Dr. Usui  –  Autobiographical Notes

Translation of Dr. Usui’s Notes Attached to the Text.

(Probably dating from about 1920-1926)

I, Usui, have decided to set down in writing my motives and aspirations and the reasons why I have introduced this new spiritual science, which in reality is a very old spiritual science that had been lost and forgotten.

I was born the first son, the eldest of three brothers and two sisters.  My father was a lower level noble who, in his wisdom or perhaps cunning, had seen the writing on the wall concerning the old government of the military shogunate, which for the 50 years before my birth had been toppling like a used and discarded table which finally came crashing to the floor, due to the wisdom and very well coordinated machinations of the Emperor Meiji and his many supporters.  This led to a change in the national attitude which was striking.

From the time of the Naro period, or even before, until the mid 19^th Century, Japan, although never admitting it, had looked toward China and in the Western direction for its inspiration and culture.  This was good, for the Chinese truly possessed it.  Not only did they bless Japan with the basis of art, language, writing, the art of calligraphy, and of course, the great gift of the Dharma, the teachings of Confucius, and the teachings of Lao Tse,  they also implanted their penchant for the maintenance of stability and the prevention of social change.  Like many other young people at that time I felt that this was not good.

When I was 16 years old I saw my first steam engine and was moved to tears at its symmetry, perfection, elegance, beauty, and also function.  Shortly thereafter there was an influx of GUI-LO, Western barbarians into Japan.  At first impression, they resembled the demons of legions of old.  With their light hair and reddish faces, they looked to be the minions of the Lord of Death himself that had arisen from under the earth, and certainly the odor which emanated from them confirmed in most people’s minds that these round-eyed ocean barbarians had not sailed from the East to Japan, but had definitely sprung from the lowest realms of the Lord of Death.

However, I met one, a Dr. Phillips, who was both a practitioner of his religion Christianity, an expounder of it, somewhat of a bonze, something known as a “lay preacher”, and a medical doctor as well as a philosopher.  As I became acquainted with him, I found him to be truly a remarkable individual whom, though totally outlandish in his behaviour and manners, I nevertheless recognized as a fellow human being and one of great intelligence.  I felt at the time, as many young people did, that I wished to learn all of this Western knowledge and would make any sacrifice, even sitting in the room with such a fragrant individual, to absorb his knowledge.

I found Dr. Phillips curious of our ways, and one day he asked the question that I had been waiting for.  He asked why were most people revolted by such foreigners.  I joyfully answered that the reason was that they did not bathe.  This startled and amused him and he informed me that he bathed at least once a month.  I informed him that most Japanese who were able bathed at least once a day and that, unlike his folk, they suffered very little from carbuncles, boils, and other skin eruptions.  This amazed him and he wished to know how we stood immersion in such cold water each day, without it affecting our health in other adverse ways.  I am afraid that I broke into laughter and explained the concept that our baths were heated.  He said, yes, he had taken a few baths that were heated by pouring a pot of hot water into a copper tub.

I told him that this was not the way that a civilized person bathed and invited him to enjoy my bath.  He was terribly amazed and caused me no end of amusement when he entered the hot water and turned far redder that I had ever seen any individual before.  In fact, his entire white body, which reminded me of the underside of an octopus’ tentacle, was a most startling shade of crimson when he emerged from the bath.

However, he enjoyed the bath immensely and inquired if perhaps such a thing could be constructed for him.  This was done, and it actually became a fashion among many of his friends, which was a relief to many of the students that were studying with them.

In fact, I was congratulated by the students’ family and presented with a rather large sum of money, at least for an 18 year old boy, for having introduced the GUI-LO to the proper civilized custom of bathing and thus establishing a great deal of WAH in the community, which had formerly been upset by the remarkable and penetrating odors, odors which seemed to be absorbed into any item with which they came into contact.

Dr. Phillips explained to me the doctrine of Christianity which rather amazed me.  It seemed to me to have very many similarities to the Pure Land practice of Amida; in fact, I was finally able to understand that perhaps Jesus had learned the doctrine of the Pure Land School and had then tried to explain it to his people, who were of dull wit, and they punished him by crucifying him.  Of course, the principal thing I could not accept at that time or any time in the future, was that man only lived once and had to obey a rather changeable, frivolous, unkind, and vindictive god.

As a Buddhist, I knew that the Buddhas were all good, but during the years from the time I was 16 until I was 27, I rejected my faith and went after the Great God Knowledge, or at least scientific knowledge which had been brought into the country by the gai-jin.  I studied medicine and physics and I became a medical doctor through the kind teachings of Dr. Phillips and other teachers, some from Princeton University, some from Harvard University and some from the University of Chicago.

I was granted a medical degree by decree of the Emperor and was allowed to practise with Dr. Phillips and his associate, a Dutch physician, a Dr. Kerngold.  I began to learn the finer points of surgery, having mastered pharmacology and the treatment and diagnosis of disease.

Unfortunately, at that time a cholera epidemic struck Japan which afflicted our people and particularly myself.  I was stricken at the age of 27.  The only treatment for cholera was to let small pills of rolled opium melt under the tongue.  This would slow the movement of the lower intestine and the individual would not dehydrate so much.  The only other thing administered was a mild mixture of salt water and potassium chloride mixed with a fruit juice to prevent dehydration and expenditure of the electrolytes, thus badly affecting the sodium potassium balance in the body.

Now I will say of opium that I found it, at that time and later in my life, a way to open the consciousness in an artificial but effective way.  I learned later that I could achieve all of this simply by meditation; however, at the time it opened my mind and I am sure that the illness also had this effect upon me.

One afternoon I had sunk into unconsciousness, at least was unable to move my body in any way, when I heard Dr. Phillips sadly tell two of his Japanese associates, Tome Dak, and I can’t think of the other name, he was a nephew of Annoi Tetsuma, however, that I would not last out the night, that I was expiring.  My blood pressure was so low as to be negligible and my heart beat was so weak that he did not expect my heart to last for the rest of the evening and into the night.  This produced great sadness in the people there; it did not produce so much sadness in me.

I remembered my childhood teachings and thought of the Pure Land of Buddha Amida and knew because I had faith, I would go there.  In my mind I began to recite the Amida mantra, “Namo Amida Butsu, Namo Amida Butsu, Namo Amida Butsu.”  I fell into a deep, semiconscious reverie and then into blackness, a dreamless state.  In the early evening, I began to awake and I noticed that I was not awakening in the hospital room, but in a place filled with light, the most beautiful golden light.  In my mind I thought to myself, “I am dead and I am beholding the Assembly of the Pure Land.”

Well, on both counts I was wrong.  I beheld Mahavairocana.  To his right was Amida, to his left was Medicine King Buddha, and above the head of Mahavairocana was our First Teacher, Sakyamuni.  They were surrounded by countless Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and their retinues.  I immediately felt great sorrow for I remembered that I had rejected them.

Then Mahavairocana spoke to me and I beheld his face, the most kind and loving face, free from passion and attachment, yet filled with compassion for all sentient beings.  And he said to me, “My poor child, you fear that because you have rejected your ancient and hereditary faith that we have rejected you.  For a fully enlightened being, a Buddha, it is not possible to be angry or feel evil or ill thoughts toward you.  We only feel compassion for you and all beings who suffer in the churning ocean of samsara, facing the two terrors of birth and death.”

At this I was overcome with joy and happiness and, at that moment, understood the commitment which these supreme spiritual beings have taken upon themselves for the well-being of mankind, knowing that each in the past had, for many Kalpas, possessed a human body and had undergone untold sufferings until they were able to put their heads above the water of samsara and step onto the dry land of Nirvana, reaching their Buddhahood, knowing all things, having experienced all things, and having developed that compassion which in any situation does not waiver, but stretches onward until it is perfected in the Supreme Buddha Mind.

As I observed the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, I felt terribly inadequate and humble before them.  I prostrated many times and said to them, expressed to them, my sorrow at having turned away from their spiritual science to the physical science that had been brought to us by the Europeans and Americans.

Buddha Mahavairocana smiled and said, “But you have not turned away my child.  For all learning and knowledge which relieves suffering is from the mind of the Buddhas.”

At that I was again filled with joy, and yet fearful that I had not earned my place in the Pure Land among the Assembly.  Then Medicine King Buddha spoke to me and said I was a physician as he was, and that it would be my job, my mission, when I had recovered from my illness, to work to make a synthesis of both teachings.  He recounted to me the age-old teaching that the soul, the life energy, the Hari, is not separate from the body, and that all physical suffering first emanates from the Hari and is due to karmic obscuration and past actions.  These lead to suffering which can only be relieved temporarily by the surgeon’s knife or the physician’s pill.  For the individual to be truly healed, he must be healed of ignorance, hatred and greed.  He must live a moral life, carefully walk the middle path and seek enlightenment for his own self and others.  This is the only true healing.  The Dharma itself is the only balm and medicine for the suffering of all living beings.

Then, when he had finished speaking, from the place at his heart came the blue light of Probhassa Vaidurya, the Lapis Lazuli.  It touched me, and, at that moment in my mind, everything went blank and into darkness.  However, the next morning when I awoke, to my physician’s surprise and delight, no symptom other than the weakness of my illness remained.  I quickly recovered.  At that time it was unheard of for a person in my condition to have recovered so completely as to have no longer any symptoms.

Unfortunately, I told Dr. Phillips and my colleagues of my dream.  They attributed it to the opium which I was ingesting and the fever that I had, and told me that a learned man of science could never believe such mythology and other such things that were the provenance of the ignorant, unlettered peasant.

Later, about a week after I had recovered, I went to my bonze who told me quite a different story.  On hearing the dream he became angry and told me I was very arrogant; I was not a religious person; why would I be telling such a lie about having a vision and so on that not even the greatest Abbot at the greatest temples had.  Why would I, a student, who was not even dressed in the traditional Japanese manner, possibly have such a dream or an experience.  He called his guards, he struck me and literally threw me from the precincts of that temple.

Up to that time I had been raised as Tendai; however, almost immediately I encountered a wonderful person who was the father of the person who became my best friend.  He was Watanabe, the Senior.  He practised a form of Buddhism known as Shingon.  I took him as my mentor and explained my dream to him.

Together we performed numerous fire offerings as a thanksgiving for the particular blessing I had been given – to behold the faces of the Assembly of the Buddhas.  I began to meditate and study with Watanabe Bonze, and immediately my life changed.  I became very calm.  My desires and attachments began to break away and the obscurations which I had held in my mind since childhood began also to fall away, like clouds in the morning sun.  I continued to practise and received all of the lesser and some of the greater initiations of the Shingon sect.  This was a great spiritual awakening for me, and I understood that the dream within which I had encountered the Buddhas was only the beginning of the Path and was certainly not the end.

Keeping this in my heart, I practised as a physician and became rather well-known in the area around Osaka.  Many people would come to me because they said I had within myself an ability to heal and that I had been born to do this work.  This is not uncommon among the peasantry who still have what many people refer to as superstitions, which I just a few years before had thought were silly superstitions; and now I believed were a perception and a wisdom that overcame the knowledge one learned, — a wisdom and understanding of the innate reality of things as they are.  That which goes beyond the normal perception.

When I was 34 years old I travelled to Tokyo and there, in a bookstore, I found an old lacquer casket which had the chop of the Emorji Shingon Temple.  Being a devout and fervent Shingon practitioner, I felt it must contain some of the Sutras or commentaries and I immediately purchased it for a small price.

The outer casket was constructed of very nice teak, and the interior of camphor wood.  I took it home and discovered the treasure that I had found, one that I had been seeking without knowing that I had been seeking, and one that had been entrusted to me by the kindness and compassion of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the Three Times.

It was at this time that I began to meditate on the material contained within the Tantra of the Lightning Flash.  As I read and meditated, it became very clear to me that here was a spiritual system of healing that had been revealed from the lips and tongue of Sakyamuni Buddha, and that, through the ignorance and carelessness of man, had been lost for a time.  It was my decision that that I would study and perfect this system of healing and, perhaps in my old age, pass it on to certain select students who would then promulgate it.

It became extremely clear in my mind that this was the mission that the Buddhas had set me on at the time I had the dream.  This would be the path that I was to follow and this was the way that I, Usui, would gain the level of enlightenment — by promulgating and practising this methodology that relieved not only the external, physical sufferings, but the internal sufferings and obscurations of mankind.  This would go beyond both Chinese and European medicine; it was complementary and not contradictory to either system, but was the root of both systems, for it had come from the Buddha.  All knowledge, both the knowledge of the Chinese and the knowledge of the GUI-LO, it doesn't matter which, also comes from the mind of the Buddhas, particularly the healing knowledge from the Medicine King Buddha, the esoteric knowledge from Manjushri Bodhisattva.  So this, I felt, was what the dream I had experienced during my illness concerned, and this also explained the miraculous recovery.

Those were the two events that changed the path of my life and led me to the fulfillment which I now feel as I set down this writing, so that my student Watanabe, the son of my mentor Watanabe, will be able to follow.  I am also giving him some advice concerning conduct and the way in which a physician, particularly a Buddhist physician, should comport himself in the relation of others, and in relation also to his patients.  By others I mean colleagues, family, and friends.

So I set this down now so that he may have this in order to understand my feelings, why I have initiated the system which is to be called REI KEI, and my feelings on the inner and outer teachings, and its applications.

I have given a little history about myself and I will give a little more probably as I go on, because what being does not like to talk about his past to others.  It is a common human failing that is perhaps not a failing, but perhaps is a way to share experiences which we cherish with others, to share actually our life and life events with others, as a sharing, not a bestowal of knowledge as such, but a sharing on the common human condition of life, which all sentient beings that are at the human level experience, and perhaps from this commonality of experiences we can gain wisdom and understanding.

So here is some advice and things that I would like to say. 

First, I want to discuss impermanence and change.  I am not the same man that I was when I rose from my bed this morning, and when I rise from my bed the next morning, I will not be the same man.  In fact, my body is mostly water and, over a twenty four hour period, that water in my body will be different water than I experienced when I rose this morning; this evening when I go to bed, most of that water will be different.  In the morning when I arise, the water within my body yesterday will not be there, but new water will be there which I have ingested by swallowing my tea, by eating my food and by drinking water itself, or the juices from plants and so on.

The proteins in my body will be different because many of them, such as albumin, will have passed through my urine and through my defecation; other proteins which I have ingested from my noodles, from the wheat, from the fish, from the meat that I eat, will be new.  My skin sheds many cells; every time I move cells fall from my skin that are dry and are replaced by new cells.  My muscle tissue is replaced, and so on.

There is a constant change in my body, there is a constant change in everything that is around me.  Now the practitioner of REI KEI should be aware of this, should meditate on the impermanence of himself, should view death as inevitable, but not as a friend, nor as an enemy, but as an occurrence.  I will discuss this later.

We have many occurrences in our lives, the friends that I have this year – some are the same, and some are different than I had last year, and the year before, and 10 years ago.  And should I live another 10 years, the friends I will have then will be different.  They will not be the same people I know now, because they too will have changed, and I will have gained new friends and lost old friends either to simple separation or to death.

Many events occur.  Impermanence is all about us, the sun rises and sets, the flower blossoms and withers, the grass grows and is cut back, the tree which has been 300 years growing is felled by the woodsman’s axe.  All things are impermanent and subject to change, but, you know, these things are only an illusion, a shadow.  They are not reality, they are only the reality which we, through our beclouded minds, perceive.  They are not the true reality that really exists all around us.  That true reality being the mind of all the Buddhas.

So death being a occurrence is also impermanent.  Yes, death, too is an illusion.  Illness itself is a delusion caused by karmic obscuration; perhaps even life itself is an illusion, caused by karmic obscuration.  Think about that.  And think that I am also a river.  I flow through time.  I encounter the rocks and my banks which cause my turnings.  These are set before me by my karma.  Yet I flow around the rocks.  Behind me is the mist from which I have flowed, before me is the mist into which I flow.  I am a river that flows through time.  I have no beginning and I have no end, and I am constantly in motion.

Death is unimportant.  Life is unimportant.  Life itself is a link in a chain or a ripple around the rock in the flow of my stream.  For I, Usui, am a river.  I flow from the past to the future through many turnings, yet I am the same river, in the past, in the present, in the future.

Everyone is a river, flowing from the past into the future.  Every mind stream is unique, yet the same.  The water which flows in one river is of the same substance as the water which flows in the other rivers.  It is no different; its formula is still H₂O.  It might have different salts dissolved in it, and it might take a different course; it might be wide and lazy or narrow and urgent, yet it is still water.  That is this unity of us all, the water in one river is the same as that in every other river.

If life is an illusion, how much more so is death an illusion.  If happiness is an illusion, how much more is suffering as illusion.  If love itself is an illusion, then how much more so is hatred an illusion.  These things have no real existence.  They are phantoms which pass through the mind.  They are feathers blown in the wind.  They are pebbles moving down a hillside.  From the great emptiness all things have arisen and entered the great emptiness.  All things will return.  From Infinite Light all things have arisen, and back to Infinite Light all things will return.  The one permanent thing is the Mind of the Buddha, which permeates all existence.

And we ARE the Buddha.  Truly it is only our own obscurations, our own clouded thoughts, our own non-understanding that separate us from total and complete enlightenment.  The true practitioner of REI KEI will realize this.  When treating an illness he must realize the truth that illness is impermanent and is an illusion.  It has arisen and it will pass.  Perhaps death will occur, but that is an illusion, too.  And the illness will pass with the death and the river’s flow will continue.  Onward and onward through time.  One must view things not as simply a segment or a slice.  One must view things as continual and unbroken, the flow of the Mind Stream through time, but then we must remember that time too is a illusion, and has no real meaning or effect on us.

These are profound truths and realizations that have come to me, and I know within me that they too are only illusions and impermanent.  I have experienced them.  Perhaps others who read my words will also experience them, but they too have no permanence.  This concept of impermanence must be impressed fully upon the mind of the practitioner of Rei Kei , the spiritual science.  If it is not, then the practice is fruitless.

Before discussing the practice itself, I had wanted to say these things.  They are the words of a silly old man and having no real meaning, but perhaps if they can provoke thought within you, my student Watanabe, then even though they are of little value, they will have served the purpose for which they were written.

I end this portion of the discourse now; I will continue it in the future.  But remember there is no past and there is no present and there is no future, for even time itself is an illusion and, by a simple clap of the hand, it too can be returned to the void, the one experience, the timeless reality, which is the Mind of the Buddha.

The chief cause of illness is unhappiness, the primary cause of health is happiness.  When treating a patient, one must remember this, for if one does not, then one cannot successfully treat the patient.  Speak to the patients, ascertain their living conditions, ascertain why they are unhappy, and what has caused this unhappiness.  Teach them to view that unhappiness as impermanent and changing and have them let that unhappiness pass away, or give them advice and instruction on how to eliminate that unhappiness.

So many women have come to me with various severe illnesses and various simple illnesses that simply spring from the activities of their husband or mother-in-law.  Many cases of cancer that I have examined and have treated successfully, or have attempted to treat but not successfully, are simply caused by unhappiness.  The person is fearful of opening their belly or inserting a knife in their throat, yet their own body, by the production of a cancer or another ailment, succeeds where their own valor has failed.  Therefore, when treating a patient, they must be led to believe they have a purpose to continue their existence, for without the purpose, even if you are able to successfully cure their present illness, a future illness will develop also and carry them away.

So in each patient that you treat, you must awaken in them the purpose to survive.  Set them on that track and even the severest case will recover miraculously.  I am not saying that this is the only treatment that should be administered.  Of course, there are many allopathic treatments from the Western countries, America and Europe, and from China, moxibustion.

By the way, the reason that moxibustion works in many cases of unhappy people, I have discovered, is because the unhappy person feels he or she needs to be punished because of some real or imagined past infraction of social code or morality, or for whatever reason.  Moxibustion certainly punishes.  I don't believe that moxibustion has any effect at all on the channels or the flow of energy in the channels.  I believe, however, that it has a profound effect on the being, a very profound effect.  And that profound effect being that it is sufficient punishment to relieve the guilt which causes the unhappiness which has caused the illness.

I will tell you a very funny and tragic story that is an example of this.  A man I was treating had a melanoma developing on his foot.  There was nothing that we could do because the melanoma had spread into the surrounding tissue and had metastasized into other parts of the body.  We simply gave him five or six months.  After the first month of this awareness the unfortunate soul developed an extremely painful gall bladder due to a number of stones.  I, as surgeon, removed the gall bladder.  He had suffered extensively and because of his weakened condition due to his melanoma, his recovery rate from surgery was slow and very painful.  Yet he recovered and what else began to happen?  The melanoma began to disappear throughout his body.  He had created his karma; his mind – his guilt – had created the melanoma to make him suffer.  However, his gall bladder made him suffer and I removed it.  Evidently in his mind stream, by the removal of the gall bladder and the subsequent pain, he felt his suffering was finished and complete and, therefore, the cancer disappeared.  It was amazing.

I once had a woman who suffered extreme sciatica due to a calciferous extrusion near the emergence point of the sciatic nerve.  She suffered horribly and was in constant pain.  I gave her opium.  I even instructed her to smoke it.  Having smoked one day, she began to iron her husband’s pants and severely burned her hand.  She felt almost no pain because of the level of opium in her body, yet the pain was there and the burn on her hand was very ugly.  Amazingly, that healed in approximately a month after much suffering, but after that month she also found the calciferous extrusion had been absorbed back into her body and was no longer afflicting the sciatic nerve.  So the one painful burn and the month of recovery was enough for her to recover also from her other illness.

… to be continued in a subsequent tape not yet received from the translator….  16 October 1994