| TRADITIONAL
JAPANESE REIKI |
| As defined by the Traditional Japanese Reiki Association |
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| At its simplest level the Chinese characters pronunced
ling qi in pinyin and reiki in Japanese simply mean a ghost. |
| It is also used to indicate a feeling of uneasiness. The
term found its way to Japan in the Han dynasty along with the Chinese characters
(called kanji in Japan) and Buddhism. |
| At a deeper level the characters are
used to describe the energy of an enlightened person that remains after
death. In Ancient (and modern) China the belief is that at the moment of
conception two 'spirits' fuse together: hun, the 'soul' and po, an earth
bound energy form. At the moment of death hun returns to a 'pool' (can explain
past lives) while the po disperses into the earth as the body decomposes.
An enlightened person can avoid the Taoist equivalent of endless rebirth
so important in Buddhism. |
| The term, as far as Usui is concerned, appears in two places: |
| 1. The Usui Memorial in outer Tokyo contains the phrase:"He
felt a great reiki over his head". This suggests a form of satori or spiritual
experience. The words are those of his student Gyuda, a Navy rear admiral.
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| 2. Usui's own handwritten affirmations: "The Usui reiki method
to improve the bodymind". The term is now an adjective meaning spiritual
(as of one's ancestors). The affirmations have only recently appeared in
the West in the original format (I brought a copy from Japan to Canada in
1994). |
| Some of Usui's followers called the system "Rei Hou" (spiritual
method). Tatsumi had not heard of the term as a description of the system. |
| All the Japanese teachers I have worked
with call the energy itself plain QI; never Reiki. This useage appears totally
Western in origin. In all other notes originating in Japan there is no other
mention of the Reiki term. |
| The Western rules of combination to not apply in the Mandarin
language which is the origin of the phrase |
| Alone, LING means 'celestial' or 'heavenly' and QI means
literally 'energy from the air we breath and the food we eat'. Combining
then does not create a word 'heavenly energy' in the sense that Mrs Takata's
followers have come to believe. |
| The way that the system was initally passed on with its
'oral tradition' is a likely source of the misuse of the term. |
| The Western concept of "Reiki being a special energy" makes
no sense, particularly if the term is at the same time translated as "universal
energy". Most Japanese character dictionaries (such as the excellent one
by Nelson) contain definitions 'ghost' and 'feeling of unease'. Of course
many small pocket dictionaries have included the Western interpretation
(but often no kanji are shown in these dictionaries). In Japan (and in TJR)
the term Reiki as applied to Usui's system is simply a [meaningless] sound
imported from the West to Japan and written in the katakana script reserved
for that purpose: |
| Visit the Traditional
Japanese Reiki Website at: http://www.reikilinks.com/home/tjreiki
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