WHAT THE TSUNAMI WANTED TO SAY
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We all feel the same pains and sufferings,
When our bodies are buried in the deep water.
We have been living in hatred for so long,
Now it is the time to have a change of heart.
To end the wrong we begin a new way,
All the boundaries s are just invisible.
The great planet is our homeland,
Now hand in hand we all love each other.
For the future, let us all sow the joy,
The trees cover all the mountains,
In the sky doves fly freely,
Along the country lanes, children come and go freely.
All boundaries would be broken down,
When the world suffers the same pain.
We will be no more hostile,
So let our love welcome the new spring.
So let our love welcome the new spring.
Today, we will discuss about the topic relating to Tsunami and Religion, as a gift for all of us on this Tet Holiday (Lunar New Year in Vietnam). You all must have heard about the tsunami happened recently. Let’s remember this event to really understand “what the tsunami wanted to tell us”.
What did the tsunami want to tell us?
Recently, West Indonesia experienced an underwater earthquake. When the seafloor shook, a very powerful force was generated and spread towards all directions. The velocity of this force could be compared to the velocity of a rocket. So within just few minutes, the tsunami waves came and swept away many houses and peoples out to the sea. Some people could survive a few first wave, but the waves were too strong, in the end they all gave up and died. After only a few minutes, the beach was totally deserted as if nothing existed there before. And within a very short time, the sea of Thailand, Sri Lanka… or even East Africa encountered the same situation. All beaches were destroyed. The result was catastrophic and devastated.
In the past, as we did not have advanced technology, we were not aware how fierce and powerful the nature could be. But now this tsunami was the worst disaster that mankind has ever known. At first, the number of casualties was about 300,000 people. However, one Indonesian official said that it must have been up to 400,000 people. This touched the hearts of all people around the world.
In 1945, when the USA dropped two atomic bombs onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the number of casualties in Japan was not more than 300,000. However, during World War II between the Nazis i.e. Germany, Italy, Japan and the rest of the world, the death toll was up to several tens of millions because the war lasted so many years. Clearly, humans kill humans is more terrible than a natural disaster. The tsunami caused 400,000 casualties, which is more than 300,000, but it still was nothing compared to the wars. The Vietnam war caused a few millions of deaths; World War II caused a few tens of millions; Particularly in the Soviet Union, during the second War, the number of deaths was 20 million – what a huge number!
However, when the war ended and humankind commenced to enjoy the time of peace, the nature became the force to threaten mankind. Today people often say: “It is a small world.” During our ancestors’ time, the Earth seemed endless, because no one could reach its end. Nowadays, with transportation facilities such as cars, trains, ships, planes and even rockets, the Earth appears within our reach. Thanks to the mobile phone network, people can even communicate with overseas ones only within the twinkling of an eye. Therefore, the term of “very far away” is unlikely to exist and our compassion for each other seems to fade away gradually.
In the past, when having said goodbye, we did not know when we would meet again. A letter we sent took nearly a year to arrive at the destination. Both the sender and the receiver were anxiously looking forward to receiving it. However, today, there is no such thing. We just need to use mobile phones, emails or chat online to communicate with each other. Therefore, perhaps, the relationship between human being is not that deep, and just superficial, completely different with our ancestors’ period of time.
Maybe in a few more years, it would be quite rare to hear the old songs with lyrics such as: “When I go away, my mother misses me dreadfully…. or “I miss you very much,” or “A sad day in Paris….” The Earth will become much smaller.
The recent tsunami, which was broadcasted around the world, was being watched by billions of people. Many people cried and felt for the ones who lost their love ones. It destroyed everything and left many dead bodies with broken arms or legs lying about… The scenes were horrific!
“When a horse is sick, the whole stable refuses eating.” (Vietnamese proverb) – One dies, the rest will feel miserable. When our parents passed away because of old age, we were sad but not miserable because a human being cannot avoid birth, aging, sickness and death. When our relatives passed away, we would miss them but accept the truth and as time goes by our mourning for them would subside.
If someone, who has been living with us in the family, had died in this event, we must have been extremely sad. In this disaster, the death toll was around hundreds of thousands of people. The disaster had impacted so many families; the mourning was unbearable. Many tourists became victims. Many families had lost everyone to the disaster.
The worst case was those families whose only a few members were left behind. When the parents died, how would the children survive? Even worst, when these children were transferred to a Refugee Camps, evil people kidnapped them and harvested their organs e.g. livers, hearts, to sell to others. Teenage girls were raped one by one because there were not enough security guards to protect them. Evil people did these evil acts when tsunami victims needed love more than ever. We could not imagine there could be people with cold hearts like animals. It seemed nature was not cruel enough that people should cause more sufferings physically and mentally. It was terrible, beyond our imagination!
Although the tsunami disaster had passed, its consequence dramatically impacted everyone. People from all over the world, who had moral conscience, had sympathy for all of the victims. Some countries sent rescue forces, money, medical devices, and people… to support the disaster areas.
Vietnam, though is a poor country, but the government also decided to contribute 450,000 dollars, other countries contributed millions of dollars, for example, Japan contributed 700 million dollars. The total amount of money contributed was above ten billion and would have been used to rebuild the cities as planned.
It seemed that the charity work for tsunami victims occurred everywhere around the world. Our Buddhism temples also called for donations from all Buddhists. Many artists and entertainers held many shows to donate to the victims. It was true that the tsunami deprived humankind of many things but it also taught us a valuable lesson.
Today, we will discuss about what lessons the tsunami has taught us.
The tsunami caused more than 300,000 deaths. Although those dead people were not our relatives, they were sentient beings that deserved love. Undoubtedly this tsunami helped us rethink, reunite and care for each other more and more to live a better life.
Let’s discuss this in more depth. Besides the sound of tsunami waves, there are many things to think about.
The first thing is: life is impermanent and full of risks.
Actually, many accidents had happened to warn us about the impermanence of life but we did not understand or we ignored. For example, we met a friend and after saying goodbye to him, he had an accident and passed away. The next-door neighbour, who had just talked to us, died due to a stroke. There were people we had just seen and would never meet them again because of the separation of life and death. Life is fragile, so we do not know when death would come. We sit here today, but we do not know where we would be tomorrow, alive or dead. Signs of impermanence appear everywhere, but due to our ignorance, we still do not realise and accept them.
We must understand the fragility of life. Anything could happen to us, at any time. No one is exempted from this. We must be prepared and learn to leave as if we would die tomorrow. We must learn and accept this because we would never know what would happen tomorrow.
Therefore, we should live as if we would die tomorrow. However, what does it really mean? For example, our next-door neighbour was very poor. We sympathised with them, so we reminded ourselves that someday we would bring them some money and clothes. Unfortunately, for some reasons, they died next day. Then we regretted not giving them money and clothes as promised on the previous day. We always thought that life would last long so we could do anything at any time that we wanted. That was why there were many plans that we had not implemented yet. For instance, we thought we would go to a temple one day; or we would chant prayers and listen to the
Dharma when we had free time… If we were aware of the impermanence of life, we would make efforts to always practise Buddhism and always be more kind to other people.
With our relatives and friends, if we knew that one of them would die tomorrow, how would we treat the person today? Normally, we would give them the best of everything. However, because we did not know that because life is so short, we kept behaving indifferently to our loved ones… not knowing that they would leave us forever the next day. We did not prepare for the situation that they or we may die tomorrow, so we were neglectful of people around us. When unexpected things happened to our loved ones, we would regret.
The tsunami told us that life is impermanent, full of risks. Therefore, we live as if we would die tomorrow; we must have complete compassion for all beings; we must treat others as if we would not see them anymore
The second thing the tsunami wanted to say was that indeed, the Earth is very fragile.
We have drilled down inside the Earth so many times, and despite of how deep we drilled we had never seen the end. Therefore, we thought that the core of the Earth is very thick, stable and strong. So we did all sorts of things on its surface… we built houses, buildings, cities…. We all live the way we like it… and the Earth continues spinning.
But the truth is the ground is not that thick and not that strong and stable. Scientists had proved that if we reduced the Earth size to an egg, then its surface would be thinner than the egg’s shell. The Earth contains lava flows inside, hot and violent. The Earth we live in is actually very fragile. It moves quite often. It is very easy to collapse and crack open. The recent tsunami in Southern Asia part of the ocean was the result of the seafloor was cracked. The movement of the Earth resulted in extremely huge waves spreading towards every direction, which was disastrous. The event could be simplified by the scenario whereby when we throw a stone into the water: the bigger the stone, the bigger and stronger the waves.
Only one movement of the Earth under the sea was nothing compared with the whole Earth but it still caused the deaths of more than 300,000 people. The Earth is very delicate. The only one thing that we thought it could permanent is actually very fragile. So, if the Earth is that fragile, what about all of things on its surface? Would those be permanent? Absolutely not. The houses we all live in cannot exist forever because they stand on such fragile ground as the Earth. Even what we own right now may not belong to us forever, for example, love, property…
That’s life. What we can see and touch does not exist forever. The following is a true story. There was a Buddhist who went to the US to do business. After a few years, she became very rich. She had owned 10 million dollars, quite substantial wealth. Because she thought this amount was real and more than enough, she became arrogant and treated everyone else badly. She looked down on other people. What had changed her? It was the 10 million dollars. Whoever advised her to live a righteous life, she did not take their advice because she relied on her wealth. She always thought that her 10 million dollars could cover everything for herself, her children, her grandchildren and even her great-grandchildren.
It would have been true if she lived a virtuous life. However, no one could imagine that five years later, she was penniless. She began to beg to work from her former employees whom she looked down and treated badly. What she thought could last forever was actually fragile. We could easily understand that the consequence resulted from her way of living which caused the loss of her blessings very quickly. There are many similar things like this in our own life.
The third lesson was that: A natural disaster is very different from a war.
A war has to have a winner and a loser when it ends. After countless of bloody battles, the loser is always being accused of causing the war. There was war that when it ended, the President of the country, which lost, was sent to prison because his country was accused of owning weapons of mass destruction. But when the weapons were not found, the president was then accused of his dictatorship. There are many reasons to accuse the loser of and that means the loser is always the responsible one for everything.
Human psychology is very strange, that is, during a period of suffering, we always want to blame someone. Only hatred would help a human feel better during suffering. For example, a family had a car stolen by a burglar. It was the burglar, who should have been hated, but he had gone away, and no one knew who he was. Therefore, everyone channeled their hatred to the person, who forgot to close the door. Human beings always behave like that. When in misery, they always need someone to hate, to blame and to channel their anger and tension to. However, a natural disaster is a very different thing because we could not blame anyone.
From a religion viewpoint, people believe that God had created everything. If it was true, the recent tsunami must have been created by God. Therefore, humans could hate God for doing that because God created the tsunami, which killed more than 300,000 people. However, no one dared hating God. Normally, after a trauma, human beings always find someone to blame and hate. However, in this case, after the tsunami had taken many lives, we did not have anyone to blame, this indeed caused a shock for everyone.
According to Buddhism, we know this was because of karma. For other religions, which believe in the theory that God created all, then their believers were more disappointed than us. Why is that? Because they knew the one who created the tsunami but they did not have the rights to hate or dare to hate God. These people became disappointed, and lost hope in life. As the result, the tsunami told us a strange thing that: We could not blame or hate anyone after the tsunami disaster because if we do not believe in God, there was no one else to blame; but even if we believe in God, we dare not hating Him. This is a strange contradiction.
The tsunami also wanted to teach us another lesson: A disaster does
not differentiate any nations or any religions.
The recent tsunami disaster struck Indonesia, which is a country of Islam; Thailand which is a country of Buddhism; India which is a country of Hinduism; Sri Lanka which is a country of Buddhism; and Somalia which is a country of Christianity (countries in East Africa are of Christianity because they used to be France’s or Britain’s colonies). When a tsunami struck, all religions collapsed, many countries were damaged and many people died. Every human being is equal in disaster, suffering, and life.
This makes us remember an eternal truth that Buddha once said, “There is no class when we all have the same red blood; there is no class when we all have the same salty tears.” Blood symbolizes life. Tears symbolize pains and sufferings. There are two things, which are always the same to all human beings: their life is worth the same and their suffering is as bitter. Though we could be rich or poor, big or small… whatever religion we follow, whatever country we are in, whatever nationality we are, we are treated the same in life and suffering. Buddha had said about this principle over thousands of years ago.
Buddha taught this principle with the compassion to all beings, however, on the other hand, the tsunami taught the humankind in a horrific way. If we listened carefully to the sound of tsunami waves
“Bang…Bang…”, we could perhaps hear the same sayings: “There is no class when we all have the same red blood; there is no class when we all have the same salty tears.” Similarly, when we express our appreciation for others, in Vietnamese it is “Cam on”, in English it is “Thank you”, in Chinese it is “Xiexie”, in French it is “Mercy”. We use different languages but the meaning is the same. Likewise, Buddha had said this in Indian and the tsunami said with its own sounds, and expressed it in its own way.
Though Buddha had taught us many principles from thousands of years ago, human being has forgotten those, therefore, there has always been separation and differentiation within our own kind. Religions are to unite human beings, not take them apart. We should not discriminate against each other based on their religions, countries or classes. Because people often did the opposite, mother nature repeated what Buddha’s saying to advise all of us not to do so. Why is that? Because human beings’ life should be valued and treated the same way and their suffering should be sympathised in the same way.
Despite many sayings, many reminders, human being still not do love and have compassion for each other, until mother nature was so angry and had used its power to remind us, but in a very disastrous way.
We must always remember that all human beings’ life and suffering are equally the same. We must not discriminate; we must end all wars and we must stop all the killings… It is time for us to love and help each other to overcome difficulties and pains. The tsunami also alerted and warned people not to be narrow-minded and intolerant. As for evil people who are so ambitious and manipulative, you must understanding that everything is very fragile and impermanent.
If one country wanted to rule the entire world then surely someday a disaster would happen to itself. War would happen within its own country and cause separation between its residents and it would lose. So what is the most accurate truth? Powerful countries should help others not rule them. This was what the tsunami wanted to say.
We have discussed what the tsunami wanted to tell us and now we will discuss what the tsunami did.
So what did the tsunami do?
Through the eyes of ordinary human beings, we could see that the tsunami had destroyed houses, roads, trees, parks, schools, hospitals, temples
… and it killed so many people. However, through the eyes of Saints, actually, the tsunami did a very great thing, it removed all barriers between all human beings, and especially it destroyed the faith in extremist religions.
When people have all their faith in an extremist religion, they only accept their religion, their teachers, and their God, and nothing else, which separates everyone. They would be willing to kill other people who do not follow the same religion as theirs. The tsunami had destroyed that invisible wall. Now, after the disaster, they could see and understand other people from other religions, and different countries that they did not care before. They all now suffered from the same pain and sorrow.
Do you know now what the tsunami did? In the future, if someone asks you if the tsunami destroyed everything, you should tell them it was just what ordinary people saw, while Saints would see that the tsunami had removed all barriers which prevented people from joining together, and making everyone have compassion for each other again.
In one neighbouring area, the people had not cared about anyone else. When all houses were badly damaged in a fire, all the people, who treated each other unkindly, suddenly felt sympathy with each other. The fire burned down everything they had. After the accident, they knew that they should love and rely on each other to rebuild their houses and their life. The tsunami had make people reunited in its own way. Therefore, the tsunami brought a lot of benefit to human beings, not just the mourning.
On the other hand, the tsunami shook the faith in extremist religious beliefs. The disaster has been a big challenge to these extreme believers. Why? When following a religion, people hope to find the things that this world does not give them. Because the world is full of hatred, people believe in “someone”, a “Supreme Saint”, who would always love and protect them.
Why are you going to temples? To look for the compassion, right? We go to temples with the hope that Buddha, the monks, nuns and fellow Buddhists will love and care for us. And above all, that is the immense love and compassion of Buddha for all of beings in the universe. Following Buddhism, we seek love and protection, which is very hard to find in life.
There are many reasons why someone would follow a religion. Life is full of suffering, bitterness, selfishness, jealousy, so people follow a religion to feel loved and have the protection from God. But is it true that God really love and protect them? When the tsunami struck, the faith in religion shook because it seemed God did not love or protect them as people used to think about their God. Even according their religion, God Himself has created the tsunami waves. They used to think that God has created all, so now with the tsunami they did not know what to say and their faith in religion began to break.
When sufferings come, theocratic religion could not explain why they failed to protect their followers. Most religions promised its followers that God would love and protect those who follow it. Many people believed so and they prayed to God every night but still were killed by the tsunami. When people asked about that, their priests secretly assured them that, “God works in a mysterious way. God punished people because they had not lived as per his teachings and they did not have enough faith in Him.“
The answer was not right! For human beings, criminals are brought to court for trial first, and depend on the seriousness of the crime committed, the criminals would be sentenced accordingly… it could be just five or ten years imprisonment; or it could be death sentence. Not everyone receives the same sentencing for what they did.
Now, if we put these 300,000 tsunami victims on trial, amongst them, there would be quite a few who had lived cruelly with others; but there would be others who had never committed a crime in their life e.g. children…
However, why did the tsunami kill them all? Was God too strict that He punished men more harshly than men punished men? We should think about this carefully.
Or there may be an alternative explanation. This was a reminder from God to all human beings that all human beings should practise and cultivate appropriately. If so, why did God have to impose such harsh punishment onto us?
Or maybe it was that: God used that way to challenge human’s faith in
Him. And clearly, after this tsunami disaster, no one would believe in extremist religions any more. No explanation would be accepted.
So what is the Truth?
That is the belief in karma, the law of Cause and Effect. The tsunami struck from Indonesia to Thailand, from Sri Lanka to East Africa all was due to the karma of men. If anything, this event helped stress the importance and the significance of karma. Why is that so? It is because karma let a human being know about his/her own responsibilities. Human being had done a huge amount of evil things over many lives and the recent tsunami was their retribution. However, after death, each person went on different paths. For many of those, who lived a great life, but had to pay for their past lives sins, would have gone to heaven. However, many others, because of their bad karma from many of their past lives, their souls would not able to be released and reborn. On the other hand, many other souls would be able to reborn to be human being again. As for the rest, the worst ones, would have gone down to hell. We could now understand that though they suffered the same death, they still went to different places after death due to their different karma.
Only karma can explain why people had the same retribution but had different realms after their death. Karma based on how we live our lives and how much blessing we have. The tsunami undermined the belief in theocratic religions but firmly confirmed the accuracy of the law of Cause and Effect. We should convey what the tsunami wanted to say to everyone, especially those extremists who foolishly believe in theocratic religions.
After this disaster, a new philosophic principle was born. It is that:
People should not be narrow-minded, and separate themselves from each other because of different religions, different languages and different races because human beings are treated equally in pain and sorrow. When we have to suffer the same pain and sorrow, nothing else would matter. Therefore, the most important thing is to unite all human beings and bring happiness to them. This is a new philosophy.
Buddha’s teaching: “We all have the same red blood and salty tears” is an eternal truth. Human beings’ lives and pain are worth the same. Except for a few people in power who want to dominate the world, most people just want to live in peace, love and rely on each other. The Earth is inherently small and fragile, so there is no reason for us to fight with each other. Let’s live together in harmony, kindness and build the heaven on Earth.
An American woman has once said, if she had the only wish, she would wish for World Peace. After the tsunami disaster, people realise the impermanence of life, so they do not want to create war. This world is too small, how could we want to separate ourselves any longer.
Recently, there was an article titled “It’s a very small world“. What does this really mean? When we do not see each other often, we naturally could forget the other person. When we have the chance to meet again, we often say “It is a small world”, but we never say “The earth is round”.
The article told a story about a swindler in prison. He was talking to another fellow prisoner. Here was their conversation:
- “What brought you here?” asked the fellow prisoner.
- “I cheated.” said the swindler.
- “Are you any good?” asked the fellow prisoner.
- “Excellent, the best!” said the swindler.
- “So, tell me the most impressive one,” the fellow prisoner said.
The swindler began: I was in Austria and met a woman. Her name was
… I cheated her by telling her that I would set up a company for her and sooner she would become a millionaire. At first, she followed my guidance then offered me tens of thousands of dollars… Then I left her for another one… then another one… until I’m here. That was what I did.
The fellow prisoner heard the story then said coldly, “Well, I regret to tell you that I’m the husband of that woman.”
What does that mean? The swindler had been caught and surprisingly was put in prison, sharing the same cell with the victim’s husband. And with more and more evidence were found, he must have got a heavier sentencing. Moreover, he would always have felt uneasy as he had to share the same cell with the victim’s husband.
We all must be kind to each other, so that when, by chance, we meet again we would not have to be so uncomfortable and uneasy about it because
“it is a small world”.
When we realise that life is so fragile and short, everything else would seem to be immaterial and not so important. When witnessing a horrific scene of many bodies lying on the beach, people began wondering: “Where are these people’s souls?” and “Where will we go after our death?”
Therefore, the new trend of the world today is to live a spiritual and religious life. People spend more time in understanding religions, spirituals to understand where we would go after death, heaven or hell, or just nowhere.
Besides, the belief in theocratic religions must also be assessed and considered carefully. People must accept the fairness of karma, the law of Cause and Effect. Only the law of Cause and Effect can explain everything thoroughly. If we believed that one of the Gods had created all, then our belief would be shaken. There is another important principle, that we all must consider: “A truly supreme being does not need to create all, but He must be the greatest teacher who would teach and guide the human race towards the only Truth.”
Who could that be? It is Buddha. It is Him, who brought great happiness and compassion to this world. Though our life may have lots of happiness but our happiness is no fragile. This happiness could not be compared with the feeling when we kneel down in front of Buddha with boundless homage and respect for Him.
We must reconsider a few things. What we love most could also be the worst, the disaster. In many countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, because of many beautiful beaches, there was the need for tourism, and as the result many resorts, nightclubs were built. The tsunami happened and swept away all. This event has taught us one lesson: We must do good deeds, and avoid committing evil sins. Even when we could do anything good, we must not claim and be proud. It is because: what we do that benefits for others, would also benefit for us.
Finally, what did the tsunami want to tell us?
It was the dream of a peaceful world without war and killings. In this world, human would be treated equally, with no boundaries, no differences in nationalities or race. Extremist and theocratic religions would not exist in this world. This world would always be full of happiness, compassion and would always be peaceful.
Namo Shakya muni Buddha.
