Tenrikyo-Ofudesaki - Checking My Vocabulary - "Metaphor"
"Metaphor - A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another by way of suggesting a likeness or analogy between them."
For example in the Poems under discussion "water" is a metaphor for the "human mind" and the words "clear" and "muddy" are metaphors
for the state of one's mind at any given moment. Identifying and Internalizing
these three metaphors in our own mind is in fact all that is needed to
understand not just the Poems but the truth of any and everything in detail.
The poems collected as "The Tip of the Writing Brush" are loaded with
metaphors that were intended to be both universally applicable for all human
minds in all times and places as well as being easily understood by the
person to whom the poems were originally given; each verse
and theme having been crafted to be appropriate for the time and place as
well as the level of
spiritual maturity of the persons to whom they were addressed.