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Who you are. July 13, 2014

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“Love is inseparable from knowledge.”
—Saint Macarius of Egypt

“The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, can not come to you from any form, possession, achievement, person, or event—through any thing that happens. That joy can not come to you—ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.”
—Eckhart Tolle

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
—The Gospel According to Saint Matthew

So many of us separate emotion from knowledge, religious experience from knowledge, joy from knowledge. But the great sages tell us that joy comes from knowledge, love comes from knowledge, compassion comes from knowledge: knowledge of ourselves, knowledge of others, knowledge of the universe and our place within it.

Just for today, be kind.

Laws or lives? June 17, 2014

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“It is God’s children who are sacred to God, not laws. Laws are to protect or assist God’s children.”

—Fr. Joseph F. Girzone

Throughout history, the people who’ve exalted laws (or rules, or what have you) above lives, who are the most rigid and unbending, who punish every least infraction and refuse to tolerate any imperfection, are also the most insecure and paranoid. If you don’t think exactly like me, write exactly like me, perform a ritual exactly like me, why, you must be implying that there’s something wrong with me and my way of doing things! And I can’t tolerate that. Fifty lashes and ten nights in the black cells for you, heretic! And next time, it’ll be the stake.

This is in such dreadful, ironic contrast to the great souls who often inspired these shriveled little souls to follow them. The Lord Jesus broke rules all the time, eating with sinners and even—gasp!—tax collectors. Mahatma Gandhi was jailed numerous times for practicing ahimsa, nonviolent resistance to bad laws. The great Sufi mystic Rumi was a rigid follower of the rules until his wild and wonderful teacher, Shams of Tabriz, showed him the truth of what was indispensable and what was not, and freed him from the chains of conformity. Dogen Zenji, the founder of Soto Zen, was relentlessly persecuted by other orders of warrior monks who felt his pure teachings made them look bad.

Mother Teresa, Saint Francis, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh—all bent, broke, or discarded laws and rules when they ceased to serve “God’s children.” So did Martin Luther and Martin Luther King. I’m sure you can think of many other examples, past and present.

Let’s look at this from a Reiki perspective. From what we’ve learned in the past couple of decades about Usui Founder and his practice of Reiki, the only rules were the Five Reiki Principles (aka Precepts, Ideals). Usui Founder instructed those who undertook the practice of Reiki to recite them aloud, morning and evening, with hands in gassho (prayer position, i.e., palm to palm). And, of course, to try to live them as well: Just for today, not to get angry, not to worry, to be grateful, to work hard, and to be kind. In other words, to live fully in the moment and see its wonders and possibilities.

This is true healing. How can you be angry (worry turned outward) or worried (fear turned inward) if you are fully present in the now? And if you’re not afraid—not worried, not angry—you have all the inner room in the world to feel happy and to be grateful and kind. You’ll have burst the fear balloon that’s filling you and preventing you from enjoying life to the full in every moment and sharing that enjoyment with every living creature you meet. Yes, it’s hard work to learn to live in the perpetual present, which is why “Work hard” is one of the Reiki Principles. But this form of work will set you free.

But I digress. Point being, Usui Founder apparently imposed no other rules on his students. He used no symbols, performed no attunements, had no set hand positions, and taught his students differently according to their abilities, strengths, and aptitude for learning the teachings. Almost everything that we thought we knew about Reiki was added later, by his students and their students, including the exclusive focus on hands-on and distant healing as opposed to the inner teachings, the Reiki Way, the road to anshin ritsumei, satori, enlightenment. In other words, the road Usui Founder himself had taken.

There is a history within the Western Reiki tradition of teaching each according to their abilities and aptitude, as Usui Founder did. Hayashi Sensei did so, giving Hawayo Takata Sensei different teachings from those he gave his Japanese students, and Takata Sensei did so when she tailored her teachings to each of her Masters, drawing the symbols slightly differently for some, changing the order of the Principles for one, the Rev. Beth Gray, who was an intuitive, so they made more intuitive sense, and so on. From this tradition, many forms of Reiki have arisen in the West, which enables those who are drawn to the Reiki path to choose the one or ones that speak to them, and which ultimately allowed Reiki to bloom around the world. Thank you, Usui Founder, Hayashi Sensei, Takata Sensei, and all teachers for allowing this flexibility!

Not that precision has no virtues: Like meditation, like hado breathing, like many other mental and physical exercises, it can strengthen focus. Placing your Reiki hands just so on someone’s body; sending distant healing just so; drawing the symbols just so, and in an exact series of patterns; performing attunements just so, and so on, can be part of the “work hard” Principle that helps you develop the inner and outer focus you need to proceed on your Reiki path. But becoming attached to doing things just so, rather than seeing the need for compassion and evolution, or even worse, attacking those who seek or practice a different way, is to become attached to the rigidity of the law and to abandon God’s children.

If you find yourself straying in this direction, ask yourself: What are you really afraid of? That your Reiki isn’t as “good” or as “powerful” as someone else’s Reiki? Then bring your attention back to the recitation and practice of the Reiki Principles. They are the broom, the wind, that will sweep your heart and mind and soul clean.

Just for today, practice the Principles.

A rare and difficult thing. May 4, 2014

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“The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing. It is almost a miracle. It is a miracle.”

—Simone Weil

We all have plenty of problems, pains, and issues to get through. So do our families, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Who has time to add on the countless strangers who are suffering? Okay, maybe we mail off a check to the local homeless shelter or animal shelter a couple of times a year, or volunteer in a soup kitchen or delivering Meals on Wheels. But do we actually give our attention to the sufferers?

In today’s hectic, multitasking world, where everyone’s texting and nobody’s even looking anyone else in the eye, even in their own families, the concept of giving attention—our full, undivided attention, for as long as it’s needed—is as alien as, say, shooting chia pets into space and hoping they colonize distant galaxies. That’s part of why Simone Weil calls it a miracle.

The other part is that sufferers aren’t inherently the young, thin, attractive, glamorous, rich, vibrant people we’re all told we should try to associate with: the winners. Instead, people who are suffering are life’s losers, the ones battling chronic diseases, crippling diseases, progressive diseases, mental illness. The ones who have been abandoned to die in gutters, covered with maggots, while everyone else looks the other way and enjoys their lunch.

This is why Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta is a saint, a maker of miracles: She had the capacity to give her full attention to every sufferer she encountered, to see them, at that moment, as the only person in her whole world, to see each and every sufferer as “Christ in His distressing disguise.” I wish the Church would allow women into the priesthood, but my greatest disappointment is that Mother Teresa has not yet been canonized (recognized as a saint of the Church). No person has done more since Saint Francis to embody the living faith of the Lord Jesus.

And how does this relate to Reiki? Most of us initially come, or came, to Reiki to learn how to heal ourselves and others, be they people or pets. Every time we lay our hands down to heal, or send distant healing to another, we give our attention to a sufferer. We put our hands (or intentions) down, we empty our minds, we give the recipient of our Reiki our full and undivided attention for as long as it takes. Let us never forget that, in our rush-rush age, it is almost a miracle. It is a miracle.

Just for today, give your attention to a sufferer.

Making “Reiki.” April 29, 2014

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Every time I watch the beautiful, even stunning, movie “Zen,” about the life of Dogen Zenji, the 13th-century Zen Master and founder of Soto Zen—the Zen we all think of when we think of Zen today worldwide—I wish someone would make a movie called “Reiki” about the life of our Founder, Mikao Usui. “Zen” is so visually rich; it conveys so much through imagery. What a man, and what a story!

Yet Usui Founder’s story is equally deep and rich, with many, many elements, from his family’s samurai origins to his prosperous upbringing thanks to the family sake brewery to his unquenchable thirst for knowledge, his numerous attempts to find a job that suited him, his wife and children, his travels, his religious studies, and his discovery and development of Reiki. And all of this set in turbulent times: Mikao Usui was born under the Shogunate, the high flowering of Samurai culture, when Japan was closed to all outside contact. (If you’ve seen the series “Shogun,” or any films set during that era, you’ll know whereof I speak.) Then the Meiji Emperor took back control from the samurai and opened Japan to the West, enjoying and embracing aspects of Western culture, a move Usui Founder wholeheartedly supported. And he survived the terrible earthquake and fires that leveled much of Tokyo in the 1920s, healing thousands with Reiki in the process.

I can see an absolutely gorgeous, moving film along the lines of “Zen” documenting and celebrating Mikao Usui’s life. I wish I could afford to find the fabulous Japanese crew who made “Zen,” hire them to make “Reiki,” and bring Hyakuten Inamoto Sensei, the founder of Komyo Reiki, the Reiki of Enlightenment, on board as script and set advisor. What a wonderful film it would be!

It’s true that nobody knows more than the details of Dogen’s life, yet that didn’t keep them from reimagining it from his extensive writings into a fabulous movie. In Usui Founder’s case, there were no writings—perhaps he didn’t think they were important, or perhaps he planned to write later in life, not foreseeing his own foreshortened life—so his life and work is preserved through his disciples, his students, as the Lord Jesus’s and the Lord Buddha’s were through theirs. In every case, those who came after found something worth preserving, something worth passing on, and in every case, they linked that back to their Founder, the one whose words, whose actions, whose promises they’d believed.

I cannot think of a single quote of Usui Founder’s that has been passed down to posterity. There are no parables, no stories, no directives, no pointed one-liners. Not even a memorable witticism, such as Saint John XXIII’s famous remark when asked by a journalist how many people worked in the Vatican, “About half of them.” The closest we can come to the mind of Usui Founder is in his actions and in the Five Reiki Principles (aka Precepts, Ideals) he gave us for right health, right happiness, and right livelihood.

His photo is here before me as I type. I wish I could hear his voice. I wish I could see a beautiful movie of his life and rest in it as I rest in “Zen.”

Just for today, practice the Principles.

Let in the light, let the light out. April 9, 2014

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“Nirvana is not the extinguishing of a candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.”

—Rabindranath Tagore

“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

—The Buddha

I love these two quotes about candles, and how they guide us on our Reiki Way. The first reminds me of Usui Founder’s description of Reiki as “a torch in daylight.” Who needs a torch when the light is already here? How much brighter a torch burns in the darkness! In the daylight, it’s hardly visible. And yet, it still burns. Usui Founder reminds us that our work in the world, on ourselves and others, is important, even if it’s barely seen, and that it will remain important until, in the beautiful Christmas prayer of Fra Giovanni, “the day breaks and the shadows flee away.” Then, when the true light breaks fully in our hearts, we can embrace nirvana (enlightenment, satori) and blow our candles out.

The Buddha’s quote about happiness brings to mind Usui Founder’s Five Reiki Principles (aka Precepts, Ideals), which he described as “the secret method for inviting happiness.” The Buddha sums this up by urging us to share, not hoard, our joy. Lord Jesus said much the same when he told the parable about hiding one’s light (candle) under a bushel (basket). The Buddha points out that sharing happiness with others will not diminish our own happiness in any way, even if we share it with thousands, with everyone we meet. It is when we try to store happiness that it slips away.

Just for today, remember that happiness is meant to be shared.

Set foot on the path. November 17, 2013

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“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
—T.S. Eliot

“I’m looking for someone to share in an adventure.”
—Gandalf, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit

“Behold, I make all things new.”
—Lord Jesus, Revelations 21:5

Today’s quotes may not at first seem to have anything in common, or any connection to Reiki, but they do. After all, the farther we go on our Reiki path, the deeper we go in the Reiki Way, the more awe and humility we feel, the more we understand that a life Way is not an abracadabra experience, but something that we hope to try our best to experience in small ways for always.

The legendary calligrapher and Dogen Zenji scholar Kazuaki Tanahashi calls this “the miracles of each moment.” The poet T.S. Eliot says that for us, there is only the trying. Whether we are struck by the lightning bolt of enlightenment, satori, like Usui Founder, or are simply able to refrain from blurting out something that would make us feel better at the expense of another person, we are humble, and we are grateful, and we continue trying. If we don’t, we have left the Reiki path and followed the siren song of ego instead.

But staying on the path and following the Way is not a boring exercise in dullness and deprivation. Instead, it’s an adventure: Who knows what amazing experiences and revelations wait around the next bend? Who knows what everyday and extraordinary miracles we might stumble across?

Perhaps, like Bilbo Baggins, not all of us are up for adventure, preferring the comfortable security of routine instead. But once we’ve taken our first step onto the Reiki path, adventures will find us, amazing adventures that will ultimately transform us as Bilbo is transformed over the course of The Hobbit.

For, as the Lord Jesus says, “I make all things new.” What that means is simply that we too are “made new” at every moment of our lives, we too have the opportunity to enjoy “the miracles of each moment,” we too can accept Gandalf’s offer and choose to go on a transforming adventure, the transformative adventure that is the Reiki Way.

As Gandalf tells Bilbo, he will not be the same if he chooses to go on the quest, and neither will we. Yow, what a scary thought! But as Bilbo discovers, as all of us who choose transformation discover, it is so very worth it, for the world opens up and the ego drops away, and all the worlds and all the time there ever was in every universe that ever spun across the sky becomes our Reiki heritage.

Just for today, see all things as new in the miracles of every moment.

Where your treasure is. October 8, 2013

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I recently read a startling article about how a smaller version of the Moon Pie, a Southern convenience-store staple, had become a status symbol—and the currency of choice—in cash-poor North Korea. Like Moon Pies, Korean Choco Pies are made of two cookies with a marshmallow filling and chocolate coating. North Koreans apparently consider Choco Pies such a luxury item that elite factory workers receive part of their monthly pay in packages of the coveted treats.

Given that the rest of their monthly pay—and this is for workers in elite factories—is the equivalent of $100, of which the government apparently takes 50-65%, some of these people have come up with a creative way to make ends meet. They take their Choco Pies to large open-air markets and trade them (illegally) for life-sustaining goods like food and clothes.

This may forcibly remind you, as it did me, of the opening scenes of “The Hunger Games,” where heroine Katniss Everdeen trades game birds and animals she’s (illegally) hunted for necessities in a black market resembling a giant flea market. If I were making $35 a month, I’d be down there bartering Choco Pies, too.

But this sorry tale of the real-life Hunger Games brought something else to mind, too: Lord Jesus’s teaching in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

We humans tend to assign arbitrary values to things, often based on scarcity, and then consider those values absolute. We pay thousands to millions of dollars for diamond jewelry when crystals can shine as bright, and thousands to hundreds of thousands for exclusive designer clothes when something from Goodwill might actually be more flattering (timeless, durable). Whether our treasure is gold bullion or Choco Pies, fixating on the material wealth of the moment is setting ourselves up to fail.

Consider Tulipomania, the first recorded economic bubble, when tulip bulbs were first introduced into Europe from their native Turkey. Dutch breeders vied to create the most extraordinary tulips (whose vivid patterns turned out to be caused by a virus, but that’s another story), and the nobility and wealthy merchant class vied to buy single bulbs of coveted species. At the height of the mania (circa 1637), a single bulb could sell for well over ten times a skilled craftsman’s annual salary. And then, poof! It was over. Those who had banked on tulips as a sure thing were ruined.

The same is true of anything to which we assign an arbitrary value. As King Midas found, you can’t eat gold, you can’t drink it, you can’t bathe in it, you can’t warm yourself with it. The only things of real value are those that sustain us in real terms, that support our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. That can be a book or painting or piece of music, a nourishing, delicious meal, a warm, comforting bed, or a beautiful view.

For those of us who follow the Reiki Way, in the gift of Reiki, its practices and Principles (aka Precepts, Ideals), Usui Founder has given us a treasure in which we may safely place our hearts, minds, and spirits. They will be well taken care of with every step on the path.

Just for today, rest in the Way.

Love one another. June 23, 2013

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“In the Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions, they say that whatever spiritual knowledge you have in your head must be brought down into your heart.”
—Sri Eknath Easwaran, Words to Live By

“Love one another as I have loved you.”—Jesus

A man once saw Mother Teresa cleaning the wounds of a leper and said, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars!” Mother Teresa replied, “Neither would I.”

“No exceptions.”—Frans Stiene, International House of Reiki’s Senior Teacher

Love is organic; when we nurture it, it grows in our hearts and minds. Just as exercise strengthens our bodies, love strengthens our souls. As there is no limit to growth, there is no limit to love. The more we love, the more we can love. And the more we practice gratitude, kindness, and compassion, as Usui Founder directed those of us on the Reiki path, the more we will be able to love.

Mother Teresa said that she was able to love everyone she met, be they maggot-ridden paupers dying of exposure and starvation in the gutters of Calcutta or wealthy Americans dying of selfishness, isolation, and loneliness, because in each of them she saw her Lord in “His distressing disguise.” May we open our own hearts, and our own minds, to see the truth of this.

Just for today, see the highest good in everyone you encounter.

All original content © copyright Red Dog Reiki. All rights reserved.

Wikipedia, Jesus, and Reiki. February 2, 2013

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I’m ashamed to say that I never read the Wikipedia article on Reiki until yesterday. I’ve read Wikipedia’s articles on Usui Founder, Hayashi Sensei, and Takata Sensei a number of times; I can’t think how I failed to read the main article on Reiki. But when I did, I was horrified.

Reiki people, imagine that you’ve just heard about Reiki for the first time and want to find out more. You look Reiki up on Wikipedia. And the first thing you see is this:

“Reiki is a pseudoscience developed in 1922 by Japanese Buddhist Mikao Usui, which has since been adopted by so called healers. It uses [a] pseudoscience technique commonly called palm healing or hands on healing as a form of alternative medicine. …there is no clinical or scientific evidence supporting claims that Reiki is effective in the treatment of any illness.”

And this is the MAIN article on Reiki! I don’t know about you, but if I were that person who was looking to find out more, I’d click off on the spot and never think about Reiki again, avoiding all us “so called healers” (the author apparently has never heard of hyphens) like the plague.

That’s too bad, because bizarrely, the rest of the article presents a reasonably straightforward history of Reiki, its schools and its techniques. I don’t agree with all of it by any means: For example, the anonymous author divides Reiki schools into Traditional Japanese and Western, but lists Gendai Reiki Ho as Western, even though it was founded by the Japanese Master Hiroshi Doi Sensei who belongs to the Gakkai! And the article claims that all Reiki schools work with the chakras and meridians, which in my experience are add-ons. But basically the information is about as reliable as most discussions of Reiki… until you get to the end of the article.

The article ends with a section called “Catholic Church concerns,” which reiterates the decree issued in 2009 by the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy, which concludes as follows: “…since Reiki therapy is not compatible with either Christian teaching or scientific evidence, it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions such as Catholic health care facilities [apparently the bishops haven’t heard of hyphens, either] and retreat centers, or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy.”

I beg to differ. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself practiced hands-on healing and passed the gift of hands-on healing to His Disciples through the power of the Holy Ghost by means of the laying on of hands. Reiki in its most literal meaning is “Ghost energy,” and the ability to do hands-on healing is passed from Master/teacher to student through the laying on of hands (reiju/attunements). If this is not compatible with Christian teaching—with the actions of Jesus throughout His ministry on Earth and the words of the Gospels and Acts of the New Testament itself—I can’t conceive what is.

I think it was this aspect, this link to early Christianity, that made Reiki so attractive to priests, monks, and nuns in the first place: They instincively got it. This was a language and a practice they intuitively understood. Too bad the Church felt compelled to take it away from them. But I digress.

Getting back to the Wikipedia article, as I understand it, an article can be challenged if it presents a biased view of a topic. I think the article on Reiki leads with a biased view and should be challenged (“Reiki is a pseudoscience… so called healers”) by everyone who holds Reiki dear. It’s a disgrace that this is the “official” entry on Reiki, when so many people use Wikipedia as an entrypoint to any topic.

Just for today, speak out.

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Do not delay. September 3, 2012

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“The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation.”—Milarepa

I love this quote, reminiscent as it is of Dogen Zenji’s constant instruction to his disciples: “Continue sitting zazen!” Even if one of his monks experienced satori, enlightenment, Dogen would abruptly bring him back down to earth: “Continue sitting zazen!” For Dogen, shikantaza—just sitting—contained enlightenment.

This also reminds me of Jesus’s comment to His Disciples, “The poor you will have always with you, but me you have just for a little while.” Jesus’s point was that His Disciples should pay attention while they had the opportunity to learn from Him, not that they should neglect the poor, but his comment so enraged the civic-minded Judas that he betrayed his Lord to His death. Which is an enduring warning to us all not to mistake do-gooding for being good. The affairs of the world will go on forever.

Just for today, be the best Reiki practitioner you can be.

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