On this Distance Healing day, those joining us at The Retreat for the Healing Ceremony will also be partaking of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, as conducted by Kendo himself. While not necessarily apparent at first, Kendo points out that visualising wellness and strength for others in the Distance Healing Ceremony and participating in the Tea Ceremony actually have some important things in common.

It’s a Buddhist obligation to seek to be of the greatest possible worth to the society in which you live, and this requires placing other things above your own ego. This is, of course, done in Kendo’s Distance Healing Ceremony, but the Tea Ceremony is also very effective in making a person examine their relationships with their environment. Such enhanced awareness of how even the smallest action can have a great impact upon everything around you amounts to enhanced humility – arguably, a person cannot care too much about whether their influence is as positive as it can be.

Kendo has written a great deal about invisible energies which are nonetheless very real and powerful, and science is only just beginning to be able to reveal them. That the appearance of such evidence is gradual actually parallels the development of enlightenment in people on the spiritual path – you are unlikely to notice something subtle unless your willingness to look for it – and believe in it – increases.

All the foregoing are examples of the kind of subtle yet intensive work that Kendo asks us to continually do upon ourselves. Stilling the mind is the first goal, closely followed by ever-more sensitive appreciation of how we affect the people and nature around us. It is so easy to forget that we are natural organisms, and even easier to forget that we are spiritual beings, and remembering this and appreciating the extent, complexity, and subtlety of our links with nature will bring about a coalescing of our own invisible energies and those around us in the natural world, and inevitably lead to the best possible health.

Kendo is highly skilled at using symbols and metaphors which reveal both the presence and importance of nature’s invisible forces to the wayward conscious mind, and the simple yet subtle disciplines of the Tea Ceremony are a fine example of this; there’s more to it than meets the eye, and understanding that we should always seek to refine even the most subtle things will bring about surprisingly positive consequences, on perhaps even unexpected levels.