Ross Heaven’s The Spiritual Practices of the Ninja is a spiritual adventure and exploration. Comments on the book identify him as a ‘spiritual warrior’.
     He is engaged in a bold quest in chaotic and dangerous times, seeking insight and wisdom from warriors who have gone before. One cannot dispute his choice of the Japanese Ninja as a most appropriate ideal for his mission and a profound example of spiritual conquest over adversity.
     The introduction of Heaven’s book, titled Who were the Ninja?, commences with the following quote from the Chinese Kung Fu film star Bruce Lee:
     “There is no fixed teaching. All I can provide is an appropriate medicine for a particular ailment.”
     This leads to the identification of the Ninja as “a people whose very way of life was based on an absorption of all that was useful in order to develop their unique perspective on the world and the means of acting effectively within it.”
     It would be difficult to find a more conclusive way of establishing the Japanese Ninja as firmly in the tradition of Chinese Daoist thought.
     The following sentence confirms this perception:
     “Like Lee, their insights and approach came from their observations of nature, from testing and thus discovering what worked from the various spiritual, psychological and warrior traditions they encountered, and from their study of human beings and their reactions to life’s circumstances.”
     Ross Heaven has elsewhere quoted Stephen Hayes (the first American to be accepted as a personal student of Masaaki Hatsumi, the thirty-fourth master of Togakure-ryu Ninjutsu) that these warriors were ex-military men who fled China after the collapse of the T’ang dynasty and settled in Japan.
     In Japan they became teachers of martial arts, philosophy, and mysticism adapted from the esoteric knowledge of India and Tibet and the spiritual practices of Chinese monks and shamans.
     Heaven’s book is clearly designed to use the robust spiritual creed of this tradition of martial wisdom as an inspiration to those in the contemporary West seeking some form of practical enlightenment in troubling times.
     Both Daoist and Ninja traditions were profoundly practical, even if their immediate preoccupations were not identical.
     Heaven’s first chapter, The Initiation into Being: Boldness has Genius, introduces the reader to the processes and techniques of the book with the statement that “All initiations have three stages.” These are outlined then as the descent into mystery, the warrior’s challenge and the homecoming.
     This process of education is distinguished from contemporary practice where the focus is on gaining a narrow functional skill, not on becoming a well-rounded human being.
     To become this mature person, fire, water, air and earth are identified as the four elements that must be harmonised in the inner workings of the body, through various techniques. These include thoughtwork, breathwork, visualisation, body action, practical creativity and commitment. All will be familiar to anyone who has seriously pursued some degree of practice and understanding in one or another East Asian martial art tradition.
     Heaven then turns the focus in his second chapter to exploring The Map of the Four Gates. These are identified, a little confusingly, as five archetypal energies – Lover, Seeker, Magus, Soul Warrior and Mystic.
     They are introduced by a sentence from Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: “You have no more time for retreats or for regret. You only have time to live like a warrior.”
     The use of the work of Carlos Castaneda is appropriate, as from this chapter Heaven’s interest and insights appear to be stimulated more by global archetypes and contemporary concerns than by traditional practices unique to the Ninja.
     Having said this there are profound insights offered from the Ninja tradition such as:
     “The Ninja reckoned that 80 percent of our available energy is locked into habits that stem from generational and social conditioning. They became expert warriors by using their enemy’s reliance on habit against them and employing the element of surprise – the other 20 percent – themselves.”
     In this manner the reader is invited to rethink the world as it seems to have been constructed and to rediscover long neglected realities. Various passages contribute to this effort, such as:
     “To be immersed in nature is to be close to the gods, and all around us there are kami (nature spirits) – in the landscape, in the leaves, in the breeze...”
     And:
     “This is clarity, the understanding that we make our reality through conscious choice and find direction for ourselves by actively deciding how we will live.”
     Finally, in defining the mystic, Heaven states:
     “He does not teach, he invites learning. He does not preach, he invites discussion. He does not dictate, he invites self-discovery...”
     And:
     “If you allow it to, this inner knowing will speak to you from beyond the socialised self and offer you a truth and clarity you can depend upon when life throws new questions and doubts your way.”
     The Spiritual Practices of the Ninja is in the contemporary genre of work that seeks to explore spiritual truth as it developed in local traditions around the world and in the face of the practical challenges of uncertainty and survival.