Polishing the Gem of Our Hearts

By the Rev. Yoshinori Horie
Konko Church of Hananomiya

(From the October 2017 issue)

The “Play” that I Cherished

  I was a kindergarten teacher before entering the Konko Seminary. There are various goals in early childhood education. Among those goals, an important goal is that we, as teachers, help our children develop their respective abilities. We let our little pupils “play,” and while they are “playing,” we try to help them develop their physical ability, creativity and capability to express themselves. Playing gives little kids much fun, and while they are having fun, they learn how to build up human relationships with the people around them. Kindergarten pupils are given many kinds of “play”: They fold colored paper. They draw pictures. They sing songs. They enjoy picture books with their teacher orally telling them the stories of the books. Among these sorts of plays, I put a special value on the “play in the kindergarten playground.”

  There are several things kids can enjoy on the playground; race, jump rope, ball play, you name it.  Above all, I placed a special importance on “playing with sand/soil.” This helps children form communities consisting of a small number of people. It gives these little boys and girls a precious chance to learn how to make human relationships with their fellow classmates. Touching the sand and soil in the sandbox also promotes the development of the sense of their fingertips. According to the kinds and/or conditions of the sand and mud, the children can experience various textures: the soil can feel gooey sometimes, it can feel smooth sometimes and it can feel rough sometimes. Soil shows different ways of absorbing water according to the kinds of the soil. Touching the soil means experiencing nature, and little kids can receive a lot of stimulus by playing in the sandbox. 

  When I was a little boy, I was totally into “making mud dumplings.” I used to compete with my friends for making the roundest and/or the hardest mud dumplings. Many years later, while I was working as a kindergarten teacher, I often remembered my childhood and made mud dumplings with my little pupils in the sandbox. Sometimes, I was even more excited than them in making those dumplings. 

 

After Repeating Mistakes…

  One day, an elder co-worker of mine took out a box from the kindergarten warehouse and came over to me, holding the box very carefully. As the senior teacher held the box so attentively, some kids were interested in what was inside the box, and they came over to and surrounded him. 

  The kids and I looked curiously into the box when the teacher opened it up. We found a sparkling mud dumpling in it. When we looked much closer at the dumpling, our faces were reflected on its surface.  The children were so excited that they exclaimed, “Wow!” And they all said cheerfully, “I wanna make one like this!” I was impressed with the senior colleague for the way he interested the little pupils with the polished mud dumpling at a perfect timing. 

  In order to make a shining mud dumpling, one needs to have manual dexterity and a high-level of concentration. Being curious, children look for good soil and they also pay good attention to how their teacher and friends are making their dumplings, so their ability to observe things develops as well.  Because the children are very much interested in what they are doing, their perseverance evolves too; They do not give up easily, and they do not give up soon. This allows them to survive many mistakes, and when they finally finish making a clean mud dumpling, they can truly enjoy a big delight of accomplishment. The elder teacher made a trigger for his young pupils to grow up in many ways by showing them one attractive thing that “shines brightly.” 

  The secrets to make a sparkling mud dumpling successfully are to remove moisture from the dumpling slowly and to put fine-grained sand onto the dumpling over and over again and polish the round object gently. The elder teacher often gave his little pupils not only words of advice but also visible examples as he was making mud dumplings with those children.

  The children grew up little by little and a few of them gradually became able to make clean, polished mud dumplings. One was kind enough to tell me that he had discovered that he could easily make a mud dumpling that shines brightly if it is a fine day after a rainy day. Another child discovered where he could collect brown soil, black soil and grey soil and he made mud dumplings in different colors. I was impressed with the inquisitive minds of these kids. Being a kindergarten teacher, I was truly happy to see the growth of these excited, curious and hard-working kids and I had enriching, satisfying days in my workplace. 

 

Meeting with A Teaching of the Konko Faith

  I entered the Konko Seminary later on. In this religious academy, I encountered a teaching of the Founder of the Konko Faith that helped me realize Kami/Deity taught me the “essence of faith” and the “Way/Law of the things” through the events I had gone through in my life. I had thought that those events had nothing to do with (religious) faith, but I was proven to be wrong thanks to this teaching. The teaching, in fact, goes like this: “…one must polish the gem in one’s heart while practicing faith.” (GI: Yamamoto Sadajiro, 53-2)

  All people have both a warm, caring, kami/god-like heart and a self-centered heart that is apt to blame others. It is important for every one of us to polish and develop the kami/god-like heart. The Japanese language has an expression, “hon’ne to tatemae,” which means “one’s true feelings and one’s public position.” To practice faith in a deity means to polish one’s true feelings for the betterment of its quality.  By way of receiving Sacred Mediation and listening to sermons, we need to set ourselves free from our own selfish, self-centered minds and encourage ourselves to live with a kami/god-like heart. 

  But this is probably a typical case of “Easier Said Than Done.” If someone asked me, “Are you in fact able to follow your Founder’s teachings with your true feelings, no matter where you are or what kind of situations you are in now?” I could never answer “Yes, I am.” The Founder of the Konko Faith teaches us, “Do not say something nice if you do not sincerely believe it.” (GIII: Shinkai, 5) Our problem is that there are occasions where “we are not sincere enough.” 

  Mud dumplings can get broken easily if we drop it carelessly or if we fail to grasp it gently. Just like this, our faith can be fragile if we get too loose about it. When we polish the rough surface of a dumpling and make it round, we tend to be satisfied with our work. If we continue to work on the dumpling, it will shine even more brightly. But we know that doing so will need more time, and we conveniently convince ourselves that the dumpling is polished enough and that the work is done. However, the dumpling stops shining brightly unless we keep on polishing it. The same thing can be said about practicing faith, I believe. 

  In the field of faith, when we are satisfied with the level of our faith, we often begin to become prideful and we may make a mistake of blaming someone, quoting our Founder’s “teachings.” I believe that in such a situation in particular, we need to spend much time and put the sand called faith onto our heart over and over again. We need to let faith and our Founder’s teachings soak deeply into our heart and we polish our heart many, many times. 

  It takes us much time to look at ourselves, question the way we usually are and reform the selfishness that comes out of us. By polishing, polishing and polishing our heart, our kami/god-like heart will gradually start to shine. As for sparkling mud dumplings, we can recently saw a kit for sparkling mud dumplings at a bookstore. If you buy one, you can make sparkling mud dumplings easily. However, there are no such convenient kits for religious faith.  

 

I Was Taught What I Should Pray to Kami/Deity about

  I am blessed with two children at present. The first child is two years old, and the second one will soon become one year old. It took my wife and me a lot of time to be blessed with two children, during which my wife and myself were in agony. We sought a divine blessing on this thing. We were made to reflect upon our faiths in our Parent Kami/Deity, who trained both of us spiritually. 

  Upon our marriage, Kami tested us. We both asked for Sacred Mediation and then we received Kami‘s blessing. With this experience, I had sort of innocently assumed, we, as a wife and a husband, would be blessed with children as long as we asked for Sacred Mediation. At the time, my wife was already over 30 years old, and both of us wanted to have our children soon enough. This desire of ours led to our prayer, “Please let us have children soon,” and we often asked for and received Sacred Mediation with this wish. 

  A few months passed by, but there were no signs for Kami‘s blessings. Occasionally, I even blamed Kami with a question, “Why?” My wife was also disappointed, and her disappointment gradually became deeper and deeper. We were in serious trouble, wondering how on earth we could receive a blessing from Kami. We found no good answers to this question, while time just went by until it was New Year’s Day. 

Since we live in the Sacred Grounds of the Konko Faith Headquarters in Konko Town, we greeted the Spiritual Leader of the Konko Faith or Kyoshu Konko-sama at 3:40 in the morning. We worshipped at the New Year’s Day ceremony and we then joined a long line to the Mediation Place of the Central Worship Hall. While we were waiting for our turn, I was thinking about what I would like to speak to Konko-sama about at the Mediation Seat; Greeting upon a new year, words of gratitude for Kami‘s blessings on both of us in the previous year, request for the fulfillment of our selfless service for Kami (goyo), request for a baby, request for our faiths to get even deeper, and so on. 

  Our turn finally came. I approached Konko-sama‘s Mediation Seat and got myself ready for Sacred Mediation with him. As soon as I began to speak, however, everything that had been on my mind just disappeared.  I knew that I got a head blank.  Even if I tried to remember what I’d wanted to say, I couldn’t.  There were a lot of worshippers behind us, and I made up my mind to say whatever words that came out of my mouth. 

  Then, to my great surprise, totally unexpected words popped out of my mouth. Earlier, I used to say at the Mediation Place, “Please allow my wife to get pregnant” or “Please bless us with a child.” At that time on the New Year’s Day, however, I said to Konko-sama, “Please allow both of us to become a married couple that is eligible for keeping Kami‘s child in our home.” I had never thought of these words before.  It was me who was saying all these things, but I still remember being much surprised at that time. 

  There was silence for a while after I was finished. Konko-sama did not give me Sacred Rice or Goshinmai very soon. I slowly looked up, wondering, “Did I say anything wrong? Did I make any mistakes?” I found out that Konko-sama was rubbing an ink stick against an ink stone so that he could write with a writing brush. Konko-sama was kind enough to write “Mr. Horie” onto the wrapping paper for Sacred Rice. I had asked for Sacred Mediation at the Konko Faith Headquarters and received Sacred Rice many, many times before, but I had never received Sacred Rice with Konko-sama‘s self-written letters written with a writing brush until that day. This helped me convince myself, “We will be allowed to receive Kami‘s blessing this year.” At the same time, I felt that I was taught how I should pray to our Parent Deity, what I really should pray to Kami about. 

  I believe that through this experience, our Divine Parent and Konko-sama taught me the importance to pray to our Parent Deity so that Kami will allow me to live up to Kami‘s expectations upon me, instead of praying to Kami in order to benefit myself. They also taught me the importance of working hard so that I can really live up to Kami‘s expectations on me. 

 

What Kami Does for us

  After a while, my wife still did not have any signs for pregnancy and we were in agony about it from time to time. Our trouble due to no pregnancy was still there, but the thing we were worrying about changed since we received the aforementioned Sacred Mediation with Konko-sama. 

  We still asked Kami for a divine blessing, but that was not all we were doing any longer. My wife and I often discussed subjects such as “How should we be as a married couple?” “What does becoming someone’s parents mean?” and “What wishes does Kami embrace for us?” We had a lot of discussions on these themes, and it helped both of us think, “No matter how things will develop from now, we will be all right, because every single thing is in the hands of Kami/God.” Tenchi Kakitsuke or the Divine Reminder has a passage, “Kami’s blessings begin within hearts grateful and caring, in harmony and joy.” Thanks to the aforesaid Sacred Mediation and the subsequent discussions with my wife, I believe that I was trained to become a person who accepts everything with a “joyful and harmonious heart.” 

  If I am permitted to use the analogy of mud dumplings, during our agonized period, the water inside a mud dumpling (egoism in me) was removed from it. Kami was kind enough to put fine-grained sand called faith onto the dumpling and polished it for me. When I became this way, Kami gave us a blessing immediately. I naturally thought, “Kami looks at us very, very attentively.” At the same time, I strongly felt, “Kami loves and cherishes us conscientiously.” 

 

Growing Up Together by Being Imitated

  Our first child was a girl, and our daughter was born into this world, being given a lot of blessings from our Divine Parent. She is blessed with good health and is growing up soundly. Because Kami generously allows us to keep Kami‘s child in our home, my wife and I live each day, sincerely hoping that our daughter will “direct her heart to Kami and faith even if a little.” I often remember what my parents did for me, and I pray to Kami with my little girl and talk to her about the importance and preciousness of food.

  “To learn” (manabu) is “to imitate” (manebu), which indicates that learning begins with “imitating someone.” Through Kami‘s blessings, our daughter has become able to do various things, and she carefully observes people around her and imitates them. Nowadays, to my great pleasure, when my wife and I are praying to Kami, our daughter sits beside us, claps and bows with us. And she seems to be praying for something in a small, low voice. 

  It would be ideal if our daughter imitated only the good sides of us, but reality shows us that she also emulates our bad sides. For example, when I scold our little girl, I unconsciously frown and say to her, “Stop it. You can’t do that.” Then, when my daughter does not like my actions, she imitates me and frowns.  Let me share another example with you: At the mealtime, we usually recite pre-meal prayer. But when we are busy, we are sometimes careless enough to skip reciting the prayer words. Our daughter looks at us carefully in such occasions too, and she skips the prayer just as we do. Looking at our little girl, I am shocked and am made to realize that I was wrong. Our daughter helps me realize it. 

  When our daughter is about to eat her meal, I say to her, “You can eat after saying, ‘I will eat what you kindly cooked for me.’” Then she cutely puts her hands together and says, “Beefsteak is yummy!” (when beefsteak is served) Our little girl then claps her hands and eats. I’m not sure if I can say our daughter’s words are a kind of pre-meal prayer, but she began to say those words by imitating my grandmother. 

  When my wife gave birth to our son, our daughter and I lived in Konko Church of Hananomiya for a while. During that span, my grandmother loved her great-granddaughter from the bottom of her heart.  My daughter often visited her great-grandmother’s room and imitated her unconsciously. And she began to eat her meals as if she were fully grateful for the foods right before her. 

 

Sentiments Are Displayed on Actions

  Five years ago, my grandmother got paralyzed in the right-side body due to cerebral infarction.  Normally, when one suffers from cerebral infarction and gets paralyzed, he or she will think about what he or she can no longer do and this patient will consider himself/herself a sad, miserable individual.  However, my grandmother was happy, remarking “Kami prolonged my life for me.” Grandmother finds one thing that she can still do and she appreciates Kami‘s workings on what she can do. She is really good at finding things that please her. 

  My grandmother often tells me a story of “What if we had not had a connection to our Parent Deity?”  If I may say so, my grandmother is a person who polishes the gem of her heart and shines brightly. Her faith is visibly reflected upon all of her actions, and I respect and adore my grandmother very much. For my daughter, my grandmother is her great-grandmother, and our little girl imitated her great-grandmother and said “An omelet is yummy!” (when an omelet is served) at the dinner table for a while. When the four of us including our baby boy resumed living in our home, our daughter gradually ceased to utter these words. This change of our little girl is helping me reflect upon my own faith, I think. 

  No matter how you may try to “patch” it, our true sentiments or notions are shown in our actions. Our daughter must have felt the abundant virtue of my grandmother’s faith and learned a lot from her naturally. When I think this way, I feel like my daughter helps me grow up as her parent. 

  Konko Shijin-sama, who succeeded the Founder of the Konko Faith, teaches us, “When you are assigned to babysit a child, think that you are allowed to take care of the kid.” Otherwise, the child you are taking care of will not be pleased even if you do what you like to do for him/her. The child will be frustrated and cry unless you do what he/she wants you to do. Conducting Sacred Mediation between Kami and people is the same as looking after a child.” When I am taught that truly important things will be transmitted to someone in this way, I should let go of the arrogant attitudes such as “My children can learn because I teach them” and “They can grow up because I raise them.” I should introduce a new attitude, “I am allowed to do…” to myself. With this new attitude, I need to interact with my kids, and I believe I must make myself see its importance. 

  Every one of us is equipped with a kami/god-like heart given by our Parent Deity at our birth and a selfish, self-centered heart. We are shown two choices; Doing nothing about both of these hearts or polishing the kami/god-like heart. We will see a significant difference through which option we take. If we encounter a hardship and regard the adversity as an opportunity to polish the gem of our hearts, and if we practice faith in Kami in the way we are taught by our Founder, we will be shown a way to joy, fulfillment and salvation. As a person and as a parent, I would like to continue to polish the gem of my heart from now on, too, accepting it as Kami‘s profound intention and arrangement no matter what may happen to me. 

 

                                                                                      (THE END)

Polishing the Gem of Our Hearts

教　話

By the Rev. Yoshinori Horie

Konko Church of Hananomiya

 

(From the October 2017 issue)

The “Play” that I Cherished

  I was a kindergarten teacher before entering the Konko Seminary. There are various goals in early childhood education. Among those goals, an important goal is that we, as teachers, help our children develop their respective abilities. We let our little pupils “play,” and while they are “playing,” we try to help them develop their physical ability, creativity and capability to express themselves. Playing gives little kids much fun, and while they are having fun, they learn how to build up human relationships with the people around them. Kindergarten pupils are given many kinds of “play”: They fold colored paper. They draw pictures. They sing songs. They enjoy picture books with their teacher orally telling them the stories of the books. Among these sorts of plays, I put a special value on the “play in the kindergarten playground.”

  There are several things kids can enjoy on the playground; race, jump rope, ball play, you name it.  Above all, I placed a special importance on “playing with sand/soil.” This helps children form communities consisting of a small number of people. It gives these little boys and girls a precious chance to learn how to make human relationships with their fellow classmates. Touching the sand and soil in the sandbox also promotes the development of the sense of their fingertips. According to the kinds and/or conditions of the sand and mud, the children can experience various textures: the soil can feel gooey sometimes, it can feel smooth sometimes and it can feel rough sometimes. Soil shows different ways of absorbing water according to the kinds of the soil. Touching the soil means experiencing nature, and little kids can receive a lot of stimulus by playing in the sandbox. 

  When I was a little boy, I was totally into “making mud dumplings.” I used to compete with my friends for making the roundest and/or the hardest mud dumplings. Many years later, while I was working as a kindergarten teacher, I often remembered my childhood and made mud dumplings with my little pupils in the sandbox. Sometimes, I was even more excited than them in making those dumplings. 

 

After Repeating Mistakes…

  One day, an elder co-worker of mine took out a box from the kindergarten warehouse and came over to me, holding the box very carefully. As the senior teacher held the box so attentively, some kids were interested in what was inside the box, and they came over to and surrounded him. 

  The kids and I looked curiously into the box when the teacher opened it up. We found a sparkling mud dumpling in it. When we looked much closer at the dumpling, our faces were reflected on its surface.  The children were so excited that they exclaimed, “Wow!” And they all said cheerfully, “I wanna make one like this!” I was impressed with the senior colleague for the way he interested the little pupils with the polished mud dumpling at a perfect timing. 

  In order to make a shining mud dumpling, one needs to have manual dexterity and a high-level of concentration. Being curious, children look for good soil and they also pay good attention to how their teacher and friends are making their dumplings, so their ability to observe things develops as well.  Because the children are very much interested in what they are doing, their perseverance evolves too; They do not give up easily, and they do not give up soon. This allows them to survive many mistakes, and when they finally finish making a clean mud dumpling, they can truly enjoy a big delight of accomplishment. The elder teacher made a trigger for his young pupils to grow up in many ways by showing them one attractive thing that “shines brightly.” 

  The secrets to make a sparkling mud dumpling successfully are to remove moisture from the dumpling slowly and to put fine-grained sand onto the dumpling over and over again and polish the round object gently. The elder teacher often gave his little pupils not only words of advice but also visible examples as he was making mud dumplings with those children.

  The children grew up little by little and a few of them gradually became able to make clean, polished mud dumplings. One was kind enough to tell me that he had discovered that he could easily make a mud dumpling that shines brightly if it is a fine day after a rainy day. Another child discovered where he could collect brown soil, black soil and grey soil and he made mud dumplings in different colors. I was impressed with the inquisitive minds of these kids. Being a kindergarten teacher, I was truly happy to see the growth of these excited, curious and hard-working kids and I had enriching, satisfying days in my workplace. 

 

Meeting with A Teaching of the Konko Faith

  I entered the Konko Seminary later on. In this religious academy, I encountered a teaching of the Founder of the Konko Faith that helped me realize Kami/Deity taught me the “essence of faith” and the “Way/Law of the things” through the events I had gone through in my life. I had thought that those events had nothing to do with (religious) faith, but I was proven to be wrong thanks to this teaching. The teaching, in fact, goes like this: “…one must polish the gem in one’s heart while practicing faith.” (GI: Yamamoto Sadajiro, 53-2)

  All people have both a warm, caring, kami/god-like heart and a self-centered heart that is apt to blame others. It is important for every one of us to polish and develop the kami/god-like heart. The Japanese language has an expression, “hon’ne to tatemae,” which means “one’s true feelings and one’s public position.” To practice faith in a deity means to polish one’s true feelings for the betterment of its quality.  By way of receiving Sacred Mediation and listening to sermons, we need to set ourselves free from our own selfish, self-centered minds and encourage ourselves to live with a kami/god-like heart. 

  But this is probably a typical case of “Easier Said Than Done.” If someone asked me, “Are you in fact able to follow your Founder’s teachings with your true feelings, no matter where you are or what kind of situations you are in now?” I could never answer “Yes, I am.” The Founder of the Konko Faith teaches us, “Do not say something nice if you do not sincerely believe it.” (GIII: Shinkai, 5) Our problem is that there are occasions where “we are not sincere enough.” 

  Mud dumplings can get broken easily if we drop it carelessly or if we fail to grasp it gently. Just like this, our faith can be fragile if we get too loose about it. When we polish the rough surface of a dumpling and make it round, we tend to be satisfied with our work. If we continue to work on the dumpling, it will shine even more brightly. But we know that doing so will need more time, and we conveniently convince ourselves that the dumpling is polished enough and that the work is done. However, the dumpling stops shining brightly unless we keep on polishing it. The same thing can be said about practicing faith, I believe. 

  In the field of faith, when we are satisfied with the level of our faith, we often begin to become prideful and we may make a mistake of blaming someone, quoting our Founder’s “teachings.” I believe that in such a situation in particular, we need to spend much time and put the sand called faith onto our heart over and over again. We need to let faith and our Founder’s teachings soak deeply into our heart and we polish our heart many, many times. 

  It takes us much time to look at ourselves, question the way we usually are and reform the selfishness that comes out of us. By polishing, polishing and polishing our heart, our kami/god-like heart will gradually start to shine. As for sparkling mud dumplings, we can recently saw a kit for sparkling mud dumplings at a bookstore. If you buy one, you can make sparkling mud dumplings easily. However, there are no such convenient kits for religious faith.  

 

I Was Taught What I Should Pray to Kami/Deity about

  I am blessed with two children at present. The first child is two years old, and the second one will soon become one year old. It took my wife and me a lot of time to be blessed with two children, during which my wife and myself were in agony. We sought a divine blessing on this thing. We were made to reflect upon our faiths in our Parent Kami/Deity, who trained both of us spiritually. 

  Upon our marriage, Kami tested us. We both asked for Sacred Mediation and then we received Kami‘s blessing. With this experience, I had sort of innocently assumed, we, as a wife and a husband, would be blessed with children as long as we asked for Sacred Mediation. At the time, my wife was already over 30 years old, and both of us wanted to have our children soon enough. This desire of ours led to our prayer, “Please let us have children soon,” and we often asked for and received Sacred Mediation with this wish. 

  A few months passed by, but there were no signs for Kami‘s blessings. Occasionally, I even blamed Kami with a question, “Why?” My wife was also disappointed, and her disappointment gradually became deeper and deeper. We were in serious trouble, wondering how on earth we could receive a blessing from Kami. We found no good answers to this question, while time just went by until it was New Year’s Day. 

Since we live in the Sacred Grounds of the Konko Faith Headquarters in Konko Town, we greeted the Spiritual Leader of the Konko Faith or Kyoshu Konko-sama at 3:40 in the morning. We worshipped at the New Year’s Day ceremony and we then joined a long line to the Mediation Place of the Central Worship Hall. While we were waiting for our turn, I was thinking about what I would like to speak to Konko-sama about at the Mediation Seat; Greeting upon a new year, words of gratitude for Kami‘s blessings on both of us in the previous year, request for the fulfillment of our selfless service for Kami (goyo), request for a baby, request for our faiths to get even deeper, and so on. 

  Our turn finally came. I approached Konko-sama‘s Mediation Seat and got myself ready for Sacred Mediation with him. As soon as I began to speak, however, everything that had been on my mind just disappeared.  I knew that I got a head blank.  Even if I tried to remember what I’d wanted to say, I couldn’t.  There were a lot of worshippers behind us, and I made up my mind to say whatever words that came out of my mouth. 

  Then, to my great surprise, totally unexpected words popped out of my mouth. Earlier, I used to say at the Mediation Place, “Please allow my wife to get pregnant” or “Please bless us with a child.” At that time on the New Year’s Day, however, I said to Konko-sama, “Please allow both of us to become a married couple that is eligible for keeping Kami‘s child in our home.” I had never thought of these words before.  It was me who was saying all these things, but I still remember being much surprised at that time. 

  There was silence for a while after I was finished. Konko-sama did not give me Sacred Rice or Goshinmai very soon. I slowly looked up, wondering, “Did I say anything wrong? Did I make any mistakes?” I found out that Konko-sama was rubbing an ink stick against an ink stone so that he could write with a writing brush. Konko-sama was kind enough to write “Mr. Horie” onto the wrapping paper for Sacred Rice. I had asked for Sacred Mediation at the Konko Faith Headquarters and received Sacred Rice many, many times before, but I had never received Sacred Rice with Konko-sama‘s self-written letters written with a writing brush until that day. This helped me convince myself, “We will be allowed to receive Kami‘s blessing this year.” At the same time, I felt that I was taught how I should pray to our Parent Deity, what I really should pray to Kami about. 

  I believe that through this experience, our Divine Parent and Konko-sama taught me the importance to pray to our Parent Deity so that Kami will allow me to live up to Kami‘s expectations upon me, instead of praying to Kami in order to benefit myself. They also taught me the importance of working hard so that I can really live up to Kami‘s expectations on me. 

 

What Kami Does for us

  After a while, my wife still did not have any signs for pregnancy and we were in agony about it from time to time. Our trouble due to no pregnancy was still there, but the thing we were worrying about changed since we received the aforementioned Sacred Mediation with Konko-sama. 

  We still asked Kami for a divine blessing, but that was not all we were doing any longer. My wife and I often discussed subjects such as “How should we be as a married couple?” “What does becoming someone’s parents mean?” and “What wishes does Kami embrace for us?” We had a lot of discussions on these themes, and it helped both of us think, “No matter how things will develop from now, we will be all right, because every single thing is in the hands of Kami/God.” Tenchi Kakitsuke or the Divine Reminder has a passage, “Kami’s blessings begin within hearts grateful and caring, in harmony and joy.” Thanks to the aforesaid Sacred Mediation and the subsequent discussions with my wife, I believe that I was trained to become a person who accepts everything with a “joyful and harmonious heart.” 

  If I am permitted to use the analogy of mud dumplings, during our agonized period, the water inside a mud dumpling (egoism in me) was removed from it. Kami was kind enough to put fine-grained sand called faith onto the dumpling and polished it for me. When I became this way, Kami gave us a blessing immediately. I naturally thought, “Kami looks at us very, very attentively.” At the same time, I strongly felt, “Kami loves and cherishes us conscientiously.” 

 

Growing Up Together by Being Imitated

  Our first child was a girl, and our daughter was born into this world, being given a lot of blessings from our Divine Parent. She is blessed with good health and is growing up soundly. Because Kami generously allows us to keep Kami‘s child in our home, my wife and I live each day, sincerely hoping that our daughter will “direct her heart to Kami and faith even if a little.” I often remember what my parents did for me, and I pray to Kami with my little girl and talk to her about the importance and preciousness of food.

  “To learn” (manabu) is “to imitate” (manebu), which indicates that learning begins with “imitating someone.” Through Kami‘s blessings, our daughter has become able to do various things, and she carefully observes people around her and imitates them. Nowadays, to my great pleasure, when my wife and I are praying to Kami, our daughter sits beside us, claps and bows with us. And she seems to be praying for something in a small, low voice. 

  It would be ideal if our daughter imitated only the good sides of us, but reality shows us that she also emulates our bad sides. For example, when I scold our little girl, I unconsciously frown and say to her, “Stop it. You can’t do that.” Then, when my daughter does not like my actions, she imitates me and frowns.  Let me share another example with you: At the mealtime, we usually recite pre-meal prayer. But when we are busy, we are sometimes careless enough to skip reciting the prayer words. Our daughter looks at us carefully in such occasions too, and she skips the prayer just as we do. Looking at our little girl, I am shocked and am made to realize that I was wrong. Our daughter helps me realize it. 

  When our daughter is about to eat her meal, I say to her, “You can eat after saying, ‘I will eat what you kindly cooked for me.’” Then she cutely puts her hands together and says, “Beefsteak is yummy!” (when beefsteak is served) Our little girl then claps her hands and eats. I’m not sure if I can say our daughter’s words are a kind of pre-meal prayer, but she began to say those words by imitating my grandmother. 

  When my wife gave birth to our son, our daughter and I lived in Konko Church of Hananomiya for a while. During that span, my grandmother loved her great-granddaughter from the bottom of her heart.  My daughter often visited her great-grandmother’s room and imitated her unconsciously. And she began to eat her meals as if she were fully grateful for the foods right before her. 

 

Sentiments Are Displayed on Actions

  Five years ago, my grandmother got paralyzed in the right-side body due to cerebral infarction.  Normally, when one suffers from cerebral infarction and gets paralyzed, he or she will think about what he or she can no longer do and this patient will consider himself/herself a sad, miserable individual.  However, my grandmother was happy, remarking “Kami prolonged my life for me.” Grandmother finds one thing that she can still do and she appreciates Kami‘s workings on what she can do. She is really good at finding things that please her. 

  My grandmother often tells me a story of “What if we had not had a connection to our Parent Deity?”  If I may say so, my grandmother is a person who polishes the gem of her heart and shines brightly. Her faith is visibly reflected upon all of her actions, and I respect and adore my grandmother very much. For my daughter, my grandmother is her great-grandmother, and our little girl imitated her great-grandmother and said “An omelet is yummy!” (when an omelet is served) at the dinner table for a while. When the four of us including our baby boy resumed living in our home, our daughter gradually ceased to utter these words. This change of our little girl is helping me reflect upon my own faith, I think. 

  No matter how you may try to “patch” it, our true sentiments or notions are shown in our actions. Our daughter must have felt the abundant virtue of my grandmother’s faith and learned a lot from her naturally. When I think this way, I feel like my daughter helps me grow up as her parent. 

  Konko Shijin-sama, who succeeded the Founder of the Konko Faith, teaches us, “When you are assigned to babysit a child, think that you are allowed to take care of the kid.” Otherwise, the child you are taking care of will not be pleased even if you do what you like to do for him/her. The child will be frustrated and cry unless you do what he/she wants you to do. Conducting Sacred Mediation between Kami and people is the same as looking after a child.” When I am taught that truly important things will be transmitted to someone in this way, I should let go of the arrogant attitudes such as “My children can learn because I teach them” and “They can grow up because I raise them.” I should introduce a new attitude, “I am allowed to do…” to myself. With this new attitude, I need to interact with my kids, and I believe I must make myself see its importance. 

  Every one of us is equipped with a kami/god-like heart given by our Parent Deity at our birth and a selfish, self-centered heart. We are shown two choices; Doing nothing about both of these hearts or polishing the kami/god-like heart. We will see a significant difference through which option we take. If we encounter a hardship and regard the adversity as an opportunity to polish the gem of our hearts, and if we practice faith in Kami in the way we are taught by our Founder, we will be shown a way to joy, fulfillment and salvation. As a person and as a parent, I would like to continue to polish the gem of my heart from now on, too, accepting it as Kami‘s profound intention and arrangement no matter what may happen to me. 

                                                                                      (THE END)