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quake/tsunami video ... up close and personal
genkaku
Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
Received in email this video clip of the Japanese quake/tsunami ... from the point of view of a driver whose car was engulfed. http://www.flixxy.com/japanese-tsunami-viewed-from-a-car.htm#.Tjhfbd6lUWQ.email
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Comments
http://sdhammika.blogspot.com/2011/03/tsunami-buddhist-view.html
Or, to put it bluntly, sometimes bad shit just happens.
I don't mean this disrespectfully ... just literally: If you knew, what good would it do you?
But going back to tying karma to natural disasters: I was horrified by various people's insensitive comments earlier this year on various websites (not here) calling this "karma" for Pearl Harbour. As if having two nuclear bombs dropped on two cities were not enough...
I do believe in the ancient Greek notion of political (and, somewhat related, cultural) hubris though-- and history is full of it, and we are seeing a lot of it today. No intentional act arises from a vacuum (whether we agree with that particular action or not). Some people tried to explain that back in 2001 and got shouted down, put in their place and labelled "unamerican."
@genkaku didn't the Buddha see karma? Didn't he use that information to lessen the suffering of those around him?
When the shit hits the fan, the theory doesn't mitigate or aggravate anything. Tsunami is tsunami ... that's all. The backdrop against which a tsunami occurs -- geological, tectonic, karmic -- hardly matters to the (wo)man caught in its path.
The flip side of imagining natural events to be karmically induced is to imagine that if we were all extra-special careful or good or virtuous or something, then the shit would never hit the fan ... an empirically-flimsy theory at best, don't you think?
Nothing saying we can't watch our P's and Q's ... but that is a matter of nourishing an honest peace, not a matter of warding off some boogie man.
1. This earth is supported by water, the water by air, the air by space. At times great winds blow strongly and the water is shaken. When the water is shaken, the earth is shaken.
2. A recluse or deity of great power causes the earth to shake by the power of concentration.
3. When the Bodhisatta passes away from the Tusita heaven, mindfully and deliberately, and is conceived in his mother’s womb the great earth shakes.
4. When the Bodhisatta issues forth from his mother’s womb, mindfully and deliberately, the great earth shakes.
5. When the Tathāgata attains the supreme and perfect enlightenment the great earth shakes.
6. When the Tathāgata sets in motion the wheel of the Dhamma the great earth shakes.
7. When the Tathāgata, mindfully and deliberately, gives up the life-sustaining mental process the great earth shakes. (He could prolong his life by supernormal power but not being asked, he gives up the possibility and announces the time of his death.)
8. When a Buddha passes away and attains parinibbāna the great earth shakes.
I'm sure someone will post something about how we don't know what the Buddha actually said, but the truth is, all we know is from suttas and sutras. I don't think we are wise to just disregard them when they are not convenient.
My personal, or a group's collective karma may include suffering through an earthquake or other natural disaster, but natural disasters happen due to their own causes and conditions, without regard to human karma.
Actually they are not disasters at all....just nature doing what it does. We choose to call them disasters because they do not meet up with our preferences.