(Tales of TEN-DOU 1)

                  It was a long, long time ago, since time out of mind there has been nothing but 
                 a God named RAUM. RAUM is the utmost holy exquisite Almighty God.

                 At first, RAUM created heaven which contained enormous amount of twinkling 
                 stars besides our brilliant sun. And RAUM settled a regulation making stars 
                 continue to go around the sun in order neither to run against each other nor to 
                 change the velocity of their revolution. 

                 At the second, RAUM yielded the most important and wonderful star … the 
                 earth. It consists of high mountains beyond clouds, splendid prairies, blue seas 
                 reflecting bright sunshine, air, water, green trees and fragrant flowers and so 
                 forth.

                 At last, RAUM bore Children, Humankind who should have been nourished 
                 under the endless love of RAUM. The number of children is told no less than 9.6 
                 billion; each of them was born as a sacred Child shared a part of soul of RAUM. 

                 And they were getting well full of joy with their spiritual Mother RAUM in 
                 wonderful RI-TEN for a while.

                 Some day RAUM thought of that, for the Children’s sake, He had better make 
                 them travel and labor their way not make them stay at home so that they could 
                 train themselves worthy to be children of God. Therefore RAUM said to the 
                 children “ You shall go and live in the brilliant beautiful blue star, the earth in 
                 order to make your souls become more and more pretty, round, pure and 
                 enormous ”.

1^st Scene: SAN-ZAN-PA Farewell

It was 60,000 years ago that the children had been recommended to leave Home. But the Children had been accustomed to live at ease and always accompany RAUM just as they like, so that they would have never accepted RAUM’s recommendation. Notwithstanding frequent pursuing advices of RAUM, the Children dared reject them. At last, RAUM willingly or unwillingly thought of an idea that He blooded own middle finger with teeth and made good-taste wine out of the red blood in order to make Children drink it. The plan was carried out at SAN-ZAN-PA (the gateway place between Heaven and Earth), the Children drunk with the wine so much as to forget even they were Children of God. And they had taken off their both clothes and shoes given from RAUM beside a pond, and then began to bathe and swim in the pond. As soon as the Children had been absorbing themselves in the pond, RAUM took away all their clothes and shoes which were necessary for their such activities that they could run around the Heaven or run about sea and mountain on the earth and come back again.

The Children were not missed RAUM till they had become sober and gone on ashore. The Children had tried in vain to look for RAUM here and there, so that they became sad and lonely and tears rolled down their cheeks. Then they heard the voice of longing RAUM in the sky …

“ My dear Children! Now is the time you are going to live by yourself. Cease from crying and go down to the earth as soon as possible. You shall reign there and rule the world so that you will be excellent mankind. You ought to wait till the time will come to return Home for a while. And when the time will be due, you shall come Home. ” The Children were still standing in tears.

2^nd Scene: Immigration to Earth

A little while later, the Children come round to themselves and asked RAUM “ How should we be going along from now without both clothes and shoes? ” RAUM replied with a sore heart “ Whenever you will suffer from hunger, you shall eat fruits of some trees. And when you will feel thirsty, you shall drink pure water of fountains. And if you need clothes, you can free from cold with wearing cloths made of fibers gathered out of trees and grasses. And thereafter, you shall sow and reap by yourselves whatever you want to eat. ” And the thought of RAUM making dear Children leave Home brought tears to His eyes.

After that RAUM yielded a plenty of such as creative beings as animals … dogs and lions, birds, fishes and insects so that they would live familiar with humankind on the earth.

Although humankind have been getting on the earth by themselves since they had left Home, now is the fact beyond the memory of them … that is, “ We are the very same Children of God and friend each other, we have come here in order to train our souls, and we shall have to come Home in due course. ” Nowadays there are so many people have come to be attached to visible affairs on the earth, so that there have been few people thinking about invisible soul world now. Nevertheless, RAUM never forget the soul Children. RAUM would rather take much more care of traveling Children always, and expecting their earlier come Home, go out of gate to meet them quietly.

What on earth, what and where have they doing?

Case 1: Way to KI-TEN

Once upon a time, a boy was born in a farmer’s family. He was a lovely and healthy child. Parents were very happy and made up their mind to make him grow up a good man of justice in his mind. He began to grow up day by day under protection of his honest father and tender mother.

Later grown up a man of farmer, he labored from dawn till dusk at the field. Thanks to successive rich harvest, his house became so rich that there were full of crops, cloths and other provisions in his warehouses. Notwithstanding he was a rich man, he thought he should not have to be happy alone, so he have used to lend as much provisions he kept in the warehouses as poor people want them. He said “ Take any goods as much as you need without reserve, and if you would work so hard as to be able to afford to return them, you might as well lend them again to whoever want them as return them back to me. ” Besides, he served his parents always with the best filial duty, making them nothing worries about at all.

When he died after lived to be more than 80, his spirit came out of material world (SHOU-TEN KAI) and came to Hell (JI-GOKU KAI, lower spirit world) at first as usual. EN-MA the great, the boss of Hell judged him and said “ You have lived to do a good deed as a man, then you shall be a deity for 100 years. You shall do your best to fulfill your duty as a local guardian deity meanwhile. ” So that he had to live in KI-TEN KAI for 100 years thereafter. But 100 years later, he would be not able to avoid reincarnation to be an inhabitant on the earth again.

Case 2: Way to Hell

Next is a story about a woman who was born in a family of some merchant prince. As only daughter, she had been bred with excessive affection and spoilt. As a result, notwithstanding a good nature, she had grown up a little selfish and such as unsympathetic young woman as to throw anything about when she could not attain her desire.

Since she had married an honest hard worker, they have done good business and lived happily for a while. Some day a war had happened to occur, which caused their house burnt down unfortunately, so that they have been obliged to wonder about ruined town without carrying anything but their wears. Nevertheless, luckily they could have run away far from battlefield to a country free from war. The couple should have to begin from the start with nothing but physical bodies. Man had been hired by the day, and his wife had been working in sewing clothes at home day after another.

In the meantime, they had been better off year by year; finally they could have got their own shop. And then her vice of selfishness has come out again. She began to waste money, and threw anything around her and destroyed it when something happened against to her satisfaction. As they had no children, so they could have quarreled with each other sometime without reserve. But, finally aged man and wife were visited with Death.

When the soul of woman came to Hell, EN-MA said to her “ You have been so selfish and unsympathetic that you had often troubled many people while you were living. You shall train yourself in Hell for 30 years. ” Therefore the woman could not have soon reborn as a mankind, but should have inflicted pains in Hell for 30 years long. If she were lucky, she would have been able to be reborn as a mankind after 30 years training in Hell again on the earth. Thus, as usual, humankind should repeat the reincarnation … born and dead … forever. Some people must have suffered from painful punishments (heat, cold and hurt) in Hell for several hundreds and thousands years in atonement for their grave sins and crimes, and some others …

3^rd Scene: RAUM sent the Buddha

At sight of miserable traveling of Reincarnation in SAN-KAI, RAUM sent a number of Saints for the sake of humankind to release from the painful situation. We are going to talk about SHA-KYA Buddha one of these Saints here.

SHA-KYA was born as a prince of an ancient India. He had been a person of transcendent greatness since he was a little boy, besides he was excellent in both learning and martial arts, he had an especially benevolent mind.

One day when he was passing through out by the east gate of the castle, he met an old man trudging along the street who could not even shoo a dog away which suddenly barked against him. The prince secured the old man from the dog.

Next day when he was going through out of the west gate, he saw a crowd of people surrounding a man who had been fell on the street and suffering from sudden disease. No one dared save the sick without kinsfolk. Therefore the prince had his follower take care of the sick.

Some day later, when he was gone out of the south gate, he saw a plenty of people coming in tears. He met a row of a funeral group and then he was sunk in thought.

A few days later when he came out of the north gate, he met a priest who had renounced every kind of desires and was training himself. After that, the prince had been absorbing in thought about the trouble of humankind such as worried to live, suffered from sickness, to be aged and to be dead. So that he made up his mind to renounce the world in order to release the human beings from these four troubles. And he had done penance for 16 years in order to realize that how he could make the mind of humankind free from painful troubles, how could they have true peace in their mind and how could they get sincerely happiness in their lives. The penance he had done was …

4^th Scene: The Penance the Buddha had done

SHA-KYA had left his castle and climbed a mountain to visit hermits, who had been devotedly doing such as painful penance as standing under a waterfall, hanging upside-down from a tree or sitting in a fire. He met another hermit who told him the best penance to do was that a man should be steadily sitting down without thinking at all.

SHA-KYA have had an idea that nobody could be free from the true distress by means of such a penance nevertheless, so that he went into a quiet forest alone. He ate a piece of rice a day at first, and finally he came to eat nothing at all. At last, the starvation made him reduced to a mere skeleton and his eyes deep-set. Some day, when he went to a river in order to purify his mind and body, the extreme emaciation made him so much exhausted as to let him fell down on the bank. 

RAUM, at sight of him, sent a messenger girl to have him drink a cup of milk. After having had a swallow of the milk and made a quick recovery from the emaciation, SHA-KYA was lost in a long meditation under a linden tree. Although some demons had sent a number of soldiers to disturb him and an a glamorous girl to fascinate him, but against their intentions, their shot arrows killed the girl, so that the circumstances recovered its composure as if around there had nothing happened at all. And then he attained higher spiritual enlightenment.

“A man of excessive strong will, shall be apt to get excited. Too weak to be idle. Then the best way a man should go must be in the middle, which has no inclination to both the right and the left.” And he went on the meditation on the happiness of human life.

The meditation had been lasting day after day. One day it had been rained from the morning, RAUM saw SHA-KYA keep the meditation, and sent NEN-TOU KO-BUTSU (Buddha) him to endow SAN-POU. As soon as SHA-KYA got the Initiation of ‘one point’, the expression of anguish for 16 years disappeared from his appearance. Thereafter he had saved a lot of people.

5^th Scene: The warble of birds.

This is a tale of the other Saint … Confucius who was a great man lived in ancient China known as creator of Confucianism. We are told that he had 3,000 disciples who were visiting him and taking his lectures every day.

Some spring morning when Confucius was taking a walk with his son named RI in the garden they heard warbling of birds. One sounded such as ‘HO HO KYEKYO’, the other sounded ‘KE-KYO KE-KYO’ rather childish. Confucius asked his son “ How do you hear the warbles sound like? ”. RI replied, “ I hear the warbles sound much the same ”. So he said “ No, they do not warble in the same tone. I guess one of them might be the warble of the other’s baby. The father’s voice sounds clear and sweet… does not it. The baby may be on the way of hard training, that is, following his father’s example. He will grow into his fathers voice throughout the perpetual training like that. Now you can walk well, but it is the result you have been training of the walking since you were baby, who used to stumble and to fall down again and again. The most important thing is that one never does a half way job. You have to know that anyone must be born with some excellent abilities, so that he should not do anything by halves without aware of them, or any infant will never be able to walk, and the baby bird will never be able to warble in such a sweet voice as to make a man listen for it. You shall keep in mind that a man ought to do his best to try anything whatever it may be painful to do, and to carry out anything however often he may fail the attempts. You should make it a rule to keep on with your hopes to the last.

The learning is just as the same becoming in one with the theory of the things what you wish to learn… you know. Nothing could be more excellent than the pleasure you would obtain as the result of making some painful efforts. People whoever know the pleasure will never complain about his appreciation by the others, whom should be worth admiring as a man of virtue. You had better remind of the story again when you will have become a grown-up ”.

It goes without saying that Confucius had been endowed with SAN-POU at the hand of Lao-tse.

6^th Scene: Jesus Christ (1).

This is a tale of a well-known Saint, Jesus Christ.

Once upon a time, Noah was born as one of the ninth descendents of Adam and Eva, who was a man of strong faith, and had lived deeply believing in God and keeping Commandment strictly. Meanwhile every other people had been living so wicked lives that the world had become worse and worse. At sight of the scene, God said to Noah “ You have to build a huge ‘Ark’ enough to pick up you, your family and each couples of every other creative beings in the world to be saved from the Flood, which shall soon occur and sweep away all the livings out of the world”.

In a little while, the Flood came. As the source of water in Heaven had been destroyed and all the doors of Heaven opened, so that forty days lasting downpour had topped even the highest mountain with water and all the livings died out except those beings took in the Ark.

The survived beings had increased the number of their descendents year by year. John the Baptist was born long years later. He believed that a ‘Messiah’ would soon appear in public without fail. Soon after the Prophecy, Maria had given birth to Jesus in a stable of Bethlehem. You know well a story that a strange light led the three doctors into the stable … don’t you.

It was about thirty years later after Jesus’ birth that he heard a voice of God such as “ You are my dear Son, the very Son of God ”. Jesus had been led by the voice, left home and wandered about in the field for forty days without eating. He had been thinking about God’s words and praying God’s mercy with all his might, meanwhile he had been visited with demons, and he refused their evil temptations three times flatly. Soon later, he had realized how should human live their lives, and as sooner as he made up his mind to live a Messiah making people enjoys sincerely happy lives, he felt whole his body filled with exquisite power.

7^th Scene: Jesus Christ (2).

Nevertheless a short life time of one and a half years from his decision making till his death by crucifying at the hill of Golgotha, he had accomplished an excellent achievement worthy of the Son no less than God itself.

Jesus Christ poured the light of more wide and deep love to the people who were poor, laborer of some jobs one dose not like, sinner and ill than general public, and released those people from their distresses. He had also such a strange power as to heal a person of blind and leprous disease at a glance. It would be a great pleasure and consolation to a man, if only he could merely either approach him or hear his voice. The gospel, that is such a teaching to be easily understood, had an exquisite power to attract the public. But Jesus had led the public to be good inhabitants with beautiful minds appropriate to live in the wonderful land, which will soon be built just like the Paradise in Heaven. No heart shall ever be melt with warm light come from God. There used to be filled with a great number of people around the place where Jesus stood, as if they were infant children longing for their mother.

What would one do when he saw his prodigal son came home repented seriously having exhausted all his properties and distressed by poverty? Would he get angry with the son and drive him away home? No, ever. He would give him kind welcome and take care of him without fail. The very man of kind or mild mind shall be one of capacities deserved to live in the paradise on land, so told Jesus. Jesus was such a Saint that he owed all the sins for himself without making an excuse, and ask God for permission of them even crimes of prisoners.

The name of God is RAUM. Therefore, now you will be able to understand the true love of Jesus Christ and to be saved, if only you will contact with TEN-DOU.

8^th Scene: MAK-KYOU

As you could have seen, there had been many Saints coming down in the world to lead up public by their holy sermon to make their mind bright, pure and honest so that they will be able to return to RAUM if the time will come when He promised before.

We are told there had 400 million souls of human achieved Return Home, so that there are 9.2 billion souls left not yet saved in SAN-KAI. They are the souls who have gotten the promise with RAUM off their minds, so that they shall never return Home notwithstanding the time has come, and have to repeat birth and death in SAN-KAI.

Besides, an awful disaster named MAK-KYOU is ready to visit us, which will be such a miserable catastrophe, as people have never met since the Creation. It must be a result that we have been behaving badly without keeping the promise with RAUM. The recent situation is just like a balloon full of dangerous gas, which is going to burst under excessive pressure in a moment.

We are told that an extremely violent blast of wind named KOU-FUU will happen to blow up all over the world without any notice some day. At the same time, a plenty of high mountains will, suddenly break the dreadful silence before a storm, burst into flames of the magma with huge explosions which will cover all the world with scattered lava showers. And everything in the world … houses, schools, factories, bridges, rivers, seas, lands and their inhabitants will be buried under ultra-massive amount of melted lava. On the contrary, from the ocean extremely tremendous Tsunami (tidal wave) will attack everywhere in the land with huge storm, while some continents are sinking into ocean with deafening roars, on the other side rises of the ocean floor will come over everywhere in the world. They will never fail to cause wild-wide scale of the earthquake with fire, so that so-to-speak a Catastrophe of water-fire-wind Trinity will make an attack on SAN-KAI. Throughout 49 days the Catastrophe will be staying around the world, meanwhile in the macrocosms, we shall see neither sun nor moon in the sky, stars and every other heavenly bodies will be out of order. KOU-FUU will blow not only in the visible world but also in the invisible world (KI-TEN and Hell). Everything and every being all together shall be judged and selected to be saved (good) or not saved (bad) evidently.

9^th Scene: Modern Ark

At last, KOU-HUU will cease entirely with the universal scale of sonic boom. Soon after MAK-KYOU, a wonderful Paradise will appear on the ground. Then we wonder, if you might have a question how could God find out a person to be saved or not, however almighty He must be. You need not worry about it… the method sure to be saved has been prepared and succeeded in secrecy since 5,000 years ago.   

The TEN-DOU had been succeeded early from a man of virtue … for example, Confucius and SHA-KYA … to the next one who should have to be a man of the highest virtue in the world. TEN-DOU must be the modern Ark … unique Saving Boat in SAN-KAI, so that the successor had been strictly limited to a great man until the time would be due. RAUM permitted to release the most secret Way to the public in 1843, which should be an appearance of the Mercies according to His Word in 60,000 years ago. The passenger of the Ark shall be selected from the people who have been keeping the Word. For the sake of the Children, RAUM had commanded MI-ROKU, “You shall make the Children of 9.2 billion come Home as early as possible ”.

MI-ROKU had been born (reincarnated) three times in the world; the second appearance was HO-TEI, as you know well by the statue, which owed every sort of sorrows and pains of human in a huge baggage in his back. The statue has an expression of being always tender for children with a warm and mild smile, and thinking about how to make people enjoy their happy lives in a true sense as soon as possible.

10^th Scene: Paradise in HAKU-YOU

There is no more souls except RAUM left in RI-TEN, because 400 million souls who had once returned Home came down to be reborn in this world in order to serve to MI-ROKU. And RAUM ordered KAN-NON to support MI-ROKU and TEN-NEN to do with Salvation of SAN-KAI. These Gods are called SAN-BUTSU (Three Buddha), and working all the time without rest in order to make people get the Way to Heaven in accordance with the Command of RAUM. If a man could get the Way, he will never fail to be saved from MAK-KYOU and come back to Home where RAUM is waiting for us, and obtain the right to live in next exquisite Paradise in HAKU-YOU.

By the way, how will be the Paradise in HAKU-YOU? It will last no less than 10,800 years. The inhabitants are limited to those wonderful people of pure mind who have endowed SAN-POU. As a result, the new world will be filled with honest, bright, kind and vigorous people, so that any sorts of evil affairs can never afford to happen, and the utmost comfortable world shall easily be constructed under their cooperation. 

Of course, we shall be favored with natural circumstances such as four seasons, rains, and winds and so forth in order. There could be no possibility to occur either wars or any other conflicts in the new world. People need not lock their doors while they are sleeping in the night. Fields are filled with various beautiful flowers; birds are flying around without any trouble. You will hear laughter leaked always from houses. All the people will be able to work with pleasure, so that there could be no beggar found. And … how could you imagine another aspects of the new world at a guess?

The Paradise, the same that RAUM had thought of it will appear in the world. How splendid prospect it will be ! Now is the time to select the people to live in the Paradise. We wish, a great number of people would be able to live in it … wouldn’t you. Would you mind visiting TEN-DAN or O-DOU (shrine or temple of TEN-DOU) as sooner as you can do, in order to get ‘Key for Luck’.