Our primary goal is to help establish Paradise on Earth.  What, then, is Paradise on Earth?  It is a world where truth, virtue and beauty are manifested fully in our daily lives.

Our teachings on health and Nature Farming provide important guidelines by which to realize our objective.  And our practice of Johrei gives new life to all phases of one’s being – spiritual, mental and physical.  But in addition to these, we believe it is vitally important to raise everyone’s consciousness through beauty.

Basically speaking, our ears and eyes appreciate beauty through the senses of hearing and seeing.  For the ears, never before have we seen a time when music flourished so much in Japan; this is due primarily to the development of the radio and the phonograph.  But our eyes for the most part are limited to motion pictures and theatrical performances; this creates quite a discouraging situation.  We should be able to have contact with beauty more easily, without any limitations of time.  Of course, for the purpose of pleasing the eyes, plays and movies are very good, but considering the time, expense and distance involved, we cannot accept them wholeheartedly as the best possible means for studying beauty.

I would like to encourage people to cultivate flowers and place them everywhere.  This would be the best means of promoting the love of beauty.  Begin by decorating the rooms in our individual homes and in other buildings, and this should not be limited to the middle and upper classes.  Our aim is to encourage everyone to place arrangements in every place possible, so, wherever people go they will see flowers and enjoy them.

Just a single flower in a vase would create a refreshing atmosphere wherever it is placed.  It would be ideal if we could see flowers in every jail, and in each prison cell.  This would have an immeasurably good effect on the inmates’ mental well-being.  If there are flowers wherever there are people, the negativity of today’s world will be considerably alleviated.

Presently, the high price of flowers is affecting how much we can do.  Therefore, we must look for a way to make them obtainable at much lower costs.  To achieve this, we should encourage increasing their cultivation, provided it does not affect the production of food.

Japan is well-known as a country with a great variety of flowers.  Also, it is said that our methods of growing them have reached the highest of world standards.  According to a survey we have made, many Americans admire Japanese flowers and are anxious to secure rare and exceptional ones that cannot be found in the United States.  I believe their export would be a great aid to Japan in its efforts to improve its economic condition.

Meishu-Sama

May 8th, 1949