2025 May Monthly Service Sermon

by Michihiro Kiyose (Chief of Europe and Africa Section)

I would now like to move on to talk about today’s main topic, which is “virtue”. In your everyday lives, you may sometimes hear people say, “That person has excellent virtue” or “That should be all thanks to your parents’ virtue”. What is it that comes to your mind when you hear the word virtue? Mr Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Matsushita Electric Company, now Panasonic Corporation, once said: “Technology is something we can teach or learn, but virtue is not something we can teach nor learn. You must grasp it yourself”. When I was a child, I had this image of virtue as savings in the bank of God, or what we call God’s savings, where if you did good things, the savings in the bank would increase, and if you did bad things, they would gradually decrease. However, my image of virtue has changed since then, and I now regard virtue as the mind of each person or the strength of each person’s soul. When facing a challenging situation, for instance, some people can overcome it with a positive attitude while others may get depressed. When I think about what makes these differences, I realise that it all comes down to the strength of each person’s soul, that is, virtue.

God teaches us in the Divine Directions:

Everything is given according to the truth of the mind of each of you.Osashizu, 27 October 1894

To put it simply, this means that everything is given from the heavens according to the truth of each person’s mind. The truth of the mind here refers to a desirable way of using the mind that accords with God the Parent’s intention. Then, the record of how we have used our minds in desirable ways is, in a word, virtue, which I mentioned earlier. God the Parent accepts the virtue of each of us and gives us blessings accordingly. To use an analogy, it can be said that we “spend” the virtue that we have acquired to “purchase” gifts from God. In human society, it is a common practice that people pay money to acquire things, but in God’s world, people spend their virtue to receive gifts in return. I believe this is what the truth of the heavens means.

In the path, we often hear people speak about virtue by comparing it to a container that people have in their minds. Please imagine a situation where each of us has a container of a different size and shape and try to receive rains with it. If you have a large container, you can receive lots of rains. If you have a small one, you can only receive as much as it is suitable for its size. It is not so easy to know the size of our containers, so we tend to try to receive too much rain in our containers or try to put as much as the person who is next to us with a bigger container does. But as the size of the container is different, you will not be able to receive as much as you want no matter how hard you may try.

Now, about the container that we have in our minds, is it not possible to change its size as it is something we are born with? Actually, it is possible to change its size. Then, how we can have a large container in our minds? In other words, how can we build virtue?

The container in our minds here refers to the container of virtue. Oyasama taught us about the container of virtue in the Divine Directions as follows:

Prepare a container of sincerity. Prepare a container of a sufficient size. It will not do if you do not have a container. By accumulating layer upon layer of sincerity, you can have a container of a sufficient size.Osashizu, 1887

This Divine Direction teaches us that, by accumulating sincerity day after day, we can build a container of a sufficient size to acquire virtue. Daily practice of exerting sincerity is a way to build virtue. By accumulating sincerity, we can have a bigger container of virtue, which in turn allows us to acquire the kind of virtue that we were unable to acquire before.

So what exactly does the “daily practice of accumulating sincerity” mean? In Anecdotes of Oyasama, the Foundress of Tenrikyo, there is a story titled “Early Rising, Honesty, and Work”. This is a story about what Oyasama told Yoshie Iburi, which goes as follows:

There is a great difference in merit between being awakened and waking up someone else. Working in the shadows and praising others is honesty. If you do not put into practice what you hear, you will become a lie. Work on top of work, saying to yourself, “Just a little more, just a little bit more”; this is not greed, it is work that comes from true sincerity.

The three teachings that Oyasama speaks about here—that is, “early rising”, “honesty”, and “work”—are the basics of the basics for exerting sincerity and are some of the keys to building virtue.

In my view, it was Rev Izo Iburi who actually put these three teachings into practice. Oyasama is said to have given Izo Iburi the following instruction:

Izo, this is a path to build virtue without being seen by others. However hard you may work while others are watching, God cannot accept it if you cut corners when nobody is watching or speak ill of others behind their backs. Also, if you do things while expecting others to express gratitude to you, the virtue that might have been acquired on each occasion will be cancelled.

Here, we are encouraged to build virtue without being seen by others.

When we have done a good thing, we are tempted to tell others about it. We want other people to give us compliments and recognise our hard work. When we have such feelings, we may act carefully in front of others, but when no one is watching us, we tend to cut corners and say to ourselves, “I’m going to finish my work now” or “I’ve worked hard enough”. I realise that I have had this kind of experience myself.

Thinking about Oyasama’s words I quoted earlier has made me realise that I must always keep in mind the importance of early rising, honesty, and work and act with genuine sincerity regardless of whether people are watching me or not.

The second point I would like to make regarding building virtue is to take good care of things and people around us and bring out the best in them whilst having an awareness that everything that exists in the world is given to us by God.

I once heard the following words:

Those who take good care of things around them when nobody is watching will receive sufficient material blessings. Those who take good care of money when nobody is watching will receive more and more money. Those who help someone when nobody is watching will receive help from unexpected people at crucial moments.

People walk with their shadows, and their shadows follow them no matter where they go. What kind of path a person has walked or a person is walking day by day when nobody is watching contributes to building their inner qualities. That is why we are taught about the importance of fulfilling our duties in accordance with the truth of heaven when nobody is watching. What we call virtue is a person’s strength that has been acquired through their behind-the-scenes efforts.

Our predecessors including our parents, grandparents, and so on have been saved through this path. We are what we are today through the efforts of many generations of people. This is an undeniable fact. It is not too much to say that we are blessed with the lives we enjoy today thanks to the virtue that our predecessors had built and left to us. Looking at the world today, there are many wars and conflicts going on in various parts of the world. In Japan, major earthquakes struck the Noto Peninsula on New Year’s Day last year. The same region was struck by floods later last year, and various incidents of murder are happening in many parts of the world. This is a reality that is completely opposite to the Joyous Life World so desired by God the Parent and Oyasama. In these bleak times, I hope that each of us will not be carried away by the current trend of “all is well if the present is well for the self alone” but rather follow the path in our daily lives by asking ourselves what Oyasama would do in this and that situation.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon, the fourth Action Day for All Yoboku will be held in the Tenrikyo community across the world. I would like each of you to take to heart the intention of Jiba with a fresh mind and raise your enthusiasm for the pre-anniversary activities as you approach the important period of the second half of the final year of the pre-anniversary activity period.

In his New Year's Address, the Shinbashira said as follows:

I announced the Instruction to help all of us in the Tenrikyo community to make progress toward the anniversary with our minds in unison. I wanted us to work for single-hearted salvation in unity of mind, thereby bringing joy and peace of mind to Oyasama.
“Unity of mind” can be described as a state in which we each completely fulfil our respective roles to achieve the common goal so that we can receive God’s blessings. If we truly work together in unity of mind, we can be blessed with strength that we cannot muster on our own. We can also experience a joy that we could never experience individually.

He also said:

This is the third year of the “three years, one thousand days” period—the concluding year for our pre-anniversary activities. We can say either that we have only one year left, or that we still have one-third of the time left. I earnestly hope that you will dedicate your utmost sincerity and work enthusiastically—whether in achieving your resolutions or your individual goals—so that we can make as much progress as possible in responding to Oyasama’s intention. Through such wholehearted efforts, I sincerely wish for this year to be a fruitful one.

I would like to ask all of you who are following the path in Europe to bring your minds together so as to be able to experience the joy of unity of mind that the Shinbashira highlighted.

The world around us will look differently depending on the orientation of our minds. I would like to ask each of you to reflect upon your mind with a renewed awareness and thereby continue to follow the path spiritedly and joyously while striving to bring as much joy and peace of mind as you can to the everliving Oyasama during the remaining months of the final year of the pre-anniversary activity period. With this request, I would now like to conclude my sermon.

Thank you for your kind attention.