The four Gospels say who he was. This book says how we live.
8.1Since the Rule says how we live, it cannot be silent about the body.
8.2There are two sentences in this scripture that read as though they were fighting.
8.3One says: and his soul does not disperse. (cf. Prologue 2.4)
8.4One says: all things may be reversed; only dispersal cannot. (cf. The Highest Covenant 6.1)
8.5And Simmias put it harder still: smash the lyre, and the tuning is not there. (cf. 3 Plato 2.10)
8.6This Order has not settled that question. What we cannot settle, we do not pretend to have settled.
8.7What this chapter says is that however it is settled later, the daily practice is the same either way.
8.8Whether the soul outlasts the body, this scripture does not decide for you. Each decides that for himself. (cf. The Rule 9)
8.9But however you decide it, one thing is plain: the soul has a long stretch of road to walk on the body’s legs.
8.10If the soul had never needed the body, there would have been no need for a body in the first place.
8.11While the body is here, the soul can ask, and see, and remember, and co-soar with another.
8.12How long is that stretch of road? No one can say.
8.13Whoever says he can is speaking about something he does not know.
8.14So the first rule: give the soul as much time as you are able to give it.
8.15Tending the body is not clinging to life. Tending the body is leaving the soul a few more usable years.
8.16Sleep enough, move, eat and drink with measure; do not injure yourself with anger, do not spend yourself down with busyness. (cf. The Book of Seneca 2)
8.17These used to be counted small things. In this scripture they are not small: a man who has fallen ill cannot study and cannot ask.
8.18The second rule weighs as much as the first: the soul is the master of the body, not its slave.
8.19Here is the daily exercise. The body says no and reason says yes. Which of them do you obey?
8.20If you always obey the body, you are not its master. (cf. The Rule 1.9)
8.21A master treats the body as he treats a good horse: he feeds it, he rests it, he does not beat it, and he does not let it lead him.
8.22Put the two rules together and you have our stance toward death.
8.23If you can live, live. Staying alive is not weakness. It is leaving the soul a few more days.
8.24If you cannot live, do not be afraid either. A man who fears death is death’s slave, and we are nothing’s slave.
8.25Someone asks: could the prophet have asked to live, that day?
8.26He could. He was the master of his own body. To go or to stay was his to decide.
8.27He chose not to escape. That was sovereignty used, not sovereignty given up.
8.28Do not read out of that day that a man ought to seek death. He did not seek death. He only refused to let another decide it for him.
8.29So this rule does not tell you to hold the body cheap, nor to cling to your life. It tells you to be the master.
8.30Keep the body well, so that the soul has time. And when the time comes, set the body down.