Feisty and Abrasive – Yet, She Reveals the Secret

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Feisty and abrasive – Yet, she reveals the secret

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‚Usui sensei was born 1865 … and is buried in Tokyo.‘

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1994 thereabouts.

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I know through a student of yours you heard from a Mrs. Koyama who had practiced Reiki for a long time.

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That must have been quite something because you were doing all this research.

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During your conversation with her the idea of the Reiki book was actually born, like you spoke about earlier.

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It was initiated by one of your students.

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Then tell us the story, how you got the name of the graveyard and later how you got the telephone number.

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Tell us a little bit about that part of the story please.

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Okay, so, earlier we talked about how my friends, acquaintances, Chetna’s family, her friends, her old friends,

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nobody seemed to know about Reiki and then at some point I kind of thought that it was all fabricated.

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So at that point, now we are somewhere around 1994, I was ready just to give up and say, ‚Look, maybe Usui sensei‘

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– so sorry to be saying this –

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‚didn’t exist, was just fabricated. Let’s leave that behind but continue doing the work because the work is good.‘

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So, one day, I’m in the car going to work to our English school. We’re going on our regular route.

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We lived about 20 kilometres away from there by the sea.

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So we’re going to the school and suddenly I see a white Toyota van with big letters: R, E, I, K, I.

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My heart goes trrrr! And I’m thinking in my mind, ‚Oh my God, finally I got it.‘

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This was in our writing or in kanji?

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In English.

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In English?

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Roman letters! R, E, I, K, I. And I’m thinking instantly, ‚Finally we got it.‘

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This must be connected to Usui sensei. Maybe they are relatives, maybe they would talk to me and they would say,

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‚Arjava, we’ve been waiting for you for so long and finally you have come. How long, why did it take you so long?‘

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All this movie is going on in my head.

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So I say to Chetna – Hokkaidō is about 400 kilometres wide – ‚And if he goes to the end of the island,

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forget the day today, we won’t work. I’m going to follow them to wherever he stops.‘

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But luckily, he didn’t have to go very far because he pulled into a do-it-yourself store, parking lot, like OBI. I don’t know an equivalent in English.

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Like when you buy tools and construction wood and garden furniture, stuff like that, and piping and what not.

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Christmas trees.

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Everything.

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So he pulls in there and I’m going like, ‚Oh man, this is on my way to work.‘

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So I pull up next, kind of go to pull up next to him and see the guy getting out of the car going into the shop.

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So I say, ‚Hey, look, look, look, there seems to be an address under the REIKI and a phone number.‘

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I got the phone number and Chetna just starts to laugh and laugh and laugh. I say, ‚What’s the matter with you?‘

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She said, ‚It’s a refrigeration company!‘ Because the ‚Rei‘ in ‚Reiki‘ (jap. pronunciation: Leiki) … If you use a different kanji can mean ‚cold‘.

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Like the cold sake is called ‚lei shu‘.

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Cold sake.

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Yeah.

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And the ‚Ki‘: if you use a different kanji – not the one that we like with the rice in the middle – it can mean ‚machine‘.

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Cold machine!

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It was a refrigeration company. They installed conditioners and all that kind of stuff. We were laughing so hard.

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So after that, it was kind of a key experience for me. I said, ‚Okay, I give up.‘

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Enough! I stop.

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I stop looking for it. I can’t find anything.

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I had looked in the phone book in Sapporo. We had six pages of Usuis.

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In Tokyo, they had 30 pages in the phone book of Usuis! What you’re going to do, call them all?

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Impossible.

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So I thought, ‚Okay, I give up. Relax. Just do an occasional Reiki workshop and it shall be like that, okay.‘

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So then one day, I get a phone call from one of my earlier students. One of those people who had been eagerly waiting

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for someone to teach the teacher’s degree, but who didn’t fulfil the requirements of Mrs. Mitsui, of Mitsui sensei.

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He didn’t speak English. And there was no way he could travel to the States like that. So he was very happy.

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He later on founded the biggest Reiki school in Japan, Vortex, it was called. So Toshitaka called me and he said,

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‚You know what? I have the phone number of somebody who’s been practicing Reiki for 65 years!‘

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So from … Where are we? ’95. So from the 30s.

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‚If you promise me that you don’t tell where you got the number, I will give it to you.‘

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So I’m like, ‚Phuuu! My lips are sealed. Give me the number.‘

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So, he gives me the number. Then I talk to Chetna. I say, ‚Hey, you know, how about … Can you call this person now, this Mrs. Koyama?‘

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She says, ‚Ah, no, not today. You know, it’s Monday. I’m very, very busy. Not a good time.‘ So after a few days I say again,

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‚Hey, what about … Can you call, make this phone call now?‘ because my Japanese at the time was not good enough.

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I thought I don’t find the right words to do it because the super polite Japanese I didn’t really know it well enough.

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So she said, ‚Ah, no, today we have a class at two o’clock and we’ll … no, not now.‘ And this went on for a few weeks.

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At some point I was mad. I said to her, ‚Why are you not supporting me? You know, I’m trying to, to figure out

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what the roots of Reiki are so we can teach it better. You’re not helping me.‘ I was mad.

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Then she explained to me, it was really a cultural misunderstanding.

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She said, ‚Look, if I get the phone number of somebody whom I don’t know, I can’t just call them.‘ I said, ‚Well, then how do you do it?‘

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She said, ‚The correct way would be of the mutual acquaintance (in this case, Toshitaka) to call that person and say,

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I have a friend that I trust, somebody I admire maybe and he does, or she does this and that,

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and I think you two would probably enjoy to have a good conversation together. Would you mind if I connect you two?

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If then the other person says, yes, it would be very nice, thank you. Then maybe he would organize the meeting.‘

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But Chetna said, ‚Look, without that I can’t just call.‘

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I said, ‚What do you mean, that number is worthless?‘ She said, ‚Yeah, it is worthless. Can’t do.‘

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Then I thought loud, I said to her, ‚Look, okay, we have one chance. The first chance we had in two years. If we don’t use it,

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nothing happens. If you call her and she yells at you, how dare you call me, how rude of you!? Klonk (hanging up),

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I will give you Reiki afterwards for an hour, make you feel better again. I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. I would do it, but I can’t. So please do it.‘

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So in the end she agreed, she called. Then the number … The first thing that person on the other side says,

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‚Where did you get this number?‘ I’m listening on the speakerphone thinking, ‚Oh boy, what a bad start.‘

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I’m always jokingly saying that Japanese people have a way of doing telephone Tai Chi.

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It’s like you’re on the phone and you are going like … When you don’t want to say something you just …

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kind of make the other understand that you’re not going to say it. That’s what Chetna was very good at.

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After a while – Mrs. Koyama understood that she wasn’t going to say where we got the number – she relaxed a bit,

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but all the time she just said, ‚What do you want from ME?‘

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I’m listening and I’m thinking, ‚Me, me, me, me, me, what an ego.‘

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What is wrong with her? Usually, the elder Japanese people … I could understand, she was old.

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Usually, they’re very kind and accommodating and warm also.

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So, I was like, ‚What is wrong with her? Why is she so angry and so aggressive?‘ So unusual.

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Then Chetna said, ‚Ah, well, my husband is a foreigner.‘

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‚I don’t care about Western Reiki, about Reiki that comes from another country.‘

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I’m thinking like, ‚Haw! What’s going on here?‘ That was the first time I heard the word Western Reiki.

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‚He’s writing a book about the Usui sensei, because what is known outside is… We don’t think it’s right.

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It seems to be all myth and we want to make it right and fix it.‘

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‚I’m not going to read it!‘

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I thought, ‚Oh boy, she’s very straightforward!‘

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And then she said,

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‚I’ve been asked so many times by people from outside, from abroad, to meet and I always refuse and I will refuse you too!‘

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I’m sitting there thinking like, ‚What is it that I don’t know here? Why … I don’t understand. What am I missing?‘

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We found out everything later on.

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So, in the end she warmed up a little bit. She said,

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‚Okay, Usui sensei was born 1865, August 15th in Gifu Prefecture. He was married, had two kids.

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He had a life of many ups and downs, big success, big failure. He was very warm-hearted. He was a good speaker.

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People loved to listen to him. People used to hang on to his clothes when he was talking. Because he can’t … ‚

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Okay, now what I say now is not what she said but what I say. You cannot touch the sensei’s body.

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But maybe you get some energy from the fold of the kimono. There’s … a place to touch, making sure you don’t touch the body.

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And that he was very funny, that his students were laughing all the time.

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It was very nice. I’ve never heard anything like it before! Almost like a first-hand rendering of somebody who met him.

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There must have been somebody who told this to her.

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Or maybe she met him. I don’t know who we never asked her.

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Anyway, in the end she said, ‚Okay, enough. Don’t bother me anymore!‘

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But in the conversation she also told us that he was buried at the Pure Land Buddhist graveyard, temple plus graveyard in Tokyo.

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Thank you to our sponsors! This video depicts a segment of a four-day interview with Frank Arjava Petter.

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For all videos and the list of sponsors visit our website:
www.reiki-conciliation.org

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Translation: AI
Transcript: René Vögtli