Tenrikyo Ofudesaki - No One Should Be Called An Outsider -

Sure Guides to awakening to the truth of your self

Until today, whatever wrongdoing there is said to be,
Perhaps none of you has known of it in yourself.
God will teach you the truth about this.
Ponder over it all of you.
All of you throughout the world are brothers and sisters.
There should be no one called an outsider.

Conflict between people is one of the main causes of human suffering. When engaging in conflict on any level, be it person to person, or on a larger scale, we tend to assume that our point of view, that is the truths of our world, are correct and the views of those people that we are in conflict with are incorrect. When disagreements pass beyond polite disagreement to more extreme measures, war for example, we may be inclined to demonize or to accept as a suitable truth of our world the demonization of people that we either know first hand or people that we don't know but have been taught by someone else to disagree with or to demonize. 

Although selfishness and greed tend to be the root cause of conflict in the world, these poems ask us to identify those wrong uses of the mind in our own mind. When I apply this hastening and instruction to the truths of the world that occupy my own mind I find that I am much happier when not seriously revisiting and  indulging them and in fact often feel regret after revisiting them. Still, because of repeated conditioning, they rise up and seek to hold the floor but identifying them for the self-centered imaginings that they are weakens their hold and denies them the claim of absolute truth.

The view that no one is an outsider, of course flows from the point of view that is given to the "mind like clear water"; the mind that knows and understands the true origin of the human mind. Please identify your own self-centered imagination, the voice or images appearing in your mind and ponder; there is one unchanging parental consciousness illuminating all of the changeable self-centered imaginations, its children, now and always.  Poetically this is called knowing and understanding the mind of Moonsun.

Sure Guides: Section IVf