Art of War 11.64

Show no weakness, and insist on your plans being ratified by the sovereign. 廊廟 indicates a hall or temple in the Palace. Cf. I. § 26. It is not clear if other officers would be present. Hardly anything can be made of 勵, the reading of the standard text, so I have adopted Tu Mu’s conjecture 厲, which appears in the T‘u Shu.

Ts‘ao Kung explains 誅 by 治, and Ho Shih by 責成. Another reading is 謀, and Mei Yao-ch‘ên, adopting this, understands the whole sentence to mean: Take the strictest precautions to ensure secrecy in your deliberations. Capt. Calthrop glides rather too smoothly over the rough places. His translation is: “conduct the business of the government with vigilance.”