Good Morning everyone. How are you?
Welcome to the 3rd Sunday Dharma school service of February. Next Sunday, we have the BCA National Conference. So, today will also be our last Dharma school service for February.
This morning, Rev. Bob went to the Walnut Grove Buddhist temple to officiate a recognition service for Sensei Roy Mehyu. He is the president of the Walnut Grove Buddhist church and the superintendent of the Walnut Grove Dharma School.
He has Buddhist Study classes and Meditation classes. Now he will also become a BCA minister’s assistant. So, he is a very busy man.
He has helped for many years at the Walnut Grove Buddhist church. So, I know he will continue to be a wonderful leader for their members.
Every year I prepared Chocolates and candies for everyone on Valentines Day. And I try to visit each class to give those snacks to all our Dharma school students. But, usually, I am not able to visit all of the classes.
Let’s see… now we have about 400 students… So, if I take 5 seconds to give candy to one student…
Let’s calculate 400x5 seconds… How many seconds is that? It is 2,000 seconds. And so… 2,000 seconds are how many minutes? 2,000 divide 60 minutes… Is it 20 minutes? No? It would take about 33 minutes to give candy quickly to everyone if I ran through the classrooms to see every student.
Dharma school class usually goes for only 30 to 45 minutes. So, I would not have enough time to visit all classes. So, this year I decided to put a snack box in front of the Hondo. So, when you leave Main Hondo or Small Hondo, please take some candy as my Valentine’s gift. I got a Valentine’s gift from Michi. It was very cute tie. Look at this!
On January 8th, I talked about my attempt to go fishing at the Sacramento Marina. Do you remember me sharing that story? It took place on January 3rd. On that day, Michi and I tried to catch fish… but as you know we did not get any fish… because the Marina area was completely flooded.
On January 27th, I received mail from the department of parking and traffic of San Francisco. When I saw the mail, I thought “City of San Francisco? What could this be?”
I was scared because the letter looked so official… and also just last month my wife Michi also received an official letter from the government. Her letter was from the Sacramento Superior Court and when she got it, she screamed “I have to go to court!” I said “what did you do?”
I read her letter and was relieved that it was only for Jury duty. When we understood that she does not have to go to jail, we laughed together. But when she first said “I have to go to court”, I was very surprised. Anyway she did not have to go to Jury duty, because she is not an American citizen yet.
So, I was scared when I received the official mail from San Francisco. As I opened it and took the letter out, my heart beat became faster and faster.
Finally, I read the letter… It said that “this is a payment notice for parking violation. Please pay $60.00”. Oh, my Buddha! My heart beat stopped. And I read the description of the parking violation. It said that “I parked in a red zone on a street in San Francisco’s China town…”
Then I thought, I would never park my car in a red zone. And I have never been to San Francisco’s China town. When I checked what day I violated this parking law, I was even more surprised. It was January 3rd around 4PM.
Hum… on January 3rd …hum… 4 P.M. hum… Michi and I were at Discovery Park next to the Garden High way… looking at the flooded marina.
On January 3rd of 2006, I did not get any fish in Sacramento but I got a parking ticket in San Francisco… This seems like a funny story… But I was not laughing… The next day, I showed the letter to Rev. Bob.
He read the letter and said “A few years ago, Sensei Patti got a parking ticket from Los Angeles city although we were in Sacramento. It was marked for New Year’s Day. He said “Sometimes city officers make such mistakes.”
He wrote a nice letter for me to the city of San Francisco to explain about my parking ticket.
So, anyway I have no violation tickets yet.
I am sure that my car was not in San Francisco on January 3rd. So there was some kind of error.
Every month, we get many bill payments. We usually think that the amount is right. But, even the city of San Francisco made a mistake although our governments may have wonderful workers. Everyone can make mistakes.
Who can say that I have never been mistaken? I make lots of mistakes…
Everyone makes mistake. It is natural for human beings to make mistakes.
But, it is most important to correct our mistakes. We should not hesitate to correct our mistakes and we must try not to make them again.
As I said, in living life, we all make mistakes. But we must learn from our mistakes and try to never make them again. This is the way to create a better life… and a good future.
Gassho
In living life, we all make mistakes. But we must learn from our mistakes and try to never make them again. This is the way to create a better life… and a good future.