Tenrikyo Ofudesaki
- No One Should Be Called An Outsider
-

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