The Distant Healing Symbol

There is no past and there is no present and there is no future, for even time itself is an illusion and by a single clap of the hand, it too can be returned to the void.
—Mikao Usui

The third symbol brings the universe to your healing hands. It symbolises the ultimate reality of the present moment, and links you to any place and any time through this present. With this tool you can give Reiki from a distance to people, animals, places, and events that you normally consider to be out of reach. You can give Reiki to issues or situations long since past, or to ones that have not yet happened. You can also use this symbol to connect to people’s emotional state, or to connect to deities, spirits of place, or ancestral spirits.

The distant healing symbol

Stroke Order: The Distant Healing Symbol

By giving Reiki to our past with hon sha ze shô nen, we can heal the wounds of our past and retrieve the lost and fragmented parts of ourselves. By doing this we become whole in the present, able to let go of things we have been carrying for a long time. As we give up our chains to the past, we become free to live fully now, to create our own present and direct our own futures.

Pronunciation

This symbol, comprising the characters 本者是正念, is pronounced:

hon (rhymes with ‘John’)
sha (‘a’ as in ‘cat’)
ze (rhymes with ‘bed’ or ‘pen’)
shô (rhymes with ‘show’)
nen (like ‘pen’)

Using the Symbol

We use the third symbol to connect to people and events that are distant from us: to another location (geographical distance), or to another time (temporally distant). Practitioners often understand this as sending Reiki energy from here, now to some other time, some other place. However part of the second level of Reiki is discovering a new sense of unity, which brings the meaning of this symbol into new focus. Instead of imagining that this symbol allows us to send Reiki to somewhere distant, we now understand that it allows us to recognise the ultimate unity of all things, all places, and all times. The whole of the universe is present with us now. Using the ‘distance’ symbol we connect to the heart of reality, and find all things are within our reach.

Later in the manual you will learn uses of this symbol for group and distant healing. For now, here is one suggested use for your self healing.

Suggested use in Self-Healing

You may go through times in your healing journey when painful memories return to you, seemingly out of nowhere. As they come, connect to that past situation using HSZSN, giving healing energy to your past self. Hold the situation in your mind for as long as feels right. You may feel releases as the power that the past event had over you is broken.

Origin of the Symbol

The distant healing symbol is a Chinese sentence, comprising five characters, and Mikao Usui put them together to make the symbol. Reading the five characters gives you the mantra¹. These characters are not esoteric; they are in everyday usage in Japan. We can therefore get straight into the meaning²:

本者是正念 Correct thought is the essence of being.
本者是正念 Correct mindfulness is the essence of being.
本者是正念 The true human being is not separated from Buddha consciousness.