2/5/2020 Anya van TIl
“One of the essential messages of the Buddha is that it’s really important to get to know the experience of dukkha, or dissatisfaction. Not to know it intellectually, not to write a thesis about it, but to get to know it by meeting this experience directly. Until we know dukkha, we don’t really have a way to end it. The discourse of the four truths that the Buddha gave after his awakening begins not with enlightenment, but with the encouragement to know dukkha, to know it in order to overcome it.” Thanissara
When I read that I recognised the System of Reiki in that (just like in so many other teachings of course). Let me explain.
What I thought of in the first place was the Reiki precepts.
Do not anger
Do not worry
Be grateful
Be true to your way and your being
Show compassion to yourself and others
Realising dukkha (=suffering) is nothing different than pointing out the anger, worry and fear within the precepts.
You most probably also have met people who claim to never get angry or scared. The thing is we are not aware of our suffering most of the times, but think that we do not anger, fear or worry. If that’s the case, then there is no way we can let go of our suffering.
So the System of Reiki starts with the precepts and points out the cause of our suffering: anger, worry and fear. It also states that there is the end of suffering: compassion to self and all as a result of realising your True nature. And the way from anger to compassion lays through being grateful and being true to yourself.
That resemles the buddhist 4 noble truths a lot, doesn’t it?
The truth of suffering
The truth of the cause of suffering
The truth of the cessation of suffering
The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering
If you think further, it also becomes obvious that the elements of the System of Reiki represent the 8 fold path or the manner of proper practice leading to the end of suffering.
The Eightfold Path is:
Right views
Right thoughts
Right speech
Right action
Right livelihood
Right effort
Right mindfulness
Right concentration
We can roughly classify the elements of the system of Reiki into how they incorporate the 8fold path.
For example:
Right view, Right thought and Right livelihood relate to the Reiki precepts
Right speech certainly leads us to Reiki mantras
Right effort, Right mindfulness and Right concentration point to meditation and symbols
Right action would be a Reiki treatment and a Reiju
But we don’t have to label them after all. It is better to see that all the practices are interrelated and represent more than one item of the 8 fold path. And this is just the first step, the deeper element is that the system of Reiki, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path show us a way of life, our True Nature. This is our axis, a state of oneness, nonduality.
Precepts – anger, worry and fear are on one side, compassion on the other side and you are in middle of that staying true to yourself, in your axis, not being swiped off by either but observing all that is.
Symbols – Earth and Heaven, again two opposites and the Heart is connecting them and drawing a line, an axis on which your True Self can rest.
Meditation – connecting the observer and the observed in a moment of true existence, presence and awareness.
Treatment and Reiju – becoming one with the client or a student and through that connection experiencing the interconnectedness with everything.
Having glimpsed into oneness one becomes aware of the fact that suffering and enlightenment are also one.
Seeing things as they are is the key to deep rest and peace of heart, which is what Reiki is about.
