Materials:
Sugar, eggs, coffee bean, electrical pot/water heater/heat preservation bottle (or any apparatus that gives/provide hot water), a small pot, a chopstick (or anything that helps in stirring).


Have you tried cooking activities in your district (for Junior Division's Meet)? This time, rather than cooking, I'd like to share a little "experiment" with you. The steps are easy, just cook the sugar, eggs, and coffee bean in three separate pots (with hot water of course). If cooking on spot would be inconvenient, you could trying bringing hot water that you've prepared earlier with a heat preservation bottle. Then, stir 3 of the tested materials.

While cooking, please remember to remind the Juniors to observe the changes in 3 of the tested materials.

Sugar: After cooking and stirring, the sugar will definitely melt. What we could see is just clear water as if the sugar had disappeared.

Egg: Before cooked, an egg stays in its liquid state at the inside, but it'll become solid after cooking. In this pot, we could still see the water being clear, and the egg looked as though there wasn't any changes.

Coffee Bean: When we open up pot number 3, we would see that the clear hot water turns brown. But when we stir the water, we could still see the coffee bean as it was before.


Message behind the activity:

Through this experiment, we learnt about "oneness and environment". After we've done with the experiment, let's ask whether the Juniors prefer being like sugar, egg, or coffee bean.

The hot water is like a challenge and training. First, we could see the changes of the sugar after the "challenge" of the hot water (environment). Before cooking, the sugar looked tough in its solid state. But after the challenge, it has back down and was defeated by the environment (melted). As for the egg, having a fragile shell and liquid body before the "challenge", has hardened after being cooked. Obviously, we can see that there is growth as the egg has became stronger after the "challenge". If we throw an uncooked egg on the floor, it'll definitely burst itself all around the floor. But if we throw a cooked egg, chances are only the shell that will have some cracks. Yes, you may say that the egg has achieve growth after a challenge, but if we look clearly, at the water, it has no changes. But what does this means? This explains, if we achieve growth from the challenges in our lives, it's good, but not enough. After achieving growth, we've never change the environment, and affect it to be a better, positive environment. At last, the coffee bean. After being challenged, the coffee beans were still as solid as before. What we see is what we get, only the coffee beans have not been affected by the challenge of its environment, but is still able of changing the environment instead.

Sometimes it is inevitable that we face problems and challenges in life. However, these problems and challenges are the steps we take to grow and learn, and the way and the spirit we used while facing these challenges, will decide our victory and defeat. If we are being like the sugar, having only a solid appearance, we'd probably be easily affected by the environment and may be easily defeated too. Just as our mentor has always been wishing us to be the "King" of happiness and victory. But by having just a strong heart and faith isn't enough. What we need to do, is to carry out our mentor's guidance in our daily lives to change the environment, achieving victory over the challenges of life.

There are lots of influences and temptations in our lives. Has the television been a temptation to you when you wished you could focus on your homework? You may feel like enjoying for the first moment, and doing your homework later, but have you thought about the consequences too? Wouldn't it be better if you could finish off your homework earlier so that you could enjoy watching the television? At this point, we must be clear of what is more important. Back to the topic, we could learn the way coffee beans have gone through the challenge. Why not we influence the environment rather than being influenced by it? For example, if you have a naughty friend in your class, have you ever consider giving him/her some good influence rather than being influenced by him/her? Don't be shy, once you've determined to do something, together with the help of daimoku, you can make your first step.

So, which one would you wanna be? Sugar, Egg, or Coffee Beans?


*This activity involves hot water, PICs please be more cautious to avoid any "accident".


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Happy.

Labels: i. Activity/games sharing