The Promise of Peace

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The Promise of Peace

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‚Usui sensei’s greatest achievement was that he didn’t create a religion.‘

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Well, I want to ask you, Arjava, about Reiki and religion.

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But before we do that, I can’t remember, probably 15 years ago, I met …

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I had to go and collect Don Alexander at the airport, small airport to bring him to a conference.

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And we went on like a house on fire. I really loved that man. And actually I was translating for him,

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but I was so touched on stage behind him through his presence that I kept crying.

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And I had a difficult time pronouncing ‚Fudo Myo’o‘.

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You just told me how to pronounce it more or less correctly. And I was crying. I butchered that translation completely.

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But I wanted to mention, you know Don Alexander?

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I met him once and I share your experience with him.

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You can’t really help but falling in love with him.

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I spent a few hours with him. We went to a conference together and they had put us into the same room. So it was really delightful.

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What a beautiful man.

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And a person who gives and gives and gives.

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Yeah, that’s the right spirit. Very, very beautiful man.

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From the airport we were in the taxi … no, I drove, I think. Yeah, I drove for a few hours until we got to that place.

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And we discovered we had, in terms of Reiki ancestry, pedigree, we had crossovers.

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But the amazing thing was, it was like pushing the ‚play‘ button. Because he just continued to give, give, give.

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No, I love him. Very beautiful man.

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If you’re in touch with him, when you see him, give him my love and hope that our paths will cross again.

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I’m happy to do that. And likewise.

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Religion.

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Religion, okay. One of my favourite subjects.

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Reiki and religion.

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So, maybe at some point we can look at some of the documents that I’ve been given.

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One is the Usui manual, a copy of the original.

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And one is a teaching manual of Koyama sensei that I was given by Ogawa sensei just before he died.

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And as you will see then when we look at that, it’s about 120 pages of A5, which is not fully printed upon.

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Just the, kind of the middle is printed. So it’s not a lot, a lot of writing.

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And in this little book, I think four or five times she says, Koyama sensei says,

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‚I think that Usui sensei’s greatest achievement was that he didn’t create a religion.‘

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When I read that, even though I read it again and again, every time I read it I was like, ‚Phew, I agree.‘

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Because Reiki is for everybody.

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On Usui sensei’s memorial it says, ‚Reiki will heal the world and its people.‘

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It didn’t say it will heal the Tendai or Shingon or Zen or the Catholics. No, but everybody, it’s for everybody.

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Now, putting this into the cultural context of the 1920s, it would have been really good for him if he had started a small religion,

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because the Japanese constitution allows you to practice your faith.

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He could have even done faith healing publicly without getting into trouble if he had his own religion,

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but he decided against it, he didn’t want it.

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And I’m so glad he didn’t.

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So Reiki is for everybody.

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And in Reiki, in the Reiki teaching you find concepts from all the four big schools of thought in Japan.

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You have some Taoist influences, the mysticism.

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You have some Shinto influences in Reiki.

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You have some Buddhist influences and some Confucian influences.

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The Confucian, the system, the setup, the hierarchy, all that.

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That’s just because Usui sensei took from the wisdom pot that he had, which is those four big teachings,

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and took a piece from here, a piece from there, a piece from there.

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So, some of the things are Shinto, some of the things are Buddhist, and he did that very clever. Some of the things are his own.

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He did that very cleverly to include everybody.

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So, if Reiki was a Shinto teaching, the Buddhists would go [frowning],

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‚What is this Shamanism? What a nonsense! It’s for monkeys.‘

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If it was all Shinto, the Buddhist people in Japan would say … The other way around.

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If it was all Buddhist, the Shinto people would say, ‚Man, this is from India. Why do we need that? We have our own indigenous wisdom.‘

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So he was very clever in putting things together and making it comfortable for everybody, for all his people.

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And now that we are also involved,

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there are Buddhist Shinto influences in Reiki, but it doesn’t disturb us in the sense that we don’t have to convert to Buddhism or Shinto.

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But we can stay as we are. We can be Christians, we can be Muslims, we can be Hindus,

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we can be Jews, we can be whatever and be comfortable practicing Reiki.

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We don’t have to subscribe to a certain view. We don’t have to change our worldview.

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Everybody can do Reiki ‚who has been given a soul‘. And that’s what Usui Sensei said and that’s all of us, everybody.

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100% of humanity and I always feel sad when I see that people try to again put a label on Reiki

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saying it’s part of Tendai or of Shingon or of this or of that. No, it’s not!

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This is for humanity. It’s not for one group. It’s for everybody.

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Actually, I think that is partly why Reiki has been able to conquer the world quite literally is exactly that it has this nature

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and it has allowed me, I told you yesterday on the walk on the mountain,

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has allowed me to bring Reiki with my Catholic background into a nunnery,

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the nunnery of my birth, so to speak, and that in itself is an incredible thing.

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And I think the worldwide spreading of Reiki would not have been possible if it had been labelled in any context with a specific religion.

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So that is a gift coming from Usui which he’s given to us,

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which has liberated us and which holds the promise of reconciliation beyond the boundaries of culture

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and the borders of race and the gender issues we have.

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That’s why I have such great hopes that if anyone can make peace, of course we start first with ourselves and in our families,

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but we have something so beautiful in nature, then it should be us Reiki people to be able to come to peace with each other.

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Yeah, well the thing is, always reflect back to yourself. So first we come to peace with ourselves.

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So this would be my advice to anybody. Come to peace with yourself. When you are in peace, there is peace everywhere.

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Usui sensei made a beautiful contribution to that by creating something that can facilitate this finding

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of the inner peace to anybody regardless of their religion, of their background, of their social status.

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Fantastic!

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So let’s keep it that way and not put a label on it.

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Reiki cannot be labelled.

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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