Tenrikyo-Ofudesaki - Never Speaks About Human Thoughts

There are two views of this that I imagine to be important points for deep pondering and self reflection and both of those views center around what the intended meaning of the teaching actually is.

• The first view is that the source of this teaching is not the composition of any human mind or self-centered imagination. In general human self-centered imaginations haven't had trouble with accepting as a fact that these teachings or other ancient teachings are divinely inspired. Throughout the known history of our species such teachings and utterances have been readily accepted as the word or words of one god or another.

• The second view is more problematic for us; in that view there is nothing that we think or can think, no ideas formed in our imaginations that constitute the truth of this teaching. This is problematic as there are easily recognizable human thoughts represented in the Poems.

  • What is the explanation for that apparent contradiction? I suggest that we recall that the poems are cast as a conversation between the single original cause of everything, called by us the mind of God, and a multitude of misunderstandings which are supported by deeply held ideas, truths of the world, of the self-centered imagination superimposed on what is perceived to be a body separate and autonomous in nature.

  • Simply put this could be poetically stated as "realize the truth by the words "clear" and "muddy".

• To help us to overcome the natural misunderstanding the adheres to a self-centered imagination that does not know the truth of its origin, various ways and means of working at, performing services, to calm our thoughts, settle our thinking, purify our mind and return it to its original pristine condition in order to reveal its true origin, are taught.

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