I believe we may say that Oyasama’s Divine Model of single-hearted salvation is also a model that demonstrates how to nurture and train people. As I mentioned earlier, Oyasama’s parental heart that desires to save us goes beyond merely relieving people of their pains and sufferings. Oyasama’s real aim was to train people so that they would be able to understand God the Parent’s intention and set out to save others. All through the Anecdotes of Oyasama, the Foundress ofTenrikyo, we find examples of Oyasama working with people who had come to the Residence asking to be saved or wishing to express gratitude for the blessings they had received. We find Oyasama teaching them the basic stance of the mind—in ways appropriate for each person—and urging them to save others.
Oyasama took especially great pains to train the Service performers. Besides drawing forth the Service performers and teaching them the hand movements and musical instruments for the Service, She taught them the significance of the Service, trained them in the basic stance of the mind appropriate for the Service, and urged them to perform the Service in a unity of mind. These expressions of Her parental heart are found throughout the Ofudesaki, from beginning to end.
The Anecdotes of Oyasama depicts Oyasama as personally showing the followers how to sing the songs for the Service and how to perform the dance movements for the Service. We also find that Oyasama personally taught young girls how to play the musical instruments for the Service. Moreover, we sense the great affection with which She gave encouragement to these performers by telling them: “Play it with all your heart” for “God will accept the harmony of the hearts of the performers.”
Let me get back to the year 1900. By that time, more than ten years had passed following Oyasama’s withdrawal from physical life, and the number of followers who had never personally met Oyasama was increasing each year. In addition, the number of second-generation followers began to increase around that time.
Surely the reason the first Shinbashira authorized the Book of the Besseki in 1898 and in the same year wrote his Biography of Oyasama, which was later to serve as the basis for the present Life of Oyasama, was that he wished to ensure that Oyasama’s direct teachings and Her Divine Model would be accurately transmitted to later generations.
Further, although the authorities were in fact pressuring Tenrikyo to systematize its teachings and to improve its organizational structure, it seems likely that the remarkable growth Tenrikyo was making at the time—when the number of followers was estimated to be as many as three million—made it necessary for Tenrikyo to train religious instructors under systematic guidelines.
During those days when various institutions such as Tenri Seminary were thus taking shape, the first Shinbashira made a point of setting an example by taking the time to work personally with the staff and students at Tenri Seminary despite his busy schedule in handling church affairs. He thereby devoted a great deal of energy to training and educating them.
As this year marks the hundredth anniversary of the seminary, I want all of us to take this opportunity to recall that not only the seminary but also all our training and educational institutions such as the Spiritual Development Course, the Head Minister Qualification Course, as well as the school system ranging from elementary school through university are all based upon the first Shinbashira’s desire and personal efforts to train Tenrikyo instructors who would be equipped with not only unshakable faith but also academic learning and moral integrity. Besides recalling his personal efforts to accomplish that, I want us to use the example he set as a guiding principle for helping us ponder how each of us is to proceed from now.
We may say without exaggeration that the first Shinbashira laid the foundation not only for the seminary but also for the entire organizational structure of Tenrikyo.
Indeed, Tenrikyo’s present organizational structure was put together and developed on the basis of that foundation.