God the Parent created us human beings and the world where there was no form because God desired to see us lead the Joyous Life and share in our joy. This divine intention in creating humankind and the world, including God's workings during creation, is the original cause, which is the basis of human beings and the world, and the intended effect of this original cause is the Joyous Life, in which all people live in joy and harmony respecting and helping one another.

With this fundamental relationship of cause and effect moving like a great stream, we are allowed to use our minds in various ways to live our lives. The joys and sufferings resulting from the way we use our minds each day, as well as from the habits of our minds that have been developed over a long period of time through many rebirths, are the consequences of our individual causality [innen]. They are, as it were, ripples on the surface of the stream set in motion by the original cause. Unaware of this original cause and the great stream underlying the existence of the world and our lives, we are always distracted by the ripples appearing before our eyes and continue living our lives in a short-sighted manner.

On October 26, 1838, God the Parent settled Oyasama as the Shrine of Tsukihi and thus revealed the Teaching that makes true salvation available to every person in the world. Surely the founding of this Teaching was not a mere accident. It took place in accordance with the conjunction of three elements concerning the original cause, namely time, place, and person, which are: the fulfillment of the time promised during creation (the Causality of the Promised Time); the Residence, the Jiba of Origin, where human beings were created for the first time (the Causality of the Residence); and Oyasama, who had the soul of the mother who conceived, bore, and reared us human beings during creation (the Causality of the Soul of Oyasama).

The Teaching was thus begun as the path that brings about a true settling of the world, and the everliving Oyasama, the true Parent of all people, will continue guiding us toward the Joyous Life.

(The above is a translation--first published in the September 1995 issue of TENRIKYO--of an article excerpted from Omichi-no-kotoba by Yoshikazu Fukaya, published by Doyusha Publishing Company.)