Welcome everybody today. Last weekend everybody came to my birthday, that was very kind and thank you for your wishes and wishes and your kindness that you shared with me. Although I said not to bring gifts, many of you left so many things, thank you so much. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you. Along with that I will also thank you for this year, 2011, for your own interest, spiritual development and that I think is great and thank you. If you don’t take the interest, there will be no effect for you. Since you do take interest, it does have some effect. Particularly you must be improving a little bit, become a little kinder, a little gentler and more caring than you used to be. Thank you for that. I am saying that because I believe this is my last Sunday talk here for this year. Not only that, it shows how quickly this year has gone. It seems like just a few days or weeks ago it was the beginning of 2011. Now it is almost the end of 2011. That shows how quickly our time goes. The fact that the time goes is fine. But when the time goes our life is also going.
When I first came to the United States in the mid 80’s I was sharing rooms with Aura and Sandy and I was not so busy and always enjoyed watching that soap opera called Days of Our Lives. In those days I had time to watch. I tried to follow up their little stories and it also helped me to learn the language and understand the American family (raucous laughter all around) – everybody is laughing, so it may not be the right family! Also I was attracted to their logo, the hour glass, that bottle with sand turned around and the sand going down. That reminded me exactly of how our life is going. As a matter of fact, when the year goes we become a year older. We may think we are a little wiser. But on the other hand we become one year closer to our departing time. We have a tremendous amount of distractions. That is actually the wrong word. I should say we have a lot of attractions and entertainment and so many events, personal and otherwise in society. We try to push our time as fast as it can go. We don’t realize that we are getting a little gray hair, a few more extra ornaments for our eyes [glasses] and maybe later one in the ears. These are clear indications that the precious, wonderful, capable human life we have is becoming shorter by another year, another month, another week, another day, another hour, another minute. That is how it is going. Be aware of that and give yourself the opportunity and the time to help yourself.
