Technology Rig Some days you wish had never started, then along comes one you hope will never end. Anything can happen in a day.

One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day and every night, from the morning of New Year’s Day through the night of New Year’s Eve.

As long as you keep death in mind at all times, and realize that the life that is here today is not certain on the morrow, for a knight, life is here today, uncertain tomorrow. Therefore he realizes everyday that he has this one day to serve, so he does not become bored or neglect any of his duties. Then when you take your orders from your employer, and when you look in on your parents, you will have the sense that this may be the last time-so you cannot fail to become truly attentive to your employer and your parents. This is why I say you also fulfill the paths of loyalty and familial duty when you keep death in mind.
In contrast to this, when you think you will be on the job forever, then trouble starts. You get bored, so you become inattentive and lazy. If people comfort their minds with the assumption that they will live a long time, something might happen, because they think they will have forever to do their work and look after their parents-they may fail to perform for their employers and also treat their parents thoughtlessly. Since no one takes personal responsibility for taking care of them, tasks pile up and there is nothing but snafus. These are all mistakes that come from counting on having time in the future.
The process of cultivating the practice of doing right begins with fear of being disrespected by those close to you, starting with your family and servants, then advances to refraining from doing wrong and deliberately doing right for fear of incurring the shame of being censured and ridiculed by society at large. Anywhere forbidden by the regulations of his employment, or disliked by his parents, he will avoid going even if he wants to. He will give up even those things that are hard to give up, just to avoid displeasing his employer and parents.

While it goes without  saying that an attitude of hardness and strength is considered foremost in the way of the warrior, if strength is all you have you will seem like a peasant turned samurai, and that will never do. You should acquire education as a matter of course, and it is desirable to learn things such as poetry and the tea ceremony, little by little, in your spare time. If you have no education, there is no way for you to understand the reasons of things past or present. Then no matter how smart or cunning you may be, in actual practice dealing with events you will run into many obstacles.

How to deal with a knight who is corrupting your overlord

Now even if the whole establishment hated the knight in question, who makes up the tax rolls, denouncing him as a devil in the house and an enemy of the overlord, with nine out of ten testifying to his iniquities, seeing no alternative but to take the matter to court and argue their case verbally with-out dirtying their hands, the problem would hardly be resolved privately—the overlord's whole organization could be investigated by the central government, and if things grew worse it could become a public scandal and a cause for government action. Throughout history, there has never been a case where a baron who was unable to manage his establishment and therefore had to resort to the central government actually had the matter resolved that way and maintained his own position. Just as in the metaphors of killing an ox to straighten its horns, or burning down a shrine to catch a mouse, when the overlord loses his position the personnel of the whole establishment, major and minor, are all disenfranchised.

In this case, the logical thing to do is to seize the villain, that devil of the house, that enemy of the overlord, and do away with him as you will—run him through, or strike off his head—and then when that is done satisfactorily you immediately disembowel yourself, committing suicide. Then there will be no government inquiry, and the overlord's position will not be affected. Thus the personnel of the establishment will be secure, and the country will be peaceful. In this way you become a role model for knights of latter days—loyal, dutiful, and courageous—a hundred times better than one who kills himself to follow his overlord in death.