The secret art of inviting happiness. The miraculous medicine of all diseases. Just for today, do not anger. Do not worry and be filled with gratitude. Devote yourself to your work. Be kind to people.
Mikao Usui
The Miraculous Medicine
Topic: Self-Cultivation & Health
The secret art of inviting happiness. The miraculous medicine of all diseases. Just for today, do not anger. Do not worry and be filled with gratitude. Devote yourself to your work. Be kind to people. Every morning and evening, join your hands in contemplation. Invoke these words to your heart and chant these words with your mouth.
Mikao Usui (August 15, 1865–March 9, 1926) was born in Taniai (now Miyama-chō), Gifu Prefecture, Japan. His education drew on Tendai Buddhist practice and a broad range of studies—history, medicine, Buddhist and Christian scriptures, psychology, and Taoism. Accounts based on his memorial stone note that he traveled within Japan and abroad to China, Europe, and America. He married Sadako (née Suzuki), and they had two children, Fuji and Toshiko.
In 1922, after a 21-day discipline on Mount Kurama near Kyoto—fasting, meditation, and prayer—Mikao Usui reported a breakthrough in spiritual insight he called “One Great Reiki.” He soon offered treatments to family and neighbors, then opened a teaching and treatment center in Harajuku, Aoyama (Tokyo) in April 1922, organizing what became the Usui Reiki Ryōhō Gakkai. He placed the daily precepts at the center of practice: do not anger; do not worry; be grateful; work diligently; be kind to others.
After the Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1923, Mikao Usui offered relief treatments in Tokyo and continued teaching as interest grew. The memorial records that more than 2,000 people learned from him. While traveling to teach in western Japan, he died of a stroke in Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, on March 9, 1926, at age 62. He is buried at Saihō-ji Temple in Tokyo. His emphasis on daily practice, ethical precepts, and hands-on healing shaped a lineage that continued through his senior students.
The Original Reiki Handbook
Usui, Mikao. The Original Reiki Handbook of Dr. Mikao Usui. Translated by Frank Arjava Petter, Lotus Press, 1999.
Mikao Usui
Theme: Healing
About Mikao Usui’s Quotation [Commentary]
Mikao Usui begins with “The secret art of inviting happiness” and “The miraculous medicine of all diseases,” then brings the teaching into daily life with the words “Just for today.” What follows is practical and immediate. Healing is joined to the way a person meets the present moment through thoughts, emotions, actions, and relationships. “Just for today” keeps the practice close at hand, asking for attention to what can be lived now.
The first instructions turn inward: “do not anger. Do not worry and be filled with gratitude.” Mikao Usui places gratitude alongside freedom from anger and worry, offering the heart and mind another way to respond. The words do not ask anyone to resolve every difficulty at once. They ask for a daily return to gratitude and steadiness. In this sense, the “miraculous medicine” is closely connected with the repeated care of the inner life.
Mikao Usui then turns toward action: “Devote yourself to your work. Be kind to people.” Inner practice is joined to daily responsibility and to the way we treat one another. The context passage makes this practice even more concrete: “Every morning and evening, join your hands in contemplation. Invoke these words to your heart and chant these words with your mouth.” These are words to remember, speak, and live. Through gratitude, devoted work, and kindness, Mikao Usui places healing within the ordinary practices of daily life.
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