July 31, 2023 • 46 mins
In the first monologue for a while we pick up the trail of Shamanic Reiki with an examination of Usui's familiy buddhism, Tendai. Tendai also influenced other strands of energy arts in Japan, as well as Japanese culture more broadly, so this episode sets the scene for the more technique-based monologues to follow in this series. The early origins of the Tendai tradition in India and China are also explored.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
Hello, and welcome to the WovenEmpty Podcast. My name's Damon Smith,
and this is going to be thefifth monologue that I've done in our series
of monologues. I was looking backand the last monologue, number four was
episode three of the series on ShamanicGregy. We had Graham as a special
(00:31):
guest. That was way back inMay twenty one. It doesn't seem like
that long ago. It's amazing howtime flies. So I thought it was
high time I was doing another oneof these, and this will be Shamanic
Greggy Part four. Before I getstarted, there's a few patrons to thank.
(00:52):
My fellow Campo instructor Brett Galloway,Thanks ever so much, mate for
signing up and supporting us, aswell as Tim Jane Molly, our old
friend, Robin Shannon, our longstanding patron, Robert Thompson, and Laura
Wiggins. Thanks to all of you, guys, and also thanks to all
of our amazing patrons for keeping thispodcast afloat and keeping us moving forward and
(01:15):
getting episodes out. You guys aresuperstars and it is so much appreciated.
So back at last the subject ofreiki, and it's kind of shamanic origins.
We talked about Macao Sui's sort ofclaimed links with matt Karama in the
last one. You might want togo back and listen to it. It's
(01:36):
been so long, and I wantedto start by looking at some evidence that
he was at least influenced by whatwas going on in the Karama Temple in
the sort of early to mid twentiethcentury. In Japanese, that's Karamada.
It literally just means Karma temple.They called derra is an ending you put
(01:56):
on Buddhist temples in Japan, andthis particular temple over the years, over
a lot of years, over centuries, has switched between different Buddhists, different
affiliations. But a particular thing thatI'm not sure if I mentioned it in
the last one, or maybe Iskipped over it faster than I probably should
(02:17):
have done, is this thing calledKaramacule. In the post war era,
the abbot of the temple, aguy called khun Shigaraki, founded his own
religion, but he was the abbotof this temple on Mount Karama, and
he made an effort to separate hisreligion from Buddhism. He called it Kurama
(02:39):
Kule and it kind of represents aneclectic blend of things. Again, it's
the same kind of stuff we've talkedabout esoteric Buddhism, esoteric syncratic Buddhism,
Shinto traditions like for instance, Huguendoand esoteric Shinto influencers. There's a strong
(03:00):
emphasis or interest in his spit offreligion, Karamacule, which came out of
the milieu of that temple, thesame one that Assui associated himself with.
And there are some influencers in thisthing or some aspects of Karamacule that sort
(03:21):
of lend credence to a series claimof some kind of a link to Karamada.
First of all, it incorporates abunch of different spiritual practices, the
obvious ones like chanting in meditation andrituals that you would get in a lot
of different Buddhist temples or Buddhist groups. Of course, Karamacua was claimed not
(03:46):
to be a Buddhist group, butalso a strong influence of Asceticism. And
as I said, this kind ofinfluence from Shugendo, that the yamabushi that
means mountain warriors, these sort ofguy who indulgent things like for instance,
Alague with severe austerities, you know, lying naked in the snow and doing
various rituals and chanting under freezing whatfalls where the tops off, and all
(04:10):
this kind of stuff. There's astrong influence of that and a really deep
connection with nature that you don't getso much in all Buddhist groups. They
are recognized, and I think thisis one of the things that Cone Shigaraki
used to differentiate it from sort ofwhat you might call more mainstream Buddhism.
(04:32):
It's recognizing the underlying energy patterns withinthe natural world, the divinity of the
natural world, that the world isGod, if you're like in the terms
of sort of an animistic kind ofworld view. And it also indulged in
channeling the healing and other kind oftransformative, transfigurative powers that exist within nature,
(04:59):
which is all obviously a strong parallelwith the kind of stuff that's in
the tradition that so he went onto initiate. There is still this concept
of enlightenment or spiritual awakening in Karamico, and that is a bit non shamanistic.
If you like this kind of ideaof a certain enlightenment or awakening,
(05:23):
I guess we do have it inthe shamanic stroke traditions, but you know,
it's more like getting rid of themiasma, and that's more of a
gradual thing than a sudden thing.And the idea that practitioners of this tradition
could utilize the underlying transformation that wenton within them to tap into what you
(05:47):
might call cosmic energy and utilize thatfor healing purposes and obviously spiritual development as
well. This is again very muchin keeping with the Reiky stroke, Saky
stroke, various other things tradition,energy arts tradition that was going on in
Japan at the time. So Iwouldn't say it became prominent because it wasn't
(06:08):
really him that became prominent. Itwas his next generation of followers who became
prominent. But that Si started histradition, which is what most people now
call reiki. Kuramacure puts a lotof importance on healing again, which is
a little different from most Buddhist groups, not that they don't indulge in that,
but I would side the emphasis onhealing is much stronger, and this
(06:30):
kind of link between the physical andthe spiritual being involved in that spiritual type
of healing. They also promote theidea of cultivation of internal energy and sort
of empowerment of the practitioner, developingan internal power, making it become stronger
(06:51):
over time. And they also incorporatedthese kind of eclectic mix of elements taken
from a whole wide range of differentpractices and effectively creating a sort of a
blend or a melding together of cherrypicked aspects of different religious traditions. So
(07:13):
this is karam a cure and whatit was about. One of the other
interesting things that they might not mentionI can't remember, is that a lot
of founders of different Buddhist sets,both modern and and historic, have either
claimed to or have actually studied atmad Karama. So this is not an
this is not an obscure backwa AndI think I'm the last one I recommended
(07:34):
visiting, or maybe it was onebefore that, I can't remember. So
we also, or we have lookedat a series links to the Buddhist tradition.
They're already in the previous one.I'm not going to go back over
that. But what we did sayis we would look at his links to
his family's Buddhism or the Buddhism thathis family indulged in. I'm quite happy
(07:57):
to do that. A lot ofmode and reiki practitioners will be keen to
downplay the influence of his family's Buddhismon reiki, but I really don't see
that. I see a strong influence. It's family's Buddhism was a very very
famous second of Buddhism called Tendai Buddhism, and another reason why I'm happy to
treat it on hears in the energyarts that we talked about a series,
(08:20):
Reiki was one prominent member of awhole rich culture of energy art that was
going on in Japan at that time. Tendai has links into others within that,
within that mixture, other energy artsas well within that mixture. And
so although I'm using the pretext partlyof using it, tend I be in
(08:41):
the family Buddhism of Makauoi Sui's family, it's actually relevant in many different ways
to stuff we're going to talk aboutin later episodes. So I think it's
a useful time now to address TendaiBuddhism and what it's all about. It
is a very major school of Buddhism, and Tendai pronounced like that it actually
rigidated in Japan, but it wastotally based on the Chinese very similar sounding
(09:03):
school called the Tiantai school in China. It's a rationalist school that's what it
put it of Buddhist thought that takesits name from a mountain in southeastern China
where a guy called gee ganpologies frommy Mandarin pronunciation, lived and created this
(09:24):
particular form of Buddhism. It classifies. One of the ways to look at
Tiantai is that it's the Chinese original. It kind of classifies all the teaching,
all of the teachings found in theMahayana Buddhist scriptures into a bunch of
different types. So it's very mucha categorization type of miasma categorization type of
(09:48):
activity, which you do get intoother Buddhist schools. It's like taking what
Kimtai did, was it took awhole bunch of pre existing Buddhist rations and
it's sort of cataloged them in away of like a library with catalog books,
and the main aspects of this.One of the categories, for instance,
(10:09):
would be those teachings that relate towhat's known in English as expedient means.
According to the tradition, Buddhism isa system of expedience means, a
pier in sanscript that leads towards agreater, more comprehensive worldview, a great
(10:33):
and more comprehensive set of truths,by dropping little, like a mouse following
a chill of cheese, little partialtruths along the path. This is the
kind of expedient means idea. Soit's it's sort of pragmatic in a strange
kind of extra kind of way.I guess that many different Mahayana schools.
(10:56):
So what expedient means is one ofthese categories. Another category is a holistic
activity. It sees chantai. TheChinese school sees all of the various Buddhist
teachings, the scriptures, and thepractices as a single vehicle, a yana,
a single vehicle leading towards Buddha hood. And it is big on sutras,
(11:24):
as you might imagine that, youknow, a religion that's operating as
if it's a library was going tobe big on Buddhist religious text and you
know, foremost among these things,famously is the famous Lotus Sutra, which
is massive in many of the JapaneseBuddhist traditions. We're talking about China here
(11:45):
though, and it sees the lotof Sutras, the highest teaching in Buddhism.
It's to them the ultimate expression ofthe Buddhist wisdom and its compassion and
its general enlightenment. A tenth highschool, as I said, was founded
by Giye in China, and thiswas in the sixth century, and it
(12:05):
has been practiced since that time.So this is actually not too long before
it was taken to Japan. Sohaving from the founding by gig in China,
it's only a century or so untilit actually pops up in Japan.
What's the name? Where does Tiantaicome from. It's the name of the
mountain known as Chiantai Mountain. It'slocated in a county called Tiantai County.
(12:30):
I guess that would be on moderncounty in the Judjiang Province of China,
would be southeast China. The highestpeak is called Huadding and it reaches it's
a tall mountain. This is likethree thousand, seven hundred and thirty four
feet and it has a you know, it's a beautiful nature scenery, all
that kind of stuff. It's it'sa great example of natural beauty. It
(12:52):
was historically one of the earliest teagrowing regions in China, and it's kind
of also associated with another famous ritualthat it made its way to Japan,
which is the Tea Samony. Ithas for a long time had very significant
Buddhist connections and was in legend theplace or the realm in which a lot
(13:16):
of Buddhist holy men lived out there, sort of ascetic lives, and it
has been a refuge for Buddhist practitionerssince its colonizational discovery in the fourth century.
The Chantai sect of Buddhism has andI guess still has a strong connection
with Mount Tiantai. The place isstill kind of a place of pilgrimage,
although obviously there's complexities with modern Chinaand government and different eras and different or
(13:43):
large or reducing amounts of welcomeness towardsreligious traditions in modern China, all that
stuff taken aside, it's still asite of pilgrimage for Buddhist So Chantai County
history goes back to the Chin Dynasty. It was at that time called long
Yue, and then later during theHand Dynasty, it was renamed to Huipoo.
(14:07):
The county is a place of Iguess you would say the place that's
famous for its natural resources, andI guess in modern China this is stuff
like water power, wind power,mining, mineral wealth and biological resources,
all this kind of stuff. Andagain, as I said, it's it's
(14:28):
very strongly associated with the natural world. Within the region, there's a quite
interesting phenomenon known as her her culture. Her culture isn't limited to Tiantai County,
but it's not as the kind ofthe cradle of this kind of unusual
culture which originated a Chiantai mountain andis a sort of twin concept culture of
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the people there that they have astrong concept of harmony and also of laughter.
So it's of a joyous ass sayin Japan, and Niki would have
said, a Yoki type of traditionalYoki kind of culture, and it literally
literally means laughter, a harmony somethinglike that. It's got its roots in
(15:15):
folklore within that region, and nobodyknows how far it went back, but
it's kind of a life outlook orworld view in which joy and harmony and
a good sense of humor, theemphasis of the positivity of laughter and the
unity of people are seen as allof these things are seen as positive values,
just as they were, for instance, in Miki's tradition. And it
(15:37):
also has the idea of finding happinessof fulfillment in simplicity. That's a big
one for for my work in variousworkplaces and institutions. The joy of the
kiss that keep it simple, stupidphilosophy and hanging in the moment and enjoying
the present moment. It's very jealousitylike her her culture. It has a
(16:02):
symbol which looks like a kind oftwo smiling faces, and it's as sort
of the face like that, andalso when you write it, it's like
doubled up character for laughter Chinese characterfor laughter. And the underlying idea is
that there's this underlying spirit of laughterand joy and harmony that is something that
is nourishing and vital, very veryanimistic. And so this is the background
(16:25):
from which the Tiantai sect arose.Obviously it took in a whole bunch of
intellectual Buddhist stuff on top of that, and to be fair, spiritual Buddist
stuff as well, But the valuein that region goes back a long time
before the value of these kind ofideas goes back a long time before the
development of the Tiantai sect, andthe underlying idea of this kind of underlying
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vitality of nature was there strong beforeTiantai arose, which tells you and the
fact that this region and was sortof discovered or colonized or uncovered relatively late
by Chinese history standards, you know, how far back Chinese history goes by
Chinese history standards, suggests that probablythere was a shamanistic, strong shamanistic tradition
in that area before it became asort of civilized, if you like.
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And so the movement of Chantai overto Japan was part of the whole evangelical
aspect of the Mahayana tradition. TheMahayana the greater Vehicle was kind of characterized
by the development of scriptures in general. So this is the one of the
probably the biggest buddhistration in the world, of which this Tiantai is a smaller
(17:41):
part, called the Mahayana Sutras.These scriptures and the key ones in the
whole Mahana tradition of things like theLord Sutra and the Heart Sutra, and
they sort of present presented for thetime some new ideas. It developed in
the first century BC in India andbecame very popular in Southeast Asia and East
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Asia. And it's the one outof the Buddhist traditions, it's the one
that's big on the sort of theidea of bodhisatvas, salvation by proxy,
all that kind of stuff. It'sthe one that the kind of how you
describe it bigs up that kind ofthing where there's a bit of we're not
worthy involved in it, we're notworthy to achieve enlightenment under our own steam.
(18:27):
But there's these wonderful enlightening people calledBodhisatvas who sort of hang around and
give us the benefit of their theirenlightenment and their spiritual attainment. It's a
benevolent type of enlightenment which they foregosome the benefit of enlightenment that prinstance,
(18:48):
breaking the eternal cycle of rebirth,that pertends to their personal achievement for the
benefit of people and actually all sentientbeings, rather than solely for personal liberation.
And this idea of religious advancement throughhelping others is strong, strong,
strong in these traditions, and againthat probably comes not so much from the
(19:11):
Buddhism, but from the sham shamesticbackground of Sham knows that to help that
community. But the idea that youcould achieve personal spiritual and enlightenment through helping
others, you can see that strongly. For instance, in a suiz Reiki
tradition, later the Kime later Mahayanathe greater vehicle proved to be incredibly popular.
(19:33):
It's spread throughout Central Asia and EastAsia, to China, to Tibet,
to Mongolia, and it expanded intoEast Asia countries like Korea and Japan.
And over time, different branches ofthe Mahayana tradition inevitably emerged as a
kind of sub traditions. The Madhyamaka, the Yoga Kara pure Land and fam
(20:00):
mostly Zen for instance. These arerelatively old Mahayana schools, and the transmission
of this Buddhism involves a bunch ofdifferent evangelical mechanisms. For instance, the
translation of texts the Sutras and othertexts from the original Indian languages like sound
(20:21):
script into the whole panoply of EastAsian languages in general, including Japanese,
and this kind of translation process andthe design for it facilitated the cultural exchange
and adaptation of Buddhism into local context. I think we've talked about this before.
When Buddhism sort of remakes itself inthe image of local days, just
(20:44):
as Christianity did when it moved intoplaces like Britain. It didn't fight For
instance, Christianity didn't fight back againstthe local festivals and the turning of the
Yeah, they just changed them intoChristian festivals and the local show sites like
for instance, Springs. It wouldturn them into you know, Sint Margaret's
(21:06):
Well or Sint Mary's Well rather thanyou know, the domestic grove that it
was originally Mahayana. Buddhism also ona massive impact on a whole swathe of
East Asian arts like literature, painting, philosophy, poetry, and it inspired
the creation of some of the greatestsculptures, paintings and temple architecture that you'll
(21:32):
find anywhere in the world. Mostof these enormous Buddhas that you find in
Japan, the absolutely colossal. Forinstance, the one that's inside Tower Daig
is an unbelievable scale. That's sortwe talked about before. It's in Nara
Park. The Old Capital of Japan. It's it's Mahayana Buddhism that's influenced these
in general, that's influenced these things. It has wide diversity of practices within
(21:59):
the the Greater Vehicle. And that'sanother way to look at the name Mahayana
the Greater Vehicle. It's just thatit's just got very very broad skirts.
I guess like you could say thatthe Catholic Church does, with all of
its various sects and groups. It'sstrongly adaptive and evolutionary compared to some of
the older forms of Buddhism, whichare heavily individualistic and focused on the enlightenment
(22:22):
of the individual. And one ofthese great strands of traditions became Tendai in
Japan when Tiantai moved to Japan.This movement was done by a student of
Giye who was called Saicho the Japanesename also known as Dinghyo Daiji, who
(22:45):
lived between seven to sixty seven andtwo two d He traveled originally to China
to bring the lord As teachings backto Japan and founded this his own school
of Buddhism based on the Tianta schoolfrom China called tenda, which is basically
a way to pronounce the Chinese wordtiantai. He's focused on particularly evolved around
(23:07):
aspects of the Lord of Sutra.It wasn't the first person to pick up
the Lord of Sutra. Lots ofBuddhists think the Lord of Sutra is really
cool, but the massive emphasis inmodern Japan on the Lord of Sutra I
think came originally from Saijo. TheLord of It is thought to have been
composed in India around the first century. See It's attributed to the teachings of
(23:30):
the historical Buddha, although the authorthe ship is obviously subject to debate because
it's so long ago, how itcould it not be? The Lord of
Sutra presents a kind of collection ofparables and other teachings that were supposedly conveyed
by the historical Buddha. It emphasizesthis concept of Buddha nature, which is
(23:52):
again a strong concept in Japanese Buddhism. I don't know if you've I've told
you the joke about the monk aboutI'll tell it again. There's a monk
who was in a kind of monastery, and there's a young monkey came down
into the courtyard in the morning,there's a young monk sitting on a wall
meditating, very early in the morning, before the sun rose. And the
(24:15):
old monk went over to the youngmonk and said, what are you doing?
And the young monk looked at himand with a quizzical look, and
said, I'm trying to come intouch with my budd and nature. Master.
This is this budd and nature conceptthat they have in these these groups,
to which the monk said nothing,and the older monk said nothing and
then went back in the temple.The next morning, when the young monk
(24:37):
came down really early to practice enlightenment, he found the old master sitting on
a wall polishing a brick with arag, and he looked a bit puzzled,
so he went over to the oldmaster and he said, Master,
why are you polishing a brick?And the master laughed and said, I'm
making a mirror, of course,And the young monk thought for a moment
(25:00):
and said, but Master, surely, no amount of polishing will turn a
brick into a mirror, to whichthe old Master said, no amount of
sitting on your bottom will turn youinto a buda, which is a really
cool joke. Stru I don't knowwhere game from, I heard it once,
but I do like it and Iunderstand this element. So the law
(25:21):
of Suture teachers that all beings,regardless of their current kind of state or
statens in life, have the capacityto attain boyhood. That's it's a possibility.
It emphasizes that enlightenments not limited toa select few people but open to
everyone. And this is great,you know, if you want to think
about that as achieving chelicity, anybodycan do that. I do like that
(25:44):
idea, but you know, thesuture, the fact that the suture encodes
that is great. The only issueis the whole and we're not where everything
that we get, we can't possiblybe worthy to achieve enlightenment kind of thing
that you do get strong as wrongly. In East Asian Buddhism in general,
that's quite a contrast to the kindof Buddhism you see Westerner's taking up.
(26:08):
In my experience, there's also theemphasis on skillful means. If anybody's seen
the boost Lee movie End of theDragon with the scene with the New Zealander
and boost Lee on the boat atthe start where boost Lee says we can't
fight here on the island on theboat. We need to go over on
the island, and the I thinkhe's in New Zealander. This guy,
(26:30):
I think it, gets down inthe boat and boost Lee's pretending he's going
to go with him, and thenhe casts the boat off. And the
cause of the art of fighting withoutfighting. This is what skillful means.
A pier in sanscript is all about, and it refers to the Buddha's ability
to adapt his teachings to the capacitiesand the needs of different people in different
(26:51):
places and different contexts. Very veryshamnistic way teaching. And this is one
of the things with the Lord ofSutra. Actually, the stuff that you're
written in it is pretty good,but the people who revere it often don't
even read it. This is oneof the things that I've noticed. And
the other thing is that they definitelyare not practicing in their everyday lives.
(27:12):
It's like paying lip service to itsideals but then not practicing it and their
everyday lives. But actually you cansee the content of the lot of Sutra,
it's quite shamanistic if you actually readwhat it says literally and don't don't
do the whole we're not worthy thing, and it is intended to underscore this
kind of idea that the budder iscompassionate and wants to help all beings and
(27:33):
all sentien beings in the world.It has a lot of powables, just
like the New Testament has a lotof powerbles in it and stories that are
intended to convey the same kind ofmessages over and over again. There's a
well known powable about the powable ofthe Burning House, which illustrate as the
buller's skillful means and guiding beings towardsliberation. The lot of Sutra place as
(27:57):
a strong emphasis are the ideal ofthe bodies adverst I've said, and enlightened
being who compassionately works for the liberationof all beings. It encourages practitioners to
cultivate the bodis advert spirit and engagein selfless actions for the benefit of others.
And you can see at least thefirst the first founder of the modern
(28:21):
reiki line, if you like,as having lived like that. I don't
think, as he made a hugeamount of money out of his founding of
reiki, unfortunately, possibly for theworld. His second generation of students were
not like minded as far as asfar as that goes, it's had the
sutra itself side a massive influence acrossthe whole of East Asia. The Lord
(28:42):
Sutra of this is including you know, China, Jepan career and places like
Vietnam, and again massive influence onartwork and it's shape the development of the
various Mahayana Buddhist traditions. It's beena very strong influence. So Saicho den
(29:03):
Yo Daishi as he was also known, he was the founder of tend School
in Japan. As I've said,he was influenced by the Chentai School from
China, and he made his tripto China that was around eight or four
d and so the family of theschool in Japan was obviously after that.
(29:25):
He died in a twenty two edie. He was born in Sakamoto in Shiga
and Japan, and he also liveda large part of his life there and
he was bowed in Refugee which isalso in Shiga. His teacher was a
guy called Yoho obviously that's earlier inhis life as Buddhist teacher was guy called
Yohio so Yoho whose birth name wasOtomo No kuro Nushi. He was born
(29:49):
in sixty six eight Edi in Nara, now a prefecture, which is the
sort epicenter of a lot of thestuff that we talked about Miki's tradition and
others. When not a million milesaway from being Jero Kawas tradition, it's
Kyoto, it's Nara, it's Osakato the Cansai area of Japan. If
(30:10):
you want to hear a lot ofstuff about that, we also talk about
it. The Japanese keempo is heavilyassociated with that region as well, So
you know, all these things sortof fit together with original four or five
episodes. Remember on the Heretics podcasttalk about the history keempo and jiu jitsu,
and we cover a lot of thatstuff that we talked about is based
in that area of Japan. Hewas so this is Joho Sacho's teacher.
(30:33):
He was addained as a monk atthe age of nineteen and became known as
Yoki. He was a dedicated monkby all accounts. He engaged in a
lot of social welfare stuff. Soyou can see that even before the whole
infront of the Chinese stuff coming inthis helping other things was strong. He
traveled around Japan providing it to peopleand obviously doing the whole Buddhist the evangelical
(30:59):
thing, but also constructing various templesand bridges and other things, again trying
to help people, and he wasvery focused on relieving the suffering and promoting
the wellbeing of ordinary people. Heplayed a significant role in the popularization of
Buddhism and the establishment of Buddhist institutionsin Japan, and Gioho had a massive
(31:19):
influence on site show, quite apartfrom the whole Chinese Tienti sect thing.
So the history of this stuff isnot very simplistic. The real history when
you start looking at it is notvery simplistic. There are various tendrils and
strands, but what you get isall the stuff that became famous in a
way. You know, they sayhistory is written by the victors. Ten
(31:41):
Day is a massive school, soyou hear the ten Dye of a closer
group of closer related schools. Youhear the ten Die version of things.
Reiki is very popular, so youhear the reiki version of things. But
as we'll find in future episodes ofthe series, there's a lot of smaller
things going on behind the scene thatare smaller from our perception today, but
(32:02):
back in those days they weren't smaller. They were equally, if not more
profoundly influential on the stuff that's goingon in the mainstream history that we get
from sex Like tend I. Heestablished it the headquarters of Tendai on Mount
Hie in Kyoto, and he wrotea famous book called The Shugo Cock Guy
(32:24):
Show. Due to a much moreconfident in my Japanese pronunciation than I am
of my Mandarin pronunciation. I thinkthat was probably quite all right due to
his influence, but some tend Ibecame dominant in Japanese intellectual life. Obviously,
his headquarters are founded in the areaof the capital and the Imperial court
(32:45):
and all that kind of stuff,So he probably did the whole same thing
that Christianity did in Europe. Ifyou convert the high ranking people to your
religion, that's a lot quicker wayto promote the popularity of religion in general.
Then if you focus on people,it emphasizes the historic Buddha Sakyamuni,
(33:07):
who represents the kind of exoteric world, and also the eternal Buddha Vera Kana
who represents the esoteric world and thesetwo former sort of yin and a yang.
Within this tradition, there's a tonof different strands of Buddhist thoughts that
came were included in Ten Day obviouslyfrom these earlier Buddhist learning in Japan,
(33:28):
and also from the Tendai tradition fromChina, and it makes it a complex,
rich mixture, and Tenda is veryinteresting just simply from the smogest border
stuff in it. The teachings ofPsicho are still proud, like over a
thousand years later now, they're stillvery prominent in Japan. So what are
these teachings, What is bud TendaiBuddhism itself teach What are people who follow
(33:52):
it believe? Well, first ofall, there's this idea of the middle
way, which is this path betweena stream asceticism of some extremosticism, of
some of the more shamanistic leaning,and also some of the more inward looking
early strands of Buddhism at the oneend of a continuum and at the other
(34:12):
end, the over indulgence bathing anddelighting in the miasma at the other end
of the spectrum. And they liketo place themselves in the middle of the
middle on that spectrum, and itencourages its followers to find a kind of
balance or harmony in all aspects oftheir lives. It places, as I've
said, massive emphasis on the Lordof Sutra, and it considers that to
(34:36):
be the ultimate expression of the teachingof the historic Buddha. They believe that
the Lord Sutra contains the essence ofall the Buddhist teachings and represents the potential
for enlightenment in all beings, allsentient beings. Anyway. They've also got
a concept which we might translate asuniversal Buddhahood, which means all beings have
(34:59):
the potential to enlightenment. And theybelieve that everyone possesses a kind of in
it, but a nature. It'sthe polishing the brick thing that can be
realized through the practices and realizations.Again, a ton of this stuff,
I mean, it hints at amassively shamanistic spiritual development kind of process.
(35:20):
But obviously over the years and thefocus on books and the focus on cataloging
stuff, and the focus on puttingthings in little boxes has extra terrisized that.
I mean, they've had a thousandyears to work on extraterrisizing this stuff.
But you can see when you readit from a Shamanic point of view,
and when you read this stuff,I'll look into the stuff from a
shamanic point view, you can seethe Shumanic origins underlying it all. They
(35:42):
focused on skillful means and they usethat not just as a way to achieve
things easily, but also a wayto teach others. The encouragement in a
very again very evangelical close to evangelicalChristianity is to emphasize the interconnectedness of truths,
but also to customize that interconnectedness tothe needs and capacities and understanding and
(36:06):
obviously localized social measma of different individuals. They understand truth, you know,
the britishtrations are talking about the sametruth, which is often what they're after.
They have again surprised by three differenttruths, just like the three realms.
They have the conventional truth, theyhave a kind of temporary truth,
and they have a kind of ultimatetruth. The conventional truth would be the
(36:30):
miasmatic understanding. It's a bit likethe Freemasons, isn't it. With the
conventional truth, you can think asthe entered apprentice, the temporary truth is
the gentleman, and the ultimate truthwould be the Mastermason. The very similar
kind of three phase, but youknow, it talks back to that whole
upper world, middle world, lowworld model from ancient Shammism. The rituals,
(36:52):
the practices include the usual suspects.You've got meditation, you've got chanting,
you've got a recitation of the suits, obviously, prostrations, the whole
We're not worthy think whiching in viewis just also rituals and a whole bunch
of other devotional practices, some ofthem leaning towards asceticism, but not very
(37:13):
strongly, because after all, theyare after the after the Middle Way.
They are. The practices that theydo are seen as means to cultivate wisdom
and compassion like the Buddha. Andyou know, people associated with these traditions
are started just like everybody else's buzzwordmindfulness in English, And yeah, I
(37:36):
think we've talked about that, Iknow from this podcast, But to a
shamanistic practitioner, it's really not avery good It's really just a dreadful word.
To me. What if I readmindfulness on the page, It's like
mindfulness is the opposite of jealosity,which would be mindlessness. The problem with
that term mindlessness is that it's beenso twisted in our contemporary vocabulary. You
(37:59):
know, steps like mindless violence arevery strong in our society. Well,
of course, a lot of thatviolence isn't actually mindless, it's actually very
mindful. Mindlessness doesn't tend to leadto violence. It's mindfulness that does.
Obviously, if you're mindless, there'sabsolutely no reason to indulge in it.
So this idea of harmonization of teachingsand the integration of Buddhist teachings and practices
(38:21):
from all over the place, andthe diversity of approaches to spiritual realization.
Again, it's interesting of as aportfolio, a kind of an echo of
a portfolio Shumanic techniques from ancient times, and they have teachings from both Marianna
and also from the Adriana traditions.So meditation. They have engaged in a
(38:45):
bunch of different forms of meditation,such as and you know, you guys
are going to recognize these things,especially if you're long term listeners to the
podcast Breath Awareness. Oh yes,the one that I'm always slagging down,
at least in the early days ofthe Podcast of Visualization, for instance,
you know the film's meditating over mandalaslike I think I think Joe asked me
(39:07):
about that on some previous episode,I don't know which one. Insight meditation.
Meditation is kind of considered a crucialpractice for developing concentration and insight into
the world. I guess into selfand through self the world. Again,
there's the an extra terri sized versionof the whole amsca idea and level two
(39:28):
technique idea. The chanting is oftendone with sacred texts, particularly load of
Sutra, and the idea is tofocus the mind while doing the whole We're
not worthy thing to expression devotion.Obviously, if you chanted the lot of
a billion times, then you're obviouslyreally devoted and probably worthy if you could
(39:50):
do it a billion times, becausethose sort of things are unachievable, and
however many times you do it,you're probably not going to feel like you're
getting anywhere. But it's also ifyou years, if you chat it enough
times without really understanding what you're talkingabout, somehow you're gonna biosmosis take on
some kind of understanding of the teachingsof the Buddha through this recitation of through
(40:12):
memorizing like a parrot. I've heardthat argument from really really bad Thai Ti
teachers. I mean bad in termsof Usually it's the Thai Ti teachers who
can't apply their art in a physicalsense. And often they believe that if
they just practice the form enough timessomehow, you know how many times that
is a million billion or something,they will eventually, through practice of the
(40:32):
form, learn how to fight withit. But they're not worthy to know
that yet. And I can tellthem all if any of those guys are
listening, you will never learn tofight with taigi simply by practice in the
faum. It just won't happen.Just so you know, not that though
some people are going to be listeningto this podcast or me so frustrations bowing
(40:52):
reverential salutations. If you go toany Japanese martial arts classes, you'll see
stuff like this, like anikdo classwhere they'll bow to the old the old
foundersa at the start of the classto his picture. Anyway, that's let's
not go into that. That's onefor. That's one for actually in the
New Energy Arts podcast and bowing tothe Buddha, it's about expressing humility and
(41:15):
gratitude and reverence. That's a twistingof that sort of reverence for nature that
you get an animistic societies. Sutrastudy study study groups are a great way
to get new people involved a bitin you know, you could say that
they parallel the activities of evangelical WesternChristian groups who go around handing out free
(41:38):
free Bibles and free Bible study guidesand all this kind of stuff, and
then arranged Bible study sessions and thengradually incorporate their evangelity and ecolment you call
them evangelise I don't know, intotheir groups. Um. And obviously these
guys are totally focused on the lawof sutras, so that would be a
focus of study. But it's agreat way to evangelize in a kind of
(42:00):
intellectual, semi intellectual type of way. The ceremonies come from all over the
place. You've got services what youmight be recognized as religious services by Westerners.
The offerings the same as you getin Shinto, similar kind of thing
you would get in Shinto shrines,purification rights ditto. These rituals are again
(42:22):
a means of expression that devotion thatwe're not worthiness that goes on in these
groups of generating positive karma, becauseyou know, karma can be a good
thing or a bad thing in Buddhism. So these rituals about generating positive karma
and creating kind of sacred environment inthe way in a sort of exoteric way
that shaman would create in inverted commas, a growth, for instance. And
(42:46):
then there's the Bodhisatva path. Tendie practitioners aspired to following the path of
the Bodhisatva. Beings are humans ofbeings who are vowed to attain enlightenment not
for themselves but for the benefit ofall others. This is about cultivating virtues
that the famous in Buddhism and compassion, wisdom, lovingness, kindness, all
(43:08):
that kind of stuff, although obviouslynot worth too much attachment on the lovingness
word, I mean too much personalattachment, which is often seen as a
bad thing in Buddhism. And engagingin altruistic acts, in acts of service
to others. And again you cansee the whole Ricky kind of based model
(43:29):
of how Ricky modern Ricky has operatedthrough this. And as incidentally, as
we're going to go on and seethat is not how all Ricky like energy
outs in Japan operated. It's justhow the most popular one operated. But
that's for future episodes. And thenpilgrimages. Finally, ten day Buddhism has
a long and strong tradition of pilgrimageto a bunch of different sacred sites,
(43:52):
obviously Mountier, the headquarters in Kyoto, about many other places as well,
and the pilgrimages are there provide anopportunity for ten Daye practitioners to deepen their
spiritual understanding, their practice, toconnect with the lineage of ten Daye masters
that went before them, and togain inspiration from the natural environment, because
(44:13):
obviously when you go into pilgrimage,you're forced to go through the natural world
to get to wherever it is you'regoing, and so again you can see
the links to shamanistic type practice.So that's the background to the Buddhism of
Makao Sui's family, the Buddhism,if you like that he grew up in
in the same way that Christian inthe West would grew up within a Christian
(44:36):
family. He grew up in afamily that had these kind of ideas,
and so basically you can see thatfrom multiple different sources from the stuff that
he either got from ak Karama orassociated themselves with bad Karama and the more
shamanistic shinshiko traditions that were going onin the areas where he was working and
(44:57):
teaching early on. All of thethings were sort of pointing him towards the
life that he lived. And inthe next one, we're going to start
digging into this idea of the underlyingnature of reiki. I think we've talked
enough about history and tradition and whereall these influences came from. As I
(45:21):
said, ten Day influenced lots ofthe psych stroke wiki, stroke NGRT type
of traditions went on in early tomid twentieth century Japan, the whole of
the twentieth century in Japan, andso I think it's worthy going through it
from multiple for multiple different reasons,going through the history of ten Day and
what they believe and what they practice, because we'll see all of these things
(45:43):
again and again as we start talkingabout the energy art traditions of modern Japan,
which is where we're going next inthis series. That will be Monologue
six Shamanic Regy five. So thanksfor listening, and Joe and myself have
an episode planned they're going to bedoing very shortly, so those who are
(46:06):
looking forward to a mainstream Woven Energypodcast episode are going to get that very
soon. But I just thought itwas a long time since we talked about
Ricky, So here's this new episode. Please do enjoy and I'll see you
all later. Thank you.
Hello, and welcome to the WovenEmpty Podcast. My name's Damon Smith,
and this is going to be thefifth monologue that I've done in our series
of monologues. I was looking backand the last monologue, number four was
episode three of the series on ShamanicGregy. We had Graham as a special
(00:31):
guest. That was way back inMay twenty one. It doesn't seem like
that long ago. It's amazing howtime flies. So I thought it was
high time I was doing another oneof these, and this will be Shamanic
Greggy Part four. Before I getstarted, there's a few patrons to thank.
(00:52):
My fellow Campo instructor Brett Galloway,Thanks ever so much, mate for
signing up and supporting us, aswell as Tim Jane Molly, our old
friend, Robin Shannon, our longstanding patron, Robert Thompson, and Laura
Wiggins. Thanks to all of you, guys, and also thanks to all
of our amazing patrons for keeping thispodcast afloat and keeping us moving forward and
(01:15):
getting episodes out. You guys aresuperstars and it is so much appreciated.
So back at last the subject ofreiki, and it's kind of shamanic origins.
We talked about Macao Sui's sort ofclaimed links with matt Karama in the
last one. You might want togo back and listen to it. It's
(01:36):
been so long, and I wantedto start by looking at some evidence that
he was at least influenced by whatwas going on in the Karama Temple in
the sort of early to mid twentiethcentury. In Japanese, that's Karamada.
It literally just means Karma temple.They called derra is an ending you put
(01:56):
on Buddhist temples in Japan, andthis particular temple over the years, over
a lot of years, over centuries, has switched between different Buddhists, different
affiliations. But a particular thing thatI'm not sure if I mentioned it in
the last one, or maybe Iskipped over it faster than I probably should
(02:17):
have done, is this thing calledKaramacule. In the post war era,
the abbot of the temple, aguy called khun Shigaraki, founded his own
religion, but he was the abbotof this temple on Mount Karama, and
he made an effort to separate hisreligion from Buddhism. He called it Kurama
(02:39):
Kule and it kind of represents aneclectic blend of things. Again, it's
the same kind of stuff we've talkedabout esoteric Buddhism, esoteric syncratic Buddhism,
Shinto traditions like for instance, Huguendoand esoteric Shinto influencers. There's a strong
(03:00):
emphasis or interest in his spit offreligion, Karamacule, which came out of
the milieu of that temple, thesame one that Assui associated himself with.
And there are some influencers in thisthing or some aspects of Karamacule that sort
(03:21):
of lend credence to a series claimof some kind of a link to Karamada.
First of all, it incorporates abunch of different spiritual practices, the
obvious ones like chanting in meditation andrituals that you would get in a lot
of different Buddhist temples or Buddhist groups. Of course, Karamacua was claimed not
(03:46):
to be a Buddhist group, butalso a strong influence of Asceticism. And
as I said, this kind ofinfluence from Shugendo, that the yamabushi that
means mountain warriors, these sort ofguy who indulgent things like for instance,
Alague with severe austerities, you know, lying naked in the snow and doing
various rituals and chanting under freezing whatfalls where the tops off, and all
(04:10):
this kind of stuff. There's astrong influence of that and a really deep
connection with nature that you don't getso much in all Buddhist groups. They
are recognized, and I think thisis one of the things that Cone Shigaraki
used to differentiate it from sort ofwhat you might call more mainstream Buddhism.
(04:32):
It's recognizing the underlying energy patterns withinthe natural world, the divinity of the
natural world, that the world isGod, if you're like in the terms
of sort of an animistic kind ofworld view. And it also indulged in
channeling the healing and other kind oftransformative, transfigurative powers that exist within nature,
(04:59):
which is all obviously a strong parallelwith the kind of stuff that's in
the tradition that so he went onto initiate. There is still this concept
of enlightenment or spiritual awakening in Karamico, and that is a bit non shamanistic.
If you like this kind of ideaof a certain enlightenment or awakening,
(05:23):
I guess we do have it inthe shamanic stroke traditions, but you know,
it's more like getting rid of themiasma, and that's more of a
gradual thing than a sudden thing.And the idea that practitioners of this tradition
could utilize the underlying transformation that wenton within them to tap into what you
(05:47):
might call cosmic energy and utilize thatfor healing purposes and obviously spiritual development as
well. This is again very muchin keeping with the Reiky stroke, Saky
stroke, various other things tradition,energy arts tradition that was going on in
Japan at the time. So Iwouldn't say it became prominent because it wasn't
(06:08):
really him that became prominent. Itwas his next generation of followers who became
prominent. But that Si started histradition, which is what most people now
call reiki. Kuramacure puts a lotof importance on healing again, which is
a little different from most Buddhist groups, not that they don't indulge in that,
but I would side the emphasis onhealing is much stronger, and this
(06:30):
kind of link between the physical andthe spiritual being involved in that spiritual type
of healing. They also promote theidea of cultivation of internal energy and sort
of empowerment of the practitioner, developingan internal power, making it become stronger
(06:51):
over time. And they also incorporatedthese kind of eclectic mix of elements taken
from a whole wide range of differentpractices and effectively creating a sort of a
blend or a melding together of cherrypicked aspects of different religious traditions. So
(07:13):
this is karam a cure and whatit was about. One of the other
interesting things that they might not mentionI can't remember, is that a lot
of founders of different Buddhist sets,both modern and and historic, have either
claimed to or have actually studied atmad Karama. So this is not an
this is not an obscure backwa AndI think I'm the last one I recommended
(07:34):
visiting, or maybe it was onebefore that, I can't remember. So
we also, or we have lookedat a series links to the Buddhist tradition.
They're already in the previous one.I'm not going to go back over
that. But what we did sayis we would look at his links to
his family's Buddhism or the Buddhism thathis family indulged in. I'm quite happy
(07:57):
to do that. A lot ofmode and reiki practitioners will be keen to
downplay the influence of his family's Buddhismon reiki, but I really don't see
that. I see a strong influence. It's family's Buddhism was a very very
famous second of Buddhism called Tendai Buddhism, and another reason why I'm happy to
treat it on hears in the energyarts that we talked about a series,
(08:20):
Reiki was one prominent member of awhole rich culture of energy art that was
going on in Japan at that time. Tendai has links into others within that,
within that mixture, other energy artsas well within that mixture. And
so although I'm using the pretext partlyof using it, tend I be in
(08:41):
the family Buddhism of Makauoi Sui's family, it's actually relevant in many different ways
to stuff we're going to talk aboutin later episodes. So I think it's
a useful time now to address TendaiBuddhism and what it's all about. It
is a very major school of Buddhism, and Tendai pronounced like that it actually
rigidated in Japan, but it wastotally based on the Chinese very similar sounding
(09:03):
school called the Tiantai school in China. It's a rationalist school that's what it
put it of Buddhist thought that takesits name from a mountain in southeastern China
where a guy called gee ganpologies frommy Mandarin pronunciation, lived and created this
(09:24):
particular form of Buddhism. It classifies. One of the ways to look at
Tiantai is that it's the Chinese original. It kind of classifies all the teaching,
all of the teachings found in theMahayana Buddhist scriptures into a bunch of
different types. So it's very mucha categorization type of miasma categorization type of
(09:48):
activity, which you do get intoother Buddhist schools. It's like taking what
Kimtai did, was it took awhole bunch of pre existing Buddhist rations and
it's sort of cataloged them in away of like a library with catalog books,
and the main aspects of this.One of the categories, for instance,
(10:09):
would be those teachings that relate towhat's known in English as expedient means.
According to the tradition, Buddhism isa system of expedience means, a
pier in sanscript that leads towards agreater, more comprehensive worldview, a great
(10:33):
and more comprehensive set of truths,by dropping little, like a mouse following
a chill of cheese, little partialtruths along the path. This is the
kind of expedient means idea. Soit's it's sort of pragmatic in a strange
kind of extra kind of way.I guess that many different Mahayana schools.
(10:56):
So what expedient means is one ofthese categories. Another category is a holistic
activity. It sees chantai. TheChinese school sees all of the various Buddhist
teachings, the scriptures, and thepractices as a single vehicle, a yana,
a single vehicle leading towards Buddha hood. And it is big on sutras,
(11:24):
as you might imagine that, youknow, a religion that's operating as
if it's a library was going tobe big on Buddhist religious text and you
know, foremost among these things,famously is the famous Lotus Sutra, which
is massive in many of the JapaneseBuddhist traditions. We're talking about China here
(11:45):
though, and it sees the lotof Sutras, the highest teaching in Buddhism.
It's to them the ultimate expression ofthe Buddhist wisdom and its compassion and
its general enlightenment. A tenth highschool, as I said, was founded
by Giye in China, and thiswas in the sixth century, and it
(12:05):
has been practiced since that time.So this is actually not too long before
it was taken to Japan. Sohaving from the founding by gig in China,
it's only a century or so untilit actually pops up in Japan.
What's the name? Where does Tiantaicome from. It's the name of the
mountain known as Chiantai Mountain. It'slocated in a county called Tiantai County.
(12:30):
I guess that would be on moderncounty in the Judjiang Province of China,
would be southeast China. The highestpeak is called Huadding and it reaches it's
a tall mountain. This is likethree thousand, seven hundred and thirty four
feet and it has a you know, it's a beautiful nature scenery, all
that kind of stuff. It's it'sa great example of natural beauty. It
(12:52):
was historically one of the earliest teagrowing regions in China, and it's kind
of also associated with another famous ritualthat it made its way to Japan,
which is the Tea Samony. Ithas for a long time had very significant
Buddhist connections and was in legend theplace or the realm in which a lot
(13:16):
of Buddhist holy men lived out there, sort of ascetic lives, and it
has been a refuge for Buddhist practitionerssince its colonizational discovery in the fourth century.
The Chantai sect of Buddhism has andI guess still has a strong connection
with Mount Tiantai. The place isstill kind of a place of pilgrimage,
although obviously there's complexities with modern Chinaand government and different eras and different or
(13:43):
large or reducing amounts of welcomeness towardsreligious traditions in modern China, all that
stuff taken aside, it's still asite of pilgrimage for Buddhist So Chantai County
history goes back to the Chin Dynasty. It was at that time called long
Yue, and then later during theHand Dynasty, it was renamed to Huipoo.
(14:07):
The county is a place of Iguess you would say the place that's
famous for its natural resources, andI guess in modern China this is stuff
like water power, wind power,mining, mineral wealth and biological resources,
all this kind of stuff. Andagain, as I said, it's it's
(14:28):
very strongly associated with the natural world. Within the region, there's a quite
interesting phenomenon known as her her culture. Her culture isn't limited to Tiantai County,
but it's not as the kind ofthe cradle of this kind of unusual
culture which originated a Chiantai mountain andis a sort of twin concept culture of
(14:54):
the people there that they have astrong concept of harmony and also of laughter.
So it's of a joyous ass sayin Japan, and Niki would have
said, a Yoki type of traditionalYoki kind of culture, and it literally
literally means laughter, a harmony somethinglike that. It's got its roots in
(15:15):
folklore within that region, and nobodyknows how far it went back, but
it's kind of a life outlook orworld view in which joy and harmony and
a good sense of humor, theemphasis of the positivity of laughter and the
unity of people are seen as allof these things are seen as positive values,
just as they were, for instance, in Miki's tradition. And it
(15:37):
also has the idea of finding happinessof fulfillment in simplicity. That's a big
one for for my work in variousworkplaces and institutions. The joy of the
kiss that keep it simple, stupidphilosophy and hanging in the moment and enjoying
the present moment. It's very jealousitylike her her culture. It has a
(16:02):
symbol which looks like a kind oftwo smiling faces, and it's as sort
of the face like that, andalso when you write it, it's like
doubled up character for laughter Chinese characterfor laughter. And the underlying idea is
that there's this underlying spirit of laughterand joy and harmony that is something that
is nourishing and vital, very veryanimistic. And so this is the background
(16:25):
from which the Tiantai sect arose.Obviously it took in a whole bunch of
intellectual Buddhist stuff on top of that, and to be fair, spiritual Buddist
stuff as well, But the valuein that region goes back a long time
before the value of these kind ofideas goes back a long time before the
development of the Tiantai sect, andthe underlying idea of this kind of underlying
(16:52):
vitality of nature was there strong beforeTiantai arose, which tells you and the
fact that this region and was sortof discovered or colonized or uncovered relatively late
by Chinese history standards, you know, how far back Chinese history goes by
Chinese history standards, suggests that probablythere was a shamanistic, strong shamanistic tradition
in that area before it became asort of civilized, if you like.
(17:17):
And so the movement of Chantai overto Japan was part of the whole evangelical
aspect of the Mahayana tradition. TheMahayana the greater Vehicle was kind of characterized
by the development of scriptures in general. So this is the one of the
probably the biggest buddhistration in the world, of which this Tiantai is a smaller
(17:41):
part, called the Mahayana Sutras.These scriptures and the key ones in the
whole Mahana tradition of things like theLord Sutra and the Heart Sutra, and
they sort of present presented for thetime some new ideas. It developed in
the first century BC in India andbecame very popular in Southeast Asia and East
(18:03):
Asia. And it's the one outof the Buddhist traditions, it's the one
that's big on the sort of theidea of bodhisatvas, salvation by proxy,
all that kind of stuff. It'sthe one that the kind of how you
describe it bigs up that kind ofthing where there's a bit of we're not
worthy involved in it, we're notworthy to achieve enlightenment under our own steam.
(18:27):
But there's these wonderful enlightening people calledBodhisatvas who sort of hang around and
give us the benefit of their theirenlightenment and their spiritual attainment. It's a
benevolent type of enlightenment which they foregosome the benefit of enlightenment that prinstance,
(18:48):
breaking the eternal cycle of rebirth,that pertends to their personal achievement for the
benefit of people and actually all sentientbeings, rather than solely for personal liberation.
And this idea of religious advancement throughhelping others is strong, strong,
strong in these traditions, and againthat probably comes not so much from the
(19:11):
Buddhism, but from the sham shamesticbackground of Sham knows that to help that
community. But the idea that youcould achieve personal spiritual and enlightenment through helping
others, you can see that strongly. For instance, in a suiz Reiki
tradition, later the Kime later Mahayanathe greater vehicle proved to be incredibly popular.
(19:33):
It's spread throughout Central Asia and EastAsia, to China, to Tibet,
to Mongolia, and it expanded intoEast Asia countries like Korea and Japan.
And over time, different branches ofthe Mahayana tradition inevitably emerged as a
kind of sub traditions. The Madhyamaka, the Yoga Kara pure Land and fam
(20:00):
mostly Zen for instance. These arerelatively old Mahayana schools, and the transmission
of this Buddhism involves a bunch ofdifferent evangelical mechanisms. For instance, the
translation of texts the Sutras and othertexts from the original Indian languages like sound
(20:21):
script into the whole panoply of EastAsian languages in general, including Japanese,
and this kind of translation process andthe design for it facilitated the cultural exchange
and adaptation of Buddhism into local context. I think we've talked about this before.
When Buddhism sort of remakes itself inthe image of local days, just
(20:44):
as Christianity did when it moved intoplaces like Britain. It didn't fight For
instance, Christianity didn't fight back againstthe local festivals and the turning of the
Yeah, they just changed them intoChristian festivals and the local show sites like
for instance, Springs. It wouldturn them into you know, Sint Margaret's
(21:06):
Well or Sint Mary's Well rather thanyou know, the domestic grove that it
was originally Mahayana. Buddhism also ona massive impact on a whole swathe of
East Asian arts like literature, painting, philosophy, poetry, and it inspired
the creation of some of the greatestsculptures, paintings and temple architecture that you'll
(21:32):
find anywhere in the world. Mostof these enormous Buddhas that you find in
Japan, the absolutely colossal. Forinstance, the one that's inside Tower Daig
is an unbelievable scale. That's sortwe talked about before. It's in Nara
Park. The Old Capital of Japan. It's it's Mahayana Buddhism that's influenced these
in general, that's influenced these things. It has wide diversity of practices within
(21:59):
the the Greater Vehicle. And that'sanother way to look at the name Mahayana
the Greater Vehicle. It's just thatit's just got very very broad skirts.
I guess like you could say thatthe Catholic Church does, with all of
its various sects and groups. It'sstrongly adaptive and evolutionary compared to some of
the older forms of Buddhism, whichare heavily individualistic and focused on the enlightenment
(22:22):
of the individual. And one ofthese great strands of traditions became Tendai in
Japan when Tiantai moved to Japan.This movement was done by a student of
Giye who was called Saicho the Japanesename also known as Dinghyo Daiji, who
(22:45):
lived between seven to sixty seven andtwo two d He traveled originally to China
to bring the lord As teachings backto Japan and founded this his own school
of Buddhism based on the Tianta schoolfrom China called tenda, which is basically
a way to pronounce the Chinese wordtiantai. He's focused on particularly evolved around
(23:07):
aspects of the Lord of Sutra.It wasn't the first person to pick up
the Lord of Sutra. Lots ofBuddhists think the Lord of Sutra is really
cool, but the massive emphasis inmodern Japan on the Lord of Sutra I
think came originally from Saijo. TheLord of It is thought to have been
composed in India around the first century. See It's attributed to the teachings of
(23:30):
the historical Buddha, although the authorthe ship is obviously subject to debate because
it's so long ago, how itcould it not be? The Lord of
Sutra presents a kind of collection ofparables and other teachings that were supposedly conveyed
by the historical Buddha. It emphasizesthis concept of Buddha nature, which is
(23:52):
again a strong concept in Japanese Buddhism. I don't know if you've I've told
you the joke about the monk aboutI'll tell it again. There's a monk
who was in a kind of monastery, and there's a young monkey came down
into the courtyard in the morning,there's a young monk sitting on a wall
meditating, very early in the morning, before the sun rose. And the
(24:15):
old monk went over to the youngmonk and said, what are you doing?
And the young monk looked at himand with a quizzical look, and
said, I'm trying to come intouch with my budd and nature. Master.
This is this budd and nature conceptthat they have in these these groups,
to which the monk said nothing,and the older monk said nothing and
then went back in the temple.The next morning, when the young monk
(24:37):
came down really early to practice enlightenment, he found the old master sitting on
a wall polishing a brick with arag, and he looked a bit puzzled,
so he went over to the oldmaster and he said, Master,
why are you polishing a brick?And the master laughed and said, I'm
making a mirror, of course,And the young monk thought for a moment
(25:00):
and said, but Master, surely, no amount of polishing will turn a
brick into a mirror, to whichthe old Master said, no amount of
sitting on your bottom will turn youinto a buda, which is a really
cool joke. Stru I don't knowwhere game from, I heard it once,
but I do like it and Iunderstand this element. So the law
(25:21):
of Suture teachers that all beings,regardless of their current kind of state or
statens in life, have the capacityto attain boyhood. That's it's a possibility.
It emphasizes that enlightenments not limited toa select few people but open to
everyone. And this is great,you know, if you want to think
about that as achieving chelicity, anybodycan do that. I do like that
(25:44):
idea, but you know, thesuture, the fact that the suture encodes
that is great. The only issueis the whole and we're not where everything
that we get, we can't possiblybe worthy to achieve enlightenment kind of thing
that you do get strong as wrongly. In East Asian Buddhism in general,
that's quite a contrast to the kindof Buddhism you see Westerner's taking up.
(26:08):
In my experience, there's also theemphasis on skillful means. If anybody's seen
the boost Lee movie End of theDragon with the scene with the New Zealander
and boost Lee on the boat atthe start where boost Lee says we can't
fight here on the island on theboat. We need to go over on
the island, and the I thinkhe's in New Zealander. This guy,
(26:30):
I think it, gets down inthe boat and boost Lee's pretending he's going
to go with him, and thenhe casts the boat off. And the
cause of the art of fighting withoutfighting. This is what skillful means.
A pier in sanscript is all about, and it refers to the Buddha's ability
to adapt his teachings to the capacitiesand the needs of different people in different
(26:51):
places and different contexts. Very veryshamnistic way teaching. And this is one
of the things with the Lord ofSutra. Actually, the stuff that you're
written in it is pretty good,but the people who revere it often don't
even read it. This is oneof the things that I've noticed. And
the other thing is that they definitelyare not practicing in their everyday lives.
(27:12):
It's like paying lip service to itsideals but then not practicing it and their
everyday lives. But actually you cansee the content of the lot of Sutra,
it's quite shamanistic if you actually readwhat it says literally and don't don't
do the whole we're not worthy thing, and it is intended to underscore this
kind of idea that the budder iscompassionate and wants to help all beings and
(27:33):
all sentien beings in the world.It has a lot of powables, just
like the New Testament has a lotof powerbles in it and stories that are
intended to convey the same kind ofmessages over and over again. There's a
well known powable about the powable ofthe Burning House, which illustrate as the
buller's skillful means and guiding beings towardsliberation. The lot of Sutra place as
(27:57):
a strong emphasis are the ideal ofthe bodies adverst I've said, and enlightened
being who compassionately works for the liberationof all beings. It encourages practitioners to
cultivate the bodis advert spirit and engagein selfless actions for the benefit of others.
And you can see at least thefirst the first founder of the modern
(28:21):
reiki line, if you like,as having lived like that. I don't
think, as he made a hugeamount of money out of his founding of
reiki, unfortunately, possibly for theworld. His second generation of students were
not like minded as far as asfar as that goes, it's had the
sutra itself side a massive influence acrossthe whole of East Asia. The Lord
(28:42):
Sutra of this is including you know, China, Jepan career and places like
Vietnam, and again massive influence onartwork and it's shape the development of the
various Mahayana Buddhist traditions. It's beena very strong influence. So Saicho den
(29:03):
Yo Daishi as he was also known, he was the founder of tend School
in Japan. As I've said,he was influenced by the Chentai School from
China, and he made his tripto China that was around eight or four
d and so the family of theschool in Japan was obviously after that.
(29:25):
He died in a twenty two edie. He was born in Sakamoto in Shiga
and Japan, and he also liveda large part of his life there and
he was bowed in Refugee which isalso in Shiga. His teacher was a
guy called Yoho obviously that's earlier inhis life as Buddhist teacher was guy called
Yohio so Yoho whose birth name wasOtomo No kuro Nushi. He was born
(29:49):
in sixty six eight Edi in Nara, now a prefecture, which is the
sort epicenter of a lot of thestuff that we talked about Miki's tradition and
others. When not a million milesaway from being Jero Kawas tradition, it's
Kyoto, it's Nara, it's Osakato the Cansai area of Japan. If
(30:10):
you want to hear a lot ofstuff about that, we also talk about
it. The Japanese keempo is heavilyassociated with that region as well, So
you know, all these things sortof fit together with original four or five
episodes. Remember on the Heretics podcasttalk about the history keempo and jiu jitsu,
and we cover a lot of thatstuff that we talked about is based
in that area of Japan. Hewas so this is Joho Sacho's teacher.
(30:33):
He was addained as a monk atthe age of nineteen and became known as
Yoki. He was a dedicated monkby all accounts. He engaged in a
lot of social welfare stuff. Soyou can see that even before the whole
infront of the Chinese stuff coming inthis helping other things was strong. He
traveled around Japan providing it to peopleand obviously doing the whole Buddhist the evangelical
(30:59):
thing, but also constructing various templesand bridges and other things, again trying
to help people, and he wasvery focused on relieving the suffering and promoting
the wellbeing of ordinary people. Heplayed a significant role in the popularization of
Buddhism and the establishment of Buddhist institutionsin Japan, and Gioho had a massive
(31:19):
influence on site show, quite apartfrom the whole Chinese Tienti sect thing.
So the history of this stuff isnot very simplistic. The real history when
you start looking at it is notvery simplistic. There are various tendrils and
strands, but what you get isall the stuff that became famous in a
way. You know, they sayhistory is written by the victors. Ten
(31:41):
Day is a massive school, soyou hear the ten Dye of a closer
group of closer related schools. Youhear the ten Die version of things.
Reiki is very popular, so youhear the reiki version of things. But
as we'll find in future episodes ofthe series, there's a lot of smaller
things going on behind the scene thatare smaller from our perception today, but
(32:02):
back in those days they weren't smaller. They were equally, if not more
profoundly influential on the stuff that's goingon in the mainstream history that we get
from sex Like tend I. Heestablished it the headquarters of Tendai on Mount
Hie in Kyoto, and he wrotea famous book called The Shugo Cock Guy
(32:24):
Show. Due to a much moreconfident in my Japanese pronunciation than I am
of my Mandarin pronunciation. I thinkthat was probably quite all right due to
his influence, but some tend Ibecame dominant in Japanese intellectual life. Obviously,
his headquarters are founded in the areaof the capital and the Imperial court
(32:45):
and all that kind of stuff,So he probably did the whole same thing
that Christianity did in Europe. Ifyou convert the high ranking people to your
religion, that's a lot quicker wayto promote the popularity of religion in general.
Then if you focus on people,it emphasizes the historic Buddha Sakyamuni,
(33:07):
who represents the kind of exoteric world, and also the eternal Buddha Vera Kana
who represents the esoteric world and thesetwo former sort of yin and a yang.
Within this tradition, there's a tonof different strands of Buddhist thoughts that
came were included in Ten Day obviouslyfrom these earlier Buddhist learning in Japan,
(33:28):
and also from the Tendai tradition fromChina, and it makes it a complex,
rich mixture, and Tenda is veryinteresting just simply from the smogest border
stuff in it. The teachings ofPsicho are still proud, like over a
thousand years later now, they're stillvery prominent in Japan. So what are
these teachings, What is bud TendaiBuddhism itself teach What are people who follow
(33:52):
it believe? Well, first ofall, there's this idea of the middle
way, which is this path betweena stream asceticism of some extremosticism, of
some of the more shamanistic leaning,and also some of the more inward looking
early strands of Buddhism at the oneend of a continuum and at the other
(34:12):
end, the over indulgence bathing anddelighting in the miasma at the other end
of the spectrum. And they liketo place themselves in the middle of the
middle on that spectrum, and itencourages its followers to find a kind of
balance or harmony in all aspects oftheir lives. It places, as I've
said, massive emphasis on the Lordof Sutra, and it considers that to
(34:36):
be the ultimate expression of the teachingof the historic Buddha. They believe that
the Lord Sutra contains the essence ofall the Buddhist teachings and represents the potential
for enlightenment in all beings, allsentient beings. Anyway. They've also got
a concept which we might translate asuniversal Buddhahood, which means all beings have
(34:59):
the potential to enlightenment. And theybelieve that everyone possesses a kind of in
it, but a nature. It'sthe polishing the brick thing that can be
realized through the practices and realizations.Again, a ton of this stuff,
I mean, it hints at amassively shamanistic spiritual development kind of process.
(35:20):
But obviously over the years and thefocus on books and the focus on cataloging
stuff, and the focus on puttingthings in little boxes has extra terrisized that.
I mean, they've had a thousandyears to work on extraterrisizing this stuff.
But you can see when you readit from a Shamanic point of view,
and when you read this stuff,I'll look into the stuff from a
shamanic point view, you can seethe Shumanic origins underlying it all. They
(35:42):
focused on skillful means and they usethat not just as a way to achieve
things easily, but also a wayto teach others. The encouragement in a
very again very evangelical close to evangelicalChristianity is to emphasize the interconnectedness of truths,
but also to customize that interconnectedness tothe needs and capacities and understanding and
(36:06):
obviously localized social measma of different individuals. They understand truth, you know,
the britishtrations are talking about the sametruth, which is often what they're after.
They have again surprised by three differenttruths, just like the three realms.
They have the conventional truth, theyhave a kind of temporary truth,
and they have a kind of ultimatetruth. The conventional truth would be the
(36:30):
miasmatic understanding. It's a bit likethe Freemasons, isn't it. With the
conventional truth, you can think asthe entered apprentice, the temporary truth is
the gentleman, and the ultimate truthwould be the Mastermason. The very similar
kind of three phase, but youknow, it talks back to that whole
upper world, middle world, lowworld model from ancient Shammism. The rituals,
(36:52):
the practices include the usual suspects.You've got meditation, you've got chanting,
you've got a recitation of the suits, obviously, prostrations, the whole
We're not worthy think whiching in viewis just also rituals and a whole bunch
of other devotional practices, some ofthem leaning towards asceticism, but not very
(37:13):
strongly, because after all, theyare after the after the Middle Way.
They are. The practices that theydo are seen as means to cultivate wisdom
and compassion like the Buddha. Andyou know, people associated with these traditions
are started just like everybody else's buzzwordmindfulness in English, And yeah, I
(37:36):
think we've talked about that, Iknow from this podcast, But to a
shamanistic practitioner, it's really not avery good It's really just a dreadful word.
To me. What if I readmindfulness on the page, It's like
mindfulness is the opposite of jealosity,which would be mindlessness. The problem with
that term mindlessness is that it's beenso twisted in our contemporary vocabulary. You
(37:59):
know, steps like mindless violence arevery strong in our society. Well,
of course, a lot of thatviolence isn't actually mindless, it's actually very
mindful. Mindlessness doesn't tend to leadto violence. It's mindfulness that does.
Obviously, if you're mindless, there'sabsolutely no reason to indulge in it.
So this idea of harmonization of teachingsand the integration of Buddhist teachings and practices
(38:21):
from all over the place, andthe diversity of approaches to spiritual realization.
Again, it's interesting of as aportfolio, a kind of an echo of
a portfolio Shumanic techniques from ancient times, and they have teachings from both Marianna
and also from the Adriana traditions.So meditation. They have engaged in a
(38:45):
bunch of different forms of meditation,such as and you know, you guys
are going to recognize these things,especially if you're long term listeners to the
podcast Breath Awareness. Oh yes,the one that I'm always slagging down,
at least in the early days ofthe Podcast of Visualization, for instance,
you know the film's meditating over mandalaslike I think I think Joe asked me
(39:07):
about that on some previous episode,I don't know which one. Insight meditation.
Meditation is kind of considered a crucialpractice for developing concentration and insight into
the world. I guess into selfand through self the world. Again,
there's the an extra terri sized versionof the whole amsca idea and level two
(39:28):
technique idea. The chanting is oftendone with sacred texts, particularly load of
Sutra, and the idea is tofocus the mind while doing the whole We're
not worthy thing to expression devotion.Obviously, if you chanted the lot of
a billion times, then you're obviouslyreally devoted and probably worthy if you could
(39:50):
do it a billion times, becausethose sort of things are unachievable, and
however many times you do it,you're probably not going to feel like you're
getting anywhere. But it's also ifyou years, if you chat it enough
times without really understanding what you're talkingabout, somehow you're gonna biosmosis take on
some kind of understanding of the teachingsof the Buddha through this recitation of through
(40:12):
memorizing like a parrot. I've heardthat argument from really really bad Thai Ti
teachers. I mean bad in termsof Usually it's the Thai Ti teachers who
can't apply their art in a physicalsense. And often they believe that if
they just practice the form enough timessomehow, you know how many times that
is a million billion or something,they will eventually, through practice of the
(40:32):
form, learn how to fight withit. But they're not worthy to know
that yet. And I can tellthem all if any of those guys are
listening, you will never learn tofight with taigi simply by practice in the
faum. It just won't happen.Just so you know, not that though
some people are going to be listeningto this podcast or me so frustrations bowing
(40:52):
reverential salutations. If you go toany Japanese martial arts classes, you'll see
stuff like this, like anikdo classwhere they'll bow to the old the old
foundersa at the start of the classto his picture. Anyway, that's let's
not go into that. That's onefor. That's one for actually in the
New Energy Arts podcast and bowing tothe Buddha, it's about expressing humility and
(41:15):
gratitude and reverence. That's a twistingof that sort of reverence for nature that
you get an animistic societies. Sutrastudy study study groups are a great way
to get new people involved a bitin you know, you could say that
they parallel the activities of evangelical WesternChristian groups who go around handing out free
(41:38):
free Bibles and free Bible study guidesand all this kind of stuff, and
then arranged Bible study sessions and thengradually incorporate their evangelity and ecolment you call
them evangelise I don't know, intotheir groups. Um. And obviously these
guys are totally focused on the lawof sutras, so that would be a
focus of study. But it's agreat way to evangelize in a kind of
(42:00):
intellectual, semi intellectual type of way. The ceremonies come from all over the
place. You've got services what youmight be recognized as religious services by Westerners.
The offerings the same as you getin Shinto, similar kind of thing
you would get in Shinto shrines,purification rights ditto. These rituals are again
(42:22):
a means of expression that devotion thatwe're not worthiness that goes on in these
groups of generating positive karma, becauseyou know, karma can be a good
thing or a bad thing in Buddhism. So these rituals about generating positive karma
and creating kind of sacred environment inthe way in a sort of exoteric way
that shaman would create in inverted commas, a growth, for instance. And
(42:46):
then there's the Bodhisatva path. Tendie practitioners aspired to following the path of
the Bodhisatva. Beings are humans ofbeings who are vowed to attain enlightenment not
for themselves but for the benefit ofall others. This is about cultivating virtues
that the famous in Buddhism and compassion, wisdom, lovingness, kindness, all
(43:08):
that kind of stuff, although obviouslynot worth too much attachment on the lovingness
word, I mean too much personalattachment, which is often seen as a
bad thing in Buddhism. And engagingin altruistic acts, in acts of service
to others. And again you cansee the whole Ricky kind of based model
(43:29):
of how Ricky modern Ricky has operatedthrough this. And as incidentally, as
we're going to go on and seethat is not how all Ricky like energy
outs in Japan operated. It's justhow the most popular one operated. But
that's for future episodes. And thenpilgrimages. Finally, ten day Buddhism has
a long and strong tradition of pilgrimageto a bunch of different sacred sites,
(43:52):
obviously Mountier, the headquarters in Kyoto, about many other places as well,
and the pilgrimages are there provide anopportunity for ten Daye practitioners to deepen their
spiritual understanding, their practice, toconnect with the lineage of ten Daye masters
that went before them, and togain inspiration from the natural environment, because
(44:13):
obviously when you go into pilgrimage,you're forced to go through the natural world
to get to wherever it is you'regoing, and so again you can see
the links to shamanistic type practice.So that's the background to the Buddhism of
Makao Sui's family, the Buddhism,if you like that he grew up in
in the same way that Christian inthe West would grew up within a Christian
(44:36):
family. He grew up in afamily that had these kind of ideas,
and so basically you can see thatfrom multiple different sources from the stuff that
he either got from ak Karama orassociated themselves with bad Karama and the more
shamanistic shinshiko traditions that were going onin the areas where he was working and
(44:57):
teaching early on. All of thethings were sort of pointing him towards the
life that he lived. And inthe next one, we're going to start
digging into this idea of the underlyingnature of reiki. I think we've talked
enough about history and tradition and whereall these influences came from. As I
(45:21):
said, ten Day influenced lots ofthe psych stroke wiki, stroke NGRT type
of traditions went on in early tomid twentieth century Japan, the whole of
the twentieth century in Japan, andso I think it's worthy going through it
from multiple for multiple different reasons,going through the history of ten Day and
what they believe and what they practice, because we'll see all of these things
(45:43):
again and again as we start talkingabout the energy art traditions of modern Japan,
which is where we're going next inthis series. That will be Monologue
six Shamanic Regy five. So thanksfor listening, and Joe and myself have
an episode planned they're going to bedoing very shortly, so those who are
(46:06):
looking forward to a mainstream Woven Energypodcast episode are going to get that very
soon. But I just thought itwas a long time since we talked about
Ricky, So here's this new episode. Please do enjoy and I'll see you
all later. Thank you.
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