The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants,
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It is in thy power absolutely to exclude all manner of conceit and opinion, as concerning this matter; and by the same means, to exclude all grief and sorrow from thy soul. For as for the things and objects themselves, they of themselves have no such power, whereby to beget and force upon us any opinion at all.
Bhagavad Gita (The Song Celestial) — Chapter 14: Chapter 14: Religion By Separation From The Qualities
And O my friend, I said, surely the gods are just?
Krishna. I BRAHMA am! the One Eternal GOD, And ADHYATMAN is My Being's name, The Soul of Souls! What goeth forth from Me, Causing all life to live, is KARMA called: And, Manifested in divided forms, I am the ADHIBHUTA, Lord of Lives; And ADHIDAIVA, Lord of all the Gods, Because I am PURUSHA, who begets. And ADHIYAJNA, Lord of Sacrifice, I--speaking with thee in this body here-- Am, thou embodied one! (for all the shrines Flame unto Me!) And, at the hour of death, He that hath meditated Me alone, In putting off his flesh, comes forth to Me, Enters into My Being--doubt thou not! But, if he meditated otherwise At hour of death, in putting off the flesh, He goes to what he looked for, Kunti's Son! Because the Soul is fashioned to its like.
with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege.
The Soul, Thus passing forth from the Three Qualities-- Whereby arise all bodies--overcomes Birth, Death, Sorrow, and Age; and drinketh deep The undying wine of Amrit.
[“Let the sailor content himself with talking of the winds; the cowherd of his oxen; the soldier of his wounds; the shepherd of his flocks.”--An Italian translation of Propertius, ii. i, 43]
[Mei Yao-ch’en says: "The subdivisions of the army having been previously fixed, and the various signals agreed upon, the separating and joining, the dispersing and collecting which will take place in the course of a battle, may give the appearance of disorder when no real disorder is possible. Your formation may be without head or tail, your dispositions all topsy-turvy, and yet a rout of your forces quite out of the question."]
He diminishes it and again diminishes it, till he arrives at doing nothing (on purpose). Having arrived at this point of non-action, there is nothing which he does not do.
The ambitious supposeth another man's act, praise and applause, to be his own happiness; the voluptuous his own sense and feeling; but he that is wise, his own action.
Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhausible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away but to return once more.
We so willingly slip the collar of command upon any pretence whatever, and are so ready to usurp upon dominion, every one does so naturally aspire to liberty and power, that no utility whatever derived from the wit or valour of those he employs ought to be so dear to a superior as a downright and sincere obedience. To obey more upon the account of understanding than of subjection, is to corrupt the office of command --[Taken from Aulus Gellius, i. 13.]--; insomuch that P. Crassus, the same whom the Romans reputed five times happy, at the time when he was consul in Asia, having sent to a Greek engineer to cause the greater of two masts of ships that he had taken notice of at Athens to be brought to him, to be employed about some engine of battery he had a design to make; the other, presuming upon his own science and sufficiency in those affairs, thought fit to do otherwise than directed, and to bring the less, which, according to the rules of art, was really more proper for the use to which it was designed; but Crassus, though he gave ear to his reasons with great patience, would not, however, take them, how sound or convincing soever, for current pay, but caused him to be well whipped for his pains, valuing the interest of discipline much more than that of the work in hand.
How many of them who came into the world at the same time when I did, are already gone out of it?
How good of you, I said; but I should like to know also whether injustice, having this tendency to arouse hatred, wherever existing, among slaves or among freemen, will not make them hate one another and set them at variance and render them incapable of common action?
[This vivid simile of Ts’ao Kung is taken from the spectacle of an army of ants climbing a wall. The meaning is that the general, losing patience at the long delay, may make a premature attempt to storm the place before his engines of war are ready.]
HERE ENDETH CHAPTER XII. OF THE BHAGAVAD-GITA, Entitled "Bhaktiyog," Or"The Book of the Religion of Faith."
[These were great mounds or ramparts of earth heaped up to the level of the enemy’s walls in order to discover the weak points in the defence, and also to destroy the fortified turrets mentioned in the preceding note.]
Will either passengers, or patients, find fault and complain, either the one if they be well carried, or the others if well cured? Do they take care for any more than this; the one, that their shipmaster may bring them safe to land, and the other, that their physician may effect their recovery?
[We are reminded of the terrible losses of the Japanese before Port Arthur, in the most recent siege which history has to record.]