Tecumseh

May 19, 2009 18:22hrs

Chief Tecumseh – Shawnee Nation, in a speech given to William Henry Harrison before he became governor (and then president)."So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, and beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."

NOTES: This is a motivational affirmation for me. I have this taped up in my locker and see it daily. I use it to guide my life as I do many things. Each day it only takes a little reminder or a few seconds of meditation to ground yourself and seek the path to enlightenment. Enlightenment is all there is, but enlightenment in itself is a Zen Kōan. The path of enlightenment is itself a life long discipline and lesson, like the peeling away of the layers of an onion, when you peel back one layer and another lye’s underneath until you get to the last layer and then there is emptiness, all in the hopes of finding the ultimate end or answer only to realize that there is no answer, just a process of learning lessons until we ultimately get to the end and find emptiness and find absolute nirvana in that emptiness. Because having found emptiness allows us to take in the beauty that is around us uninhibited by thought and emotion, it just is and it just being as it is “Nothingness” we find the spectacular beauty in it being that simple. Just being content with nothing (emptiness) and loving it.

The following phrase may help to confuse …

“Our bodies are given life in the mists of nothingness, existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase form is emptiness, that all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase emptiness is form, one should not think that these are two separate things” - Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai – Yamamoto Tsunetomo

The above quote is just another reference to my notes. Whoa! My head is spinning now.

Peace GhostDog