Six Realms: The Human Realm

My co-teacher Kim led this lesson.  She started off with a game.  People drew fortunes from a little box Kim shared.  Here are some of the fortunes as examples:

You will do great in school and go to a good college.

You will make it a practice to ask Kanzeon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, for help every time you fell worried.

You will get an exciting job at the zoo, and one day you will get bitten by a hippopotamus.

You will break your leg and not be able to go on a ski trip with your friend, but the leg will heal completely.

You will marry a person you love very much and will enjoy that person's company for many years.

Kim drew out some of the aspects of the fortunes, things that can occur in the Human Realm.  Some of them involved losing something important to them, bad things happen, good things happen.  Some were things they would do in Dharma School, they could choose.

When Kim asked which realm they would prefer to be in, one child said the Heaven Realm, but another said the Human Realm, because in the Heaven Realm they didn't always keep caring about others.  Kim said the thing about the Human Realm, is it does contain bits of the other realms, but not to such extremes, and that it is easier to get off the Wheel of Life in the Human Realm.  It is more possible to make choices.

For a craft, we had them "draw the comic strip of their life, with Kanzeon as the hero."  We talked about the Thousand-Armed Kanzeon with her many tools, and how these tools help us in our human life.  We also included more objects for our altar this day, including some household tools.