Essays From The Master

It is held by some that the roots of the Ninja are to be found among the truths of Shugendo or “the way of preternatural power” which is based around building personal power by exposing one’s self to the elements of nature and the forces behind and the personalities of those elements. It is held by others that the roots of the Ninja in Japan are to be found among the practices of the Lin Kuei of China who perfected the arts of stealth through mimicry of animals such as the fox or the tiger. Could it not be possible that some of the Lin Kuei came to Japan and augmented their shamanic animal mimic Kung Fu, both the spiritual and the martial, by applying those same states of altered mind and body to the elements and local spirits? It is clear from history that the same skill in being unseen can just as easily be applied to being in harmony with nature. Harmony with nature can be seen as resulting in an absence of self or building one’s self so that one can move with nature while retaining one’s self. In the second approach nature serves as a crucible to produce the jewel of the self air stimulates the senses, water when hot can open the gates of the body or when cold close them, fire can draw out venom or cause the bio-electrical aura to rise and resist said fire to give a few examples.
By working with the elements of nature in the outer world the elements of nature within are built up and the ninja learns how and when to blend or not with nature to go unperceived or use natural forces in such a way so that the humanoid body transcends what the masses believe to be the limits of the body. The same stillness that allows the ninja to be in a room and not be noticed and thus strike using a dart is a stillness that allows someone to be able to discern the patterns of nature that some perceive as the voice of the spirits or the universal mind. By mimicking animal movements and behaviors one can get past the constraints of the social compact and find the beast within and use its force to balance and aid to intellectual freed from the limits of the myth of civilization. By combining the building of personal power through the forces of nature and the unleashing of one’s inner bestial nature beyond the limits of the social order the result is a being with the raw force of a beast and the intellect of a man that can blend with or direct the forces of nature i.e. a ninja.
In pursuit of either the martial or occult truth embodied by the ninja one should not avoid the other because to do so puts one out of balance and thus open to attack. If we take the tact that the Silent Way began as a purely spiritual path or as a means of survival born of mimicking nature the fact remains the way remains the way. To be able to be in harmony with or direct nature one must build the individual spirit in the same way that one must in order to move and act in stealth with speeds and strengths that seem to defy the limits of nature. No matter what one does with one’s path one must build one’s spirit; individual that walks the path is the foundation of any path no matter how that path is applied. It is one’s self that is the flame that casts whatever shadow the flame is cultivated to throw and this flame is like in nature if not the same flame that is eternity whose shadows are the phenomenal world. It is the eternal flame that the ninja is a shadow of making it so that the modern adherent of Nin Do has an option that the ninja of old rarely ever had, the option to be a shadow of death or the shadow of mystery pointing to the truth within.

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