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ReikiDharma.com
Newsletter
#4
Dear friends!
September 15, 2001
Welcome to the fourth
ReikiDharma newsletter
I hope that all of
you are fine and that you are at ease in every moment of life, with all
itÍs peaks and valleys. In times as these, it is important to cultivate
an attitude of trust in reality the way it is.
Today I would like
to tell you about my Reiki research in Japan and the meeting with Chiyoko
Yamaguchi, a student of Dr. Hayashi.
Things come and go
I came to Japan in 1992 to open a language school with my wife Chetna.
Little did I know then what strange turns my life would take in the next
nine years... We had traveled all over the world and had decided to live
in Sapporo because everything we wanted from life offered itself easily
here: we were floating in the stream of life like two feathers, light
and without worries. One year later we began to teach Reiki as well as
English, Japanese and German. In the course of the years Reiki took on
more and more importance until the language teaching disappeared entirely
in the end of the year 1999. We were to walk into the new Millennium afresh,
into a new direction.
My Reiki research
My Reiki research began in 1993 rather accidental. I had learned Reiki
in Germany from my brother initially and upon returning to Japan tried
to research its roots in Japan. Since my wife is Japanese our chances,
I thought, were good. We began by asking her parents and relatives about
Reiki. Then our friends and students. No one had ever heard of it. My
wife called the Doshisha University and inquired about Dr. Usui, because
he was believed to have been one of the principals of that institution
in the past. This turned out to be a misinformation and the same happened
when I called the University of Chicago where Dr. Usui was said to have
received a doctorate. At both institutions, the archivists had never heard
of him. We were assured that the institutes held records of all their
staff and their students and that a Mikao Usui had never been registered
at either one. (Proof of this information is disclosed in my current book,
titled "The Spirit of Reikiî in collaboration with William Lee Rand and
Walter LÄbeck.).
The first and last
doubts
I began to doubt Dr. Usui's existence all together since we were not able
to find any substantial information about him in spite of intense research.
Most of the information previously given by the countless publications
in books and magazines turned out to be inadequate, and often, far fetched.
Then one day we were given the telephone number of someone who had practiced
Reiki since the 1930's. My wife talked to the person who turned out to
be Mrs. Kimiko Koyama, the president of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai. With
her help we were able to provide a lot of factual information about Dr.
Usui, his life and his life work: Reiki! It was her who led us to Dr.
UsuiÍs grave at the Saihoji Temple in Tokyo. The following research and
the resulting information is documented in my first four books "Reiki
Fire", "Reiki, the Legacy of Dr. Usui", "The Original Reiki handbook of
Dr. Mikao Usuiî, and "The Spirit of Reikiî.
My childhood dream
It was with the help of Walter Lübeck that my first book was published
and a life long dream came true. Already as a child I had always wanted
to be a writer. My maternal great grandfather, Ferdinand von Raesfeld,
had been a well-known writer, but I had never thought that this dream
might become reality one day. It was in 1989 that I met an old friend,
Prasthan Dachauer, a painter with a love and very deep understanding of
astrology. He looked at my birth chart and asked me" Do you paint?" I
declined and he then asked me whether or not I wrote. I told him that
as an adolescent I had written thousands of poems, but had given it up
when I began to get seriously involved with meditation and the search
for the inner emptiness out of which all life is born. "Arjava"! Prasthan
said "Write! Get into it, it will bear fruit and you will be able to make
your living with it".
From poems to non-
fiction
After we met,
I went to Japan with my wife for the first time and I began to write haiku
poetry. The next time I met Prasthan, a year later, I showed him the poetry.
He liked it, but said that writing Haikus was certainly not the end product.
He encouraged me to do some "serious" writing. Another year or so later
we went to Japan again and I began writing the English and German curriculum
for our school. This was a wonderful training that took several years.
When the curriculum was complete, I set out to write a book on Reiki and
the rest is history... Shaking it up In the year 1998 it was again Walter
LÄbeck, who shook up my relatively quiet life. When spending a week in
Tyrol together with a couple of other colleagues, he asked me to write
a book on Chujiro Hayashi with him. I liked the idea of working on a project
with him, but I did have no connection to C. Hayashi at all. My focus
had always been on Dr. Usui and upon finding the original way Reiki was
taught and passed on in Japan. I declined his offer for the reason mentioned
above.
The same old questions
It is said that history repeats itself and it seems that this holds true
for my own personal history as well. I have been known to make the same
mistakes and to repeat the same thing over and over and over until I have
learned my lesson. I began to research Chujiro Hayashi the same way we
had originally set out to research Dr. Usui. And the results were exactly
the same. We found absolutely nothing. My secretary almost developed an
ulcer, because everything I asked her to do brought no result. She contacted
the ministry of health to inquire about the clinic that Dr. Hayashi had
operated in Tokyo in the1930's. She talked to all the major Japanese newspapers.
And she talked to several government agencies, including the Japanese
army which we thought might have information on Dr. Hayashi in their files.
After I had exhausted all my ideas and my patience I gave up. There was
no trace left behind.
Low tide
On the beach
Footprints and driftwood
Goodbye Japan
I felt that I had come to the end of the time given to me in Japan, and
was convinced that I would not do anymore Reiki research. What else was
there left to research. Maybe, I thought, it is time for someone else
to take over what I had started. We began making arrangements to move
to Germany. I have not lived there for about twenty years and am looking
forward to going back home. A feeling that I had never before experienced
in my life...
Hello Japan
And in this moment, things began to move at full speed. Japan is not ready
top let us go yet. In the winter of 1999, I heard of an old lady who was
a direct disciple of Chujiro Hayashi. And this lovely lady was supposedly
teaching in Kyoto. Several months later, in the summer of 2000 my wife
Chetna and myself went to Kyoto to spend five days with Ms. Chiyoko Yamaguchi
and her son Tadao. We were to learn Reiki One and Reiki Two the same way
that Dr. Hayashi had taught it sixty years ago.
Finally, traditional
Reiki training!
For seven years I had worked upon the possibility of taking training with
someone who had learned Reiki in Japan the traditional way. The teachers
of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, the association that Dr. Usui incorporated
in 1922, were not interested in communicating with me- or any other foreigner.
Before my wife called the Yamaguchis I was quite suspicious. Were they
even going to talk to her, if she mentioned that her husband was a foreigner?
I was determined to find out. Already on the telephone Tadao Yamaguchi
was very open, friendly and polite. Chetna let the cat out of the bag
right away. She told Tadao-san that I am a foreigner, that we had been
teaching Reiki already for seven years and that we would like to do a
training with them at a time of their choice. As long as I could speak
Japanese, and we could communicate with one another, Tadao-san said, there
was no problem. Was history repeating itself again, I wondered? After
all C. Hayashi had taught Hawayo Takata his art. And this I always thought
was a very brave thing to do: to teach an American woman the art of Reiki
in the mid and late 1930's was very bold.
A trip to Kyoto
We made arrangements to travel to Kyoto in the end of July 2000 to meet
with the Yamaguchis. I was very thrilled by the prospect of learning more
about the original way Reiki was taught by Dr. Hayashi, about the attunements,
the symbols, the hand positions and so on. But what I was looking forward
to most was how someone who had practiced Reiki her whole life, would
BE. I was disappointed with the way many Western Reiki teachers lived
their lives and how they did not live what they taught. Meeting Mrs. Yamaguchi
Meeting Mrs. Yamaguchi and her family describes a new era in Reiki for
me. The day we left the Yamaguchi's home in Kyoto I said to Mrs. Yamaguchi
that it had been an immense pleasure to finally meet a Reiki adult. In
the Western World we are still in the adolescent Reiki age, and what we
call tradition is at the most twenty years old. But in the presence of
the Yamaguchis I felt that the spirit of Reiki was transmitted continuously.
In every smile, in every reassuring word the humble lady uttered, every
little hint she gave us in regard to healing, and in the way she walks,
talks and lives each moment of her life. Mr. Yamaguchi and his mother
have now begun conducting monthly courses for foreigners.
They will teach Reiki
One and Reiki Two in five consecutive days, the same way that Mrs. Yamaguchi
learned from Dr. Hayashi. Students will get a certificate, but the YamaguchiÍs
ask their students not to teach what they have learned. For now, no Reiki
master classes are planned. This goes for foreigners as well as for Japanese
nationals. Six- eight participants are accepted for each class.
If you are interested
in joining one of these classes, please contact Tadao Yamaguchi at http://homepage2.nifty.com/reiki/
O.K. That should be
all for today. Thank you for bearing with me for so long, I wish you all
the best, may love and grace guide you always, with love from Japan
Your friend
Arjava (Frank Arjava
Petter)
Copyright © by Frank
Arjava Petter, 2001
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