Essays From The Master

Many would think being crippled would bar one from being a martial artist; much less a practitioner of the Silent Way but this is not the case. In the martial arts we find entire systems based around limits of the body such as blind fighting or forms using canes as weapons. In all of these examples the assumed weakness is made into strength, a disability is transformed into a tactical advantage. In the martial sciences to be underestimated is to be given the higher ground, to not be seen as a threat is to be more of an actual threat. Along with not being seen as a threat having confidence or not showing fear while being underestimated is to make the target doubt their senses and values as to what is and what is not a threat. In the space of time it takes a target to doubt their senses and values one has the options to manipulate the target, attack or vanish or any other act that is needed. Ninja can be read as “one that endures and prevails through stealth” and part of stealth is being misperceived which is the basis for the art of disguise. To always need to be seen as strong, heroic, and moral and so on is to be open to the manipulation and thus the victim of others. The only power one can be sure of without fail is power over one’s self, self control being the key to being able to controlling others. One controls others by being aware of what one sets in motion and how one responds to others, in other words one controls by only imposing one’s will on one’s self and reality as it applies to one’s self.

Having limits or weaknesses to overcome or adjust to, much like having standards to aspire to, causes one to be creative and thus be less predictable than the typical warrior. Weakness becomes strength first by forces one to be honest about one’s resources and needs by forcing one to manage one’s resources in keeping with one’s needs and goals. Secondly weakness becomes strength by forcing one to build one’s actual strengths and skills while at the same time forcing one to shatter one’s own illusions as to one’s strengths and abilities. Thirdly weakness becomes advantage or strength by making use of the expectations of others such as the fact that security in most places is built around barring the able bodied. If a handicap or weakness is overt many people have been known to break protocol and bend rules in order to aid that person allowing one to get close or avoid conflict. Knowledge born of one’s limits forces one to be more aware of one’s environment than others that can move without having to think or plan. Planning beforehand based on one’s limits compels one to be sure of one’s facts and the tactics one has chosen to see one’s goal achieved.

Strength in any one area creates weakness as a matter of course in another area as an answer to that strength unless one makes a point to balance one’s strengths with the understanding that no individual is perfect. A sentient being cannot help but tend toward what makes them strong or what they think makes them strong showing another avenue of weakness that can be exploited if one needs to do so. The very thing about ourselves that we would avoid, indeed the realities about ourselves that we would loath can be our greatest resources if we take the steps and apply the knowledge and will to make them so. If one is willing to stare into the mirror of negative self reflection one has the potential to call on as tools those inner demons that the masses avoid to the point that they change the language used in talking about them as if that would change the reality of having to deal with them.