    
The background of Reiki
In Reiki the history of the system and how it
developed has become an important part of the western system. The only
information available was based on the teaching stories that Madame Takata
taught about Mikao Usui, the founder of the Reiki system.
Since 1998 a number of western Reiki masters have made contact in Japan
and learned that Reiki continues to be used in Japan up to the present day.
The History of Reiki
“Virtue
is what you obtain through cultivation and training, merit is to spread and
carry out the instruction and salvation. The great founder is someone with great
virtue as well as great merit. From ancient times, every person who started a
new theory or religion were considered that way. Master Usui should be one of
them”
(Taken from the memorial to Usui’s
virtue. Saihoji Temple. Tokyo)
Dr Mikao Usui was born on 15th
August 1865 in the village of ‘Taniai-mura’ (now called Miyama-cho) in the
Yamagata district of Gifu prefecture Kyoto. He was a Doctor of Philosophy, an
honoury degree.
The Usui family were Tendai Buddhist
followers. They came from a Samurai background and were ‘Hatamoto’, that means
they were from the higher Samurai ranks. It is not yet known how this applied to
the Usui family at that time. However Hatamoto were allowed to carry two swords
and have retainers, they would also have had land and station (according to
rank).
The Usui family crest was Moon and Stars;
these were the symbols of ‘Myoken Bodhisattva’, the icons for Samurai and the
family crest was of the Chiba’s famous Samurai Clan.
As a child he studied in a Tendai Buddhist
monastery school, entering at an early age. He followed the Buddhist teachings
all his life and became a very spiritual man.
He practiced Martial Arts from the age of 12
years, eventually reaching the highest levels of Menkyo Kaiden by his mid
twenties. He continued training in the Arts and reached high levels in several
others of the most ancient Japanese methods.
His memorial states that he was a talented
hard working student, and his knowledge of medicine, psychology, fortune telling
and theology of many religions around the world, including the Kyoten (Buddhist
Bible) was vast.
He married and his wife’s name was Sadako,
they had a son (born 1907) and a daughter.
1868, three years after Usui’s birth, was a
very important time in Japan’s history, the restoration of rule by the Meiji
Emperor-‘The Meiji Restoration. Mutsuhito, who was to reign until 1921, selected
a new reign title- Meiji, or Enlightened Rule- to mark the beginning of a new
era in Japanese history.
This led to Japan opening its doors to the
outside world after many years of being a closed country. Japan underwent a
period of rapid industrialisation. Such a period of change created a climate of
‘wanting to keep hold of traditional culture’. Japan was looking for a spiritual
direction and people wanted to rekindle and maintain ancient traditions, while
embracing the new.
This is what Usui did when he adapted Reiki.
In the time he when he was growing up, Japan was a melting pot of new ideas,
with many new spiritual systems and healing techniques being developed. Reiki
was one of these systems.
In relation to the traditional western Reiki
story as told by Takata, it should be noted that for over two centuries,
starting as early as 1641, all Europeans with the exception of the Dutch, had
been expelled. Chinese and the Dutch had been confined to Nagasaki only. No
Japanese were allowed to leave the country. Christianity was declared illegal;
all Japanese were forced to register at Buddhist Temples. Those Japanese who
refused to renounce Christianity were executed, so were a number of European
missionaries who refused to leave the country. This seems to have been the case
up to 1868.
Usui sensei studied and may have travelled to
western countries and China several times, to learn and study western ways. This
was encouraged during the Meiji Era. As a result he experienced a variety of
occupations such as public servant, office worker, industrialist, reporter,
politician’s secretary, missionary, supervisor of convicts. At some point in his
life Usui became a Buddhist Monk/Priest (maybe what we in the west call a lay
priest), but still had his own home, he did not live at the temple. He was a
‘Zaike’ in Japanese-priest having a home.
On two occasions he undertook a the Lotus
repentance meditation, a fasting meditation lasting 21 days, which included
sitting and walking meditations.
On his memorial it says that at one point
this took place on Mount Kurama. The sacred mountain…..Kurama Yama……Horse Saddle
Mountain. Despite what the memorial says, it was not usual for this sort of
meditation to have taken place on Kurama.
At the time of these meditations, Usui had
been teaching his spiritual system for several years.
His system was called a ‘Ronin’ (leaderless)
system, this was to ensure that no one-person could lay claim to the system then
or in the future. This would keep the system freely available for all who wanted
to practice it.
As well as practicing and teaching his
‘Spiritual Teachings’ in his home, he also gave healing.
The first teachings ‘Shoden’ were made
available to anyone who desired to learn them. His skills must have been
extraordinary, as his fame spread very quickly throughout Japan. His teachings
were very popular among the older people who saw them as a return to the older
‘Spiritual Practices’. This was all taking place at a time in Japan when the
government was making many changes, especially in relation to religion and
westernisation.
The Usui system was specifically
for teaching people how to heal themselves. Healing would be given to them, and
then they were taught how to heal themselves. Usui’s system was a truly
Spiritual one based on affirmations and leading a proper life.
For today only: Do not anger-Do not
worry
Be humble
Be honest in your work
Be compassionate to yourself and others
The teachings were Buddhist in origin,
(although he included Shinto energy practices for those who came from that
background).
He brought together these various strands in
a unique way that allows anyone to be connected permanently to a source of
healing energy. Although Reiki is generally promoted in the west as a healing
system, it seems that the original impetus for the development of Reiki was the
personal benefits that would be experienced through the system: to know ones
purpose in life and be content, to heal oneself and find ones spiritual path,
and ultimately to achieve ‘Satori’- enlightenment. He taught healing for
yourself and others, emphasising health and happiness. So this gives us the
meaning of his ‘Spiritual Practice’.
Mikao Usui died from a stroke in a town
called Fukuyama in Hiroshima-Ken. He was 62 years of age. Even the night before
he died, he practiced healing.
One of the last students of Usui was a man
named Hayashi…
Dr Hayashi was a Reiki master who worked in a
clinic in Tokyo. He was taught by Usui sensei in 1925 at the age of 47. Dr
Hayashi had a small 8- bed clinic and treated a minimum of two practitioners per
person. It was he who introduced the hand positions used today in western
Reiki. Working with more practitioners on one person, more hand positions were
needed. Dr Hayashi only trained with Usui for 6-9 months and he changed the name
of what he taught after Usui’s death; this was the Japanese ‘right thing to do’
following the death of a teacher. He was one of the original members of the
Gakkai, but left because of changes that were being made.
The Gakkai used the name Reiki in a general
way as the name given by those trying to describe the system after Usui’s death.
Hayashi/Eguchi may have initiated this.
It seems likely that the reason Hayashi began
to use symbols and change the emphasis of how Reiki was used, was because of his
Methodist faith.
We should remember that Dr Usui taught the
individual, not a generalised system to all. So if someone came from the
Buddhist religion there would be meditations, or if a Shinto follower then
Kotodama, sacred sounds, would be used.
Consequently, when Hayashi and the naval
officers, (who founded the Gakkai) were taught by Usui (at the same time) they
had some difficulties in perceiving the energy. This may be because they came
from differing belief systems – some were Christian, some part Christian and
part Shinto and others were part Christian and part Buddhist.
So Usui used a system of symbols he was
familiar with, which had some significance in Japanese religion. Symbols gave an
experience of the energy. They were used as tools, if you wished to do such and
such you used the appropriate symbol.
This seems to have led Hayashi to introduce a
more structured approach to the practice and teaching of Reiki and to lessen the
emphasis on Reiki being a ‘spiritual path’ in the Buddhist/Shinto mould. He used
a complicated attunement process that involved the use of symbols, his training
courses were for a fixed number of days, and he developed sets of hand positions
that could be used by multiple practitioners in his clinic.
Dr Hayashi kept detailed records of the
treatments that were given and used this information to create ‘standard’ hand
positions for different ailments. These were published in the training manual
for the Gakkai students. However he still expected his students to be able to
use advanced scanning or intuitive techniques to work out their hand positions,
with the ‘standard’ hand positions as backup.
Dr Hayashi would teach the first level of
Reiki over a five day structured course, with each day’s training taking 90
minutes, and the students would receive attunements on four occasions during
this period.
There doesn’t seem to be anything significant
about the number four, other than it was more than one!
Hawayo Takata
In 1935 a thirty-five year old woman from
Hawaii, Madame Takata, arrived in Tokyo for hospital treatment. While there she
learnt of Reiki and visited the clinic of Chujiro Hayashi. She was cured of her
illness and became very interested in learning Reiki herself. She persuaded Dr
Hayashi to teach her, probably the only lady at that time to have been taught.
Although it seems he did teach his wife.
Originally she returned to Hawaii with the
first two Reiki levels, later Dr Hayashi visited Hawaii and gave her the master
level attunement.
Mrs Takata opened a clinic before the war and
practiced successfully. She was also given permission to work in hospitals,
subject to being requested by the patient. Madame Takata became a Reiki master
in February 1938.
This marked the beginning of Reiki healing in
the west; from Hawaii it soon reached Canada, America and then Europe.
Master Chujiro Hayashi passed over on May 10th
1941.
Mrs Takata was responsible for introducing
Reiki to the west, and before her passing on December 11th 1980 she
had attuned 22 Reiki masters.
It cannot have been easy for Madame Takata,
teaching a Japanese healing system in America after the Second World War. This
may be why she modified and changed the Reiki that she had learnt so that it
would be more acceptable to the western people she dealt with.
She also put together a story about the
history of Reiki that would be more acceptable to the American public. Out went
Mikao Usui, Tendai Buddhist and in came Mikao Usui Christian Theologian, who had
travelled all over the world to discover a healing system that explained the
healing miracles of Jesus.
After the death of Madame Takata, Reiki split
into two schools. They were the Radiance Technique, and the Reiki Alliance
(founded by Phyllis Furamoto, Takata’s granddaughter).
Mrs Furamoto was asked by a number of
Takata's surviving Masters to take on the role of leader and this is where the
term the “Grand Master and Lineage Bearer” of Reiki evolved.
It should be pointed out
that Mikao Usui never envisaged that a Grand Master designation would be passed
on to anyone. His was leaderless/ ‘Ronin’ system.
Contact Information
Please feel free to contact us by the
following:
Telephone
+61 (0)400 364 990
Postal
PO Box 239, Camden, NSW, 2570, Australia
Electronic mail
ahs@akaelah.com
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