*From September Issue of SNI Toronto Newsletter by Rev. Yoshiharu Taka
Until several days ago, it had been sunny and hot in Toronto. The plants around the Centre had been limp because of the heat, but, because of the rain after those sunny days, they seemed to have recovered. I, myself, feel better with the lower temperature.
At the end of July, I stayed in Japan for a week to attend the “Seicho-No-Ie Special Conference for World Peace”, which was held at the Seicho-No-Ie International Headquarters. I came back to Toronto with one of the worst jet lags I have ever had.
However, as I remembered the words of encouragement by the President of Seicho-No-Ie Rev. Masanobu Taniguchi, “We suffer from jet lags because we are a part of nature,” I was able to appreciate the time difference and accepted it as it was.
The theme of the Special Conference for World Peace this year was “Attitude Towards the Destruction of Nature and Action Being Taken by the World’s Major Religions” It took three days. On the first day, being divided into groups, we went into the forest surrounding “The Office in the Forest”, and did training to feel oneness with nature. We learned that “The Sense of Wonder” is important. One of the books by Rachel Carson is titled so, and the words can be explained as ‘the sense to see spirituality and wonders.”
On the second and third day, we looked at how Muslims in Indonesia are working on environment problems, and how Christians and Buddhists have behaved and done about the issues. We then learned that many religions changed interpretations of their scriptures in order to resolve the environment issues.
One thing that was significant to me was a phrase by Rev. Masanobu Taniguchi, “God, nature and people are essentially one,” which he said as the summary of the whole event.
It means that God, nature and people are already one in True Image World. In order to bring about the unity of that one thing “God, nature and people” to the phenomena world, it is important to unite our actions with our beliefs.
So, how should we act and behave every day to do that? The Founder of Seicho-No-Ie Rev. Masaharu Taniguchi wrote the following passage in “365 Golden Keys to the Summit of Fulfillment.”
Be Sure to Make Some Contribution Every Day
The fact that you are alive is proof that you are supposed to make a contribution of some kind to God, society, as well as the rest of mankind. To reserve this theory, it means that as long as you live, you must contribute somehow to the welfare of God, society and mankind.
When engaged in your work, if you hold such a mental attitude of service to God, society and mankind, and if you think to yourself, “I am grateful to Thee, God, for letting me do this job,” it will not fatigue you as much. Moreover, you can harvest absence of fulfillment which makes you even healthier both physically and mentally. In fact, man, as a child of God that infinite capacity flows. Therefore, lack of ability only indicates that your realization and conviction of man’s true nature as being one with God are weak. Consequently, whatever you do is a fruit attempt to accomplish things with the power of your own little self.
(“365 Golden Keys to the Summit of Fulfillment” p 182)
In this way, when we do something, we should not think that we could do everything on our own. We should do it by deepening the feeling of oneness with God by practicing Shisnsokan meditation, by deepening the oneness with all human beings by practicing “deeds God love.”
By doing these, whatever we do enlighten things around us, enlighten the humanity and therefore we can surely realize World of Grand Harmony of “God, Nature and Human Being” on this earth. Thank you very much.