0:00
One of the confusing things about grandmother’s teaching is that she called what she taught “Reiki” and she called the energy “Reiki”. However, the practice of Reiki was like a shortcut for Usui Shiki Ryoho and maybe Usui Shiki Ryoho Reiki. So… we all called it Reiki until like the beginning of the 1990ies. And then there were so many other Reiki forms of practice emerging that it was very difficult to know who we are talking about, it was very confusing.
0:52
Then in about 1993 or 94 there is this gentleman who was a master from Germany, Shunjan Joop Hilger. And he decided to take care of business because he knew that I wasn’t doing this, which I… appreciated his motivation, I didn’t appreciate what he did, but I appreciated his motivation. And he trademarked in Germany… the words Usui Shiki Ryoho and the Usui System of Natural Healing and the Kanji of Reiki. And so… I challenged him because he was starting to threaten people, that if they didn’t comply with his idea about what the practice was, then they couldn’t use the words.
1:55
So I went into a 2 year trademark…. what’s it called.. challenge I guess or something like that (background voice) … and I challenged him to the right to trademark these. And the attorney that I used in Köln..in Cologne said, when I told him my whole story, said: “well, if you are the recognized lineage bearer, the Grand Master, then they are yours.”
02:29-2:45 So … (talks to herself ….pause )

9:38
And oh just to answer the question about different symbols: Well there are no different symbols. The problem again is ignorance and I will use the word ignorance, it’s kind of an ugly word but it carries for me an emotional impact that I actually mean to communicate. It’s about ignorance of the Japanese language. Like 99% of us, including myself, do not read and write Japanese, (1017) so…. (cough)
10:23
99% of us don’t read and write Japanese, (1028) so of course it looks just like a series of lines that means whatever our master says. But in truth it’s actually the written Kanji for Japanese. So there are so many different ways to write the Kanji, so many different styles and so many different… handwriting styles that of course it looks like there are different symbols being given to different people, but it was just simply the way that Hawayo Takata wrote the Kanji in that moment.
11:05

11:05
They are trying to get ähm.. like a traceable same image, but you are not gonna do it, because it’s handwriting. And the other thing is that she didn’t give the written Kanji to all of her masters, and she didn’t need to because…ähm.. it wasn’t necessary. It is not necessary for me to know the Kanji, I don’t use it in the practice and you can look it up on the internet now. (1140) So……(is there any other thing I would like to say?)…
11:51
So I just would like to take people back to the real, what I would say would be the authentic understanding of mastery, what the step really means to all us because I know that the people who are concerned about the master symbol, actually, most of them that I have met, live and are dedicated to their practice of Reiki and it is unfortunate that their focus of their mastery is on this Kanji and not on the way that they live.
12:38-1244 (René mumbles)

0:00 … (ooo5) (Renés voice)
Well this idea of the master symbol didn’t come from Hawayo Takata’s students. It came after she died, a few years after she died when there were many, many masters who already had a couple of generations away from (0030) (René: yea) Hawayo Takata. So this didn’t come from this circle, (0034) I’m really …. (René: this circle you mean the 22 Masters) Yeah!
0:41
So I don’t want to report on an understanding that the circle had of the differences of how she wrote it. I mean, they kept to the practice, for the most part (0056) the way that she impar… you know, the way she, (hicup) excuse me…. (räusper)
1:03
They practiced and taught the way that she gave them the system. (0107) (hicup, turns her eyes up) ..So…
1:14
I never… in all my years of, you know, talking with them I never heard anybody question what she did because at the very beginning it was clear that it was Kanji and that there were several different ways to write the Kanji just like in Reiki there is a book that my mother produced called inevitably “the grey book” because it has a grey cover and the Kanji on that is a very, very old Kanji, it’s almost Chinese, it’s so old. And the Kanji written today would have many less strokes and would almost not be recognizable.
2:02

2:02
So there are lots of different Kanji fonds or ways to write the Kanji and then on top of that there’s handwriting. So that’s all I’m saying is that to try to make it a symbol where it absolutely has to be, one line has to be this long and the other line has to be this long and it has to be … you can’t do it because it’s not possible, it’s …..
2:30
You have to know the Japanese language. My … my test of whether my Kanji is correct if somebody could read Japanese would be able to read what I wrote, and that’s not likely. I can to an approximate but my guess is that even my Kanji the way that I draw it isn’t really natural because I have no knowledge of the Japanese written language.
3:02

2:00
This particular system of Reiki practice has a specific form and a specific set of fundamental principals and values that is unique to this system. One of the things that happened in the mid 1990s is that there was a gentleman in Germany who 0221 trademarked  0223 äh Usui Shiki… no …. trademarked 0226 Usui system of natural healing, trademarked the Reiki Kanji and a number of other things and felt that he was doing this in service to this system because he felt that I wasn’t doing my job, which he might have been right, I have no idea. But I certainly didn’t want him to own the copyright in Germany, because he was sending threatening letters to masters and so on.
2:55
So I got into a very interesting conversation with him, we’ll call it a conversation between our attorneys and eventually they awarded these – trademarked phrases and the symbols, like the Kanji being a symbol at that point to me, because I was the rightful owner. Well by the time they did this, which was I think in 1998, Reiki was so common in Germany that it had become a household word and therefore could not be trademarked. Which on one hand I was very relieved because it just saved me from a really …. difficult process of trying to defend the trademarks while at the same time it opened it to a lot of people.
3:57