Essays From The Master

It has been said that one has confronted the eight enemies of the path, the overt and the covert, the Komuso adept still has to face his own negative shadow. Because the true self of the adept on this path is known as the Kagejin or shadow self its negative opposite is known as the Shiro Ninja i.e. the white ninja, the ninja stripped of his powers. To be stripped of his powers as a ninja is to be a victim and unable to act, this inner foe is a union of the fear, anger, greed, hate, overconfidence, naiveté, denial and self-righteous punishment. One in this state of mind, body and spirit has been overcome by such things as self-pity and feels they cannot invest in and draw from the Silent Way because one has lost confidence in its reality. This is a shadow that has lost its darkness, a shadow that has lost its connection to the void and thus its connection to the Kokoro or the Heart of All things. One in the grip of being Shiro Ninja would know the methods and lore of the path but would not have the clarity, intent and focus of will to apply them. One that is Shiro Ninja would not be open to the world as the path defines it and would not sense the energies and essences that are used in the path, one cannot apply what one does not invest in. Any adept of any form of the Silent Way will be made to face this enemy and it is one that one must always be on guard against in one’s path. This is why self-discipline is a key to the Silent Way, as is also true of other martial arts, pointing to the fact that one can have many teachers but one master i.e. one’s self.

Often this enemy is encountered on the path first in ritual, as a part of the ninth test in the path, in which one is made to face one’s self as reflected one’s most negative expression. To know this expression in one’s self is to be able to find and exploit it in others so that confronting it is not only empowering but also a broadening of one’s own understanding of one’s self and others. In life this enemy is often encountered after a trauma that effects both the mind and body which stirs the emotions and cuts off the will. The Shiro Ninja can manifest more subtly also i.e. as a small voice that makes excuses and finds blame to explain why one will fail and thus has no reason to act, if one falls to that voice one will rely on it rather than the voice of the Kagejin that is in touch with the Heart of All things. There are those that hold that one can induce the state of Shiro Ninja marking it as a kind of curse or linking it to an attack that leads to that result but this is not the case. The closest one can come to this being any sort of attack is to enable the fears and so on of the target so that they will accept the comforts of self-pity and the like so that the target will heed the inner voice that leads to those comforts. Whether an attack or a state of being that one falls into one must ask how does one cure it or what can be done about it, is there an answer to it?

The primary answer to Shiro Ninja is to confront it and thus know it which leads to one knowing how to guard against and counter it, never assume that it is utterly defeated. With that foundation one’s best recourse is to train in one’s path and apply one’s skills in life so that one can know their reality and the greater reality that they propose. If one acknowledges the small voice that the Shiro Ninja often manifests as then one can also acknowledge the voice of the Kagejin and use it to counter that of the negative shadow. One can learn to actively use the Shiro Ninja as a signal for when one is close to stepping off of the path which risks one breaking one’s oaths to the path. With this understanding of the final enemy it should be clear how this is the only actual enemy that the rest on the path are just phantasms of. Even if one holds to the path issues will arise and thus the path has means to deal with them but an enemy that is known can be planned for which takes this understanding back to both self-discipline and training i.e. being one’s own master. To confront the negative shadow is to acknowledge one’s power as an individual and that the only foe is inside.