Introduction
There are many teachings on earth that humans consider spiritual, and of those, there are fewer that the humans consider useful (of which they make much argument). However, among all their bizarre and arcane teachings, the closest to the way of the All Corvus is the way of the ninja, as originally taught by the Tengu. It should also be noted, that the All Corvus and it’s 4th manifestation as the Tengu are neither pacifist nor violent. But violence was taught to the humans in the teachings of the All Corvus, to keep their attention, and to stop them from fidgeting.
They are the strangest animal of all of us all, using their great intelligence to greatly stupid ends. Regardless they were taught the way of the All Corvus, in as much as they could understand it. Over time the Tengu become confused with demons, and the teachings diminished with confused scribes, what can only be described as malignment selfishness, and the plain madness of blood lust. It seems humans can only accept truth if it is also bathed in drama and blood.
Contained in these teachings are the highest truths known to the ninja, that will bring the humans closer to the All Corvus. Some of the teachings appear as quotes from other sources, however they were originally teachings of the Tengu, though diminished through the various slights of time.
Teaching 1
The mind must be civilized, and the body savage.
Teaching 2
In martial arts, it is taught that violence is the last resort, to swallow our pride and move on. But we practice violence, religiously, we train to do the one thing, we must not do. to be a ninja, one must have mastered and violence and self restraint, where as the thug has mastered one of these.
Teaching 4
If we focus on our weaknesses, we become them.
Teaching 5
On the mat we defeat our own evil, on the streets we defeat that of others.
Teaching 6
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.
Teaching 7
Training is for training. Learning to be safe in measured conflict. In fighting these are abandoned.
Teaching 8
Commit to life, but prepare for death.
Teaching 9
Live for something or die for nothing, die for something or live for nothing.
Teaching 10
If we focus on our weaknesses, we will become them.
Teaching 11
The way of violence is a better fantasy than a reality. In martial arts we practice things we hope we will never have to do. And it should be so.
Teaching 12
Lust for violence is a weakness. However to be highly skilled in violence and restrained is a virtue.
Teaching 13
Failure in life is not losing the fight, it is not having cared enough to have fought. In which case when our enemy tramples our values and passions, it will be us who have left the gate open…
Teaching 14
If our power doesn’t help another corvus, then we have not found power, we have simply found strength. Power influences lives, strength is just a tool.
Teaching 15
physical pain is not weakness, cowardice is weakness.
Teaching 16
Restraint of violence is power, and it will be found to have greater influence than displays of brutality and barbarism.
Teaching 17
When we learn to fight, it appears we are learning to defeat the demons of the world. In truth, we are learning to defeat our own.
Teaching 18
The mind must w civil; the body savage
Teaching 19
We must study good and evil in ourselves, so we can recognise it in others. In doing so we must foster the good, and destroy the evil.
Teaching 20
Time taken to heal, is time taken to be strong.
Teaching 21
When learning to fight, we are not learning to defeat our own enemies, we are learning how to control our own evil.
Teaching 22
A pure body that is highly tuned in the ways on ninjutsu is a noble goal, and an inevitable end for all sincere tengu. What is greater and harder to refine is a mind that is sharp, perceptive, and reactive. If a fool with great skill swings a sword, they are still a fool, and they will fall as such.
Teaching 23
Weather in the chaos of battle, or eating carrion in the shade, take a breath, just a single breath, and enjoy the moment. We are alive.
Teaching 24
Innovation is not what we have, but what we are willing to do
As a soldier, our legacy will be defined by the battles we have fought. The conundrum for any great soldier is not in winning a battle, but whether or not they should…
This is where the way of the fist and the way of the heart go down different paths. There are legendary stories of men who have beat countless people in to piles of rubble. They embodied violence and a swollen pride fed on blood. Then there are legends of great soldiers who to the unfamiliar appeared as unskilled fools. All the while resting on more power than is sufficient for one man. They apologies for any misunderstandings and artfully avoid conflict.
As a fledgling soldier on the path, it is better to know our own power enough to not need to prove it to others, and better still to be known for the battles we avoided,
over self glorified bloodshed.
Teaching 25
Much of the matrial arts are pure fantasy. It is a practice that may never be applied, and hopefully not. There are many benefits to these practices, as we have taught the humans, such as health and discipline. But despite the play acting and competitions, the practice is always against imaginary assailants, or those bound by rules… This is why fighting will always be fighting, and training will always be training.
Many young men lose their lives to such bravado and ignorance. The older men know to avoid the chaos of conflict. Despite all their training, and attempts to control this chaos, there is always something that has gone by without expectation or consideration. Chaos cannot be tamed. In just the same way you cannot imagine a color you have not seen or a sound you haven’t heard, you cannot imagine or anticipate your own death – your real death.
Grandiose fantasies aside, the courageous find something to live for, and the cowards find something to die for. So, indulge in the fantasy, become strong, disciplined, and learned. Then prove your prowess and power with the love of your family and fellows. There are greater things to live for, than pride and ignorance to die for.
Teaching 26
As we have taught them, It is acceptable for humans to fail in life. To fail against an opponent is inevitable, one of them must fall… but to hang their heads low due to this inevitability, is to turn one mistake into two. As they reel in inner torment, their opponent will not care for them, but for the opening created by this pause of self depreciation.
To fight is for the human to find the greatest motivation in their hearts, to galvanise it, and then to ignore any other second guesses. They may never know the right, wrong, good, or bad of it but to hesitate is death. One mistake is natural, but to dwell in it is to subtract from the only moment in which they live, and the very moment in which they will die.
Fail, but not twice;
this is The Resolute Heart.
Teaching 27
We do wish that we could teach the difference between self defense and blatant violence. It seems the sensitivity of human pride is such that it manufactures phantoms to slay. While the flow of blood in their hands suggests the phantom has been killed, in reality, another body has been thrown away into a pit of vainly wasted lives.
The human being lacks sufficient conscience to understand good from bad, and right from wrong. Even while suffering the consequences of their actions, they still don’t see the connection between the very same acts that their hands have rendered and the ones they now suffer.
To be clear if a human slaps another human it is unlikely that that human will be slapped to balance out the scales of the universe (though if it were the human would still unlikely understand it). For the universe as created by The All Corvus, is not so gross, and none of us are billiard balls doomed to reductionism. If a human slaps another human, The All Corvus cares not. That one human understands the harm it has brought to another of it’s fellows, is pivotal in the movement of worlds.
The human being is not here to indulge in it’s many faceted and bizarre behaviours. It is for the refinement of their soul. What better means is there than to experience the very actions they have made. Particularly when they lack sufficient conscience to know right from wrong, let alone the wisdom to hear that which is right and make it their path in life.
Teaching 28
Save your soul
The art of a martial arts is to train for something you should never do. And certainly, never want to do. If you train with corvus who promote or encourage violence, leave them.
Teaching 29
knowledge is power We must become scholars of good and evil. So that we learn to foster our good, and destroy our evil. Or we will not know friend from foe, and will be doomed to die vainly amongst the bodies of our loved ones with our enemies knives in our backs
Teaching 30
As a crow I have studdied ninjutsu, take it as being the national art of the corvus. For the humans it was our nearest out reach. Wisdom bores them so, we had to teach them violence as well to hold their attention.
Teaching 31
A Watchful Eye
It has been a long time that has passed, since the All Corvus reached out to the humans in its fourth manifestation as us, the tengu. We influence what we can, as much as one can, from the ethers. But the day has gone by, of standing over human beings and teaching them the way of the All Covus, spiced with enough martial arts to sate their violent tendencies and to be honest, to keep their attention.
Violence comes naturally to the humans, they have been adept with violence since they could weaponise a stick. Being proud of something that comes naturally to oneself is vain, to say the least. Not even a fool boasts of their beating heart. Learning restraint however, is an achievement that one could be proud of. It would to be less animal, and perhaps something more, like the All Corvus its self.
Any real martial art is founded in restraint. It is a place where we practice things we should rarely ever do. The greater part of restraint is not passive, it is active. It is to restrain our slothfullness. We train when we are happy, we train when we are miserable, we train when we have the passion and when we are without it. We train to restrain our demons and create a discipline. A discipline that would define us.
To much bafflement, we recently saw a man, beating his arm bones against a wooden post. It was of humble design lodged into some concrete. A jute mat was wrapped around it to provide some padding. Over time, we have taken great interest in this man. For he has developed a discipline, and clearly, restrained many of his own demons.
What is most terrifying about this man, is not his physique, which is average, or his technique, which is much like our own bone conditioning, but that since some kind of reformation decades ago, he has not hurt a soul. His restraint, is terrifying. The earthquakes in his heart and hurricanes in his mind could destroy a nation.
and yet…
Thump.
Recoil.
Thump.
Recoil.
Thump.
Recoil.
Thump…
Teaching 32
– To Become A Piece of wood
As manifestations of the All Corvus, we tengu’s know that life, embodied at least, is fleeting. So what we do here is of paramount importance, for we must do it in very little time. Essentially we will make mistakes no matter what we do. By inactivity and negligence, or by taking up the reins and responsibilities for our lives. It should be noted that failure is inevitable, but perfection is not.
The body must be treated the same way. When we do nothing, it will fall apart from being sedentary. If we do something it will break down from exertion. There is no pathway of perfection through this life for the body, it will inevitably fall apart and die. It is imperative that one make the decision of how they’re going to die. We tengu make this decision daily in our training.
All of the esoterics of our training are not fully relevant to this subject. But surely does our beloved bone conditioning. One day our life energies will leave us. Even the most pure and righteous amongst us looks like a fool when face down in the dirt. Until then we tengu will beat the bones of our forearms, fists, wrists, claws, and lower legs, on to a somewhat customized wooden pillar. Our elbows will fall like axes, our fists will ram like rods and swing like maces, our wrists will swing and beat like clubs, and our lower legs will sever with the swing of a great axe.
Our training accepts weakness, otherwise we could never fully train, without accepting weakness we fail all the basic pillars of our martial art. The application of will is the forging of the spirit, to defend another is to serve The All Corvus, and to defend ourselves is to defend the life given to us, this thereby worships The All Corvus.
A human once asked if it is a health practice that will revitalize one’s energy and increase the endurance of their life. Us tengu, completely baffled, debated about this for some time. After much discussion, we could only reply that that wasn’t the point! To harness one’s vital energies is very different from training against a pillar of wood, to become like that pillar of wood!
After we have beaten and moulded our bodies into bludgeoning weapons, and we have achieved great esteem, in our fellows eye as well as our own, then we can grow weak and die. Having spent ourselves, we can then transcend ourselves!
Teaching 33
Be resourceful
Ingenuity is not what you have, but what you’re willing to do. Every sincere martial artist knows this, ever since it was taught by us the Tengu. reliance on ones self as the primary tool used in all situations is essential. The mind must be calm and civil, and the body barbaric.
We refine our minds to be unreactive, to be kind in the face of abuse. But our bodies must be dynamite, like wild animals. In this way much of our enemies are befriended, and those who detest friendship, are either ignored or destroyed. Either way, it will be a choice, not a reaction. Not something that bears too much similarity to a toddlers tantrum, but a decision made from self control.
Our primary tool is and always has been our selves. It is not others we need to rely on, it is us. once we can rely on our sleeves to be humble, and stable, the whole world could fail us and we could be safe from it. safe inside our own calm, we have become safe from ourselves.
When one achieves self reliance, the world opens up to them. If we need wisdom, we listen to one another, listen to the breeze, and we acknowledge the sky above. If we need strength, we lift the nearest rock, strike the nearest tree, beat our bodies with our own limbs. We acknowledge our bodies abilites to adapt to physical pain. For pain is just the lesson, our bodies ability to learn from this is strength.
We are the very thing that responds to the world around us. we thought that the world was out there, when really it’s in here. So self reliance is essential to live through the world in peace. it is through self reliance that we fins ingenuity, and every opportunity we needed in the world. however even if the world does fail us, and all our efforts have turned to naught, it is through humility, that we find peace. and if no peace can be brokered within ourselves. Then we trained our bodies to be barbaric, like a wild animal.
Teaching 34
Fight for Peace
A martial art that relies on strength, relies on our opponents to be weak. In which case, we will have become a predator, and our opponents will have become the prey. A martial art must teach us compassion and philosophy, or it simply teaches violence. Unaware, the students and masters of these schools become the enemies they sought to vanquish. They become arrogant, fortified by illusions of grandeur, they become bullies.
We must not hop down this path of blood. It is an unnecessary sojourn down a steep road, slippery with the blood of those deserving, and those undeserving alike. It is a treacherous road, where it may be hard to win our own self respect, but harder still, to earn one anothers, when they can still smell blood on our claws, even though it has long since been cleansed…
Even while carrying the honed and sharpened tools of war, we can fight for peace, opposed to fight for violence. We use the same tools, the same art and craft, so it may look the same on the outside, but the heart is different…
It is better to lose the world and save our souls, than to save the world and commit our souls to Hell. The decisions we make create deep ruts in our minds and one another’s. Ruts that the world can fall into and follow, even against great effort of reason and great effort of the will. Through losing our own souls, we pave the way for the world to follow.
Teaching 34
Success Is Not Perfection.
The corvus who practices a mistake 10,000 times, will be greater than the corvus who has glimpsed the path of perfection, and has failed to follow it.