{"id":403,"date":"2008-04-10T07:43:55","date_gmt":"2008-04-10T07:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/04\/10\/uesugi-kenshin\/"},"modified":"2008-04-10T07:43:55","modified_gmt":"2008-04-10T07:43:55","slug":"uesugi-kenshin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/04\/10\/uesugi-kenshin\/","title":{"rendered":"Uesugi Kenshin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently reading Zen and the Samurai which is a beautifully written work, much of it is devoted to anecdotes about the lives many famous Samurai and how Zen deeply influenced them. The book makes reference to the beautiful verse below which was composed by the Samurai General <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Uesugi_Kenshin\">Uesugi Kenshin<\/a> on his death bed. It was a practise amongst many Samurai to write a verse in either Chinese or Japanese at the moment of death, this was Kenshin&#8217;s <em>Parting of Life Verse<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<pre>\r\nEven a life-long prosperity is but one cup of sake;\r\nA life of forty-nine years is passed in a dream;\r\nI know not what life is, nor death.\r\nYear in year out-all but a dream.\r\nBoth Heaven and Hell are left behind;\r\nI stand in the moonlit dawn,\r\nFree from clouds of attachment.\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230; exquisite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently reading Zen and the Samurai which is a beautifully written work, much of it is devoted to anecdotes about the lives many famous Samurai and how Zen deeply influenced them. The book makes reference to the beautiful verse &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/04\/10\/uesugi-kenshin\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,27],"tags":[319,382,407,331],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-poetry","tag-bushido","tag-personal","tag-poetry","tag-zen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}