Book 18 Chapter 20

108 Essential Books for Students – Recommended by Cheonmu Academy, but Read by Almost No One

Cheonmu Academy’s Thirteen Secret Manuals: The Theory of Useless Secret Manuals

―Excerpts―

…(Strategy)…

…Some argue that secret manuals, whether from a thousand or five hundred years ago, are nothing more than useless antiques once unearthed. This is the essence of the "useless secret manual theory." However, this is a grave misconception. While it is indeed impossible to condense all the essential principles of martial arts into a secret manual, we must then ask: why do we read texts like the Four Books and Five Classics left by the sages of the past?

I believe it is a serious error for proponents of the "useless secret manual theory" to underestimate the utility of secret manuals as a means of recording information. Secret manuals rescue the essence of martial arts, which could vanish at any moment, not only from individual forgetfulness but also from historical amnesia. How many martial arts of countless masters have been buried in the past along with their deaths? Without secret manuals, even more martial arts would have met the same fate. The ability to recall hazy memories is incredibly important. Many people forget the martial arts stances they need to practice when learning. Even if they memorize them, after a month or two of not using them, they quickly forget some of them again. It is this difficult even to memorize the forms, let alone understand the profound principles and grasp their essence. Even a superficial glance is not easy when the watermelon is too large. Without the existence of secret manuals to aid them on such a arduous journey, how much more difficult would the already challenging process become? The saying, "A dull pen overcomes a sharp wit," did not arise without reason.

A secret manual is not an end product. It is a guide and a map for expanding one's spirit into a wider world. Without them, we would be forced to repeat numerous trials and errors every time. Human life is finite; when can we ever progress if we only repeat trial and error? Secret manuals dramatically reduce this waste of time. Despite the clear limitations of language, books are the most powerful tool created by finite humans to combat infinite time. Only the lazy, who are uninterested in reducing ten failures to just one, will fail to recognize the usefulness of secret manuals.

…(Conclusion)…