TENRIKYO - The Path to the Joyous Life
INTRODUCTION - 8/28/01
WHAT IS TENRIKYO?
- What are Tenrikyo's basic teachings? by Roy Forbes
- Tenrikyo [Wikipedia]
- Tenrikyo Search Engine
The Service
The Tenrikyo Service is the most important ritual taught by Miki Nakayama as the means to the universal salvation of humankind. The principle of the Service is to have, in the course of the dance, the singing, and the playing of the musical instruments, all persons, whether performing or attending the Service, become one in mind with God the Parent. The significance of this is that the performers and attendees must sweep all self-centered thoughts from their mind - a process that the Service itself promotes.
In the service at Jiba ten dancers: five men and five women, representing the ten aspects of complete providence at the time of human creation perform a ritual symbolizing the creation story. All dancers encircle the Kanrodai and wear their respective kagura masks and symbolize by hand gestures God the Parent's different workings through which human beings and the world were created. The Service therefore symbolizes the renewal of human creation.
The Service is a prayer where we can invoke the blessings of God, by becoming one with God as it was in the beginning of the world and be reminded of where, why, and how God the Parent created humankind. Accordingly, then, human beings are able to live in perfect accord with the will of God the Parent through the performance of the Service.
Another means of saving people with illness is by the Sazuke or Divine Grant, the diving power of healing. I don't like to call it healing or faith healing, as it tends to conjure up superstitions or images of instant miracles without any basis on faith. I'd rather call it prayer for blessing. Followers of Tenrikyo attend special lectures called Besseki at total of nine times and are granted the Sazuke to become yoboku (or timber), which we commonly called missionaries. In revealing the teachings, God the Parent used metaphors to expound certain truths. In the construction of a joyous world "home", it would require the use of timbers or yoboku.
A thing lent, a thing borrowed
Since God is our Creator, we cannot claim anything as being our own, except our mind. From the doctrine, we are taught that our bodies are not our own, but borrowed from God, only our mind alone is ours. We are free to use our minds as we wish. We are kept alive by the divine protection of God, not by our own power. Realizing this fact we offer our gratitude and thanks to God daily. From this we have Hinokishin, the activity for which Tenrikyo is well known. An outsider may think that Hinokishin is voluntary labor cleaning up a disaster stricken area, public parks, streets and toilets. Hinokishin means daily contribution. The Foundress taught that Hinokishin was to be a daily contribution or offering to God as an expression of our thanks. If we merely feel gratitude in our hearts but do not express it outwardly in some form of action, it does not become Hinokishin. When we express our gratitude to God from our joyous hearts in some form of action for the benefit of society, it becomes Hinokishin.
As mentioned before, we are free to use our minds as we wish. If we use our minds to follow God's will, to mutually respect and help another as brothers and sisters, then we would be able to enjoy a joyous life as God intended. However, we humans sometimes think that we can do just as we like and make a wrong use of our minds with mental dust. The sooner we start with the cleaning, the easier the work. To assist us in cleaning our minds God enumerates eight kinds of dusts: miserliness, unreasonable desire, hatred, self-love, animosity or bearing grudges, anger, greed and arrogance. We are also warned against lying and flattery.
When these dusts accumulate, it becomes difficult to get rid of them. We call this causality, the relation between cause and effect. I don't use karma, as karma usually refers to past lives, where causality refers to both present and past lives. We undergo sick and troubles due to our causality, because we have sown the seeds in this and in previous lives. We reap what we sow. However, in Tenrikyo there is no feeling of resignation, that this if fate and that we can do nothing about it.
First we have repentance. Then comes tanno, which is joyous acceptance. It is to see the intention of God in all that happens in our daily lives, and consequently to live always in a bright and cheerful way. We are taught that tanno is the way to cut our bad causality.
There is always hope - hope of reforming our minds, of getting rid of the dusts from our minds, of following God's will to help and save other people, hope of changing our bad causality into good causality. We are taught that we are save by saving others. As you can see, this teaching of causality also implies belief in reincarnation.
