Dragon’s Mind: The Chinese

Strategic View continues....

While the intellectuals of early China, quite understandably, gave

greater importance to the ‘civil’ side of the administration of states, and

to the development of intellectual attributes and literary and artistic

accomplishments, the martial side did not go undeveloped.

The Chinese intellectual or ‘Brahminical’ class thought that these were non intellectual, and therefore boorish or low-class. In their writings they looked down upon the military profession, but there were two parallel developments in this field which became equally important for the development of the Chinese strategic mind-set of today. One was the development of the martial arts as a physical accomplishment, and the

other was the development of military strategic thought as a necessary

intellectual requisite for the security and the responsible governance of

states.

Martial arts and the spread of their popularity over China formally began with the Indian Buddhist monk Bodhidharma’s acceptance into the Shaolin monastery in the 6th Century, where he taught his version of the South Indian Kaleripayattu in addition to teaching meditative (‘Dhyan’) Buddhism, subsequently to become known as Ch’an Buddhism in China, thereafter becoming know as Zen Buddhism in Japan.

The period that followed the Warring States Period also produced

such luminaries as Zhuge Liang, commonly known by his style, Kongming, a celebrated military strategist, tactician and administrator, who was appointed to positions of the highest responsibility in both civil and military leadership. He was born in 180 CE, and thus lived

during the fabled era of the Three Kingdoms (150-280 CE) which has

been so greatly romanticized in the cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and

Vietnam.

He served for the kingdom of Liu Bei, eventually becoming a top general and even the regent for the new king. Immortalized in literature for his intelligence and humanity, he was greatly admired as a warrior and an administrator. With a strong Taoist thought in his

attitudes towards life and work, and his personal humility, his writings

on social and political organization are still widely read today, both for

his human wisdom and his military practicality. He is specially

honoured for his quality of sincerity.

To be continued...