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.~ Hagakure

At times it is important, to begin with the end in mind. One’s own inevitable end especially so. Death is a certainty that is too often overlooked in the modern world. The western traditions placed massive value on the spiritual exercise of contemplation of your eventual end immortalized in the phrase: memento mori.

One of the distinctions of the martial path is a unique relationship with death. The warrior is intimately entwined with his own end as well as the more preferable end of others. While death comes for all of us in whatever station of life, the warrior consciously makes the decision to throw himself face to face with his own end for a larger cause or other potential gains. Even today, I’ve noticed in our current decadent age that in America there remains a degree of reverence for the military and others fallen in the course of duty.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that at the basest of levels this attitude is insane. In our materialistically centered culture the most logically consistent goal is self preservation. However, as mentioned in the echoes of reverence towards fallen heroes and the scorn toward cowards we find acknowledgement of something greater than mere existence. Alongside we also see the idea of a“fate worse than death. Here lies a paradox which can only be resolved at higher levels.

To a warrior, contemplation of one’s physical death is critical but there are some analogies to consider. Analogies that may be critical before you even begin. In the Christian tradition, there are several instances of a type of death before death.

Amen, amen I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die,  Itself remaineth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal.~ John 12:24 

For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God. ~ Collosians 3:3

Here is a type of seeming contradiction. Death before death. But not just another death but death into a greater life.

Spend time on the peripheries of the internet and you’ll find many schemes of self-improvement attempting to instruct in methods to inculcate traits to become more fulfilled. However, nothing can ever truly be a strict addition to one’s life. Your traits and actions are things that you value to some extent no matter how banal and shameful. Take physical fitness for example. You finally decide to get into shape and go lift in the morning before work. Well, you’ll need to wake up earlier to get there and shower in time to make it to your job. Looks like there goes some time spent sleeping. You could argue that you didn’t need that sleep but the fact that your eyes weren’t normally swinging open of their own accord speaks otherwise. So to make things easier you decide you’ll go to sleep earlier the night prior. What were you doing then? TV, reading, video games, drugs, spit bubbles, or perhaps profound meditation? No matter how inconsequential it had some value to you and to accommodate this new addition there need be some subtraction a type of sacrifice which always involves blood literal or otherwise.

By acknowledging a goal as worthy one is by necessity acknowledges a privation in themselves. To make room for any transformation requires letting go of something else. However, inconsequential these inner elements seem aspects of your being, however accidental, find value in them and their loss constitutes a form of death.

Monastic candidates considered their newfound vocation a form of death before death. To embrace a synthesis of the warrior and ascetic will require more subtractions than additions. A series of alchemical processes conducted on one’s being that will render the previous substances unrecognizable. Facing down these various deaths will by necessity involve fear but it will form a bridge that to something greater and act as a medium of transformation.

For now, think not so much of what you must gain but what you must lose.