Today's Schedule:

9:00-10:00am Children's Class

10:15-11:30am Aikido. Kensho Furuya

Monthly fees are due for February.

Many thanks!

Many thanks to all of the volunteers who helped clean out the 3rd floor of the dojo on Saturday. It is a lot of hard work! Many thanks again!

Have A Positive View of Life:

I often see that some people look at Life as all of the things that they can't do. And then there are some people who look at Life as all of the things which they can do.

Some people lament to me, "I can't do this, and I can't do that." And, as you can imagine, nothing gets done. Some people say, "I can do this," or "I can do that" and somehow they are able to go ahead and achieve their goals.

The people who are negative create negative action and a dark view of Life. It is important in your practice to keep a positive view of Life and practice and fill your mind with what you can do.

I once met a Zen priest who confessed to several new students of Zen who were having trouble sitting in the Lotus position. He related: "When I first started to practice Zen, I could not sit in the Lotus position either, it was so painful for me and I could only sit for a minute or two. What I did was practice in the morning, noon and night for just a few minutes, trying to increase my sitting time by only a minute or two. Eventually, I built a small platform so I could sit in the Lotus position when I ate my meals with my family. Now, after several years, I can sit for two to three hours with no problem at all."

Often, people create goals which are impossible to accomplish and end up failing. Create small goals and goals which are easily accomplished. For example, maybe you cannot run a mile - if you try, you will fail and your mind will become negative and filled with the idea of failure. Just run a short distance which you can do easily. Keep practicing and you will find that you can easily run a little more and a little more and eventually, you can runa mile without any effort at all.

A Positive view of Life is nothing more than a normal view of life. You never have to force yourself to do anything - although I see this so much in our Lives today. I am not talking about working hard here. . . There is nothing wrong with hard work and especially young people should work hard to build a good life for themselves.

I am talking about keeping a good healthy view of Life - filled with accomplishment, however small our goals, and avoiding constant failure leading to a negative view of life. Once a student quit because he could no longer practice seven day a week. It was not a working alternative for him to practice six or five days a week. This "all or nothing" attitude of his caused him to fail in many aspects of his life. . . . . .