Good morning everyone.

Happy New Year and welcome back to our Sunday Dharma school service this morning.

At our New Year morning service, I talked about my new year’s resolution. Some of you already know that my resolution is “Fit Size L”. Now I wear XL shirts, so, hopefully I will be able to fit into L size shirts by the end of this year. So, please do not feed me… a lot. Otherwise, it will be difficult to achieve to my goal!

At our last Sunday Dharma School service on December 17, some of you may remember that I used a puppet which was our service book to talk about our broken service books... At that time, my puppet was crying and said “please take care of me gently, otherwise my body will wear and tear easily…

And I also said that when we realize that everything is a part of the great oneness of life, we begin to care for everything in our lives with a heart of gratitude. Taking good care of things around us is really the same as taking good care of ourselves… This is the Nenbutsu way.

After the service, I had many good responses from people who said “we really enjoyed your talk” and the puppet made your Dharma talk more easily understood.”

Then, I had an idea. Maybe we can create an original puppet for our Betsuin! Is this an interesting idea for all of you?? No? Oh, maybe I am the only one who is excited about this…

Anyway, I am pretty good at sewing… So, I want to ask all of you to help and create our original Betsuin puppet.

Please take a piece of paper and draw a picture of a character and also if you wish, give your character a name. Next Sunday, I have to go to Orange county Buddhist church as their guest speaker. So, I will give you 2 weeks to give me your ideas. Please bring them to our Betsuin office by January 21^st. Maybe, we can create a character which will be our puppet. I will prepare a special prize for the winner. So, please draw a lovely character that will maybe become our future puppet.

In a way, I am a sales person for our Jodo Shinshu teachings, so, I must always try to share our teachings in our way for everyone to enjoy. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to contact me. I will always try to improve the quality of our Sunday services…

Gassho

One of our Jodo Shinshu seven masters, Zendo Daishi often said “we must keep the spirit of Jishin Kyonin Shin” which means “we can share our teaching with others only when we really understand and appreciate our teachings from the bottom of our hearts…” So, let us always try to learn more about our Jodo Shinshu teachings and feel gratitude to have the Nembutsu way.