The Kurama Mountains —
where tengu and fire dwell.

A mountain that's really a range

Many Reiki books talk about "Mount Kurama," where Mikao Usui had his great spiritual experience. That sounds like a single peak, and that's where a small misunderstanding begins. Strictly speaking, 鞍馬 Kurama is a whole range of mountains and valleys connected by saddle paths. The word itself means "horse saddle," because between the peaks the path dips only a little, just like a saddle. So you can get from peak to peak without climbing down deep into a valley.

Japanese doesn't distinguish between singular and plural, so 鞍馬山 Kurama-yama can mean "mountain" or "mountains." The translators went with the singular, and that's how the image of a single mountain came about, and it's stuck ever since. So Usui didn't meditate on one summit. He moved through a range with many places for meditation, waterfalls and sites of austerity.

The Kurama range lies in the north of Kyōto Prefecture, about twelve kilometers from the Imperial Palace. The highest peak is around 570 meters. Today you can comfortably take the train to the foot of the mountains. In Usui's day, getting there was still hard going.

A place you don't enter lightly

The Sarashina nikki, a Japanese diary from the early 11th century, says: "Kurama is so overgrown that even if you decide to go there on pilgrimage, you won't set out for fear."

The Kurama range has always been known as a place teeming with unfriendly spirits. The tengu, the long-nosed mountain spirits of Japanese tradition, were said to be particularly fond of hanging monks and ascetics from the trees. The mystical dangers aren't the only ones, though. On the way up there are still signs today that strongly advise against going deeper into the forest, because of the Japanese black bears.

About once a year a Japanese newspaper reports that someone wanted to feed the bears honey and the bear was so delighted that it ate the donor's arm along with it. If you're running from a bear, by the way, watch out that you don't step on a mamushi, a venomous Japanese snake with pretty brown markings. If you get bitten, you don't have much time left to get back to Kyōto.

In other words, Usui chose a truly wild place for his austerities, one known for its dangers, physical and spiritual alike. To me that shows how seriously he took his search.

Why Usui went to Kurama of all places

According to his memorial stone, Usui climbed into the Kurama mountains one day, gave up food and practiced hard austerities. On the twentieth or twenty-first day he felt a great spiritual power above his head, and out of the blue he received the method that Reiki grew out of. More in the article on Mikao Usui.

Japan has many sacred mountains. Why did Usui pick this remote one? My own take is that it's because the Kurama range had been regarded for centuries as a place where people had spiritual breakthroughs. On top of that, there were countless places for austerities: waterfalls, caves and shrines beneath ancient trees.

The exact spot of Usui's experience isn't known. I think it's very likely that it was at the foot of a sacred sugi tree near the Yoshitsune shrine. In my view he did a meditation with the morning star there, meaning Venus, and that's where the light came from that people keep telling about.

Awakening has a tradition here

Usui wasn't the first to have this kind of experience in the Kurama range. According to temple tradition, in 770 the monk Gantei, a close companion of the famous Chinese master Ganjin (Jianzhen), was led up Kurama by a white horse. There he had a vision of Bishamonten, and so he founded a temple on the spot.

Just 26 years later, in 796, Fujiwara no Isendo, who at the time was in charge of building the Tō-ji temple, had a similar experience on the same mountain, this time with the thousand-armed Senju Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion. He expanded the temple with new buildings.

I think it's very likely that Usui knew these stories and chose the Kurama range precisely because of them.

The three spirits of Kurama 尊天

Three spirits are venerated together at Kurama temple. Together they're called 尊天 Sonten, the venerable heavenly beings. The temple associates them with three qualities, love, light and life force, and that's of course very reminiscent of Reiki.

What's remarkable is how many connections to the Reiki symbols show up here. Senju Kannon's seed syllable is the original form of Sei He Ki, and Bishamonten's pagoda recalls the shape of Hon Sha Ze Shō Nen. Maoson's life force, in turn, recalls Reiki itself. One of the two spellings of Cho Ku Rei fits this too: 直靈, a Shugendō term for the creative power that appears in an instant. And the fact that Maoson came from Venus fits very nicely with the morning star. So in my view anyone who practices Reiki has a connection to this place, even if they've never been there.

Fire, typhoons and the vulnerability of sacred places

The original buildings of Kurama temple were destroyed by fire in 1126, and in 1236 the temple burned down again. In 1945 the main hall burned once more, and today's main hall dates only from 1971. That means Usui saw quite different temple buildings from the ones visitors see today.

In September 2018 a typhoon devastated the Kurama range and tore swaths hundreds of meters long through the forest. In May 2019 I was there myself and saw the extent of the destruction with my own eyes. Kurama temple was luckily left largely intact. The small shrine in front of the sacred sugi tree, where in my view Usui had his experience, was destroyed, though, as was an old dragon power place with a pond.

In my experience the spirits are still there, and a surprising amount of the power has remained, even though the old buildings and power places from Usui's time are gone.

Yoshitsune and the tengu

Probably the most famous story of Kurama is about a boy called Ushiwakamaru, who later became Minamoto no Yoshitsune. In the 12th century the samurai families Taira and Minamoto were locked in a struggle for power. The Taira had killed the leading men of the Minamoto but spared the children. Young Yoshitsune was sent to Kurama temple to become a monk, far away from it all.

Yoshitsune had a strong urge for freedom, though, and kept sneaking out of the temple into the woods. There, the legend says, the tengu Sōjōbō taught him swordsmanship. There's a theory that the tengu were really people practicing martial arts in the mountains, and some think of the ninja here. There's no evidence for it, though, so I'd rather stick with the legend.

You can still see the spot in the forest where Yoshitsune is said to have practiced his footwork among the tree roots. The roots grow above ground there, a natural obstacle course. The Yoshitsune shrine is close by.

Shingon, Tendai and esoteric Buddhism at Kurama

Over the centuries Kurama temple changed schools several times. From the end of the 9th century it belonged for more than 200 years to the Shingon school founded by Kūkai. At the beginning of the 12th century it switched to the Tendai school, which also maintains esoteric teachings. Since 1949 the temple has been the head temple of a school of its own, Kurama Kōkyō.

Both schools, Shingon and Tendai, know the secret teachings of esoteric Buddhism. In my research I've shown that the teachings of Shingon in particular flowed into Usui's practice, and the Reiki symbols bear the traces of that tradition. Shugendō, Shintō and shamanic Daoism come on top of that. More in the article on Usui and Tendai.

What Kurama means for Shingon Reiki

Kurama Kōkyō teaches that the hard climb up Kurama is like striving for enlightenment. The descent, on the other hand, is like a bodhisattva returning to the world to help beings.

That of course recalls Usui, who climbed up, meditated for three weeks, received the Reiki power and came back down to do good for others. In this sense, everyone who practices Reiki and tries to do good for the beings of this world is a kind of bodhisattva too, starting with Usui.