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Seicho-No-Ie News

Rev. Masanobu Taniguchi’s Message at Founding Day Celebration

Let’s Practice the Love of the Virtue of Nonattachment toward Nature

The Founding Day Celebration was held at the Seicho-No-Ie Headquarters on February 11. Rev. Masanobu Taniguchi, President of Seicho-No-Ie, addressed the 400 attendees for 28 minutes in his capacity as the Superintendent.

Rev. Taniguchi looked back on the messages he had given on the Founding Day Celebration in the past and cited four points as the significance of the Founding Day Celebration: (1) it is based on the Kojiki (Ancient Chronicle) and Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan); (2) it is rare for a country to have its founding day based on old chronicles; (3) it shows the characteristics of the nation of Japan and its people and it also has much in common with the stories from the rest of the world; and 4) it depicts the ideal and conviction on the scale of humankind and it cannot be separated from those living in the modern time.

Rev. Taniguchi next noted three points that characterize the country’s central figure as shown in the Jimmu Emperor’s Tosei (Conquest of the East): (1) the emperor lives without betraying God’s will; (2) he is a person of virtue; and 3) he loves and cares for nature. The President said that these virtues are embodied by the Imperial Family. He urged the attendees to convey and pass on to the future generations the wonderfulness of the Japanese myths as well as Japan’s ideal and goal.

The President also referred to his message from last year’s Founding Day Celebration: The fact that Amaterasu no Omikami is a female God, or the Sun Goddess shows that Japan is a country where both men and women command respect and he went on to introduce the fact that based on the feeling that the sun is female Rev. Masaharu Taniguchi wrote the book, Onna wa Ai no Taiyo da ([Women Are the Sun Filled with Love], published by Nippon Kyobunsha, currently out of stock).

Rev. Taniguchi next turned to Seicho-No-Ie’s view of “love” and pointed out that when loving nature, we used to take only that which is convenient to human beings with the love of attachment. Referring to a section from the same book, the President spoke about the virtue of “nonattachment” from the Four Immeasurable Minds and said that true love is stern in that it abandons what needs to be abandoned, while guided by wisdom. He stressed the importance of practicing the virtue of nonattachment toward nature as well.

The President cited an example of it: to buy a lot of chocolate on St. Valentine’s Day leads to deforestation and CO2 emissions. He said that the time has come for us to consider what kind of way we should live in this age in order to practice the Four Immeasurable Minds toward nature.

In concluding his message, Rev. Taniguchi stressed that the respect for nature is deeply rooted in the ideal of Japan’s founding and asked that we take the Founding Day Celebration as the opportunity to reconsider the starting point of what it means to live as Japanese, convey it to many people, and continue to work together to find a solution to the problem facing humanity.

The Founding Day Celebration started at 10:00 a.m. Rev. Masanobu Taniguchi served as the Superintendent. Mrs. Junko Taniguchi, President of Seicho-No-Ie White Dove Association, was also present. The Ceremony began with the singing of the national anthem and the Seicho-No-Ie song, Jisso o Kanzuru Uta (Song to Visualize the True Image). It was followed by deep bows to the Ise Grand Shrine and Kashihara Grand Shrine. There was a message by Rev. Kazuo Isobe, Chairman and CEO of Seicho-No-Ie, before Rev. Masanobu Taniguchi gave an address. After the singing of Kigensetsu Hoshukuka (Song to Celebrate Japan’s Birth), the Celebration ended at 10:50 a.m.