My teacher Stephen K. Hayes is quick to point out you can’t learn the kuji from a book, because the understanding represented by the kuji requires certain experiences. He describes the kuji in his books and DVDs in order to set the stage for the experiences. The description is not the experience, but the description might help you recognize and relate to the experience when it comes along. If these powers intrigue you, you will eventually need to spend time with a qualified teacher who can illuminate the technique, but if you have read, studied, and reflected on these powers beforehand, you’ll have an advantage.
CHAPTER 3
The Secrets Told
Twelve years after that first encounter, thousands of hours of training later, my teacher and I were standing together in a Tibetan art shop in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. He was visiting to teach a seminar on the advanced kuji powers in my own dojo, where I had built a thriving community of 150 students with my wife Mary. We had come a long ways since I hesitantly first approached him in the mountains of North Carolina.
We had just come from the seminar. It had taken me months of convincing him to agree to teach it—that my students were ready for the kuji teaching. He always said that most people weren’t ready for the kuji, even though they said they wanted it, so they would miss out on the experience even if it was right in front of them.
The seminar had been a success, and I was ready to ask for more. “I really think these are powerful teachings. The world needs more of this.” He simply nodded as he perused the Tibetan thangka paintings, so I continued, “You should write a book with more detail about the kuji.”
“Actually, I think you should write it,” he replied.
I almost dropped the small statue I was holding. “Me? Why would I do it instead of you?”
“I’ve written a number of books with kuji information in them, and put out several DVDs on the topic. You are very passionate about it. Maybe now it’s time for another voice.”
I thought about that. It was true that I was the one who had been asking him about the kuji on every possible visit, attending every possible seminar on the topic anywhere in the country for the last 12 years, and reaching out via email, phone, and SKH Forum posts for more information. I was the one who sought out and practiced every piece of kuji-related information, even if it just had kuji in the name and turned out to be unrelated. Passionate was perhaps an understatement.
“How would I do that? Would I just lay out the mudra, the mantra, and the visualizations of the practice?” I asked. “I mean, it’s so much more than that. How would I get across the insights, the personal transformation?”
“I think the very best place to start,” he began, pinning me with his gaze, “is to tell the stories of our time training together, just like I did in Ninja and Their Secret Fighting Art.”
Even after all our years together, I still found his gaze intense. I froze under it, until he turned back to look at the art. I remembered reading the book many times, so I mentally reviewed it now. His story came together so naturally and magically when he arrived in Japan in the 1970s. It was like Dr. Hatsumi was just waiting for him, and incredible magical lessons came together right away.
I thought about my own magical lessons with him, unbelievable yet undeniable events that happened. Some of them happened in front of many other people, but somehow I felt like the others might not have noticed or understood the significance.
“When I imagine telling my stories of our time together, I worry that other people will disagree with what happened. After all, these kuji events are so subjective. What if I share my deepest truth and someone else who was there claims no such thing took place?”
“An important question,” he acknowledged. “One I have faced many times in my own life. Wonderful real magic happens in the room, and ignorant people claim that nothing happened at all. Sometimes the most powerful intelligence is just beyond the grasp of the ignorant ones.”
He paused and looked at me to make sure I was paying attention. “I call it vajra time. Miracles are happening all around us, right now. Can you see it?”
Stephen K. Hayes and the author visiting a shrine in Nitobe Memorial Garden while traveling for spiritual teachings. —Photo from author’s personal collection
Our eyes locked and the room seemed to recede around us. The light brightened a little, and the sounds shifted. It was like we had gone into a bubble of some kind, or a protective force field. I had felt it before in our kuji training, but never in a random public place. I didn’t know that it was there, just out of sight, at any time. We stayed there for a moment, time suspended, and I thought maybe I had a sense for his thoughts and how he viewed the world.
The bubble burst. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed—the bored shopkeeper, the listless patrons in the store looking for enlightenment on the cheap. Nothing, no reactions from any of them.
“Ignorant people,” he said again, “just don’t get it. And they think nothing happened. But you know.”
I had never really thought about it from a writer’s perspective, so I had always just accepted the ease and clarity of the stories. Thinking about it now, however, I knew it couldn’t have been that easy. Now that I had lived through the training, seen the complexity and difficulty of finding truth and transforming the whole self through the experience, I knew that his story must have been much more complex than it sounded in the books.
“What about memories through time? Like an insight that breaks through only after several training experiences, sometimes years apart, or comes together in a seemingly unrelated moment when a phrase in a book or movie delivers the realization?” We had discussed previously how the mind can mysteriously recognize subtle insights out of small clues and artistic reflections. Sometimes the breakthrough comes at the most unlikely of moments.
He nodded. “Those are the deepest ones, aren’t they? That’s how the kuji work, they deliver themselves to you in mysterious ways, when the time is right. Inner vajra time. You’ll find a way to share these truths too.” He paused and looked at me. “You have to.”
CHAPTER 4
Physical Strength
The Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, 2001. “The first kuji, Rin, is about strength,” An-Shu Hayes told the assembled training group. Some of us had read his books and therefore knew the name of Kuji One as Rin (臨 in Japanese, pronounced “reen” with slightly rolled “r”). A few even knew the old Chinese Taoist history that explained why the Japanese kanji character, which literally means “face” or “meet,” came to represent Strength.
“There are many kinds of strength,” An-Shu continued. “And if we were going to study Kuji One deeply, you’d want to look at all of them. But let’s start with physical strength, because it is the most clear and maybe the easiest to learn.”
Inwardly, I was worried. I didn’t want to do a bunch of calisthenics. I was more of a long-distance runner, and not much of a gym guy. Besides, I came to the seminar in the misty mountains of North Carolina to learn magic, not attend a high-school PE class.
As if he read my mind, An-Shu continued with, “Now we could study things like weightlifting to understand strength. That would be the most literal and