*This is a piece from July Issue of Seicho-No-Ie Toronto Newsletter, written by Rev. Yoshiharu Taka
In June, we had our founder Rev. Masaharu Taniguchi’s 31st Memorial Service. We were able to express our gratitude through this memorial service. In Vancouver, we had a Japanese Truth Realization Seminar for the first time in about six months. The theme of the Seminar was “Joy and Gratitude.”
This month I would like to study with you about the wonderfulness of Shinokan Meditation. Rev. Seicho Taniguchi wrote in his book “Shinsokan is Wonderful” as follows:
Everything goes well for a person who is always shining with hope. However, should this hope stem from egoism or selfish desire, while it may materialize temporarily, it is not necessarily true that one will become happy. Since this hope is not in accord with the will of God, it may even lead to an unhappy fate. Therefore, it would probably be better to change the word “hope” to the words “will of God.”
How can we know the will of God? It is best to ask Him. God already dwells within you as the true you, so it is not the least difficult to ask God. If you practice listening to God daily, you will be sure to hear Him. This practice is Shinsokan.
(“Shinsokan is wonderful” p3)
In this way, by practicing Shinsokan Meditation, we can surely listen to the voice of God. The founder Rev. Masaharu Taniguchi once told us that practicing Shinsokan is practice to see True Image. Rev. Masaharu Taniguchi told us that we can see the True Image world without knowing it. He used an analogy of traveling to Osaka from Tokyo. Even if a person has never been to Osaka, as long as the person buys the train ticket to Osaka and gets on the train, they can surely be able to reach Osaka. Therefore, all we need to do is practice Shinsokan. By practicing it, you can reach the True Image. You don’t have to know what it is from the beginning.
So, practicing Shisokan is the same. In order for us to listen to the voice of God, it is important to practice Shinsokan. By practicing it you will be able to gradually listen to the voice of God and see the True Image World.
I think many of you have been to New York. I have been to New York many times. There is a famous music hall there, called Carnegie Hall. Have you ever been to Carnegie Hall? I have only seen it from the outside.
There is a famous joke about Carnegie Hall that I want to share with you. There were tourists who were looking for Carnegie Hall. They asked a violinist near Carnegie Hall. “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The violinist simply replied, “practice.”
We can also say the same thing about getting to the True Image World. In order for us to get to the perfect and harmonious True Image world, we should practice Shinsokan. Practicing Shinsokan every day will surely lead us to the True Image World. Practicing it once is not enough. Rev. Seicho Taniguchi wrote in his book “Shinsokan is wonderful” as follows:
God’s world and this world.
Let us now practice Shinsokan. In Japanese the word “Shinsokan consists of Chinese characters for God, to think deeply and to see. In other words, Shinsokan means steadily to think deeply about and see in one’s mind a perfect harmonious world created by God.
Where is it? It is already here. As a matter of fact, everywhere is God’s world. Everywhere is perfect and harmonious. It is just that we cannot see that perfection with our physical eyes. This is because God’s perfect and harmonious world is so very perfect that even the combined efforts of man’s five senses – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching are unable to capture it fully. This can be captured with a photographic beautiful sense. No matter how we may try to scan photograph, it will be only one aspect of it. We are unable to capture fully the richness of its colors. Our photograph is then as an infinite perfect presentation of original sense.
(“Shinsokan is wonderful” p33)
We as a child of God are already living in God’s perfect world that hasn’t appeared in this phenomenal world yet. When you turn on your TV, you see famous movie actors and actresses, but people on TV do not really exist in the TV set, but they are far away, maybe in the TV station or some movie studio.
We as a child of God have a physical body, but we’re not really in our physical body. We as a child of God are living in the True Image world, just like how actors and actress are not in a TV set but in a TV station.
However, if we see things through our five senses, we can only see the outside from our physical body. That is why, we first declare in Shinsokan, “I now leave the world of five senses and enter the world of God. This is as is the world of God” and we deny our five senses. Let us practice Shinsokan every day with a bright and cheerful mind and with gratitude. Thank you very much.