On September 25, the Oyasato Institute for the Study of Religion held the fifth of its 2004 public lecture series on the teachings, entitled "Faith and Society—Learning from the Anecdotes of Oyasama." Held in Doyusha Hall, the lecture was attended by 117 people.

The lecture series is designed to provide pointers drawn from the Anecdotes of Oyasama on how followers should engage with the issues of contemporary society.

The recent lecture, delivered by the institute's Associate Professor Akira Kaneko on the topic "Faith and Management," focused on anecdote no. 104, "Faith in God."

After reading the anecdote aloud in the beginning of the lecture, he drew attention to Oyasama's words "buy dearly and sell cheaply" (Anecdotes of Oyasama, p. 88) and explained that these words, which might seem to lead people to suffer losses, could be understood as embodying a certain wisdom, which, acted upon, could generate profits in the long run for all people concerned, including oneself.

Dr. Kaneko also quoted the verse "As your minds become spirited step by step, there shall be rich harvests and prosperity everywhere" (Ofudesaki I:9) and stated that Oyasama would look after prosperity not only on the level of individual family business but also on the level of all humankind's economic activities if we fully understood the causality of origin and became joyously spirited.

In closing, he told his audience: "No matter how much you run a business according to faith, you might fail in some cases. If that happens, it is important to understand the teachings that 'whatever happens is the truth of heaven' and that 'buds sprout from knots.' These teachings are encouraging us to think of profit-and-loss arithmetic not in the eyes of a human being, but in the eyes of God. Finding joy even in things that the human mind normally cannot readily rejoice in will strengthen the growth of one's virtue. That, I believe, is profit in the eyes of God."