MEDITATIONS: DOKKODO; THE WAY OF ALONENESS XVII.

Principle Seventeen

Do not fear death. (Miyamoto, Musashi)

In his Discourses, stoic philosopher Epictetus spoke thusly of death:

I must die. But must I die bawling? I must be put in chains—but moaning and groaning too? I must be exiled; but is there anything to keep me from going with a smile, calm and self-composed? (Epictetus 7)

And echoes of this sentiment reverberate throughout the east as well as the west. Yamamoto, Tsunetomo says in the Hagakure:

Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.

. . .

It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them. Death, for example, is nothing frightening . . . but the judgement that death is frightening—now, that is something to be afraid of. (Yamamoto)

And even the Buddha said:

For someone
At the journey’s end,
Freed from sorrow,
Liberated in all ways,
Released from all bonds,
No Fever exists. (Buddha 23)

Yet, despite all the wisdom in the world pointing in the same direction, human beings are, have been, and likely will continue to be eternally petrified by the fear of death.

But why?

Of course, conscious creature has an instinct to survive, at least well enough to successfully reproduce. Natural selection pressures cannot drive evolution otherwise, and even artificial selection is subject to the same Darwinian force at the level of culture and memetics. Fear of death is innate, but so is fear in general, and individuals as well as collectives commonly learn to overcome all manner of phobias and prejudicial sources of anxiety. Why not also with death?

Some do, though they are few are far between. Nietzsche might call them those rare individuals of noble spirit and temperament. They are unlike the rabble which require blinding quantities of lies poured down their gullets. Most only deny death by imagining an afterlife. Rather than face the necessary finitude of their existence—one of many constraints on their Wills-to-Power—they craft from whole cloth the concept of immortality which exists in the realm of forms, though very few understand their religion is that of Plato and the gnostic cults which preceded and followed. This is not overcoming fear of death through the cultivation of courage but the psychological attempt to escape it by becoming ones own demiurge. In the minds of this kind, mortality itself becomes a prison which one’s soul is liberated from after death of the body—if and only if one possesses “correct” belief, that is, gnosis.

But not everyone is a Light Bringer, even among those whose convictions require the assumption of an afterlife and immortal soul. Among all times and peoples, there are those who, as Tsunetomo prescribes, cultivate their courage in the face of death by voluntarily confronting its reality on a daily basis. Each morning and each evening, they affirm that they must die; and in so doing, they also—as a necessary consequence—affirm life.

In the same way that courage exists because of the existence of fear, love of life is possible only because of the looming doom of death. One creates the other as its opposite, and the annihilation of one requires the annihilation of the other. Therefore, to “not fear death” is to not shy away from it. And to not shy away from death is also to not shy away from life. This is because life, necessitating death, is rife with risk. Living life to its fullest will inevitably mean skirting and even falling into misfortune, misery, injury, and death—but if one wishes to live meaningfully, he must also accept the suffering that is made to mean something in the end.

So “do not fear death.” Embrace it instead. Shake hands with him like an old friend. Do not bar him entry, but invite him in when he comes knocking at the door. Do this, and hesitation will fly before one like the stone scales which immobilize him whom fear has petrified. Death might be a gorgon, but the brave man does not look away. He stares her in the face, snakes and fangs, and loves her anyway.

If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. (Yamamoto)

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. The Dhammapada; Teachings of the Buddha, translated by Gil Fronsdal, Shambala Publications Inc, 2008.

Epictetus. Enchiridion. Discourses and Selected Writings, translated and edited by Robert Dobbin, Penguin Books, 2008.

Miyamoto, Musashi. Dokkodo, translator unknown, 1645.

Yamamoto, Tsunetomo. Hagakure.