Death Poems
The Rinzai school continued the practice of the katsu, as can be seen through the examples of the death poems of certain Rinzai priests:
Katsu!On the death bed — Katsu!
Let he who has eyes see!
Katsu! Katsu! Katsu!
And once again, Katsu!
Katsu!
I often cried Katsu! to no avail.
And now, while dying,
Once more to cry Katsu!
Won't change a thing.
In Japanese history (and other countries as well), elderly martial artists who practiced the arts all their lives were honored and respected by their students and the population of the towns they live in. In particular for two distinct reasons. The obvious one was their ability to hurt and kill people. The other fact not well known to most people was these elderly martial artists' abilities to heal people. Martial artists placed (some still do) much value on healing and resuscitation arts as they did on their fighting techniques. These arts are known as "Katsu of Kappo", gave the practitioner the ability to restart someone's heart, resume breathing or treat other injuries. These tactics were a natural outgrowth of martial arts practices where the need to reverse techniques was commonplace.
Gary Kwack, The Martial Art/Healing Connection,April/May 2003 Massage and BodyWork
Read more about this topic: Katsu (Zen)
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or poems:
“Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“I tell it stories now and then
and feed it images like honey.
I will not speculate today
with poems that think they’re money.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)