Japanese etymology: 覚悟しろ Kakugo shiro
When you watch Japanese films, you sometimes see the protagonist or villain say 覚悟しろ “Kakugo Shiro” right before they start fighting each other.
It conveys the message “Prepare to die” or “Prepare to face consequences” but it’s originally a Buddhist term that means something quite different.
覚 Kaku and 悟 Go both refer to reaching enlightenment. So 覚悟しろ is like saying, “Nirvana, nirvana, do!” 😂
When Buddhism first came into Japan over a thousand years ago and it was time to spread it to peasants, I think what happened was that they had trouble explaining nirvana.
“Nirvana is a profound state of liberation from suffering, attained through practice,” they might have said. But people don’t catch on with Zen riddles immediately. So maybe peasants were like, “Isn’t that kinda like heaven?”
And the preacher was like, “Well, yeah, for lack of a better word, it’s kinda like heaven.”
And then everyone was like, “Nirvana is heaven!” 😂
So now, nirvana and heaven are mixed up in the general mind of Japanese people. So perhaps that’s why 覚悟しろ came to mean, “Prepare to die.”
So the correct response to 覚悟しろ should be: “…Now? I hear that Buddhist monks spend decades trying to reach the first level of enlightenment and you would like me to do a double nirvana at this very moment?”
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