Essays From The Master

Some goals are such that they can take years or decades to the point that the goal can become all consuming and one can put one’s expectations outside of what the goal can produce in the best of circumstances. In combat this is seen in the idea of “victory at all costs” which is a false premise because all victories cost something, one can give more than the goal is worth making said victory into a defeat. This is the meaning of the teaching “celebrate your victory as your funeral” to remind one to make the effect worth the cost and not waste force where it is not called for. Force should be no more than is adequate to the goal but no more than is needed nor can one expect a goal if reached to fix all things in one’s path or life. Goals at best can smooth one’s path allowing one balance in the chaos, the war that is life. Keeping cost, proportion and value in mind allowing one to act with total resolve without attachment to any outcome because one is able to use the results of one’s actions no matter what they are. To give too much or expect too much from any goal is one of the greatest traps achieving success and this trap breeds the bitterness that the “princes” use to control others.
The other trap of success is to allow an advance or small victory to stop one’s progress in the path. When one has any progress that must be honored but if said progress does not finish the task it is not time to stop or rest but rather it is time to push through and use the progress as a step to the next level. The “princes” delight in having individuals focus on any advance they make so that the individual will stop working and cease to be through stagnation or become part of the masses. An advance is a great thing but to make any advance the same as having an actual victory is a kind of delusion which makes the one that advances defeat themselves. Merit is only as valuable as it is current and usable. To always recite one’s past advances is a way to stop moving and is just as bad as always brooding over past defeats, the past good or bad is done and over so to use it as other than data in the present is folly. The powerful one of the past always gloating will always finds his glory behind him just as the person that never looks past a defeat will always be defeated. The wise man slays the ghost of the past if it is painful or the glamour of the past if it is something that draws the ego.
Take the time to enjoy advances but use them to go further and build on that advance, give the past its due and learn from it but do not be trapped by it; if one can do both balance is achieved allowing one to have more options. Make all advance and the past fuel for one’s goals, means to build one ’s self. When a goal is met it must be understood that said goal is also the gate to the task that leads to the next goal; this is the difference between seeking a prize and walking a path. Walking a path includes goals which expand and enforce the path which makes the adherent of the path express the values of said path. As valuable as success is it is also a trap but only if one allows it to be. The key to that is how one reacts to it and what one does with the results and rewards of any success. Gravity is achieved because the earth is in constant and consistent motion and true success or victory is achieved when reward based on merit causes one to delve further in pursuit of the merit rather than the reward.