Good morning everyone!
Last Sunday, I went to the Lodi Buddhist church to help their Sunday Dharma service. At the Lodi Buddhist church, each high school student is asked to be chair person for a Sunday Service. The chair person read Golden Chain and Three Treasures. So, I just chanted Juseige and gave a short talk to them. Most of their Dharma school students are middle school and high school age. They are the future of the Lodi Buddhist church. I hope they will visit our Betsuin Sunday Dharma service and Dharma school… because as Rev. Bob says, “we are the best”.
Since last Monday, I have had muscular pain in my arms. There is a big maple tree in the front yard of our home. Every fall season, the maple tree has many colorful leaves; red, yellow, green and brown color leaves. It is very beautiful. But, at the end of fall, all the colorful maple leaves fall and cover not only my front yard but they also scatter to our neighbor’s yards. I really feel sorry for our neighbors. Because, even if they clean up their front yards, the next day, their front yards are filled by my maple leaves.
So, last Monday I decided to cut our maple tree down in size. The tree was about 15 feet. So, I wanted to trim the tree to about 7 or 8 feet.
First, I visited my neighbor Mr. Tom Shimizu to borrow a cutting saw. He had a hand saw and he said “I don’t have a chain saw. It takes a long time to cut your big tree with only a hand saw”. I answered “my new year’s resolution is be more active. So, cutting this tree will be my good exercise. Please don’t worry about it.”
I felt it would be easy to cut this tree and I started cutting the maple branches. After I cut just 3 branches, I already felt muscular pain in my right arm. Then I said to myself “oh… I am still in my twenty’s. I will be 30 years old in this year. I should not feel muscular pain in my arm...”
But after I finished cutting 5 branches, I thought “maybe it is better to get a chain saw…” When I quit cutting the tree, it was dark.
Last Wednesday, I asked Mr. Frank Hirota who is our Betsuin Board member to help me to cut the tree. He brought a chain saw! And he cut all branches in about 20 minutes. I spent over an hour to cut 5 branches with a hand saw. But he was able to cut over 10 branches in about 20 minutes with a chain saw. It was amazing!
When people have difficulties, sometimes our technology can really help. In the old days, people only had hand saws, but now we can use chain saws to get things done quickly.
When I had the help of Mr. Hirota and his chain saw to cut my tree, I really appreciated it. I appreciated it deeply. Because I have experienced how difficult it is to cut branches with only my arm power and a hand saw…
If we just know the easy way to doing things, we will never really appreciate all that we have. I think that sometimes we can learn the heart of appreciation by knowing difficulties. When people are active, they may encounter some difficulties. But even our difficulties can be opportunities to feel appreciation.
It is important to learn about appreciation from book or someone’s saying. But it is most important to experience the heart of appreciation with our lives.
Anyway, still, I have muscular pain.
Gassho