Personal Reflections on the Kakisage
The Kakisage is often spoken of as being the tenth Besseki Lecture. After a period of preparation, recipients of the Kakisage, having just been granted the truth of the Sazuke, are advised to read daily and ponder its intended meaning. My own ponderings change day by day, according to the state and truth of my mind at any given time. Upon reflection I find that my thoughts and ponderings change, not only day to day but moment to moment. In that regard I will attempt to be guided in my ponderings by two poems from the Ofudesaki appearing below.
From now on I shall speak in the metaphor of water.
Be enlightened by the word clear and muddy.
Ponder this: no matter how clear the water may be,
if you put
mud into it, it will become muddy.
"Among those I accept, there is only one of free and unlimited workings: the one truth. Do not wonder where the truth of free and unlimited is. It is in the truth of the heart alone. "
Human minds, that is human self-centered imaginations are full of all sorts of truths, they are designed to freely work that way. It is vitally important to recognize that this Tenrikyo Teaching is entirely focused on finding ways to reveal just the one truth that resides eternally at the heart and core of the human mind. And that all of the numerous worldly common truths of self and the world, that are accumulated in human minds, rise up from and are reflected as our experience of the our self and our world.
That one truth isn't like any of the other truths accumulated in human minds, which are ideas and as such, like all common truths of the world, are temporary truths. Instead the one truth is the origin of all other truths that it freely gives rise to. It is the one and only permanent truth. For human beings that one truth can only be found by temporarily completely settling all of the other truths that rise out of and are reflected in the one truth. Metaphorically that means that we are instructed both in ways to return and reveal the origin of our own mind, and in finding ways to return and reveal the innermost heart of others.
The truth we seek is within us and can be revealed by temporarily, sincerely settling all of our ordinary temporary truths. By returning our mind to its origin, the pure mind that we were born with, settling with the parental mind of God, ( kami-ichijo), we are able to awaken to the true origin and intention in our creation. In my own case, I have worked to made the revelation of that one truth my first priority and fundamental focus. To me, sincerely invoking, settling and returning the mind to its original condition is the revelation, the "Sazuke".