Titans of History (4 page)

Seven days after his birth, Gautama's mother died. Eager that his son should follow the former, worldly path, his father had Gautama “exceedingly delicately nurtured,” shielding him from any sight of hardship. He seldom left his palaces (he had one for each season of the year), and on the rare occasions that he did, the king ensured that the streets were filled with young, healthy and cheerful people. Only when he was twenty-nine did chance encounters, first with an old man, then with a sick man and finally with a corpse, alert Gautama to the existence of age, infirmity and death. This realization inspired a fundamental aspect of his doctrine—that human existence is one of suffering.

Subsequently catching sight of a peaceful wanderer with shaven head and yellow robe, Gautama made the “Great Renunciation,” abandoning princely luxury in the hope that an austere religious life might bring greater spiritual fulfillment. Taking one final look at his sleeping wife and newborn son, he stole out of the palace in the dead of night to embrace the life of a wandering ascetic.

Gautama's search for spiritual enlightenment took him first to two renowned sages, but when his abilities outstripped his tutors', he refused their offer to become his disciples. Instead, accompanied by five ascetics, he retreated to the village of Uruvela, where he spent six years trying to attain his ultimate goal of
nirvana
—an end to suffering. Fasting and denial, however, proved unrewarding. With limbs “like withered creepers” and “buttocks like a buffalo's hoof,” Gautama framed another of his fundamental tenets: the path to enlightenment lies in a life of moderation—the “Middle Way.” It was a decision that so disgusted his ascetic companions that they deserted him. Left alone, the thirty-five-year-old Gautama finally reached
nirvana
while meditating cross-legged under the Bodhi tree. As the watches of the night passed, he fought and triumphed over the devil, saw all his past lives and all the past and future lives of all the world, and with his soul purified emerged
as the Buddha: “my mind was emancipated … darkness was dispelled, light arose.”

The Buddha promptly converted the five ascetics and spent the rest of his life teaching the path to enlightenment. He trained his followers to convert others, and his community of monks (the title by which the Buddha addressed his disciples) flourished. Pressed by eager followers, he later instituted an order of nuns. A teacher beyond compare, the Buddha instinctively understood the capacity of each student. When, before his death, he asked his disciples if they had any doubts they wanted clarified, none of them did. Those who came determined to oppose him left converted. When even a famously murderous outlaw became a monk, the Buddha's opponents accused him of being some sort of magician who possessed an “enticing trick.”

At the age of eighty the Buddha announced his intention to die and did so shortly afterward, having eaten a pork dish prepared by a lay follower. Despite the pleas of his closest disciple, Ananda, he refused to appoint a successor. Undogmatic to the end, the Buddha held that his teachings should be treated as a set of rational principles that each person should apply for themselves. Resting on a couch—soon to be his deathbed—placed between two trees in a park, he instructed his disciples to let the truth that is
dharma
(natural order) “be your Master when I am gone.”

551–479
BC

A man who has regard to the old in order to discover the new is best qualified to teach others
.

Confucius,
Analects
2, 11

Confucius was a Chinese philosopher and teacher whose influence was felt—and continues to be felt—not only in his native China but throughout east Asia. He regarded learning as the true path toward individual self-improvement, but, in a manner that was to leave an indelible mark on all subsequent Eastern thinking, he also took an eminently practical view of his role. He saw culture and refinement, based firmly on tradition and correct ritual observance, as the keys to good governance and sought to put his ideas into practice by taking an active role in the administration of his country.

The son of impoverished aristocrats, Confucius was born and grew up in the state of Lu (the modern-day Shandong province). “Confucius” is a Latinized version of his name; in the East he is known as Kongzi or Kongfuzi (meaning “Master Kong”—his family name). Though his exact birthday is not certain, it is celebrated according to east Asian tradition on September 28.

By the age of fifteen Confucius had become an avid and dedicated learner, with a prodigious appetite for the six disciplines of calligraphy, arithmetic, archery, charioteering, ritual and music. He was particularly noted for his incessant questioning of his teachers at the Grand Temple. As a young man he took various jobs, working as a cowherd, shepherd, stable manager and bookkeeper.
He married when he was nineteen and dutifully followed tradition in mourning his mother for three years after she died when he was twenty-three. Confucius spent most of his twenties combining his working life with a devotion to education.

His knowledge of the six disciplines was bolstered by extensive study of history and poetry, and in his thirties he was ready to start on a brilliant teaching career. Before his day, teaching was usually carried out by private tutors to the children of the wealthy, or else it was essentially vocational training in administrative posts. Confucius took a radical new approach, advocating learning for all as a means of benefiting both pupil and society alike. He started a program of study designed for potential leaders, reasoning that an educated ruler would be able to disseminate his learning to his subjects and so improve society as a whole.

Unlike many other wise men of the time, who shunned human interaction and were detached from society, Confucius engaged wholeheartedly with the government of his state. He served as a magistrate, rising to become assistant minister of public works, and then was promoted to the position of minister of justice. When he was fifty-three, he became chief minister to the king of Lu, accompanying him on diplomatic missions.

But Confucius' influence on the king and his strict moral principles alienated him from the rest of the court, who conspired to obstruct him. Realizing that his message was going unheeded, Confucius left the court and went into self-imposed exile. During the twelve years of his absence, Confucius toured the states of Wei, Song, Chen and Cai, teaching and developing his philosophy. His reputation as the “wooden tongue in the bell of the age” began to spread.

Confucius' thinking was partly a reaction to the extreme lawlessness of his age, a time of unrest in which neighboring warlords were constantly in conflict with one another. His position was essentially conservative, emphasizing the importance of tradition,
proper ritual observance and respect for elders and ancestors. He saw himself as a conduit of learning, who invented nothing but simply passed on received wisdom and encouraged self-inquiry and the personal quest for knowledge. He believed that rulers, chosen on merit rather than according to lineage, should not impose rules and govern by means of threats of punishment, but rather should develop their own virtues and so earn the devotion of their subjects.

Confucius' sayings were collected after his death in the
Analects
, which form the basis of what Westerners now call Confucianism (the term does not translate meaningfully into Chinese). His most famous precept, the so-called “golden rule,” is mirrored in countless later moral systems (including Christianity). It is well captured in the following exchange:

Adept Kung asked
: Is there one word that can guide a person in life?

The master replied
: How about
shu
? Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.

The idea of
shu
(roughly, reciprocity) runs through Confucius' ethics, which are also underpinned by the notions of
li
,
yi
and
ren
. The concept of
li
equates approximately with ritual,
yi
with righteousness, and
ren
with kindness or empathy.

Confucius ended his exile at age sixty-seven, returning to the state of Lu to write and teach. Burdened by the loss of his son, he died at the age of seventy-three.

c.
544
BC
–496
BC

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate
.

Sun Tzu (or Sunzi), was the author of a treatise on war that is still hugely important in military thought, business, politics and the psychology of human relationships.

Little is known about Sun Tzu's life but he was a contemporary of Confucius. He is believed to have been a general for the state of Wu toward the end of the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476
BC
). In
The Art of War
he distilled his military genius into an organized series of instructions and axioms that covered every aspect of waging a successful war.

One of the most striking things about this work is Sun Tzu's insistence that although “the art of war is of vital importance to the state,” it is often better to avoid battle, which he views as costly, disruptive and damaging to the population at large:

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting
.

Where fighting cannot be avoided, preparation and knowledge of the enemy are all:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle
.

To forsake this advice because it necessitates going to the expense of gathering intelligence is simply wrong:

To remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one begrudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver … is the height of inhumanity
.

As Sun Tzu makes clear in many passages, attention to detail can win the battle before it begins: “making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.” And this, in theory, ought to minimize the damage done by battle:

The best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them
.

Though he could be dispassionate and ruthless about war, Sun Tzu stresses the need for violence and bloodshed only as far as is absolutely necessary. Enemy soldiers should be kindly treated and lengthy, destructive campaigns avoided in favor of swift victory. It is Sun Tzu's mixture of brilliant strategy and tactical analysis with a concern for human welfare that makes him relevant even to this day.

d.
480
BC

In the course of that fight Leonidas fell, having fought like a man indeed. Many distinguished Spartans were killed at his side—their names, like the names of all the three hundred … deserve to be remembered
.

Herodotus,
The Histories
, Book VII

The last stand of Leonidas and his 300 against the might of Persia spread the legend of Spartan bravery across the world. A peerless fighter, Leonidas sacrificed himself for Greek freedom. His intrepid defense at Thermopylae gave the Greeks the time and the inspiration to defeat the massively superior Persian force that sought to overwhelm them.

For over a decade the Greeks had been fighting the Persians, who were determined to absorb them into their empire. Faced with Greek intransigence, the Persian Great King Xerxes assembled the greatest army the ancient world had ever seen. In 480
BC
it crossed the Dardanelles on a bridge of boats, then swarmed along the coast toward the Greek heartlands. Xerxes' progress seemed inexorable, Greece's subjugation inevitable.

Ten years or so earlier, Leonidas had succeeded to the throne of Sparta, a city-state in the area of the southeastern Peloponnese known as Lacedaemonia. The latter name gives us the word “laconic,” for the Spartans were renowned for their terseness of speech—as exemplified by the Spartan discipline, toughness and endurance that Leonidas and his fellows were to display.

There was only one career for a male Spartan: as a fighting machine. In an education system as ruthless as it was effective, Sparta raised men who belonged, as the Roman historian Plutarch said, “entirely to their country and not to themselves.”

Sparta was frozen into an ancient constitution laid down in the 7th century
BC
by the semi-legendary King Lycurgus. Innovation was a mortal offense, individualism mercilessly eradicated. Foreigners were discouraged, money was replaced by iron bars, meals were taken in common. Nothing was allowed to divide the brotherhood of Sparta.

Sparta began selecting its warriors at birth. Inspecting all male infants, the council of elders weeded out the sickly and malformed, abandoning them on the mountainside to die. The sturdy, destined to protect rather than burden the state, were sent back to their fathers to be reared by nurses.

At the age of seven boys were taken into the care of the state, which set about transforming them into some of the toughest warriors the world has ever seen. The balletic grace of Sparta's soldiers was honed by years of gymnastics and athletics, all undertaken in the nude. So endlessly did Spartans indulge in such exercises that the Athenians gave them the nickname
phaenomerides
, the “displayers of thighs.”