Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness

by Scott Jurek

emptiness, or an empty mind. This doesn’t mean sleepiness or inattention; the bushido concept of emptiness is more like that rush of surprise and expansiveness you get under an ice-cold waterfall. The empty mind is a dominant mind. It can draw other minds into its rhythm, the way a vacuum sucks up dirt or the way the person on the bottom of a seesaw controls the person on the top. When I hear a runner say he “runs his own race,” what I hear is bushido. Bushido is letting go of the past and the future and focusing on the moment. As Thoreau, an American practitioner (though he probably didn’t realize it) of bushido and a pretty good distance walker himself, wrote, “Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers … simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.” I created my own bushido exercises. I stood in icy rivers to strengthen my mind’s control over my body. I sat cross-legged and meditated, visualizing my breath, focusing. Another

Bushido & Thoreau