Osho explains that meditation and swordsmanship, archery, or other ways of the warrior are joined together in a Samurai.

The Meditative Warrior: Samurai

cientists may think that life is centred in the heart, that if the heart stops, you are dead. It is not true. There have been experiments proving certainly that the heart can be stopped and the person does not die. After ten minutes he comes back, and the heart starts again. According to the spiritual science, life is just two inches below the navel. The child was joined by the navel to the mother. And the navel was nursing the source inside, two inches below... It has been cut from the mother's life, but it is still joined with the universe from the same place. It is not in the heart, it is just two inches below the navel. And because of this, in Japan a certain thing developed: hara-kiri. Hara-kiri is a special kind of suicide. Hara is the name of the centre below the navel, where life is. And only in Japan has it been possible to locate it exactly. A certain development in Japanese tradition led to this point: if you want to kill yourself, the best, the quickest, and the most comfortable way is just to put a knife in the centre of the hara, so the cord is cut. That happens within seconds, and the person is dead, but he does not suffer any agony. And the science of health, medicine, has to take note of it, because if it is the real centre of life, then it should be nourished when a person is dying or sick. Rather than working on other places which are only offshoots, work at the centre. Perhaps a totally new science of medicine and health can come out of it. The hara has not been recognised anywhere except Japan. But Japan has proved it, that there is the centre of life, because within a second the person is finished -and with no agony, no anguish. His face is as it was when he was alive -- not even any tension. Hara-kiri developed for a strange reason. It is part of the Samurai training in Japan. The Samurai is a special kind of warrior. He is a meditative warrior. Life and death are equal to him, but honour, respectability, dignity, is higher than anything else. So if anything happens that he feels is humiliating, then it is not worth living, and he commits hara-kiri. It is not good to

translate it as suicide, but there is no other way. Thousands of samurai have committed hara-kiri. You cannot hurt the integrity of any samurai. It is dangerous -- he will not kill you, he will kill himself. Life has lost meaning; if people cannot respect him, there is no reason why he should live. And he lives with dignity. The samurai is a special development of human individuality, and utterly devoted to freedom. Anything hurting him, or anything destroying his freedom or his

honour... In the Second World War it was a danger, that you can destroy Japan but you cannot win. It was the atomic bombs which changed the situation; otherwise the ordinary war... Thirteen years after the Second World War, a man was found hiding in a forest, still fighting. Whenever he could find an opportunity, he would kill an American and then go back to the forest. He was caught thirteen years after the Second World War, and when he was told that Japan had been defeated, he could not believe it. He said, "That is impossible. Japan can be destroyed, but cannot be defeated. It is a land of Samurais. We live with dignity, we die with dignity." He could not believe it -- thirteen years had passed, and he was still fighting for Japan, alone. Meditation and swordsmanship, or archery, or other ways of the warrior, have been joined together. To us it seems too much, that a person should destroy himself, but to those thousands who have committed hara-kiri it is not the case. They are not destroying themselves, they are simply leaving this life -- this life is not worth living, something has gone wrong. It is against their honour to be here. Through hypnosis we can make a person aware of how this rising upwards happens, and how he can enter the body again. And once you have done it, a posthypnotic suggestion can be given, that you can do it on your own, any time you want. And it is a tremendously beautiful experience, for the simple reason that for the first time you find that the prison is not you. Your body is one thing; you are totally different: you are eternal, immortal. Bodies have come and gone; you have been here since eternity, and you will be here until eternity. -Osho, Beyond Psychology

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