5th Oceania Seminar

On 5th and 6th February for two days and one night, the “5th Oceania Seminar” was conducted in a lively manner at the Oceania Centre. The Oceania Seminar was held for the first time in February 2009 for the purpose of nurturing a “real Yoboku” who can perform the service and engage in sprinkling the fragrance of the teachings and salvation work in the present seasonal time towards the next milestone, and has since been held twice a year on a regular basis. In the seminar this time, 11 followers of the path, including one newcomer, assembled from Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and shared a very significant and fruitful time together by listening attentively to the lectures, devoting themselves to the practice of the hand movements and the musical instruments, and exchanging their thoughts in the discussion sessions with an open mind as followers of the path living in the same region.

In the opening ceremony starting from 1:30 p.m. on 5th, Rev. Tony Cheng made his opening remarks, right after worshipping God the Parent and Oyasama. In the introduction session, the participants introduced themselves in a friendly atmosphere, forming a big circle. In Lecture One, the participants listened attentively to the lecture delivered by Rev. Adachi about the Mikatura-uta. They learnt the meaning of the songs and the hand movements in Song One in Part V as well as the Sazuke, the Divine Grant, the theme of this Song, which attracted the participants’ attention.

After taking a commemorative photo was Discussion Session One in which the participatns were set to watch a video and discuss its contents. The title of the video this time was “A Busy Waterwheel Never Freezes” which portrays the “parental love” of a mother who brought up her disabled son with a congenital disease to be a real missionary for the Path. Divided into two groups, the participants eagerly discussed some themes in the video such as “parental love”.
Following the evening service and dinner, the musical instruments practice was instructed by Rev. Adachi. Listening to the polite explanation about the mental preparation to play the musical instruments for the service, the participants learned “Song VII” and “Song VIII”. Since all of them were able to play the instruments to some degree, the participants were encouraged to challenge any instruments that they were not good at, and willingly tried to do so, which impressed us very much.

Day Two started with clean-up hinokishin in the early morning fresh air. They engaged in hinokishin in high spirits in the assigned places such as the entrance hall and toilets in the Youth Hall and outside. After morning service and breakfast, Lecture Two was conducted by Rev. Cheng who delivered the lecture on the Divine Model of Oyasama based on Chapter Five of the Doctrine of Tenrikyo as a textbook. The participants seemed to feel closer to Her Divine Model by learning it. One of them commented by saying, “I learned how important it is that we should act by imagining what Oyasama would do when we get stuck or lose our future course in life”. Then, with a short break, the hand dance practice was led by Rev. Adachi who explained the mental preparation to perform the hand dance and instructed “Song VI” this time.

After enjoying curry and rice for lunch, Discussion Session Two was held.The participants discussed the Divine Model of Oyasama that they had learned in the lecture that morning, and deepened their understanding of the Divine Model. Then the Overall Practice Service followed as a highlight of the Seminar. The particpants sincerely performed the hand-dancing and the musical instruments by rotation from “Yorozuyo” to “Song III”, “Song IV” to “Song VI”, “Song VII” to “Song VIII”, which provided them with a valuable opportunity to feel how wonderful the Service is and to know how important “unity of mind” is. In the closing ceremony, each participant was presented with a certificate of attendance by Rev. Adachi, and the two-day and one-night Seminar was successfully concluded with joy and satisfaction, as well as expectation for the next seminars.

We have safely completed the “5th Oceania Seminar” with great joy thanks to the unlimited blessings of God the Parent and the warm parental love of Oyasama. In their reflections, most of the participants made positive comments as follows: “It was good that there were so many things to learn”, “The seminar this time had much richer contents than expected”, and “I could make my knowledge of the teachings deeper and wider”. As obvious in these comments, we realise that this seminar has become fairly established after five events, and, at the same time, we have come to the conviction that we have just taken a firm step to nurture a “real Yoboku” in the Oceania region. We would like to hold this seminar twice a year on a regular basis, aiming at holding “Shuyokai in Oceania” in the future. We do hope that as many Yoboku and followers in the diocese as possible will participate in this seminar. We ask for your support and co-operation.