We refer to the path as "the final teaching" for world salvation.

Human beings have for centuries sought an answer to fundamental questions about life and existence, such as: "What is the nature of a human being?" "What is the meaning of life?" "How did we come into being and what are we living for?" "What am I and how am I supposed to live?" and "What is life, what is death, and what is happiness?" To date, a great many philosophers and scientists have approached these questions from their respective standpoints and left us with mountains of scientific, ethical, and religious knowledge. Nevertheless, these questions have always remained unsolved. This cannot be helped because, just as we can learn about our birth only from our parents, so can we learn about the meaning and the purpose of our existence only from the Parent of all humankind, or God the Parent, who created human beings and the world where there was no form.

Ever since the creation of humankind and the world, God the Parent has constantly been nurturing us. In the meantime, God provided us step by step with training in wisdom and letters, which enabled us to develop a variety of civilizations and cultures. However, due to our ignorance of this Parent in Truth, who is the core of everything, we have been unable to awaken to the true meaning of life or to have any picture of the true happiness and joy intended for us. Instead we have just continued wandering in the darkness created by our minds.

At the arrival of the promised time, October 26, 1838, God the Parent--the true Parent of all people--became openly revealed at Jiba taking Oyasama as the Shrine. In teaching the path to the Joyous Life, God illuminated the final teaching which had never been taught before. Over many years, according to the stages of our spiritual growth, God had given us various teachings, which comprised nine-tenths of the complete teachings. The final teaching was now revealed as the ultimate point of the complete teachings.

This is to say that God the Parent let us know about the Parent of Origin. By so doing, God intended to help us realize that we are all brothers and sisters, the children of God the Parent, and are meant to respect and help one another. God thus taught the path that enables all of us to savor the Joyous Life together with our Parent.

"The final teaching" does not signify anything final in a temporal sense. It means the "core" or "absolute" teaching, in the sense that nothing we know can be deeper than that. This teaching is the very path that brings about the true settling of the world.

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