Valuing life

"Men go out of life and into death. The ministers of life are thirteen (the senses, etc.). The ministers of death are thirteen. Human life hastens to the place of death in thirteen ways (by the undue exercise of the senses and limbs). And why is this? It is because the life men are striving to live is only the gross (physical) life (of intensified activity). I have heard it said, that a man that is good at taking care of his life may travel over the country without meeting a rhinoceros or a tiger, and may enter an armed host without fearing their steel. The rhinoceros finds in him no place to insert his horn; the tiger finds no place to fix his claw; the weapon finds no place to receive its blade. And why is this? It is because he is beyond the reach of death."