Tenrikyo Dynamic Mission - RETURNS

The questions of "Rebirth" and "Divine Retribution" as well as the kinds of detailed truths that reasonably flow from those ideas, when used as  principle truths or foundations for still other truths which can be used to explain the cause of our situation now and in future lives come up throughout the poems of "The Tip Of The Writing Brush".

The truth of divine intervention, either to reward and help or to punish and crush in this life or the next is one of our species oldest and most deeply held worldly common truths. I have used the representation of the story of Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea and then closing them again on the pursuing Egyptian Pharaoh and his army as it illustrates both common human impulses as they relate to the topic of "returns".  That is returns that help and returns that punish. The entire story has it all, curses, plagues, angels murdering children everything the human imagination could come up with to torment one's enemies as well as divine intervention on behalf of a particular person or group.

 I could have used the storm that sank the Spanish invasion fleet on its way to Britain or the "Divine Wind"("kami kaze") that destroyed the Mongol fleet on its way to Japan or any number of other iconic instances of "Divine Intervention" but the image of Moses parting the Red Sea was easiest to acquire and since it was also one of the earliest instances of a "seed of truth" planted to condition my childhood  mind so that I would grow up to be an adult that followed a set of moral and ethical rules and share the kind of expectations common to my community as a whole. Unfortunately such "truths" can and often do give rise to an adult mind that is unable to distinguish between the real and the imaginary and the causal and the coincidental. That inability to distinguish gives rise to the way that the world is now and the reason why the original mind of God (consciousness clear of imagined truths) has stepped in to make repairs by waking us up from the truths that flow from the shallow, worldly common, self centered dreams the seeds of which were planted in the childhood of our species.

I had the good fortune to attend a private parochial grade school and, as I remember it, the entire school was taken to see whatever film version of the story of Moses was current at the time and the experience included being exposed to an adult world wherein that story and other such stories were taken to be absolutely true. The idea, I think, being that these were not just children's stories or fairy tales but true stories that the entire adult world sincerely held to be true.  I say the "entire adult world" because the point of view of a child is a rather narrow one and the truths taught to a child in most cases are built upon the truths that their parents or other adults teach them and in turn become principles upon which a child builds their own adult world view.  Taken together there is a mountain of such imagined truths filling our world, some of them are useful and some of them are the root cause of great unintentional suffering.

Once the ground is prepared and the seeds of magic, miracles and divine intervention are planted all kinds of  ideas and truths of "returns" can be imagined and made to take root in our mind. If we are able to calm our imaginations and take a look at our current situation we would see a world choked by imagined truths proliferating like weeds. Bound up as we are by the weeds of worldly common truths how can we ever know what is true?

The poetic theme above sounds very much like a variation on the worldly common theme of "divine retribution" as there is quite literally nothing that can be said that cannot be interpreted in a worldly common way. The key to understanding the poems above is to be found by following through on the instruction to "dig up the root of this world's origin". According to our parent of origin and the Tenrikyo Dynamic teaching, the only way to know and understand what these poems mean for sure is to totally purify our mind so that it becomes a perfect reflection of God's mind. It is to that totally purified mind, the mind like clear water that the truth of any and everything is given. Anything less is just a continuation of worldly common speculation which yields incomplete knowledge and understanding making it very difficult for us to receive the free and unlimited workings that our original parent wants us to have and enjoy.

To get a sense of what "as soon as I accept your minds" means, think of the instantaneous return that one gets when looking into a mirror. To help us to understand this the following "talk" was given:

Our parent of origin is hastening us to mature out of childhood and into the free and unlimited workings given to full adult life. We cannot do that as long as we insist upon holding onto the child's interpretation.  Utilizing the child's interpretation it is very, very easy to come to a worldly common understanding of what the mind of God is trying to help us to overcome.

In most cases we are drawn to seek the aid and relief of our original Parent because of bodily disorders. It is no small task to get us to switch from concerns about the state of our bodies and instead move our focus to the way in which we are using our mind.

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