Aryana Libris

Author : Chu Chin-Ning
Title : Thick face, black heart The warrior philosophy for conquering the challenges of business and life
Year : 1992

Link download : Chu_Chin-Ning_-_Thick_face_black_heart.zip

Introduction. In 1949, at the age of three, holding tight onto my mother’s skirt, I ran with my parents and two younger brothers across a Shanghai airport runway. Amid the sound of bombs blasting, we boarded the last commercial flight out of China. From a life of affluence and privilege, my family was reduced to the condition of faceless immigrants among millions in Taiwan who had fled the conquering Communists. All the possessions we were able to salvage from the devastation of our lives fit into the suitcases my parents carried. In 1969, when I was twenty-two, I left Taiwan to begin a new life in America. Once more a faceless immigrant, I arrived in Los Angeles with two suitcases containing the few possessions I was able to bring to my new home: clothes I had made for myself, a few personal effects, and two books. By this time, I had already read hundreds of books, and I owned many; but I brought only two to the United States: Sun Tzu’s Art of War and a slim, black-bound volume written by Lee Zhong Wu called Thick Black Theory. The Art of War, an ancient book of strategy and wisdom, is fairly well known in the West. Thick Black Theory, however, is a relatively modern work and is still virtually unknown outside of China. Although I cannot say exactly why I brought Thick Black Theory with me, at the time I had a strong, intuitive sense that it would prove to be very important. In its original form, it is an erratic, difficult book. Lee’s writing is obscure. His arguments include great intuitive leaps that often left me behind. But after my first reading of Thick Black Theory, I knew that there was something very profound in it. For the past twenty years I have returned to this book time and time again, not quite knowing why, except for a powerful and disturbing sense that it held the key to a puzzle I was trying to solve. It has colored the way I now think about all my life experiences. I left many precious possessions behind in Taiwan, but was able to bring Lee’s invaluable book with me to America. Lee first published his ideas in 1911, a year of chaos and profound change in China. It was the year of the overthrow of the Ching dynasty, the last in a succession of imperial dynasties that stretched back to the beginning of human civilization. Thick Black Theory has never been translated or published outside of China. Even within China, Lee’s frank discussion of the uses of ruthlessness and hypocrisy was so disturbing to the ruthless and hypocritical that Thick Black Theory has been banned almost since the day of its publication. Even if Thick Black Theory were to be faithfully translated, it would still be incomprehensible to most non-Chinese. The Chinese language is highly context-oriented. The basic building blocks of the language are short three-and four-character phrases that have an extended meaning far beyond the literal meaning of the characters that make up the phrase—somewhat like idiomatic expressions in English. This extended meaning is derived from history, ancient literature, folktales, and a myriad of other sources. Thus, in a few characters, a Chinese writer can express a very complex idea by skillfully combining these associations. Foreigners who are considered fluent in Chinese but do not have an intimate knowledge of the Chinese culture often understand the words, but are unaware of the levels of meaning that are subtly implied. With Lee’s work, this difficulty is even more extreme. His chaotic style makes Lee difficult to understand even for learned Chinese. He writes in brief, disconnected epigrams that are meaningless to anyone not deeply immersed in Chinese literature. In its original form, Lee’s Thick Black Theory is of little use to Westerners. But I have always felt that his profound yet bluntly honest vision of the world, which is the essence of Lee’s philosophy, would be of great importance to anyone who desires to exert a measure of control over his own life. It is this vision, this attitude, this essence, that I refer to simply as Thick Face, Black Heart. Lee estimated that it would take three years of studious endeavor to master the practice of his ideas. Lee’s ideas ignited the sparks within me that led me to explore in great depth for the past twenty years the uncharted reality of our daily lives in relation to Thick Face, Black Heart. In my inquiry, I discovered that there are two distinct levels of understanding. There is the superficial aspect: learning the methods and practices by which you can get what you want by imposing your will on others. And there is the deeper, spiritual understanding of Thick Face, Black Heart as the natural and proper state of your soul. Having been raised in China, I was already immersed in Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, despite the fact that I was Catholic. The principles of these religions are so deeply ingrained in Chinese culture that it is not necessary to formally profess any of them to be influenced by them. My continuing search for understanding took me to all parts of the world. I studied the Hindu scriptures and Christian mystics. At one point in my life, I gave up my successful business career in Los Angeles and moved to a remote mountain in the Oregon Cascades for a long period of meditation and soul-searching. As my horizons broadened, I came back to my Chinese roots with a new perspective. I looked at Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and their Japanese extraction, Zen Buddhism. It became clearer and clearer to me that these diverse religions and philosophies shared the same central principle and that if I could understand and extract this principle, it would give me the power and control over my own life that I sought. In my struggle to articulate this principle, I kept coming back to Lee Zhong Wu and the phrase “Thick Face, Black Heart.” I do not believe that at the time he wrote Thick Black Theory, Lee himself clearly realized the full breadth and depth of his subject. Although I understand now that the value of Lee’s work was in his putting a secular face on a principle that had previously always been discussed in abstract, religious, or philosophical terms. For years I tried, without success, to write about Thick Black Theory. Finally, I turned away from it and wrote my first two books, The Chinese Mind Game and The Asian Mind Game. Now, at last, I can write Thick Face, Black Heart. The ideas I express are my own, but I wish to acknowledge my debt to Lee. However, my book is not an interpretation of Lee’s work. To me, his book was not so much a source of knowledge as a way of looking at things, a starting point for the development of my own thoughts and a touchstone for the examination of new ideas and experiences. The result of my inquiry is that from this book you can receive the instant benefit of the knowledge of Thick Face, Black Heart as a concentrated, potent capsule. The knowledge revealed in this book will mirror your own life experiences that are familiar to you and that you are not able to verbalize. Because of the novel ideas in this book, a revelation in your understanding can occur in an instant. ...