Kotodama — the force of sound

Japan has an old word for the power that lives in a spoken word: kotodama 言霊. The idea behind it is that a word doesn't only mean something, its sound actually does something. That matters for Reiki, because the names of the Reiki symbols come from exactly this culture. In this article I'd like to explain where the idea comes from, how it lives on in Shingon Buddhism and what it has to do with the symbols.

What is kotodama? 言霊

The idea is older than Buddhism in Japan. In the great 8th-century poetry anthology Man'yōshū 万葉集, the poet Yamanoue no Okura calls Japan "the land where the soul of words brings happiness" (kotodama no sakiwau kuni). Another poem says Yamato is a land helped by the soul of words. Put simply, people believed that a word spoken well brings good fortune and a careless word brings bad.

I find an episode in the Kojiki 古事記, Japan's oldest surviving chronicle from 712, very interesting here. The two kami Izanagi and Izanami walk around a heavenly pillar in order to marry. The first time, Izanami speaks first, and the child born from the union isn't as it should be. The heavenly kami explain that the words were spoken in the wrong order. The second time, Izanagi speaks first, and only then are the islands of Japan born. You can read this story in different ways, but it shows very clearly how much weight people gave to the spoken word.

In Shintō this lives on in the ritual prayers, the norito 祝詞. They aren't simply read out but recited in a set rhythm. The oldest surviving collection of norito is in the Engi shiki 延喜式 from the 10th century. By the way, choku rei appears there too, as an ensouled word. More on that in the article on Cho Ku Rei.

Mantra in Shingon Buddhism 真言

Buddhism reached Japan in the 6th century by way of Korea. Esoteric Shingon Buddhism came much later, in the early 9th century, when Kūkai (774–835) returned from China in 806. The word Shingon 真言 means "true word" and is the Japanese translation of the Sanskrit term mantra. So the whole school is named after the sacred spoken word.

Kūkai wrote a whole treatise on this, the Shōji jissō gi 声字実相義, "The Meaning of Sound, Letter and True Reality." In it he argues that sound, written sign and reality are at bottom one. In other words, for him a mantra isn't a description of a buddha, it's the buddha himself in the form of sound. This fits the teaching that Dainichi Nyorai, the Great Sun Buddha, preaches without pause and that the whole universe is his voice (Japanese: hosshin seppō 法身説法).

This is where kotodama and mantra meet. What's remarkable is that in Japan the two ideas never stood against each other. In Japan the old isn't thrown out when something new arrives. It lives on alongside it and over time blends with it. So the old idea of the soul of words could grow together quite naturally with the mantra practice of esoteric Buddhism, and in Shugendō, which unites Shintō, esoteric Buddhism and Daoist magic, the two belong together anyway.

The three mysteries 三密

Shingon speaks of the three mysteries (Japanese: sanmitsu 三密): body, speech and mind. The body is the hand gestures (Sanskrit: mudrā; Japanese: in), speech is the mantra, and mind is meditation and visualization. When all three come together, Kūkai says, what's called kaji 加持 arises, the connection between the buddha's power and the person practicing. You'll find more on this in the article on Reiki initiations.

For Reiki this is interesting because many people know the symbol names mainly as something you repeat silently. From a Japanese point of view, though, the name of a symbol also includes its sound, and with it the level of speech from the three mysteries. That's one reason the names of the symbols carry so much weight in Shingon Reiki.

The names of the four Reiki symbols 四符

Each of the four Reiki symbols has a pronunciation, and in most cases the pronunciation tells you which kanji are behind it. I've explained this in detail in the articles on the individual symbols. Here's just a short note on what they have to do with kotodama.

Siddham, sound you can see 悉曇

In Shingon Buddhism the Siddham characters (Japanese: bonji 梵字) are more than letters. Each one stands for a Sanskrit syllable, and many of these are seed syllables that stand for a particular being of light. You could say a Siddham is a sound you can see. Kūkai wrote his own introduction to the Siddham script.

The syllable a (अ) plays a very special role. It's the first syllable of the alphabet and is considered the mother of all sounds. In Shingon it stands for the unborn, the origin that itself has no beginning (Japanese: aji honpushō 阿字本不生).

The melody of mantras 声明

In Shingon temples, mantras and sutras aren't just recited. There's a whole tradition of Buddhist chant there, shōmyō 声明, passed down from master to monk over many centuries. If you've ever been in a temple in the morning when the monks recite together, you know how completely the sound fills the room.

Usui took the spoken word seriously as well. His life principles say you should hold them in your heart morning and evening with your hands in gasshō and recite them aloud (kuchi ni tonaeyo 口に唱へよ). More in the article on Usui's life principles.

Kotodama in Shingon Reiki 修行

How the symbol names and mantras are pronounced correctly and how you practice with them belongs in the initiation, because that's where it's passed on in the right context. In our community and at the live events you can experience this together with others. Have you ever noticed how a room changes when a mantra is spoken in it?