Ninja Combat Survival Psychology

There’s a con­cept in authen­tic Ninja Mar­tial Arts train­ing known as SHINSHIN SHINGAN, which lit­er­ally means “god eyes, god mind,” a good translit­er­a­tion into Eng­lish is “Obtain­ing the mind and eyes of God.” this con­cept can be found in the scrolls of both Gyokko Ryu Koshi­jutsu and Togakure Ryu Ninpo.

At first this may seem like a reli­gious idea, even a blas­phe­mous one by West­ern stan­dards. How­ever, it most def­i­nitely is not. The ancient Japan­ese under­stand­ing of “God” or “Gods” is much more in line with con­cepts of ele­men­tal shamanic cul­tures through­out the world. It pre­dates the West­ern monothe­is­tic idea, or more accu­rately the Mid­dle East­ern con­cept of the One True God, by thou­sands of years. The Japan­ese notion of Shin (as in Shinto) or  KAMI “Spirit” has more to do with an intu­itive shamanic under­stand­ing, appre­ci­a­tion and rev­er­ence for the nat­ural world then the Mid­dle East­ern con­cept of a sin­gle cre­ator of the universe.

Many impor­tant Asian con­cepts relat­ing to both mar­tial arts and med­i­ta­tion train­ing are often couched in metaphor­i­cal or poetic lan­guage. So if “Shin­shin Shin­gan” is not a reli­gious con­cept in the con­ven­tional sense, what is it, and what does it pos­si­ble have to do with per­sonal pro­tec­tion? “Obtain­ing the mind and eyes of God” is code for per­ceiv­ing things as they really are and not how you would like them to be. This has far reach­ing appli­ca­tions in real world self defense and ulti­mately is one of the essen­tial keys of real­iz­ing enlight­ened consciousness.

Many mil­i­tary lead­ers have either grossly under­es­ti­mated their enemy’s strengths, greatly over­es­ti­mated their own strengths or both. If the com­man­der could have per­ceived things with the mind and eyes of God, that’s to say that if they could have PERCEIVED THINGS AS THEY ARE and not as they would have liked them to be, the suc­cess of his cam­paigns would have been greatly increased.

In Real­ity Based Self Defense the appli­ca­tion of this con­cept will keep us out of a lot of trou­ble. If we truly see things as they are, we will per­ceive dan­ger before it turns to vio­lence, and if we do engage in vio­lence to pro­tect our­selves, we will only use the appro­pri­ate amount of force to sur­vive the attack.

To obtain the mind and eyes of God, train hon­estly and con­sis­tently with a mas­ter­ful Tai­jutsu teacher.

Tags: mental preparation mma survival