Friday, August 18, 2023

"witness of myself, and the Father that sent me" - But Spiritual Mountains are in Japan



Around Tokyo

But Spiritual Mountains are in Japan


Traditionally, some monks of Buddhism and followers of Shintoism, warrior priests, practitioners of Shugen-do, etc. in Japan have tried to enhance their minds and conscious in order to understand what the world is or what they should be.  Indeed, every religion developed or introduced into Japan in its 30,000 year-long history is based on the original and inherent spiritualism of the Japanese race who first reached the Japanese archipelago or  the peninsula about 30,000 years ago before it had been detached from the Asian Continent some 10,000 years ago.  

Truly, the first group of the Japanese race reached a peninsula at the east end of the Asian-European Continent about 30,000 years ago, which was separated from the Continent to be an archipelago some 10,000 years ago.  It must be a long journey from Africa through the Asian Continent to the Japanese archipelago.  Some groups should have stopped moving around the Himalayas or continued to travel to the further East over the Bering Sea to Americas.        

After reaching the Japanese archipelago, original Japanese seemed to have developed animism where people saw spirits in everything in the nature.  They seemed to see and find spirits in stones, mountains, plants, and animals, and even in movement of clouds, etc.  This spiritualism has never been lost when a culture started 3,000 years ago with rice cultivation, tribal state systems were established 2,000 years ago, and religions were imported to Japan from Korea and China 1,500 years ago.  Even today, this trait of animism can be seen in the Japanese culture where Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and even Christianity have been absorbed.  In other words, Japanese have tended to see spirits in everything around their lives, which is secret and the basics of traditional Japanese culture, although Japanese people today have lost their original sense to a degree where they have become materially oriented people like other races in this world.      

From the Japanese traditional sense, almost every religion in the world is materialistic.  Confucius did not mention the afterlife.  The Buddha also kept silence about the spirit world.  Christianity minded too much development of  its tenet and formality.  Their temples and churches are usually built in towns and cities.  Bur temples of Shintoism, where original spiritual traits of Japanese people are most well preserved, were usually built in mountains.  Or mountains have been regarded as the place for ascetic practices.  Even monks of Japanese Buddhism often went into mountains for their spiritual training.  The nature has been respected as the source of spiritualism.  But with introduction of modernization and industrialism since the 19th century, the nature of the Japanese archipelago has been devastated, harmed, and destroyed to the extent that its economic activities are suppressed and  deterred.  That is why Japanese companies moved their factories and production bases to the overseas, such as China and Southeast Asia to save the nature of the Japanese archipelago, although cheap labor costs there were one of other major economic reasons.     

With this background, I have to assert that spiritual power sometimes takes priority over material power in this world.  In some mysterious conditions, such as in faith in the God, spiritual power works over material restrictions.  

That is why many faithful saints in Christianity could perform miracles and even Yuri Geller can bend spoons with his psychic power.  Indeed, Christ Jesus said: "Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you (Matthew 17)."

Christ Jesus must have said correctly that with your faith enough to invoke the spiritual power, you can remove a mountain to anywhere.  

I think this material world and universe as well as the human world were created through psychic power of the God.  Therefor, our prayer can connect to the psychic power of the God still working in the spirit world, so that a miracles can be caused even in the human world.  Restrictions of time and space should be easily overcome, so that nothing shall be impossible.    

However, Satan has also spiritual power.  It can penetrate into everywhere, including human minds, to exert its evil power.  So, this human world is the place of battles between good and evil as depicted in the Bible, sutras of  Buddhism, etc.  As these battles are carried out spiritually, we have to focus on human minds.  In other words, the key is indeed in our minds.

What you can learn from the Japanese culture is importance of minds but not a unique material aspect of its civilization. Old buildings are in Jerusalem; sacred buildings are in the Vatican; and modern buildings are in New York; but spiritual mountains such as Mt. Fuji, Mt. Tsukuba, Mt. Hakusan, and Mt. Gassan are in Japan, where many Japanese even today climb to refresh their spirituality.     



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John 8, King James Version
15 Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.
16 And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me.
17 It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true.
18 I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me.
19 Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.