* For similar actions, see Lee and Jackson at Chancellorsville, VA and Patton and Truscott at Brolo, Sicily. (See also here for excellent write-up of Operation Husky generally.)
Others have put this principle of warfare — and life generally — in famous language: De l’audace, toujours de l’audace, encore de l’audace ! My way of putting it, from many years ago, has been: Start out where you want to end up. That way your travel and distance are zero-ized.
If you are having trouble, you are not thinking big enough. Probably your assumptions are wrong as well. But the more fundamental hinderance is that you are think small instead of big, narrow instead of grand, shallow instead of deep. Be grand, think grand, go deep. God will grant His Grace on your efforts, approving them. God is Grandeur Itself. He is Lord of the Abyss and much more. In addition, everything that happens is for one’s benefit. Faith in that paradoxical truth is needed for experiencing it.
Credo Ut Intelligam,
says the great Augustine.
There is an alternative to thinking big: thinking small, so small that you can slip through any net fashioned to hold you in. In war, this is a useful tactic. But ultimately, strategically, war is won by thinking big, with a maturely courageous coup d’œil. Additionally, thinking big is an American trait that fits well with winning wars rather than just fighting them interminably. General Patton (also here) is said to have related this story:
One of the bravest men I saw in the African campaign was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were moving toward Tunis. I stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing up there. He answered, ‘Fixing the wire, sir.’ ‘Isn’t it a little unhealthy up there right now?’ I asked. ‘Yes sir, but this goddamn wire has got to be fixed.’ I asked, ‘Don’t those planes strafing the road bother you?’ And he answered, ‘No sir, but you sure as hell do.’ Now, there was a real soldier. A real man. A man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty appeared at the time.
The deepest, grandest attack on an enemy proceeds from elegance, from success in spiritual discipline. There in that unavoidable war, the enemies are fear, anger, greed, envy, lust, and attachment. Liddell-Hart pointed out that:
- The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.
The commander who rids his heart of these spiritual enemies, or at least has them at bay, has a mind able to out think the opposing military commander and beat him. For this reason Joan led The French Army into the confessional before she led them into battle, to ensure that at least formally they were shriven.
Success in spiritual discipline presents as experience of non-dualism in existence, direct experience of the paradoxical unity of subject and object, finitude and infinitude. The Sanskrit word for non-dualism is Adwaitha, literally, not two. (Note the connection to English: the common prefix a, meaning not, and the common cognates du [dual], tw [two], and dw [two], meaning two.) Here is a description of that experience, with its implied necessity for successful orienteering through the thickets, forests, and glades of life:
Start with the non-dualism principle: “there isn’t anything that isn’t God” (Note: Vivekananda started with this principle.). God has no second.
Vedic formulations come across as clearer linguistically than Christian formulations regarding the non-dualism principle. However, Christian formulations in Greek and Hebrew are just as definite, albeit less clear on account of inattention and prejudice.
The Non-Dualism Principle = The Adwaitha Principle: nothing is outside God. God has no second. One reminds oneself of this fact incessantly. It is, as St. Paul puts it, the full armor of God.
Various names are applied to God, formal names such as Yahweh, Jehovah, Rama, Krishna, Ahura Mazda, Jesus the Christ, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Allah, Odin, Thor, Zeus, Athena, Siva, Brahma, Vishnu, The Lord, etc. But in reality, everyone’s name and everything’s name is a Name of God. This is the truth that must be realized for a commander to be fully victorious.
Formal names of God are products of times and places. Rama, Krishna, Jesus, Allah, Thor, etc. . . . these are product of a time and a place. Many persist through time and space, but they are, nonetheless, artifacts, as is any name.
Any name is a Name of God. However, what people do with a Name is what matters. It isn’t the Name that counts. What counts is what you do with the Name.
If the Name is leading you towards more love, wider recognition of the universality and impartiality of God, sense of kinship with every creature large and small, then it is a good name for religious practice, for spiritual exercise.
If the name is leading you towards anger, brutality, violence, having feelings of separation or partisanship, then that name – even though it is a Name of God – is being misused and you are spreading harm by using it.
The Very First Commandment: don’t take the Name of God in Vain. God being love, anything unloving is ungodly. Misusing a Name of God leads towards what Tillich sees as separation, estrangement, alienation from God, from oneself, which is the same thing.
A Name of God is a tool that can be used to hurt or to help. If using it moves one towards experience of the non-dualistic principle, of unity with all, then this is helpful. If using it moves one toward alienation, this is hurtful.
It’s all in the use, not in the Name. The Name, like God, is impartial. As is the feeling, so is the result.
“Idolatry” is when you use a Name of God to increase violence, separation, alienation, and distance from the non-dualistic principle, from your fellow humanity. For example yelling Allah Akbar when killing people — and think it is your religious duty — that is idolatry.
It is idolatry of a name, but behind that, also idolatry of a book and a person. You are feeding the impulses for alienation and separation. If you say Allah Akbar while helping someone, feeding someone, saving someone, in compassion and sympathy with them, that is a proper use of a Name of God, not idolatry.
Idolatry is always harmful.
Christianity won over the Greco-Roman world because Christians insisted that God is love, good order, and kindness, and not to be feared. And they tried to practice that truth. The practice is what convinces both practitioner and observer that God is love and therefore all that is and much, much more.
Non-dualism = no essential difference between man and world, man and wife, parent and child, God and Nature, even though difference in bodies, abilities, roles in society, etc. clearly exist. These differences are epi-phenomenological ephemera, proximately useful, with just purposes no less, but not ultimately valuable or worthwhile as achievement of elegance. The essential unity of God and man (non-dualism) is the important experience. That is true elegance. Differences have to be taken into account and worked, but they are not the essence of the matter of living.
When asked, “What is Christian and what is not Christian? How can we tell the difference?”, Luther replied, Ob Sie Christum Treiben. That is Christian what tends towards Christ, which moves in the direction of unity with God, because that’s what Christ is – Son of God, One with The Father . . . Love. So, anything that tends towards unity with God, that is Christian.
A Hindu moving towards ecstatic unity with Siva is a Christian. A Buddhist moving towards emergence in the Universal is a Christian. A Moslem moving towards full submission in the splendor of Allah’s Mercy is a Christian.
Conversely a Christian moving towards unity with God in Christ is also a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Moslem, etc.
God has countless Names, He is only One, and always the same. He answers to any name used in faith and love. Husband speaking love to wife is God talking to Himself. Child speaking love to father or mother, sibling or friend, or teacher, is God talking to Himself.
It could be singing a hymn, relishing a meal, hearing a lecture, a moment of quiet reflection, a distant noise, a close embrace of children, a cup of water offered a thirsty traveler, an episode of marital bliss, a bow in reverence to an august personage, audition of a great work of art.
God needs no introduction or permission to use anything at hand in order to make one aware of one’s essential unity with Him, and He as all.
In this regard, note that the Bible, in common with all sacred literature, is meant to be heard, not read. Being more subtle than fire (seeing), sound (hearing) penetrates layers of ignorance that corrode intellect — like a surfactant, lifting them off to reveal intellect’s native effulgence — and much more easily, thoroughly, and efficiently than does reading.
Bible versions to listen to: The Jerusalem / New Jerusalem Bible, The King James / New King James Bible, The Wycliff Bible, The Douay-Rheims Bible, The Revised Standard Version, the The Moffatt New Translation (a gem in obscurity but available at least for reading).
There is also this, not a translation of the Bible but a collation of it to reflect, as a set of Cantos — Ballads — the standard that is the Doctrine Of The Holy Trinity.
Principle I
Principle II
Principle III
The Sun’s northward journey is a pointer to the path man should take to realise God. The Sun is the supreme example of selfless and tireless service. The world cannot survive without the Sun. Life on earth is possible only because of the Sun. The Sun teaches man the lesson of humble devotion to duty, without any conceit. The Sun is the supreme example for everyone that one should do one’s duty with devotion and dedication. Doing one’s duty is the greatest Yoga, as pointed out by Krishna in the Gita. Let your actions and thoughts be good. You will then experience the Bliss Divine. Sankranti is intended to bring about various changes in man’s attitude so that one may sanctify one’s life. It is a festival not intended for Bharathiyas [Indians] alone. Its message has a meaning for everyone in the world. It has a message for people of all climes, creeds and countries.
