QuoteWhen I was researching for writing Jikan, I came across an old Samurai method of centering yourself based upon a Buddhist idea concerning the nature of time. Each man's life, the teaching goes, is a succession of moments - one heaped upon another heaped upon another like autumn leaves on the forest floor. No man can ever make sense of such a confusion of scattered and unique moments, to even try, especially in testing times, can lead only to confusion, doubt and weakness. All you have to do is understand this One Single Moment - the last mo.ent is gone forever and the next will never arrive. To understand this One Single Moment is to master all moments. A samurai who understands this, the lesson concluded, has the strength of two. I have found that keeping this lesson at the forefront of my mind has been very helpful to me.
I like that analogy; it's very much in keeping with what Eckhart Tolle teaches. I've read him fairly extensively and like his stuff a lot. I've also been training in Bujinkan for about 8 years, which is a martial art derived from the traditions of both ninja and samurai; and it's very nice to know that this idea of living in the present fits in with the samurai tradition too.