Essays From The Master

In a previous article the Way of the Ninja or Nin Do was compared to Budo or the Way of the Warrior via the code of the ninja versus the code of the samurai. There are some that have put forward that Nin Do or Nin Po is a “higher order” of the Silent Way and this may be so for other ryu or schools of the path but not for the Komuso Ryu. In the Komuso Ryu Nin Do is the whole of the path composed of both the Kuji Kiri or esoteric skills and Ninjitsu or mundane methods of the ninja. In the west Kuji Kiri is usually explained as Ninja Magick by the Komuso Ryu while the same or similar skills are taught in other schools of the Silent Way as Mikkyo or “secret teachings” or the “secret doctrine.” Ninjitsu or Ninjutsu is the collected methods of the ninja including but is not limited to the martial sciences, stealth and herbalism to give but a few examples; the methods of the ninja differ from school to school. In the Komuso Ryu much of the martial training is cloaked in the symbolism of the esoteric much as in Africa martial skills were hidden in dance or in China Kung Fu was hidden in Chinese Opera after the fall of the Shaolin.

While it is normal to call the system Komuso Ninjitsu the formal name of the system is Komuso Nin Do or “the Monk of the Void’s way to endure through stealth.” Komuso can also be translated as the “wandering or vagabond monk” evoking the ties between this ryu of the Silent Way and Vagabond or Beggar Kung Fu which has ties to the Mao Shan Taoist sect whose teachings parallel those of Kuji Kiri even using some of the same mudra or hand seals. The martial as esoteric training can be seen in the training of Shugendo whose adherents use the elements to harness their bodies and through their bodies their minds and spirits not dissimilar to the training of the Shaolin but with a focus on stealth and assassination. This is not to say that the esotericism of the Komuso Ryu is a blind for the martial arts or that the martial skills are a blind for an esoteric sect, rather the mundane martial skills hidden or overt used by the ryu work and one gets from the esoteric what one invests in it. For some Komuso Ninjitsu is a martial art with esoteric trappings and for others it is spiritual path that includes specialized martial skills.

Shugendo means “the way of developing supernatural power” but Shugenja i.e. adepts of Shugendo do far more than performing rituals, forcing themselves to endure the extremes of nature to build their bodies and through that the mind and spirit; this is also true of the Komuso Ryu. The Armed Forces of the US and other nations have used such things as Remote Viewing or seeing with the mind over a long distance in order to locate missiles and so on terming such things as Psi Ops but cover elements of it by also including psychological warfare and for them it is not magick but science. Much of the difference between magick and science is that the language of magick tends to be symbolic and poetic and science’s language seeks only to be functional. The techniques of the Fudoshin or immovable mind can be defined as psychology, mysticism or magick, for the ninja it is the results that the techniques produce that matter not the terms used to define it or whether anyone accepts the said methods are real or not. A ninja is “one that endures through stealth” and it is that ability or power that makes a ninja an effective spy, assassin and so on. Ultimately Komuso Nin Do is a body of knowledge how one applies that knowledge can make Komuso Nin Do a way of life, a means of death or both as one whole.