Sunday was the annual Setsubun service, literally “season-division”, and traditionally the dividing line between winter and spring and bad and good. The service included a blessing and afterward the traditional tossing of candy into the audience to signify welcoming good fortune. The envelopes of the traditional beans signifying chasing away of bad spirits were handed out afterward.

Last year this was all new. I took the packet of beans home and placed it on my altar and two weeks later when I attended the next service at the church, I asked the priest what I was supposed to do with the beans. “Eat them, ” he said.

Today’s service included a short Dharma talk in which the priest described the Namu Myoho Renge Kyo as the detergent that removes the stains of our past karma. I was imagining a Tide commercial.