Aswad
Posts: 6618
Joined: 4/4/2007
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Hey, Grace.
Edit: Slightly off-topic (or, rather, around-topic). Sorry about that.
The matter of dying well, combined with a trick of perception, is part of what has confused some people who have trained with me in the Japanese koryu martial arts. To many outside observers, it can seem as if the school of thought is obsessed with death, and hopelessly rigid about protocol in training. When a more complete explanation is offered, some still don't really get it, while others have a moment of enlightenment, so to speak.
Consider the illusion of the picture that can be viewed as a vase or two faces looking at each other. Is it a vase on a white background, or a pair of faces on a black background? The human perception of contrast doesn't see a neutral difference. There is a preferred point of reference; the difference is from this reference to what is compared to. When, as angel pointed out as the likely Gorean preference, life is that point of reference, rather than the opposite exemplified by people like Sylvia Plath, the pieces fall more into place and the school of thought that confuses the students seems less morbid.
In practicing a koryu art, one must remember that one is honoring a tradition that was developed in a time of war and later codified, passed on by people who lived and died by it. To them, even a simple gesture like a respectful bow held significance and merited attention to proper execution, for the simple reason that it might be their last well considered act in life. As such, in honoring their legacy, it is appropriate to maintain that same mindset, and appreciate what it implies about living life; that the only way to ensure that one's final moment is lived as it should be, is to ensure that every moment is lived as it should be. Correctness and integrity are virtues to strive to embody for one that has taken up such a tradition and, one might argue, anyone who is concerned with such things.
Trevelyan related the story of how, during a seminar, he was led to believe they were all going to die. At such a time, some people obsess over death, while others' attention immediately turn to life. For those who are inclined toward the latter, in particular, the aforementioned school of thought simply reminds us of the importance of life and living it well. It is not that one should necessarily be overly concerned about the possibility of dying, but rather that one should be fully concerned with living, and living well. Death becomes a prop, a tool to turn our attention to life. Like the people at the seminar were confronted with what they had left undone, so too are the students.
Humans are such creatures of habit that it sometimes does not fully hit us how important it is to live well, even when we are offered reminders such as those. We occasionally need a good kick in the rear to "wake up" enough to see it. For some of us, the passing of someone near and dear can be that reminder. Others get hung up on things that have been left unsaid or undone, without their thoughts turning to what else is still unsaid or undone in their lives. For those, it is only an encounter with the prospect of their own death that will cause them to "wake up" in this way.
That is, I believe, the main point behind a test used in another Japanese martial arts school, where the last test for any senior student before completing the full set of teachings is to be attacked with lethal intent using a sharp blade. Upon passing (the test is not administered to a student who does not have the ability to pass), the student has come face to face with the prospect of their own death, and if that doesn't cause them to pause and consider what the life that has now been restored to them is about, then nothing will. Thus, in a dual sense, the test either ends in death or true living.
Took me a while before I realized that this is why the concept is never actually explained. 
Health,
al-Aswad.
< Message edited by Aswad -- 9/10/2009 1:19:52 PM >
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Dying well - 
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I did what I did, how I did, and like I said, I would not change the way things progressed. I simply was trying to continue the discussion that I had inadverently opened up with Sgs on this. As for the guilt, well, I have had more than 10 years in which to come to terms with it. It never goes away, it probably never will...but I can live with that. 
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