Tenrikyo-Ofudesaki - Admonish with My Verses

There are two crucially important "Guides" to be pondered and understood in this rather short and simple poem.

• The first draws our attention to the fact that the ordinary understanding of our experience of what we call "illness" never applies to this teaching.

  • Most if not all of the people who turn to our original Parent for help, do so with the expectation that they will get relief within the context of their "ordinary" understanding of the meaning of the word illness.

  • Note that at the time and place that the poem was written there was a sincere expectation that "illnesses" be treated, depending upon one's ability to pay, by both doctors and medicine and particularly in this model case, through the employment of ritual magic incantations purchased from a shaman or healing monk.

• The second "Guide" is also intended to show a model that is contrary to the "ordinary" expections of time and place and of course it applies even now. Ponder this; the ordinary expections as concerned the ordinary understanding of the causes of illness included such creations of the human imagination  as curses, demons, evil spirits and the like. That is a pretty scary and nasty outlook to have.

  • That we are admonished by the use of poetry has two features to ponder.

    • First: we are given a teaching the understanding of which asks us to quickly ponder the meaning of the poems and they way in which they gently admonish us to mature.

    • Second: Though the poems admonish us, they do not intend to punish or force us to comply. This distinction is best savored as an expression of a Model of Parental Love, which in fact is what the entire teaching is an expression of.

Table of Contents - Sure Guides  IVd