I often wonder what Tenrikyo people talk about when they set out to do niogake. One person said they talk about yokigurashi, or the Joyous life.  What is the Joyous life? Is it about donating to the church, performing the Yorozuyo and 12 dances, and making pilgrimages to Ojiba?  Is this what we call the joyous life? Will this information be likely to bring new members to our places of worship?   Look at our success rate of bringing in new members. Do we need to look at other methods?  The answer is simple. All we need to do is read and understand the Ofudesaki. The Ofudesaki gives us the instructions to save ourselves, and also instructions to save others.

In our lives, people do not want to suffer. They do not want to suffer from physical ailments, mental ailments, and obstructions in their lives. Most people think that they have ideas which will make them happy, like food, alcohol, social status, and physical possessions. But they do not know why people suffer, and how to prevent suffering.  The mystery of suffering is unfolded in the Ofudesaki.

In the first verse of the Ofudesaki, God tells us we do not understand our own souls. It is the soul we must understand to save ourselves. It is this information about the soul that we must spread to the world to save others.  This is a simple teaching, but like all religions, the truth becomes secondary to customs, ceremonies, and rituals of human beings.  I will not explain the soul today, as I have mentioned it in previous posts. 

To save oneself, we do not even have to acknowledge God, but only understand the soul to purify our own minds. But human beings are stubborn and will have difficulties understanding new concepts like the soul, and the pure mind that will bring only joy to our lives.  This is why God has granted us the most powerful prayer in the world. This is the Youki-tsutome-tsutome, often called the teodori in the Ofudesaki. What does this prayer do?   When God accepts this prayer, God will place illness as guidance to the people we have spread the truth of the soul, to convince them of the soul. How does illness or suffering help people understand the soul? 

When we spread the teachings of the soul to friends and strangers, we must tell them that God may place illness as guidance on their bodies to help them understand that they have negative thoughts in their minds. It is these thoughts that we will tend to act upon when temptations, and obstacles appear in our lives.  It is these negative actions that our own soul collects, stores, and eventually manifest back to us as suffering or obstacles in our lives. We reap what we have sowed because our own soul monitors our behavior. 

Some people (kara) will not understand God’s guidance when it appears to them, but for those (nihon) who understand God’s guidance, they will come to our places of worship to be healed. We then perform the sazuke to heal them, and further give them instructions to purify their minds. They will be able to purify their minds by understanding what fates come from their souls. 

In conclusion, the teachings in the Ofudesaki are very simple. These are the instructions: