Good Karma Music Stories

Our family of four just came back from our year-end trip from Northern California to four national parks in Southern California and Arizona. We spent six nights in four hotels during the seven-day trip. We were very grateful to hotel staff who still worked very hard during the holiday season. What we did was leaving tips along with a hand-written thank you note in the hotel room when we checked out. In addition, I made sure that we also tipped the hotel staff who made continental breakfast for us. On our last day of the trip, when we were getting our car’s tank filled up with gas, it occurred to me that I forgot to put the bills in the tipping box of the hotel dining room. So I asked my older son to go back to drop off the tips in the box. Sharing the earth together, we are like a big family and we are interdependent and interconnected. Without the work of all the people, our vacation would not be possible. Happy New Year to all my family members on this earth! Love you all!

Facing financing crisis, spiritual crisis. I had no hope. I wish to go to the Pure Land as soon as possible. But still an aged mother needs to be taken care of…. Very struggle on life.

I am a leader in the Vietnamese Buddhist Youth Association. Every week, we chant our repentance in Vietnamese language. The American born kids have a hard time to understand the repentance because it is not in Ebglish. I have combined many partial translations of our repentance into 1 translation and also translated some parts of it. So far, I have finished about 80%. I will finish the rest very soon.

I teach at a public elementary school. Since the pandemic, our school focus has been on socio-emotional learning . To facilitate this, my class of first graders have Sharing on Fridays. Each child can bring an item of their choice and tell the class what it is, how they get it and answer questions from their classmates. Sometimes, they can’t stop talking. To help them, I taught them to “Sit like a bell”. Bells do not talk. So they learn to sit and listen (and take turns to talk). At recess, when lining up, they learn to “Stand like a tree”, so noone is swinging their lunch bags and hitting another. When they walk down to the lunchroom, they learn to ” Walk like the wind”, and not run down, for they might fall. Once I asked if anyone has heard of “meditation”? Half the class started to cross their legs and put their hands on their laps – like the character Aang in the kids Netflix series “Avatar”. I taught them to hold their hands in a diamond mudra clasp. To help them be kind, every child who does good and kind deeds in school gets Excellence cards each week. Hopefully, they will remember. Next, I will teach them how to meditate.

My old mother had passed away last month 13th Oct, and me try vegetarian food and praying in 49 days, hope she really could go to pure_land (极乐世界) to have better living.

Chanted Namo Amituofo

When I was in the hospital for my open heart surgery, before and after the surgery, I tried to speak to other patients next to me because they looked worried. We encouraged each other at the same time and after I spoke to them, I felt they were more relief and for myself, I felt the pain is not so pain anymore.