Raven's suggestion of last week that we should have prayers for dying well got me to thinking of good examples. Our culture is not rich with them. One example that came to mind was the 1999 film 13th Warrior. Ironically, perhaps, both of the prayers are not Christian; both are nevertheless excellent.
Both are also too long. These are prayers to say when you have time. But an abbreviated version might do well.
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There's an irony in that "Viking Battle Prayer," which I've seen reprinted on tee-shirts, etc. as a death song for warriors. In fact it's adapted from the real Ibn Fadlan's report of what a Russ slave girl recited shortly before she was sacrificed for her master's burial. It's a slave prayer, preparatory to a slave's death.
Yes, that's right. The original is also substantially different from the dramatic version, in that it doesn't speak of Valhalla but "Paradise." Now that's Ibn Fadlan himself, I'm guessing, using the word in the Arabic that he think applies to the concept. However, she goes on to say that it is 'beautiful and verdant,' which is not much like the descriptions of Valhalla.
So the poem as presented in the book and the movie is transformed from a slave's to a warrior's impression. For the current purpose, we're also trying to look for inspirations in order to construct something new.
Well, I've been partial to this one for some time, even if it is Hollywood:
If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!
On the other hand, as I've said before, I don't fight to die, I fight to win.
Better to have prayers for honorable victory than for honorable death.
Eric Hines
Lk. 9:24. It is, as Chesterton said, practical advice for soldiers and men at sea.
Indeed, the Chesterton quote is worth giving in full. It's from Orthodoxy.
“Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if we will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying.”
Yep. It's the difference, though, between fighting to live and fighting to win.
Eric Hines
Can't put a quote to it, But Musashi said something similar. Some caution is good, too much will get you killed. Any motorcycle rider will recognize this idea. Always best to go fast enough to see death looking forward, rather than to be surprised in the rear view.
Musashi may have said something like that, but Daidoji Yuzan certainly did.
"One who is a samurai must before all things keep constantly in mind…the fact that he has to die. If he is always mindful of this, he will be able to live in accordance with the paths of loyalty and filial duty, will avoid myriads of evils and adversities, keep himself free of disease and calamity and moreover enjoy a long life. He will also be a fine personality with many admirable qualities. For existence is impermanent as the dew of evening, and the hoarfrost of morning, and particularly uncertain is the life of the warrior."
You guys actually believe your higher self consciousness dies...?
Look up some near death experiences.
This whole dying thing is about as real as people want it to be. Or as real as a game avatar dying and after a reload, it pops back up again.
I studied NDEs more than twenty years ago. They're interesting, but we don't know if they last longer than oxygen in the brain. They don't prove survival after death.
Now, that said, survival after death is perfectly orthodox -- for Christians, Jews, Muslims, even Buddhists (who are against it, in principle). It's the accepted belief for the ancient Greeks as for the Vikings. Nobody really believes in final death except the atheists.
"keep constantly in mind…the fact that he has to die."
One of my favorite twitter follows is an account called "Daily Death Reminder". All they do is tweet daily "Remember, one day you will die".
Yes, I also follow that account.
It seems appropriate to bring up memento mori here.
The 'See also' section has the topics:
Carpe diem
Et in Arcadia ego
Mortality salience
Sic transit gloria mundi
Tempus fugit
Ubi sunt
Vanitas
YOLO (aphorism)
YOLO? "One of these things is not like the others..."
I laughed at its inclusion as well. However, Wikipedia makes the case that it is similar to the idea of carpe diem.
I studied NDEs more than twenty years ago. They're interesting, but we don't know if they last longer than oxygen in the brain. They don't prove survival after death.
They have only gotten more crazy since then.
You should look into Journey of Souls, a book by Newton and also on youtube as audiobook. Although hypnotherapy might be a topic that you feel apprehensive over. When paired with other user and human testimonies, the dots are very easily connected. At least, easily connected by me.
Humans die. The Spirit does not, it is eternal. It was present when America was born and before. It was present when the multiverse was created and before. It has no beginning, and thus no end. Although that doesn't mean everybody is equal. This human obsession with fairness and equality is most likely a quantum signature of forgotten pre mortal memories rather than human social conditions.
Humans can only be born with a soul and consciousness by the Spirit undergoing a Phoenix rebirth through death cycle.
The entity that controls the human avatar has already died. When the human dies, that is when the spirit of the Phoenix is reborn from the ashes.
This is correlated to the waters of forgetfulness. We have already drank that water of forgetfulness. It's a necessary precondition to being incarnated here. This is the Underworld or the world of death. Outside of it, eternity does not allow for death or life, because that is a linear time concept. One has to be inside time to experience it, not outside of the stream.
Death is what happens when the user of the avatar logs out and has to rest, clean their room, and do more important things than have fun gaming with the avatar in a fictional world of maya and illusion. The fact that humans take their life so seriously is part of the experience and agreement, but that is only because they have forgotten.
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