Newpath Tenrikyo - ONE TRUTH
This universe is the body of God.Ponder this in all matters.
All human beings are things lent by God.
With what thought are you using them?
Our minds are full of truths, this teaching recognizes that fact. The truths that occupy our mind are not as a rule challenged or negated by this teaching, those truths however are in fact just in the way of our being able to expose the One Truth, the "Jiba" (the place where we are made), the Parental Heart, the Truth of Origin. To expose the one truth it is necessary to quiet or remove all of the other truths that are piled on top of it. In this regard the reasoning that is the Tenrikyo Dynamic is solely about settling and removal, there is nothing new to be learned. From the point of view of the Tenrikyo Dynamic the truth of this or that are just common truths of the world. When those worldly common truths are settled or swept away what remains is the one truth of origin.
In the teachings of the reason of heaven there is however one group of truths that are negated, those are the truths that occupied Miki's Nakayama's mind and that she shared with her family and neighbors before her awakening as the Shrine of Moonsun, God our parent, God of origin. That they are specifically negated gives us a clear before and after view of the distinction between the awakened mind and the mind that is occupied with self-centered expectations, dreams and imaginings. Further, when we look at the way a narrow path of single hearted salvation was made we become aware of a very strong tendency for us to replace Her teaching with worldly common interpretations that modify but leave intact existing worldly common truths and expectations. There was from the very beginning an effort to bring the Teachings of our Parent of origin into accord with the worldly common expectations and interpretations of those around Her. Though She was willing to tirelessly work with, tolerate and interact with our misunderstanding of Her intention and teaching, She was not willing to allow us to represent our misunderstanding, not matter how sincere, as being Her teaching.
Our human minds have the ability to create truth. Over time we accumulate those created truths and they become "understood" as we repeatedly use of them to motivate and inform our thoughts and actions. Generally speaking all of the truths that occupy our mind have a fundamental principle at their foundation. Those principles become the foundation for the reasoned truths that flow from them and define the way in which we see and experience our world. It can be said that the principles that we use to create truths are of two kinds. Those that are based on direct experience and those that are the product of the power of imagination only. Both kinds of principles have yielded both good and evil in the world. The marvels and convenience of our modern world are the fruits of our human imagination. That those same marvels have been made into weapons of oppression and suffering is a matter of choice. It is because of the choices that have been informed by imagined truths that at this time in our human journey we have put ourselves and the entire species at risk of great suffering and possible extinction. Though both the good and the evil are supported and made to thrive by our original parent we are hastened to look upon things from the point of view of what is good for all human beings equally and no longer solely from the point of view of our own self centered interest.
So far in our human history the fundamental premise of the human mind has been the self-centered imagination only. It is because of many of the truths that have flowed from our self-centered imaginations some of us currently enjoy an unparalleled level of health and prosperity. There are however truths of the human mind that have led to suffering on both the individual level and on the collective level. The purpose of the Tenrikyo Dynamic mission is to help all human beings equally to replace the current limited premise of self-centered thinking, that in many cases leads to the kind of reasoning that yields suffering, with a deeper and more secure foundation. That deeper and more secure foundation yields free and unlimited reasoning that is given to a self-centered imagination that knows, understands and is informed by the one truth of its origin. Reasoning from that deeper foundation we are able to distinguish between things as they actually are and things as we imagine them to be.
For each human being then there is the potential to view the world both as it originally is and as we imagine it to be. To experience how this works, look at something, a tree, your computer monitor, anything at all and use your imagination, talk to yourself, either as a voice or an image and be aware that it is superimposed over whatever you are directly perceiving. Most people do this superimposition seamlessly and effortlessly throughout the day. We ordinarily label it as thinking, imagining or day dreaming. On the other hand when we consciously look in at our own thought process it is called being self aware.
Self awareness is not something that has been with us for our entire life. When we are born we are conscious but not self-conscious. Self-consciousness begins to come online at about three years of age. Some people can remember the very first instances of this happening, recalling them as earliest memories while others cannot. In any case as infants we do not have a self-image but rather remain one with the universe, developing in accordance with the functioning of the instruments that make up a human body. At about three years of age we begin to develop an understanding of our body as being a separate self. This consciousness of being a separate self is a very important tool for us and provides a necessary focal point in time and space that we can use to form relationships with other people and objects all of which then appear to us to have a separate existence. The self-centered imagination is then a very deeply held idea that is located on top of the original single core consciousness without which nothing can ever be known by anyone or anything. The goal of single-hearted salvation, becoming single hearted with God, is not to live without a self-centered imagination.
"Sah, sah, because Moonsun exists, the world exists. Because the world exists, things exist. Because things exist, your bodies exist..."
Timely Talk January 13,1887
The goal is to quiet the self-centered imagination just long enough to realize its origin. Replacing the self-centered foundation of thinking and reasoning with a new foundation that understands, in all matters, the true origin of the self centered imagination and the original cause of all things.