One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day, and every night, from the morning of New Year’s day through the night of New Years Eve.
As long as you keep death in mind at all times, you will fulfill the ways of loyalty and familial duty. You will also avoid myriad evils and calamities, you will be physically sound and healthy, and you will live a long life. What is more, your character will improve and your virtue will grow.
People of all social classes, high and low, constantly overeat, drink too much, and indulge in their desires to an unhealthy degree, all because of forgetting about death. This puts a strain on their internal organs, so they may die remarkably young, or else become sickly or invalid.
When you always keep death in mind, even if you are young and healthy, you already know how to take care of yourself. You moderate food and drink, avoid sexual addiction, and behave prudently. As a result, you are physically sound. Because you are healthy, you will live a long time.
Code of the Samurai – Taira Shigesuke
MEDITATE ON YOUR DEATH
Most people take the easy path. They do nothing. The unconscious path. Or they do something they do not care for so they do not have to feel scared walking down a path with consequences that matter.
A morning routine fights against unconscious living.
The unconscious avoiders die with regret and incomplete objectives.
Dying with your goals unaccomplished is a painful punishment for living incorrect.
The path, what we are supposed to be doing, is scary because it matters. Feeling scared is living.
You are responsible for walking towards your fear. The path is full of dragons that will not move until you defeat them in your mind.
Keeping death in mind is the only way to appreciate the time that you have. Time is the most valuable commodity which is why companies fight so desperately for it. Living prudently means living with respect to the present and the future. You take the value from your time for yourself, only occasionally wasting it for you know that it is gone forever once burned.
Live Professionally
You will make fewer mistakes and have fewer accidents if you routinely meditate on your death. You will also take more calculated risks, knowing that uncalculated risks taken for short-term pleasure will often create long-term suffering. Live like a professional.
look at men in their 50’s from the 1950s and what 50 looks like today. We didn’t know that lifting weights and doing cardio was the fountain of youth. All you have to do is exercise a few hours a week.
If you consider how you will look a decade or more in the future, you will take care of yourself right now which benefits the present.
The path through Hell
The path through Hell is miserable but you must walk through it to leave.
The modern warrior stays on his path. The path is the life of the warrior even if he does not go to war.
You must rehearse your death so you do not forget your limited time. If you do not walk the path, the trees still age, the land changes, the birds die, you change, and you move farther away from the path.
Your duty must be self-assigned. Your masteries. Sometimes an individual, or life, can bring you a quest or meaning, but ultimately it is your responsibility to accept the contract.
What are you here to do? Walk that path in pursuit of mastery. Not fame. Mastery.
A warrior’s health
If you understand you are going to die, you will do everything to live longer. You will eat healthy. You will drink water, brush your teeth and wash your hands.
Those who live and eat recklessly believe they will live forever–ignorance grows to the level of your consequences if you let it.
You can understand your mortality and earn your privilege of being confident through brutal training.
Fatigue makes cowards of us all.
George S. Patton Jr.
Bring yourself to defeat in training. Experience the lows and you will have strength of body, mind, and spirit in all endeavors.
Training in all things is chaotic & painful; atoms vibrate at increased speeds. The deeper you go the more you can tolerate.
The pursuit of DEPTH does not stop for the warrior wanderer.
Live well
Taira Shigesuke, samurai, understood how a sexual addiction can kick a man into the gutter and off his path. If you believe you will live forever, you will not stop. Those who are addicted to lust covet the physical release, not the path. Welcome authentic experiences instead of hyperstimuli found on the internet.
Believing you have all the time in the world makes time worthless. Water has no value when you are at home, but has infinite value stranded on a remote island. Supplies of time are limited and cannot be replenished.
Live well.