'Tall Tales' - New James Deacon Article!!

Hi Folks,

James has just made available a previously unpublished article. It is called 'Tall Tales', and focuses on the bogus claims by many Reiki people. A very timely publishing, if I do say so myself.

James being James, takes great care in all aspects of creating an article. So instead of me copy/pasting it here, I'll just provide you the link.

http://www.aetw.org/reiki_tall_tales.html

Milarepa wrote:Hi Folks,

James has just made available a previously unpublished article. It is called 'Tall Tales', and focuses on the bogus claims by many Reiki people. A very timely publishing, if I do say so myself.

James being James, takes great care in all aspects of creating an article. So instead of me copy/pasting it here, I'll just provide you the link.

http://www.aetw.org/reiki_tall_tales.html

Thanks Wayne, much appreciate.

M not sure if the problem is with everyone or its just me .. but the link provided above is not working

ankit wrote:M not sure if the problem is with everyone or its just me .. but the link provided above is not working

It worked for me

Link is still down

Link is working fine Ankit. Must be a localized issue with you.

Methinks James, in spite of his financial position (or because of it), is just cheap...

I get a "CPU Limit Reached" error message in the URL
http://error404.000webhost.com/cpu-limit-reached.html

Guys, with both myself and RLL broadcasting to the world that James' site might not be up for long, and one should get the downloads while they can - it is crashing his site often. site traffic is immense,

I found James' article extremely interesting and important. There is too much deception going on in many different forms of non-standard medicine. I think we have to learn how to police ourselves.

I do, however, appreciate James' charitable attitude towards the end of the article. Not everyone who does something bad, is a bad person or has bad intentions.

As for the Tibetan connexion, I believe it because I once had a long talk about "healing" with a Tibetan Lama (teacher) and practitioner of Tibetan medicine. I took notes on a restaurant place mat, which is somewhere among my messes of papers. Maybe I'll find it and write it up for publication some day. The way he described his "healing", it is extremely similar to ours. Instead of using symbols, however, he recites mantras to "the Medicine Buddha."

He presented this as a Tibetan art, not an import from Japan or anything.

He also uses chakras, in a way similar to the way in which we use them. But now I come to where I am confused. I have come to understand, on the basis of what I have read, that Usui sensei did not use chakras. Is this true? If it is true, then I think that the Reiki which we practice is based on Usui-sensei's teaching, but chakras were imported later from Tibet. Can anyone help me to clarify this further?
Best wishes to all,
Yeruham

Hi Yeruham

yeruham wrote:...As for the Tibetan connexion, I believe it because I once had a long talk about "healing" with a Tibetan Lama ... The way he described his "healing", it is extremely similar to ours. Instead of using symbols, however, he recites mantras to "the Medicine Buddha."
He presented this as a Tibetan art, not an import from Japan or anything.

We need to remember that the Tibetan practices in relation to the "Medicine Buddha" (known as 'Sangye Menla' in Tibetan) actaully derive from the Indian manifestation of the "Medicine Buddha" - known as Bhaisajya-guru.
His cult spread to Tibet along with other Buddhist deities; however it also spread to China (where he became ("Yao shi fou?), and from there he was brought to Japan (in the 6/th century), where he became "Yaku-shi-ruri-kou" or "Yaku-shi" (often referred to as 'Yakushi Nyorai' - nyorai is a term for a buddha in the esoteric Buddhist traditions)

Yakushi is still a popular deity in Japan, and amongst his devotees, healing also involves the chanting of his mantra:

"On koro koro sendari matogi sowaka"

So, similarities betwen the Tibetan healing practices of the Medicine Buddha and Reiki are not confirmation of a direct connection between Usui Reiki Ryoho and Tibet.

yeruham wrote:
I think that the Reiki which we practice is based on Usui-sensei's teaching, but chakras were imported later from Tibet. Can anyone help me to clarify this further?
Best wishes to all,
Yeruham

Yes, the concept of the chakras was 'imported' by Reiki practitioners who came after Hayayo Takata. One of her students, John Gray, began to incorporate chakra work into his practice at an early stage (I recall him saying something about doing this while Takata was still alive?)
And as some of Takata's other students were also involved with other forms of healing, they were probably already familiar with the concept of the chakra system, so it was simply their way of comprehending and working with energy.

Again though, we cannot say the use of the chakra concepts were imported from Tibet specifically.

Thanks, James, what you are saying makes sense. Perhaps I hadn't thought enough of the fact that Buddhism started in India.

I have taken an interest in similarities between Judaism and other Asian religions. It is a long story, but in brief, I have come to the conclusion that seeking for historical causality is pointless. In fact it is detrimental because it draws attention away from the really interesting question of similarities. I hadn't thought about this much in connexion with chakras and Tibet. But after having thought about what you have written I think that the same issues arise here. It seems that we can fruitfully study similarities between Reiki and Tibetan medicine, and the studies can help us to understand both of them better, while we can just ignore questions of historical connexions.
Are we in the same direction?

A further thought. Although we may have no evidence that Tibetan medicine influenced Reiki, I do not think we have any evidence that it did not.
Best
Yeruham

yeruham wrote:...A further thought. Although we may have no evidence that Tibetan medicine influenced Reiki, I do not think we have any evidence that it did not.
Best
Yeruham

Indeed.
However I feel it is also fair to say that, while we have no evidence that Reiki has influenced Tibetan medicine, we do not have any evidence that it has not.

James,
I can agree with that. And I enjoy these exchanges, I mean between you and me more than between Reiki and Tibetan medicine.

I recently had a discussion with a martial arts friend, about which arts influenced which arts. He replied something like: "It is like a T-Shirt nowadays. The cotton came from India. It was woven in China, sewed into a shirt in Malaysia. The label says it is Adidas and made in England. So where is the T-shirt from?"

Incidentally, I have been a scholar most of my life, so I enjoy speculative discussions. But when it comes down to it, the main thing is that Reiki exists, I can feel it, my patients say thank you. The rest is sort of a hobby.
Very best,
Yeruham