Practical Activities As A Religious Leader
Takahashi referred to the law that he preached, and practiced, as shoubou (proper Buddhist law). It has been said that when he held lectures in the provincial regions, he would spend several hours afterwards "self-reflecting", based on the hasshoudo, as to whether there was any wrongness in his role and whether there were any inaccuracies in the "law" that he preached. It has also been said that Takahashi possessed all of the capabilities of the six spiritual powers (tengantsu, tenjitsu, tashintsu, shukumeitsu, jinsokutsu, and rojintsu.)
Takahashi took in people such as elderly people who were homeless, a woman who had intellectual disabilities and no relatives, and people who had difficulty living independently in society, such as gangsters. He supported these people with the profits that he made as a company owner.
Takahashi criticized blind faith and fanatical belief in religion and consciousness, and paraphrasing Karl Marx, he also believed that religion based on blind faith is like opium. In his teachings he insisted that one should always doubt, and should believe only what cannot be doubted any further.
Takahashi believed that religion should not be turned into the sustenance of life, so he lived off of the profits that he earned as the corporate manager of Koden Industry Co., Ltd., without taking any profits from his religious activities. Takahashi allotted the profits he made as a corporate manager to fund missionary activities and regular administrative expenses for his religious organization.
Read more about this topic: Shinji Takahashi
Famous quotes containing the words practical, activities, religious and/or leader:
“Theorists may say what they like about a man’s children being a continuation of his own identity, but it will generally be found that those who talk in this way have no children of their own. Practical family men know better.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Love and work are viewed and experienced as totally separate activities motivated by separate needs. Yet, when we think about it, our common sense tells us that our most inspired, creative acts are deeply tied to our need to love and that, when we lack love, we find it difficult to work creatively; that work without love is dead, mechanical, sheer competence without vitality, that love without work grows boring, monotonous, lacks depth and passion.”
—Marta Zahaykevich, Ucranian born-U.S. psychitrist. “Critical Perspectives on Adult Women’s Development,” (1980)
“The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Just as every conviction begins as a whim so does every emancipator serve his apprenticeship as a crank. A fanatic is a great leader who is just entering the room.”
—Heywood Broun (1888–1939)