Why I think it is important to uncover the secret of Sun Tzu’s message.

Know. Your. Enemy. Again, Sun Tzu is pointing his words to the multi-dimensional reality beyond name and form. On the level of name and form, we identify as different individuals, organizations, and even countries. In the context of warfare, we identify our opponents as enemies. And on the superficial level, Sun Tzu’s quote is about the importance of knowing the enemies’ strengths, weaknesses, their allies, and their foes.

On the level of form - we appear different and once we identify someone as an enemy, it is advisable to learn as much about the enemy as possible to be able to successfully resist and defeat the foe. 

However, everything we can hope to learn about the enemy is within the realm of name and form. As soon as we look deeper into the identity of an enemy and how the process of identification happens, we begin to see ourselves as the observer and the enemy is the subject. Looking deeper and deeper into the enemy, we realize that the number of troops don’t really identify the army as an enemy. The language, the population, the political structure, do NOT identify as enemy. Those identities exist as name and form but they are not the Enemy. 

We look yet deeper. We see that the “enemy” is not and cannot be contained by the borders drawn on the map, nor the enemy is the government because looking deeper we see what we called the government is an inconceivable number of processes and people, their actions and reactions without beginning and without end. The definition of the enemy becomes fussy and unclear. We look for an enemy in towns, buildings, or perhaps within microorganisms and all we find is more names and forms. Where is the enemy in the opposing political party or another government if all the political party is an unfathomable congregation of ideas, legal documents, people in office with an unending combination of connections with other people and organizations that permeate through the world? 

Grounded in Absolute, the ultimate reality containing all names and forms, Sun Tzu truly knew that knowing the enemy is an easy task, which will end in recognizing the perceived enemy is blending in with the rest of existence. It does not have a clear, fixed, and defined reality (identity). Enemy is an idea. Although we count the troops and see the people in charge, their weapons, their cities, - these are still but material manifestations, bodies, machines, industries, but where in all that the enemy?

Know thyself - is a famous Latin proverb that leads us down the same rabbit hole.

Bound by the material existence, humankind is in the ever-lasting struggle for the material resources, land, and power - but this is only if we look on the level of name and form - on the material level. When a sage takes a vantage point of the Unified Feild, the opposites are seen as mere parts of the whole. The identities of the enemies as well as friends dissolve in the ocean of Absolute. All identities, all names and all forms dissolve in Absolute reality.

When struggling with your worst enemy- the outward one or the inner idea of your better self, remember that while the dangers can be real, the physical threats do exist, the idea of the enemy is always self-created. While the enemies may exist and they could have shapes and names and maybe big as a country or small as a virus, on the level of form they are merely called enemies, on the level of Absolute... They. Just. Are. 

Just like all of us... We. Just. Are