Reiki Help Blog :: Oasis Reiki Dojo

Living deep in the mountains
I’ve grown fond of the
Solitary sound of the singing pines;
On days the wind does not blow
How lonely it is!

— Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1895)

I came across this poem and instantly recognized myself in it. When a poem can do that, it’s a very significant moment. So I went searching, especially because Reiki has made me fond of all things Japanese. I found gems like this one:

In the morning breeze
a riverbank willow
scatters its leaves
into the flowing waters—
so autumn begins…

According to information available online:

“Otagaki Rengetsu, best known as a famous Japanese poet, was also a calligrapher, potter, and painter. She was born in 1791 into a samurai family with the surname Todo, but was soon adopted by the Otagaki family and given the name Nobu. Having lost her mother and brother at a young age, she served as lady-in-waiting at Kameoka Castle (in present-day Kyoto Prefecture) from the age of 7, until she returned home at the age of 16 to marry. In 1823, after the death of her husband and three young children, she became a Buddhist nun, adopting the name Rengetsu, which means “Lotus Moon.”

Rengetsu moved to Chion-In temple in Kyoto to be with her father, a Buddhist priest. She remained there for ten years until her father’s death, at which time she moved to the countryside. To earn a living Rengetsu wrote Japanese poetry and also produced clay teapots which she often decorated with carved inscriptions or calligraphy of her poems.”

For example the above piece of her teaware has this poem of hers inscribed on it:

Coming and going
I feel neither beginning nor end…
what a strange thing
this heart of mine!

She is best known for her waka poetry. According to Wikipedia:

Waka (和歌, literally “Japanese poem”) or Yamato uta is a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature.The term was coined during the Heian period, and was used to distinguish Japanese-language poetry from kanshi(poetry written in Chinese by Japanese poets), and later from renga.

The term waka originally encompassed a number of differing forms, principally tanka (短歌, “short poem”) and chōka (長歌, “long poem”), but also including bussokusekika, sedōka (旋頭歌, “memorized [head repeated] poem”) and katauta (片歌, “poem fragment”). These last three forms, however, fell into disuse at the beginning of the Heian period, and chōka vanished soon afterwards. Thus, the term waka came in time to refer only to tanka.

Japanese poet and critic Masaoka Shiki created the term tanka in the early twentieth century for his statement that waka should be renewed and modernized. Until then, poems of this nature had been referred to as waka or simply uta (“song, poem”). Haiku is also a term of his invention, used for his revision of standalone hokku, with the same idea.

Traditionally waka in general has had no concept of rhyme (indeed, certain arrangements of rhymes, even accidental, were considered dire faults in a poem), or even of line. Instead of lines, waka has the unit (連) and the phrase (句). (Units or phrases are often turned into lines when poetry is translated or transliterated into Western languages, however.)

Here’s an example of her calligraphy, inscribed with one of her poems:

In the paddies between the hills on a misty path a human from takes shape: a scarecrow.

Otagaki Rengetsu was prolific; her poems here are a mere handful. When you read her bio, it’s obvious that she actually lived real human challenges. Her poetry and art doesn’t come from some idyllic existence.

That’s why I bow to her spirit, for it remained light as a feather, and gracefully inspirational. I’ve fallen head over heels in love with her creative spirit and humility.

I leave you with two more for her poems.

Waiting
beneath a maple
its colors still unturned—
so happy this morning
with the first rain of winter!

And finally for a spiritual healing focus:

Won’t you open
the lotus inside
and turn
those demons
from your heart?

— Otagaki Rengetsu

Gassho!

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Reiki is historically linked to one of the worst earthquakes Japan has suffered, prior to the one that struck on March 11, 2011. It happened in September of 1923, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale. It’s known as Kantō daishinsai and well over 100,000 deaths were reported. Its power and intensity moved the 121-ton Great Buddha statue at Kamakura, located 60 km away from the epicenter, forward almost two feet. The disaster was exacerbated by embers from lunchtime cooking on charcoal stoves, which spread fires rapidly through wooden buildings.

Because Kantō is the largest plain in Japan, it is densely populated and includes the large metropolises of Tokyo and Yokohama. Prior to this disaster, the founder of Reiki, Usui Sensei, was teaching his methods by himself, quietly in his dojo. As they say, ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ According to one source:

It was due to this earthquake…that Reiki and Usui Sensei became well-known in Japan…Until 1923 Usui Sensei was the only teacher of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, his association that he incorporated in 1922. When faced with the incomprehensible devastation, he decided to change his ways: He gave eight of his senior students the Shihan (teacher) status, and taught them how to teach Reiki…Over the next year or so, they initiated thousands of people and…gave several hundred thousand treatments.

I really want to focus on the love and respect Japanese people have for the Earth and Nature. Before I do, here’s an excerpt from Usui’s Memorial Stone which was erected a year after his passing. Let’s also remember how perfectly Reiki blends with helping animals and plants, and enhances our food and water.

In September of the 12th year (1923 A.D.) there was a great earthquake and a conflagration broke out. Everywhere there were groans of pains from the wounded. Sensei, feeling pity for them, went out every morning to go around the town, and he cured and saved an innumerable number of people. This is just a broad outline of his relief activities during such an emergency. (Translated by Inamoto Hyakuten.)

Japan has produced a number of spiritual traditions and art forms. Almost all are either nature-based, or show a great reverence for nature. There’s a profound understanding of the inextricable link humans have to the natural world we live in. A complete accounting of the earthquake to hit Japan a few days ago hasn’t even begun. It was followed by a devastating tsunami, and the threat of nuclear radiation from ongoing repercussions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

I hope my focus on the Earth and Nature in this post serves as a reminder to all of us to come into balance once again with the natural world. My heart-mind goes out to Japan in compassion, and in thanks for the great beauty it has given to human culture.

Shintoism is Japan’s native spirituality. It’s heavily nature-based and “was the communal response of the ancient immigrant dwellers of Japan to the stunning natural environment in which they found themselves.” (Stuart D.B. Picken)

Here’s a modernized excerpt by the same author of The Litany of Earth:

Leader — Think of how human beings first experienced earth bringing forth her fruits

Think of how earth was conceived of as a mother and revered for fertility, her abundant gifts, and her ability to nurture and support life

Think of the season’s as they flow by, the yellow and green of spring in all its newness and freshness

Think of mystery of the seed, how life is contained within it, and its creative growth

All — Our senses have been dulled and dimmed, and we see earth not as the environment of our life, but as a tool to be used

Our senses are blind to its mystery and meaning

Our senses need the purification that will enable us to see nature as our teacher and guide

Motohisa Yamakage who was born in 1925 and raised in a Shintoist family writes:

We [Japanese people] have felt that plants and animals, as well as mountains and rivers, have lived with us and have been deeply connected to us. This love and reverence toward nature is a quality that should be reinstalled in our hearts, if we want mankind and earth to survive the ecological crisis that has resulted from excessive materialism.

Recently some scientists, notably the British geophysicist James Lovelock, have rediscovered the notion of “Gaia.” In this view the natural environment of earth is not seen just as a mechanical system, but more than that, as a highly organic network created by complex relationships and subtle connections between all forms of life. Life has therefore neither passively adapted itself to the earth’s environment, nor been created by chance. Every life form, every creature has influenced the environment and helped to shape it. It has interacted with and depended upon all the creatures as a part of a harmonious cycle of creation. The world of nature is ultimately self-regulating and self-renewing, preserving its own order or homeostasis, restoring the planet’s balance much like the immune system of an individual organism.  We can therefore think of the earth as if it were a single organism, or the sum total of all living organisms: a self-regulating, self-rejuvenating biosphere.

Of late and we have heard extensive use of the word “co-existence.” This means that no creature can operate without regard for fellow-creatures. It can only exist and survive in a state of balance with other living organisms.  Nature is the constant interplay of living organisms. It is the continuous search for and restoration balance.

These perceptions of organic nature are identical to those that the Japanese have entertained and cherished deeply since ancient times. The islanders blessed with a rich natural world recognized intuitively that even plants and trees speak and that human beings could not live without mountains and rivers. In Japan’s past there was no thought of conquering nature or of unilaterally exploiting it.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the play of Nature in Zen spirituality is with some poetry by Zen masters. If interested you can look up individual teachers to learn more.

All sentient beings are essentially Buddhas.
As with water and ice, there is no ice without water;
apart from sentient beings, there are no Buddhas.
Not knowing how close the truth is,
we seek it far away
—what a pity!
Hakuin Ekaku Zenji

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
Dogen

When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd’s purse.

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
Ryokan

This is a woefully inadequate sampling. Search for “zen poetry’ or “zen haiku’ to get a full flavor.

Motohisa Yamagake writes, “Japanese Buddhist sayings, such as ‘mountains, rivers, plants, and trees will all become Buddha,’ or ‘the shape of the mountain and the sound of the valley stream are also the manifestations of Buddha’ are expressions, in Buddhist fashion, of this Japanese spiritual sense of nature.”

I’ll end with a thought by Thich Nhat Hanh who’s teaching today and while being a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and master, is prolific and receives worldwide recognition:

The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquillizing ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.

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Today I’d like to share a couple of poems which help condense important truths. I’ve been reading a lot of Mary Oliver lately, mainly because she’s new to me and has a precise way of highlighting Nature with a cosmic consideration. First the poem:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

See what I mean? The poem draws you in, delights in natural details which alone create greater awareness, then from that microcosm a soul-shaking question is asked, instantly taking you to the macrocosm!

To me it says: “Don’t tarry in the nonessential. Don’t make excuses. Live your passion. Be your purpose. Don’t delay, don’t procrastinate. Because you’re unique and life is fleeting yet necessary, teeming with expression and it wants yours!”

What does this poem say to you?

The next one is part VI of Wendell Berry’s poem “Sabbaths 2001.” You can read the entire poem here and it’s well worth it.

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

How many moments in life have we allowed breathing to be prayer? Despite all the teachings, all the alerts that the breath is sacred, ours is mostly hurried, shallow, stop and start, jittery or too athletic. Make it smooth, make it even, make it gentle for in your breathing you find the true measure of your heart, your innermost status quo, the pulse of your body and mind.

Please share how you breathe.

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And now for a completely different tradition of poetry and spirituality; a little haiku and Zen. When you get down to it though, the truths are the same. Different flavors of ice cream are still ice cream.

I’ve featured the haiku of Mitsu Suzuki here before. She wasn’t only a haiku poet, but wife to Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and with him played an important role in bringing Zen Buddhism to North America. First a couple of her haiku written in the summer months, then a spiritual teaching from Suzuki Roshi based on his visit to Yosemite National Park.

by RobW

Too small
to call it a Zen garden
moss blossoms
—
Gardenia’s
whiteness remains
the night is complete

——

I went to Yosemite National Park, and I saw some huge waterfalls. The highest one there is 1,340 feet high, and from it the water comes down like a curtain thrown from the top of the mountain. It does not seem to come down swiftly, as you might expect; it seems to come down very slowly because of the distance. And the water does not come down as one stream, but is separated into many tiny streams. From a distance it looks like a curtain. And I thought it must be a very difficult experience for each drop of water to come down from the top of such a high mountain. It takes time, you know, a long time, for the water finally to reach the bottom of the waterfall. And it seems to me that our human life may be like this. We have many difficult experiences in our life. But at the same time, I thought, the water was not originally separated, but was one whole river. Only when it is separated does it have some difficulty in falling. It is as if the water does not have any feeling of being separate when it is one whole river. Only when divided into many drops can it begin to have or express some separate feeling.

Before we were born we had no such feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called ‘mind-only,’ or ‘essence of mind,’ or ‘big mind.’ After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have such feelings. And you have difficulty because of such feelings. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore and we have no actual difficulty in our life.

— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

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