The Samurai of the Spirit: Living with the End in Sight

There is a very old Japanese tradition among the Samurai that says a warrior should have the idea of death before his mind “day and night, from the dawn of the first day of the year till the last minute of the last day.” Now, to our modern, Western ears, that sounds a bit “morbid,” doesn’t it? We like our spirituality to be about “abundance” and “positive thinking.” But if you really want to know the Grandest of All Truths, you have to look directly into the eyes of the one thing you’ve been running from your whole life.

A great teacher once challenged a group of students to find the most important truth. His answer was: “We shall all die!” He wasn’t being a “gloomy Gus.” He was showing them the most “vigorous” and “uplifting” practice imaginable. He wanted them to be “monastics at heart” – not necessarily wearing robes and living in caves, but practicing an internal renunciation of everything that is temporary.

The Psychology of the Hero

You see, even a coward thinks about death. But the coward is forced into it by fear. The “hero” or the “earnest seeker” chooses to face it. They use death as a “pestle” to smash their own petty attachments.

When you first start this practice, your heart might break down. You look at your beautiful home, your loving family, and your successful career, and you think, “It’s all going to vanish.” That despondency is the first stage. But if you persist – if you let days, months, and years pass with this thought – the “spirit within” wakes up with the strength of a lion. You find a “mighty power” that you didn’t know you had.

This isn’t an obsession with death. It’s a “resolutely positive” meditation. It’s about being “alert” to the fact that the clock is ticking. As one old book puts it, you should order your thoughts and actions as if today were your last. This doesn’t make you lazy; it makes you Practical. You stop wasting time on “meanness” and gossip. You start doing your duty in the world with a sense of urgency and love.

The Turning Point

Every great “awakening” in history started with this confrontation. Think of the prince who had everything – the best food, the best music, the most beautiful palace. He saw one corpse, and it changed him forever. He didn’t just drive on; he stayed with the suffering until he became the Enlightened One.

Think of the young philosopher whose father died when he was a child. He didn’t look back until he had “conquered death.” He was always flanked by two invisible companions: Knowledge and Death. He acquired the first to overcome the second.

You see, there is no such thing as an “ordinary” person who can’t do this. We are all “geniuses” if we try. We are all “potentially divine.” The only difference between a saint and a “worldly person” is the intensity with which they direct their internal power. If you direct that power toward the truth of death, you undergo a “radical transformation.”

The Transformation of the Self

Let’s look at how this meditation on death actually “cleans the house” of your personality:

1. From Attachment to Freedom: You realize that everything perishes. Your social status is a shadow. Your possessions are borrowed. Once you see that even your own body is just “merging into the soil” one day, you stop being a “shadow-chaser.” You become unattached and free. 2. From Desire to Peace: A mind full of desires is like a stormy ocean. But dwelling on death convinces you that chasing these desires is like “hastening the process of death.” You stop the endless chain of “more, more, more.” You develop one “higher desire”: to know the mystery of what is Real. 3. From Anger to Forgiveness: It’s almost impossible to be angry when you’re facing the end. If you knew you were going to die in ten minutes, would you spend five of them being mad at someone for cutting you off in traffic? Of course not! You’d forgive. Well, the “Samurai of the Spirit” lives in that ten-minute window all the time. 4. From Delusion to Stability: Most of us live in a state of “moha,” or delusion. We think satisfying a desire will make it go away, but it just makes it stronger. Death is the ultimate “de-bunker” of this delusion. It lifts you from the morass and gives you stability.

The Love of Death

This is what renunciation really is. It’s not “committing suicide” – suicides aren’t lovers of death; they are just people who are failing at the game of life and don’t want to play anymore. “Love of death” means realizing that your narrow, “little individuality” must die so that your “universal individuality” can be born.

You realize that “I will die” actually means the “separation of the body from me.” You’ve changed your “body-dress” millions of times. But the Mind – the “problem-generator” – is the dress you really need to lose. The mind-dress is what keeps you “latched on” to new bodies because of its unfulfilled cravings.

The ultimate “death” is the Death of the Mind. This is the “fall from grace” in reverse. We want to be pure and “naked” of all labels, all ego, and all desires. We want to wander in the “Garden of Reality” without any “mind-clothes” to limit us.

The Final Freedom

When you meditate on the certainty of death, you are unfurling the sails of your life to catch the “breeze of grace.” You aren’t seeking the death of the body, but you aren’t afraid of it either. You are striving to “burn away” the mind-dress.

And when that happens, you are free forever. No more births, no more deaths. You aren’t a “he” or a “she” – those are just tags on the body-dress. You are the Unfettered Self – the Absolute Reality that is sitting right behind the curtain. The “Grandest of All Truths” has taken you by the hand and led you to the only truth that never changes: your own immortal, divine, and blissful nature.

Summary of the “Transcendence Cycle”

To help you anchor these thoughts before your reading, keep this “Alan Watts” progression in mind:

The Shock: Facing the fact: “I will die.”

The Breakdown: Despondency and the realization that “all is vanity.”

The Rebirth: Developing the “Strength of a Lion” and the “Love of Death.”

The Ultimate Realization: Discovering that the “Self” is the screen, and the “Body/Mind” are just the movie.