And so one skilled at battle

Critical Text

Yinqueshan Text

¬Gµ½¾ÔªÌ¨D¤§©ó¶Õ¥±³d©ó¡C¡C¡C¤ì¥Û¤ì¥Û¤§¥Í¦w«hÀR¦M «h°Ê¤è«h¡C¡C¡C

Shiyijia zhu Text

¬Gµ½¾ÔªÌ¨D¤§©ó¶Õ¤£³d©ó¤H¬G¯à¾Ü¤H¦Ó¥ô¶Õ¥ô¶ÕªÌ¨ä¾Ô¤H¤]¦pÂà¤ì¥Û ¤ì¥Û¤§°Ê¦w«hÀR¦M «h° ¤è«h¤î¶ê«h¦æ¬Gµ½¾Ô¤H¤§¶Õ¦pÂà¶ê¥Û©ó¤d¥Q¤§¤sªÌ¶Õ¤]

Translation

And so one skilled at battle seeks it in shi and does not demand it of people. Thus one can dispense with people and employ shi. One who uses shi sets people to battle as if rolling trees and rocks. As for the nature of trees and rocks: When still, they are at rest. When agitated, they move. When square, they stop. When round, they go. Thus the shi of one skilled at setting people to battle is like rolling round rocks from a mountain one thousand ren high. This is shi.

Annotations

A key theme of this chapter, and the entire Sunzi, is that finding the right configuration of your forces within the environment (that is, the right shi) makes finding victory easy. You need not always undergo the prolonged and difficult altering of either self or other to find this.

Ze ³d, normally "the demands of duty" and thus plausibly understood here as matched with ren ¥ô, "to employ," instead has the sense in this passage of "to demand [something of someone]." Thus it is paired with qiu ¨D, "to seek."