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The Regional Cultures Research Center was founded as a way to carry out the "spirit of the founding of the university." Its purpose is to examine regional cultures from the perspective of globalization, to pursue interdisciplinary research and methodological studies of foreign cultures and societies, and to make use of this process and its results to the education and research within the university as a whole. The center has begun operation by undertaking three shared research themes and three projects involving "international participation."
When viewed from the perspective of "a story of the truth of spiritual maturity," the latter half of the Truth of Creation narrates the continuity from passing away for rebirth to spiritual maturity. In that case, there are two meanings for passing away for rebirth. The first meaning is the rebirth of the mind, when the body is alive. In this case, human beings can be reborn while still alive. The second meaning of passing away for rebirth is the returning of one’s body. In this case, the soul of the person passing away will be reborn in the person of another being. While human beings of this world exist with soul and mind and body as one, there are exceptions, mentioned in Oyasama's teachings, where the body continues to live even after the soul has departed from it.
All games have their own rules, and those participating in games yield themselves to another world from the world of their own reality. Games are activities that are finalized within a predetermined time and place, but there is no such finalization in the real world. The world of games is one dominated by the rules of the game, and it displays to us an even more specific, more finalized, more complete world. Activities predetermined by rules are often compared to rituals. In 1896, Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympics of ancient Greece, but these new games were intended as a festival of human-unity in order to nurture mutual understanding among all nation-states.
We are granted ears to hear whatever the
minds wants to hear. For human beings to
live and act humanely, its manner of use
becomes an issue. For our hearing senses
to listen to linguistic sounds, it requires
great effort from the inner nervous system
within our brains, unlike the case when we
hear simple sounds; and in addition, our
senses become the most sensitive in dark
places. The capacity to utter languages probably
developed within such conditions.
Next, eyes are granted to allow one to see
things with our will. Over the last 3.8 billion
years, we have accumulated various ways to
see things, and it is upon this foundation
through which we visualize things today.
Human beings are able to see and hear things
that monkeys and other animals are unable
of seeing. This is why Tenrikyo teachings
state that "to hear is innen, to listen is innen." Animals turn on their eye's muscular
cells when they are hunting food for prey.
What, in turn, turns on human beings. This
is an issue that requires thought, in order
for human beings to live humanely. Human
beings acquire the use of language through
confirming things through their own eyes.
Also, our visual and listening organs are
necessary to read and to write.
The sense of touch, particularly our sensitivity
to pain, is an instrument that allows us
to avoid even greater injury, and thus something
that we should be grateful for. We have been
thought that illness is also a means for
"pulling forth" based on the parental
heart of God the Parent, who is the creator
of all human beings; therefore, illness ought
to be regarded positively as something irreplaceable
for living.
The joy and elation engendered by these organs
corresponds antithetically to the dusts of
"miserliness," "greed,"
"hatred," and "self-love";
and thus, these organs ameliorate the existence
of these dusts.
Currently, Japan is in the midst of the "great
Heisei depression." Even large corporations
cannot escape the anxieties. Rather, it may
be more stimulating to pursue one's dreams
when still young by beginning one's own venture
business. To succeed in a new business, one
must fully utilize one's human network.
To begin a new business, nothing is more
important than a dream and a passion to make
the dream a reality. In Tenrikyo, those people
who undertake a new missionary enterprise
are called arakitoryo (wood master). A new missionary enterprise
can be said to be a form of venture business.
With such missionary spirit, a new business
enterprise should also be possible.
Shimizu also worked actively as a judo instructor, and he hosted judo tournaments. The top two tournament winners were sent to Tenri University, where they were able study judo extensively. Judo thus became a means by which to earn the trust of the Congolese people towards Tenrikyo. On the other hand, Shimizu, who had come to provide names for the newly-borns among the Tenrikyo followers since his third year, attended the funeral for Masao, a child that he had named; at the time of the funeral, Shimizu was heartened to see that Masao’s mother had firmly embraced the teachings of "a thing lent, a thing borrowed."
In this article, I touched upon the variety of Japanese views on life and death. We can clearly see the way in which shamanism and animistic views of life and death form the background, upon which foreign philosophies (Buddhism and others) take the forestage. And such state formed the basis upon which Tenrikyo's views on life and death were formed.
Given that dance performance is an activity
of a person dancing, to learn or to teach
the dance movements cannot be separated from
the fact that one learns a specific person's
dance. A person learning the dance does not
engage in some material entity but rather
faces another human being who teaches the
dance.
If that is the case, we must take into consideration
the bodily element of the person who leads
the dance steps, if we are to think about
the kinds of dance movements that are passed
down. The specific traits of each dance are
not to be encapsulated within a dance genre
but rather as a feature of a movement by
the dance performer performing a specific
dance. With this in mind, I would like to
reflect upon the relationships between the
dance performers who perform the folk dance,
as well as the relationship between dance
performers and musical accompanists.
In many cases among folk dances, there is
no strict division of roles between dancers
and musical accompanists. The fluidity between
these roles can be traced not only to historical
and sociological reasons but also to an impromptu
freedom that informs folk dance, a feature
that can be regarded as the lifeline of folk
dance.
When learning the musical instruments or
the dances, the performers are made to listen
to an oral rendering of the songs, known
as koshoka, which they memorize and use to develop
a sense of the flow of the music and movements.
That is, they articulate the sounds and movements.
Here, it is important to note that sound
and movements are articulated on the same
plane. That is, particularly in the case
of folk dance, it is critically important
that sound and movements are both captured
by the same words. Through sharing the same
medium of expression, sound and movements
are mutually interchangeable. And those sounds
and movements are carried out by different
performers when performed on stage.
In the actual case, dancers do not so much
dance along with the music, but rather the
musical accompanists read the motion and
movements of the dancers and perform accordingly.
The dancers dance as they wish. The musical
accompanists synchronize to their movements.
Furthermore, they do not only create sounds
to match the movements but they also read
the motions of the movements and amplify
its energy back to the dancers.
Because drums and songs have the capacity
to amplify such motions, the dance performers
are in turn emboldened to exercise greater
liberty in their own movements. Precisely
for such reasons, musical accompanists must
be familiar with the dance movements, and
of course, be able to take part in the dance
as well.
In 1973, a Supreme Court ruling legalized abortion up to the third month of pregnancy. However, this ruling touched off a bitter debate over the issue of abortion. In the 1980s, the New Right, proclaiming their position as "pro-family," confronted the ERA (equal rights amendment) and abortion rights as a political issue, and criticized both on the grounds that they threatened the existing social order in regard to family and gender. Subsequently, in 1982, the ERA failed to pass.
The ideas of picturesque, idealistic, and abstract are defined as the characteristics of East Asian Gardens in relationship to the climatic and geographic conditions. The form of continent, peninsula, and islands helped these characteristics formulated. Furthermore, the meanings of Poetic Gardens and symbiotic relationship with nature are predominant among East Asian Gardens. Less is more could be defined as the most powerful characteristics of Japanese garden that seems to be the destination of gardens developed in East Asia.
The school-wide reform to take place in 2002 at the Tenri University will incorporate a curriculum, such as “International Participation” (including practical training) and “Tenri Cross-Cultural Missiology,” to reflect the “spirit of the founding of the university.” Through mutual interaction of the Tenri cross-cultural missiology with other disciplines within the school, the spirit of the founding of the university will lead to an opening in future perspectives.
According to the philosophy of organism, past lived experience does not disappear but rather endures in the state of “objective immortality.” “Objective immortality” is rendered in religious vocabulary as tama (spirit). On the other hand, tamashi (soul) implies the locus that engenders the whole experience (somatic and mental phenomenon) of human beings. In order to avoid a contradiction between the teachings of passing away for rebirth (death) and rebirth and the practice of enshrining the memories of the deceased, a distinction between tama and tamashi must be clearly drawn. That is, tamashi is reborn in the form of multiple persons while the tama is the appearance by which a specific person renders everlasting influence.
Flow―that is, ideal experience―engenders joy and happiness within one’s mind as one focuses his or her concentration and establishes a goal. Flow occurs in the middle of one’s work or is experienced in the middle of a thought process; thus, it occurs in various conditions. When considering the ideal experience possible through the use of the body, in order to attain joy in swimming, one must refine the necessary skills for those sports; for such purpose, one is required to concentrate one’s attention. Joy occurs within the mind of the swimmer, and flow is not something that occurs in the midst of a physical exercise but rather is constantly involved with the use of one’s mind.
Whether one believes in God or not, one can
feel joy or anger, sadness or happiness.
Among these emotions, joy is the one that
is most welcomed by all people; that is,
the joy in the fact of our very existence,
the joy in possessing body and mind, and
the joy in being able to use it for either
good or evil. Joy is not something that occurs
at the spur of a moment upon achieving something;
rather, we prefer it to be a continuous state.
However, people are simply unfamiliar with
such continuous state of joy, and the reason
that it cannot be achieved lies in the absence
of an enabling receptacle.
One can come to understand this, when reflecting
upon the reason why God lent the body to
human beings. According to the divine truth,
our being exists within our soul, and the
body is something borrowed from God the Parent.
Human beings take a bodily form through merging
with the existence of the soul; because a
soul, on its own, can only achieve an idealistic
sense of joy and cannot experience the joy
directly through the body, God lent the bodies
to human beings. Among these things borrowed
from God, there are many instruments and
organs that God has created that enable us
to communicate through language. The emotional
organs are those that enable us to express
lived joy not only in terms of taste or vision
but also through the medium of language.
I wish to name this organ as “the organ
of joy.”
In regard to “the dharma realm of non-obstruction between principle and phenomena,” Shigeo Kamata raises the example of buddha nature and sentient beings and argues that it is a world in which “sentient beings are engendered by the buddha nature and when sentient beings reach an enlightenment, they reach the state of buddha nature; sentient beings are those whose buddha nature is in doubt, and the relation between sentient beings and buddha nature is one of non-obstruction.”
After Seietsu Kudo and his family returned to Japan, Tetsuya Tani arrived to take charge of the Rukaku Mission Post. Tani managed to dig a well in a nearby plot of land that the village headman had offered to the fellowship, and thus was able to secure water, a commodity that was a source of anxiety. Tani’s active missionary work earned the trust of the neighboring people, and the fellowship was infused with the spirit of Tenrikyo. Many came to him for requests for his visit, and he begun to visit Kai’s homeland. That area neighbored the area where the pygmy people lived, and he began to administer the Sazuke to them as well. The pygmy tribe agreed to accept the Tenrikyo teachings, and they provided land for a worship hall.
A feature of the movements of folk dance
is that its movement be “natural.” How
does such feature influence folk dance, and
inversely, how is such feature nurtured within
the framework in which the folk dance is
practiced? Precisely because it is “natural
movement,” a relationship of potentiality
is certainly there. On the other hand, through
positioning oneself in such relationship,
a natural way of being is reinforced.
On the other hand, the stronger the human
ties within a community, mutual existence
as humans become more possible through bodily
and mental sharing as found in folk dance.
At such moment, an event such as sympathy
or empathy does not occur between human beings.
Rather, it is engendered within a consistent
wave motion of natural phenomenon comprising
everything. We human beings must also empathize
our own bodily and mental rhythm within the
layerings of such cosmic wave motion. Only
through becoming aware of the wave motion
within us and situating ourselves within
the wave motion of nature at large can it
become possible to empathize among human
beings who share the same wave motion.
In this article, I describe the theory on ascetic training that incorporates both jiriki and tariki found in many religions, particularly the case of ascetic training in Mikkyo (Sanmitsu kaji) and in Tenrikyo. Further, I describe the features of mysticism among the religions that form the background for many of the ascetic training.
While referring to issues of race, class, and gender among the anti-abortion movement in late nineteenth-century America, this article provides an overview of the feminist views on abortion during that period and the response from religious circles. In the following hundred years when abortion was illegal, abortion was in fact carried out, and there were many deeply tragic cases. Within such conditions, services providing abortion appeared even among religious circles.
Given the direction of the medical science―in which even human genes are being altered for the sake of researcher’s interest, satisfaction of one’s prestige, and pursuit of profit―we are now witnessing a world in which we must establish a biological definition of human beings. Now is the time to firmly understand the meaning of life.
In Japan, the effects of the cow disease has led to an increase in the number of disposed cows. The absurdity is that the cost for the fodder for these cows is equivalent to one year’s supply of food for the Afghan refugees. The meat-labelling scandal within one of Japan’s food company that came under scrutiny as consequence of the mad cow disease can be traced to the “management” who are the “high mountain.” The drama involving the forced resignation of the foreign minister came about from the lack of understanding of the NGO by the bureaucrats of the foreign ministry ― who are also the high mountains. Let us remind ourselves of Oyasama’s Divine Model of giving, which began from her concern for the suffering people at the “low valleys.”
In the philosophy of organism, enduring object, regardless of whether they are alive or not, all comprise the societies of occasions of experience. Human beings and other animals possessing higher forms of structure are organized around social orders that include personal societies characterized by domination. Various levels of societies came into existence in the universe when God desired to realize higher values within the temporal world. The narrative of human rebirth and maturity, found in the Truth of Creation, symbolically portray this process in which human beings begin from a lower form of experience such as grass, trees, insects, and fish, and slowly mature through the mammal stage, and eventually become capable of human experience that God had desired.
Religion and sports possess an intersecting element in that spirituality is given meaning in both. This spirituality takes hold through the repetition of practice and training, but is taught that one attains the place of the master when one follows the path of the master without a single error. This implies that the disciple achieves originality and creates new form through having studied the form that the master had studied.
In the same way that earth is comprised of many living beings who communicate with each other, the human body is also comprised of many tiny cells that exchange communication with each other. As stated in the Osashizu, that “through the single truth of the spirit, one heads toward ten thousand,” the fertilized egg is originally one cell which creates not just ten thousand but also over 60 trillion cells. If communication is defined as touching each other and helping each other, then, the movement and function of the cells as well as the interaction among cells take the form of communication. Its mechanism is truly the basis of the ideal world of joyous life, and also holds the basis for communication. In fact, the cells the nervous system and the internal secretion system share a division of labor that maximizes each other’s traits, and we can to know that our life is supported by the activities of the individual cells and the various organs within the human body. What ties together the life of all these cells is the function of communication between these cells. Is that is the case, the power that enables “the truth that moves ten thousand people” is, in fact, the power of communication.
Since the Meiji, many Japanese arrived in the Philippines. Among them, there were not a few members of the Tenrikyo faith. While not many in number, there were also those who came to the Philippines for the explicit purpose of engaging in missionary work. I have described how people came to listen to the teachings and become recipients of God’s salvation, leading to the founding of a church. The World War Two had the effect of rendering the results of their sincere efforts into naught. However, in the postwar, through the hands of those who devoted themselves in the Philippines, a new mission began to take hold.
Head minister Shimizu’s resolution ― to have the Congolese continue in their faith even in the absence of any Japanese, and to have them extend a hand of salvation to those afflicted with illness within the harsh natural environments of the wilds of Congo ― led to an effort to establish missionary bases at locations outside Brazzaville. First, the village of Rukaku, which was home to Muang Machiu, a longtime faithful, was chosen as a site to establish a base, and Seietsu Kudo was sent. Within difficult living conditions, Kudo sought to administer the Sazuke.
Following the previous issue in which I wrote about self-empowered training, this article will discuss training based on tariki, or empowered by the other. I will draw my examples particularly from the training philosophy (naikan) of Jodo Buddhism and Tenrikyo (Oyasama). In the next article, I wish to discuss the theory of training from a new perspective.
The process of transformation within folk
dance in which the dancers change places
overlaps with the process of transformation
taking place in healing. However, this analogy
does not reach the model that one can find
in objective “normal” models achieved through a statistical comparison.
A naturalness found in real situations is
engendered in conjunction with a number of
conditions each unique to itself. Rather,
the more that the spontaneity corresponds
to any common principle, the more that different
forms of expression will come about, as a
result of conditions that pertain to specific
cases.
The process of healing does not always aim
in any single direction. The substance of
healthiness had been given form within a
specific web of human ties formed through
a multitude of human perspectives.
Radical feminism of the early twentieth century Germany had reached the level of the second wave feminism of the 1960s. However, its radical idea of “self-determination” was already enveloped by the influence of the eugenic thoughts of its time.
This paper has shifted to report you my current research of the East Asian Gardens for finding the concepts of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese gardens together. In terms of scale and time in which those ancient gardens were developed, we believe that they will have a significant impact on the contemporary designs in the world. The ideas of Poetic, Aesthetic, and Sustainable shall be focused in coming issues of this research. Other authors are Professor Ching Chen, North China University of Technology, Beijing, China, and Professor Yong-Ki Kim, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea.
Last year marks the 120th year since the “storehouse” was built within the Residence and also the 115th year since Izo Iburi conveyed God’s intention immediately after Oyasama hid her physical being. Both the founding of Tenrikyo and the anniversary to mark Oyasama hiding her physical being revolve around the “storehouse.” What is the significance of this? Either in the form of fasting or giving to the poor, Oyasama’s conduct is not explained through the medium of language. The “storehouse,” which symbolizes the point of departure of the path of the Divine Model, was also a silent revelation. It is an important duty for the followers of the path to understand and interpret the significance of this silent revelation.
Self-enjoyment, creative activity, and possession of purpose―features thought to be the characteristics of life―are features that can also be found, with some differences in degree, within the inorganic world (the inorganic natural world). That is, these three features are features that belong not only to organic beings but also to inorganic elements. Those matters that have an existence today possess these features, to some degree, and therefore are considered to be an organism. All matters that were created by God the Parent have been bestowed with the Divine Providences; and that which was first given life was not a life form possessing DNA and a capacity to self-reproduction, but the dynamic being that enables the beginning of the universe.
We have seen the coming of the new year without a resolution to the events surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks that occurred last year. A multi-nation task force, led by the military forces of the United States, armed with the latest military technology, continue their pursuit for the perpetrators of the terrorist attack; however, there is yet to be found a means to prevent its reoccurrence. I offer an examination of “game theory,” “principles of evolution,” and “effectiveness of anti-biotic substance” as an approach to think about the means for prevention. I argue that, although each of these concepts does not lead directly to a means for prevention, they offer a resource to begin to think about this quandary.
Within nature and its workings, how should
human beings act and carry on in their lives?
I outline five stages in response to this
query. The first stage is the pure, apathetic
age. This is the way in which animals live.
The second stage is the age in which human
beings both fear and is moved by nature and
its workings. In the third stage, there is
an overwhelming joy over being able to receive
nature’s blessings. However, this sense
of joy must ultimately find its way to the
fourth stage, of “appreciation.” It is
in this stage where human beings, through
their use of reason, are able to inductively
feel a sense of appreciation. The fifth stage
is that of “requital based on gratitude.”
At this stage appear human beings in their
true appearance as personification of reason.
According to Tenrikyo teachings, this world
can explained as a metaphor of God’s own
body; the world is founded upon the workings
of the ten providences of “fire,” “water,”
“wind,” “seed,” “seedplot,” “support,”
“joining,” “rise and fall of moisture,”
“pulling forth,” and “cutting.” The human
body is a “thing lent,” and is given life
through the ten providences. In that case,
1) what kind of tool has God the Parent lent
to human beings, what is the substance of
this thing lent, and what kind of working
has God the Parent lent us? 2) What is the
purpose for lending us our bodies? 3) What
is the method of training, and also, what
are the conditions for this act of lending,
and the price? 4) How are human beings using
this body that we have borrowed from God
the Parent? I will first state my thoughts
in regard to the first question. Human beings,
and all living beings, are comprised of cells,
and each individual cell is given life through
the workings of the ten providences; and
startlingly, each individual cell communicates
with each other.
I write about ascetic training, which one undergoes in pursuit of the absolute. This practice is included within what is known in Japanese cultural tradition as keiko, or exercise, and aims to fulfill the stages that indicate the oneness of body and mind. In this article, I examine ascetic training found in Zen (zazen and koan), as a central concern of my reflections upon this issue.
As a policy to overcome the recent downturn in employment opportunities, workshare has been introduced into this nation’s labor practices. This is a system that can be practiced not only among full-time employees but also among part-time and temporary employees as well; and certainly, the latter must become the case. Workshare―a practice for “sharing the pain” and “mutual cooperation”―resonates with the actualization of the Tenrikyo teachings of “helping one another.”
An active will to commit oneself into a network
of communication is engendered by process
of self-discovery of one’s powers that occurs
through actual events in which one’s existence
is already acting upon the outside world.
The object of “healing,” taken into consideration
in this article, are those people, for the
most part, who are burdened with difficulties
as a result of not being able to discover
such relations between the world and themselves,
that is, those who were not able to discover
their own powers and experience events that
would lead to confidence in their own existence.
If such is the case, “healing” is realized
through placing oneself once again within
such “relations” or discovering that one
is already embedded in such relationships.
How can art, or dance, contribute to this
process? In this article, we examine in particular
the way in which participation in folk dance
leads to an experience of such “relationships.”
The world was shocked by the news that, in forty years before and after World War Two, Sweden, known as one of the world’s representative welfare states, coerced sterilization surgeries upon roughly sixty thousand men and women. I examine the issues of gender as it appears in this sterilization method.
At first glance, medical uses of embryonic stem cells may seem extremely profitable; yet, there are problems that may remain technologically insurmountable. Also, in the ethical dimension, this approach entails medical research that contains a contradiction, of sacrificing a life for the sake of another life.
In the past, many people have commented on the nature of the spirit of Tenri Judo, and I believe that most of these are accurate and appropriate. In particular, there is an interview by the second Shinbashira that appeared on the August 1956 issue of Judo. In this interview, the second Shinbashira outlines the key features of Tenri Judo.
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