Good morning, everyone. How are you? Over the summer, in July, I enjoyed my first Sacramento Obon Dance. I wore a Japanese Yukata/Kimono while dancing in Obon. I looked like this. Some people said “Sensei, you look like a SuMo wrestler”. So, I thought that I should go on a diet. I was able to lose 5 pounds. Do I look better?
And last month, we had one of the Betsuin’s biggest events, our annual Bazaar.
Most of you know I came here last year on August 4th. So, I have been here…for just over 1 year and 1 month. Time goes fast. Don’t you think so? For a Bazaar prize, I crafted a famous Japanese Samurai castle out of wood. Japanese people call it Himeji-castle. I spent about 3 hours a day for 2 months to make this castle. So I hope some of you were able to see it, before it was given away as a prize.
And today, we started 2004 to 2005 Dharma school.
How was summer vacation for you? Was it good?
I went to Alaska to go fishing on my vacation with Mr. Don Masuda, his son Mason, his nephew Darien and our Betsuin President Mr. Bob Tanaka at the end of June…it was my first Vacation and it was a 7 days trip.
We stayed in a Mr. Masuda’s 4 bedroom cabin and we went salmon and halibut fishing almost everyday.
We tried 2 days of salmon fishing but I was not very good a catching Salmon… Salmon fishing was difficult for me. But, fortunately I caught seven halibut. The biggest one was 23 pounds. I thought that was really big! When I caught it, I felt it was a giant fish really. Like this picture! When we finished fishing that day, I said “my biggest fish was 23 pounds! That’s pretty big, isn’t it?”
And then, Mr. Bob Tanaka said “Mr. Masuda’s son, Mason who is 11 years old, caught a 50 ponder”. Our fishes would look like this!
When I heard about Mason’s 50 pound fish, I could not say anything anymore…
On the 7th day of my vacation, we went clamming. The clamming beach was south of Anchorage. We dug on a sandy beach, and we easily found big clams. The biggest one was about the size of my hand.
We didn’t have to spend many hours clamming. There were so many. But sometimes, near the shore, when I dug into the sand, sludge and black oil came out. I thought maybe that oil had leaked from ships from an oil spill…or maybe someone just dumped it!
Shakyamuni said “we can not live in this world without taking life or damaging the environment. But, we should never destroy or hurt nature unreasonably.” Now-a-days, we even have a word for destroying or damaging nature “ECOCIDE”.
I think we had better take care of nature and our environment, as much as possible. And we have to protect nature for we are also a part of nature.
As we know, Buddhism is not a religion of dogma, and also, Buddhism is not a teaching of what is right or wrong. Buddhism is the teaching that reminds us that a good human life is one that lives in harmony with great nature…
Gassho