Part Five treats these one group at a time, with the argument. This is the list, unbroken, the way it was handed over.
1. Do not turn from the way, in any generation.
2. Do not contrive pleasure for yourself.
3. Hold no partiality in anything.
4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
5. Be without desire for yourself for the whole of your life.
6. Feel no regret over your own affairs.
7. Do not envy others their good or their ill.
8. On any road, do not grieve at parting.
9. Do not hold a grievance or a complaint against yourself or against others.
10. Do not let yourself be led by the feeling of attachment.
11. Have no preference in anything.
12. Do not seek comfort in where you live.
13. Do not pursue the taste of good food.
14. Do not keep possessions you no longer need.
15. Do not act on customary belief.
16. Beyond what is useful, do not collect weapons or practise with them.
17. Do not shun death in the way.
18. Do not seek to possess goods or fiefs for your old age.
19. Respect the gods and the buddhas; do not depend on them.
20. You may abandon your own body; you must not abandon your honour.
21. Never depart from the way of strategy.
Twenty of the twenty-one are refusals. Only the last is a positive instruction, and it says: keep doing this. That is the shape of the document, and it is why it reads so coldly. It is not a philosophy. It is a list of things not to do, written by a dying man, a week out.