Thank you very much. Mahalo nui loa. Arigato Gozaimasu. Many thanks again to each and every one of you sangha members and friends for all your help, cooperation, effort, and support in making our annual Obon festivities and bazaar weekend a very successful one.

This is the fifth Obon festivities I've had the privilege of witnessing and participating in since I arrived in June of 2002. I continue to be thoroughly impressed with each of you as you came to plan, prepare, construct, implement, and clean up the many, many details which make for a busy and successful weekend. Your giving, cooperation and hard work were so evident in the success of another fully active weekend. I am truly grateful to you for your time, commitment, dedication and involvement in enriching and enhancing the life of our temple: spiritually, socially, and economically.

I hope that in the process of preparing and holding our enthusiastic gathering, you were also able to "rub shoulders" with other temple members; enjoying each other's company; sharing tasks as well as ‘heart'; and catching up with each other's life. A conversation, a comment, a shared story, or a shared laughter may have touched a part of us that made the weekend together feel truly worthwhile, in spite of great energy expended and the tiredness from a busy task well done.

I am often made to reflect after the fact that each moment of encounter - of seeing, talking, sitting, and being together is a sacred and precious moment, never again to be repeated in the very same way. Each moment is the first and the last moment, and extremely special. In each moment of our meeting infinite layers of meaning, joy, and gratitude resonate deep within our being and they fundamentally connect us in inexpressible grateful ways as a dharma community. In this sense, each moment we share is truly spiritual in nature.

My sincerest hope is that such an unrepeatable moment may have captured your heart as it has mine in inspiring and gratifying ways. Thank you again. See you next year. Namu-amida-butsu.

Have you ever had the experience where you were so shocked to find out that something was fake when you always thought is was genuine? You might have felt angry or mortified that you were betrayed....

There are many people who are distressed and angered when they are fooled by imitations. Some even claim that their lives were messed up. So, how can we distinguish between the genuine and imitation?

Years ago, I asked a jeweler how to distinguish a real diamond from a fake one. He told me that there is a range in the quality of diamonds, and there is a certain standard of hardness, purity, clarity, color, refraction, cut, etc. However, experts need not go through the troublesome analysis to determine its authenticity because, in reality, they can tell whether a diamond is genuine or not just by holding it in their hands. That is because they are exposed to genuine diamonds all the time.

When a lot of counterfeit money is discovered, the Treasury Department maintains strict control over the problem. They have devised a countermove where inspectors are trained to detect any counterfeit instantly, no matter how well it is made. Everyday, for two months, the inspectors count real bills over and over again. They come to a point where they can instantly detect a counterfeit bill by just touching the counterfeit money.

In both cases, because the experts were constantly exposed to the genuine thing, they were able to tell immediately when something was an imitation. Likewise, unless we encounter the true and real thing, we will not be able to identify the imitation and may end up seeing the imitation as real.

Mitsuo Aida, a Buddhist calligrapher and poet, wrote a poem entitled, "encounter".

He says in it, "when you pursue the true and real and live in the true and real, one day you will be able to see the Buddha without fail."

Our founder, Shinran Shonin, pursuer of the Buddha's true and real mind, exclaimed in joy as he encountered the Buddha, "Ah, hard to encounter, even in lifetimes, is the decisive cause of birth, Amida's universal Vow! Hard to realize, even in myriads of kalpas, is pure shinjin (faith) that is true and real! If you should come to realize this practice and faith, rejoice at the conditions from the distant past that have brought it about.....Wholly, sincere, indeed, are the words of truth that one is grasped, never to be abandoned, the right dharma all-surpassing and wondrous! Hear and reflect, and let there be no wavering or apprehension."

We must encounter the true and real teachings of Onembutsu: Namu-amida-butsu, through constant listening to the teaching, so we are able to distinguish instantly what is real and what is imitation (fake). There is no need to be led astray by paganism, superstition, or folk beliefs, etc., and we can live in a dignified manner, no matter what life brings. Namu-amida-butsu.

(Rev. Makino is presently the Rinban (Head Priest) of the Hawaii Betsuin in Honolulu. He is speaking at our Fall Ohigan Seminar on September 23 in both Japanese (9:30 am -12 noon) and English (1:30 pm - 4:30 pm). He is also the guest speaker at our Ohigan service on Sunday, September 24, from 10 am.)