0:00
Well, the short answer is: I don’t know. The longer answer is that, ähm you know, his paper is on …what happens to an oral tradition when it’s taught through a number of generations and it goes from one culture to another culture and the changes that happen within the practice. Is this… Why are the changes made? And is there a developmental process actually going on? And these kind of questions. And then.. so that’s the general kind of theme of his thesis. And then what he did, was he used Reiki as an example of that and especially the time of Hawayo Takata because she was the person who took Reiki as a Japanese practice, well actually Usui Shiki Ryoho, and then brought it to another culture and then within that (1:16) how did she… let me start again. (1:26) How did she translate not just the language of Reiki but the culture of Reiki? How could she bring the Japanese culture into the practice of Reiki at the times and the moments when it was important for the actual practice to be understood?
1:54 (coughs)
And this part, I think Justin does beautifully.. for the most part. I mean of course I don’t agree with everything that he has surmised or come to, but I do really like his approach, because he really gets that this wasn’t about making Reiki… for instance some people have said “well, she made Reiki more Christian because she was teaching Christians” – but, this just drives me crazy but ähm…He saw that she needed to, for instance, add this precept particularly “honor your parents, teachers and elders» because for a Japanese person this is THE fundamental principal that every child grows up with and this is where you… this is what your life revolves around. And, of course, in our culture that is not necessarily true.. (laughs)
3:02

0:00
Well, for me the Master Symbol came up when people… when people began to initiate masters who were not Hawayo Takata (if that makes sense). And then they wanted to validate or prove that they were masters. So how could they do this? And a natural answer to this question is: Do you have the right symbol? But for me there is no Master Symbol.
0:43
What is called the Master Symbol, number one: It is not a symbol, it’s a phrase in Japanese. So you know there are two ways to look at this: All language is symbol. So we can say “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” and it’s a symbol, I mean it has more meaning than just the words themselves in Christianity and it has become a holy phrase that evokes, if a priest says these words, a certain kind of energy, which I myself have experienced. So when people say this phrase in Japanese, it’s a phrase that comes from.… it’s like a holy phrase in Buddhism, so it’s not a symbol like the second degree symbols, it’s a phrase, it’s a part of the initiation and that’s it.
1:56