Earthquake Reflections
My teacher, Luang Por, looked at me; actually, he looked through my heart. With some teachers, it feels like a travel security screening device, a magnetic tractor beam. But with him, there is just lightness. All negativity vanishes. I couldn’t remember the question and I didn’t even have to ask. How to practice with heart for the world?
In my tradition, we are supposed to aspire toward omniscience, so as to ‘benefit all beings.’ All sentient beings that is. The word in Pāli for such a one means ‘breathing being.’ Plants are said to be ‘single-faculty beings;’ they grow toward the ideal quality of light for themselves, the proper soil characteristics, the optimal moisture and draining. And they do this naturally. There are plants along the road in Thailand that sway and recoil when you touch them. They make me think of puppies wiggling in their litters. This getting born. We do this too. No one left out. I think of all the beings who breathe and suckle. I am lucky, having been granted temporary access to this ‘six-faculty being.’ This package of flesh and nerves that is so sensitive, I try to embody it to the best of my ability. The five sense organs and this heart that breaks wide open.
Luang Por, meaning ‘Venerable Father,’ looked at me, and the woman named Su who was translating for us spoke one line. “Seeing it all can be very overwhelming,” she said. I got his drift. Clearly, he did mean to specify all of it, all of them. Those being born, those dying, those in between. Humans and non-humans. He spoke from his own experience as if to inquire, “Do you really want to know? Do you have any idea?” I do not know. But reminders happen unprompted, and we remember our share in this organismal will, this poignant drive toward life. When the cognitive decorations fall away, we feel what remains. We might squirm.
Sometimes, I try to emulate Luang Por, to see in my mind’s eye all around this planet. Earth is a living, breathing, interconnected system, much more so than it is some discrete entity. I look for where the suffering is and wish beings well. I have heard that a ‘wish’ is for this lifetime; whereas, ‘aspiration’ does not necessarily have an endpoint in one lifetime. For me, these are mostly imagined. In kindergarten, we played chase on the playground. There were two fast boys, Brett and Charley. I caught Brett by the jungle gym. I’m a small girl. Having tagged him and pinned him to the sand, I didn’t know what to do. I was in shock, first of all, because I had attained to the impossible. Second, because in that moment, I recognized the unexamined assumption that catching my quickest classmate would be the end of the project. Suddenly, I realized that the end of one thing is merely the beginning of another. As with dust on the playground, we stir things up and repeatedly so. The other kids were yelling, “Kiss him! Kiss him!” I remember thinking, “But what good would that do?” What if I could see the suffering in this world? What then?
A certain Sayadaw, renowned for mastery of concentration practices, told a group of yogis that the Buddhas come to teach the sāvakas, the renunciants, the way to Buddhahood. He continued that the sāvakas cannot realize Buddhahood without recognizing ‘ultimate materiality’ and ‘ultimate mentality.’ The sāvakas, in the riddle, do not know those things. How could they hope to realize the ultimate? Nonetheless, Buddhas continue to appear in the world so as to teach. Why is that?
Compassion. It is far from static. If we tune our hearts, compassion is continuously being expressed in a multitude of ways. Beings with food give food. Beings with shelter give shelter. Beings with creativity give art and music and dance. Beings adept at critical thinking or communication or engineering or nurturing protection or joy or contentment, those gifts are given by them, in turn. Beings with wealth give wealth. Beings with wisdom and equanimity share that invisible balm, making the way things are more bearable. Beings who are awake give the way to awakening.
I might not be rich in those particular offerings, but I know we can generate mettā, loving-kindness. To a war-ravaged country, its earth quaking at magnitudes of 7.7, 6.6, and 5.1 in succession, I feel a profound sense of gratitude for the palpable expression of a certain flavor of mettā. To me, it is priceless. Michele McDonald, a wonderful female lay teacher with roots in a Burmese tradition, exemplifies this special variety of caring and how it can encompass all of the emotions and thoughts that arise. The ‘affectionate awareness’ she describes is not dependent upon my assessment of whether a certain charge in feeling is bad or good. Just that it is. And that these expressions are worthy of our receiving them with care. Whether in relationship with the box elder bug, the jumping spider, or secretly, my plants, I want them to be comfortable, to have good lives. “May you maintain yourself happily.” This wish cannot hurt. Projection. Projector. In this way, it is possible to cultivate the place where the both become one. In that inseparability of love and emptiness there is real integrity, which manifests in thought, word, and deed.
The wish to care. The wish to do no harm. These intentions inform deeds that follow from that point. The very first line of the Dhammapāda tells us: "Mental phenomena are preceded by mind, have mind as their leader, are made by mind (trans. K.R. Norman).”
That being so, the next step might be to rouse ourselves with the words of Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi when interviewed by Insight Myanmar:
“I don't want to discount or dismiss sending mettā, but too often, people fall back on the idea of sending mettā as a way of avoiding making other commitments to transformative action. Certainly, one should send mettā, send it quite strongly to those who are afflicted, but also find other ways of taking action.”
He pointed to a trap we can avoid if we pay attention, and again, the key is action:
“If one feels satisfied simply sending gratitude but doesn't take any further action, that could be a kind of ‘cop out’ or what's called a ‘spiritual bypass.’ At the same time one is experiencing and sending gratitude to the people and the teachers of Myanmar, one can find ways to express that gratitude in action.”
Walking up the gravel road, I am halfway around the world from the most intense suffering of suffering and concerned mostly about small things. Hearing the spring birds, their songs surround me, expanding the attention like the sky that touches everything. Their tiny movements, wings on air, flit through bare branches about to bud. Soft glimpses of how they, like me, need to breathe just this much. Glancing at the place where the rabbits make tracks in remnants of snow to and from the wild scrub, there is a sweetness that seems to make a difference. At least, to those who are alive.
I decide to run up the hill and when my throat is raw and burning, I wonder about the people buried beneath the buildings. Are their throats burning from the dust? Do their eyes feel gritty and sting? Do they hunger for breath and yearn to suck the air? What of their thirst? Does the smell of death pervade their particular heap, and could it be the last hint of family? Is there time to feel the weight of beams and cement on the chest. Does roughness scrape their sensitive limbs and digits? Is there a sharp and searing heat to the fleeting pain in their bodies? Bones are made of calcium; they are earth element. In time, we are crushed and pulverized. I see photos of people in helmets sorting through piles of concrete. Do people trapped beneath them feel the warmth of these beings above them. Do those near death hear their would-be rescuers and long to cry out, or are they just quashed more firmly beyond the possibility to extend this fragile lease? How long does life last like that? Would it be easier for them just to let this body go? What are their dreams and final thoughts? If the issue were simply survival under decades of brutal military oppression, they could run or fight. But now they cannot. Under the rubble, even such meager options are severely curtailed. I would be the same.
To a certain temple, a question was patched in online, at the end of a meditation session with their teacher. Someone in Thailand wanted to know how to practice the Dhamma during the actual experience of fear while running down six flights of stairs to escape a shaking building but knowing all the while that we are all going to die anyway. The teacher advised the pupil to do what needed to be done but to maintain mindfulness at all times, both to support full awakening and so as not to create or succumb to further harm in the situation. The teacher kept utterly cool, yet he did not say to just sit there.
It is not just an earthquake. It is the unthinkable. I don’t know when the unthinkable began. Probably birth. Colonial rule? Before that? Then came 1958, 1960, the coup d’état of 1962. People disappeared, were tortured. It sounded pretty bad. What about 1988, 2007, 2017? These atrocities were made by humans. Is it so different when we think we can blame someone else? Why can’t there be some respite in 2025? Nature doesn’t care that I ask.
There is a term called ‘resilience.’ Loosely, this could be described as the capacity of a people, both socially and economically, and also of the ecosystem, to recover from catastrophic events. The behavior of the junta is catastrophic. The earthquake is catastrophic. The withdrawal of aid is catastrophic. The lack of adequate international attention is catastrophic. I cannot see all of the connections in between. That one should be wary of greed in seeking some ultimate well-being is quite different than the practical gathering up and setting aside of resources in order to make it through inevitable hard times. Caring for oneself and community is intuitive to the social animal, given some degree of mundane freedom, for the opposite would foster unnecessary vulnerability. Even now, the junta, which so rarely allows assistance, has undermined supports for its own existence.
Resilience, I would think, depends upon internal and external coping mechanisms, unified families and communities, wholesome role models whatever the religion, planned risk reduction, functional infrastructure, strong public services, good governance, economic vitality, reserve funds, communication networks, education, healthcare, habitat protection, diversity, inclusivity, sustainability, and equitable distribution of resources. These protective factors have been systematically and intentionally destroyed by brutal rulers who were not chosen. Nor was the earthquake chosen. Still I cannot know where to send thank you cards or where to place blame. It comes down to individuals I might never meet. It is not magic. It is choice by personal choice. As if the praising and blaming of ideas would assuage all woes anyway.
Again, in the words of Bhikkhu Bodhi, exhorting listeners to act:
“The oppressed are suffering from the wrong choices of the oppressor. To the extent that one has any prospect for contributing towards a peaceful resolution of this conflict… take action to do so.”
Upon hearing about the earthquake, I asked an excellent monk about spiritual power. I wanted to know, if they really do have some sort of power, then why don’t they just rescue the people who are not entirely crushed in the earthquake, those who are injured just modestly, who are maimed but might survive, those who join the estimated more than 20 million who were already in need of requisites before this recent series of earthquakes? I was seeing in mind a little nun, her cheeks round above a pale pink outfit with a sash over one shoulder. I wanted to pluck her from the pain. I did not reveal these images or thoughts. Then the monk asked me, “Which little nun would you rescue first?” I almost wept. But weeping cannot last forever. What then?
Loren Eisley wrote a story that seems pertinent here:
“One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, ‘What are you doing?’ The youth replied, ‘Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.’
“‘Son,’ the man said, ‘don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!’
“After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said… ‘I made a difference for that one.’”
Luang Por says that, yes, you practice meditation but you also abide according to your community. After the Indian Ocean tsunami, a magazine published an article in which Luang Por was said to be seen walking along the beach blessing the beings. An awful lot of them were dead. They washed up onto the shore. But since we are on this shore, he keeps on blessing.