscurities of the original, its compressed logic, its ambiguous connectors, and its abrupt switches of point of view from "enemy" to "us."
Sonshi.com: The overall theme of your book seems to revolve around "taking whole." If there are one or two major concepts you want your readers to learn after reading your book, what would they be?
Denma Group: You're quite right that "taking whole" is a major theme in our understanding of the Art of War. But it's important to note that the Art of War is not put together as an argument that must be followed theme by theme if we are to understand its meaning. Instead it offers us a larger view, on the basis of which we can act effectively in the world.
Most simply said, that larger view sees the world as whole. Beginning with the minutest details of our life, and continuing on through the largest principles, all things are interconnected. Effective action depends on our ability to understand the constantly shifting patterns of this world. Taking this view of the whole allows us to meet the challenge of conflict and chaos wherever we encounter it. Though the Art of War was originally written for the military, it applies to all aspects of our lives.
We are therefore convinced that this text isn't just a historical artifact but an excellent articulation of commonly held, accessible human wisdom. This wisdom does not originate in some foreign source. Rather it is insight we all possess. It requires no unusual talent, nothing that is not already ours. We need only our human intelligence, attention to the moment, and openness to the world. At the same time, we can also work to develop all of these abilities further.
Approaching the Sun Tzu in this way, we see that its teachings are not limited to any single realm of activity. Its language can apply equally to the mother putting her son to bed and to a platoon commander resisting his superior officer's disastrous order to fight the wrong battle. The Sun Tzu works at the level of the battle of ego, or for warfare between nations, and everything between. Yet its specific application can only come from the uniqueness of a particular case. Through deep study we can come to a genuine, direct connection with this text.
Sonshi.com: Tell us more about the latest offering from the Denma Translation Group -- The Art of War Box: Book and Card Deck.
Denma Group: The Art of War Box: Book and Card Deck includes a paperback edition including the translation and essays from our book, fifty slogan cards, and an introduction to the use of the cards. Each of the cards contains a passage from the Sun Tzu, along with brief commentary. Though any one card contains only a small piece of the book's wisdom, each is a portal to its larger vision.
The project was originally proposed by our publisher. We were a bit surprised at first, because our relationship with the book always stressed the way all of its parts worked together. We realized, however, that there were more ways into the text than we had ourselves imagined. For example, some people work extremely well with smaller, slogan-like sections of the text, which they then contemplate very deeply. As we've said, the Art of War is not constructed linearly. Thus each point of entry can immediately connect readers to all the rest. The card deck allows them to do that, and the commentary on the reverse of the card affords inexperienced readers some guidance in their initial encounters with the book.
It's important to note how the text developed. Long before it was written down, the Art of War was the oral property of a lineage of Chinese strategists. It was the way that a clan shared its wisdom with future members. So the text had to be simple to memorize and to pass on; it had to be repetitive. In our translation we worked to retain that feeling. Insofar as we're successful, readers can experience a fuller meaning of the Art of War, letting its sounds seep into their being.
Contemplation of the slogan-like nature of a particular passage allows its meaning to get in underneath inquisitive mind. As it does that, it works on our brain from the inside out and begins to shape how we see all situations. The repetitive quality of the text re-views the basic principle of taking whole from many different angles, giving us a larger view. And in the end, understanding the Art of War is all about view. If we see the world the way the text does, then we understand that interconnectedness, the web of life, that wholeness. Then the skillful action of the Art of War becomes effortless and automatic.
[End of interview]