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| Sunday, 23 January 2005 |
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Life's end that defies an answer by Sumana Saparamadu "What happened? I can't fathom this," said my friend as we stood a little away from the two coffins of the father and daughter placed near the crematorium at Kanatta. Three more coffins were in the funeral parlour, those of the younger daughter and her two children, both under five.
On that fateful day, while the daughters' spouses and the teenage grandson had escaped with injuries, the father, the two daughters and the two infants were felled by the towering black waves that devastated Nilaveli Beach Hotel. By the day of the funeral, which was three days after tsunami struck, we had heard of many deaths of acquaintances, but never anticipated the death toll to be over 35,000. My friend is a Christian by birth and upbringing and I am a Buddhist. We have our own conceptions of life and death and the after life, as explained in our respective religions. Mine is based on Kamma or Karma, the inexorable law of cause and consequence, the consequences of our actions good and bad which are always with us like our shadows - chaayaya anapaanini, or like the cart wheel that follows the hoof marks of the oxen - chakkamva vahato padam. Talking about this disaster with a friend who is wiser than I, and more knowledgeable, I said "it must have been their karma that pushed these many victims of the tsunami to go to those particular places on that black Sunday." Her answer was "we tend to explain everything away by attributing them to karma. There must be other explanations". Scholar She was right as she often is. Since the tsunami, I have been reading articles in the daily papers by erudite scholar monks on the subject and discussing this with many who have read more on Buddhism than I have. but for the tsunami I would not have learnt of the Niyama the natural laws that govern the cosmos, expounded in the suttas and the Pali exegetical literature. There is mention of a five-fold cosmic order, Niyama-Utu, beeja, kamma, citta and dhamma niyama. Dhamma Niyama, as defined in the Pali Text Society's dictionary is "the order of the norm". To most, Dhamma connotes the Doctrine of The Buddha. Here dhamma is law or order as in "esa dhammo sanantano" - "This is the eternal order". As explained by the erudite, there is a life span that is the norm for a particular community/country or a particular period of time. A 100 years ago the life-span that was the norm for the people of Sri Lanka was less than 50. Health care and new drugs and vaccines etc have pushed that norm up to the 70s. And when that norm is reached life will come to its natural end. These deaths have no connection with karma. Growing old and infirm is a dhamma niyama not a kamma niyama. Round-the-clock medical care, and ethics and laws that prevent the unplugging of life supporting devices try to defy the kamma niyama when in actual fact life has already been lived and is now over. Climate Utu Niyama is the physical law of causation, the physical order as opposed to the kamma niyama. Utu nibbata is coming into existence through physical causes. These are the seasons, climate, weather, floods, droughts, cyclones, tidal waves and land slides causing damage to life and limb, house and property, land and sea, even altering physical features. What the 18th century economist and demographer Malthus saw as checks on population growth are brought about by utu niyama. While accepting that natural forces over which man has no control, which in the English language are referred to as "acts of God", do off and on, decimate whole villages, provinces and communities, I still believe that the kamma niyama, also works during such catastrophies as floods and tidal waves. How else does one explain one or two members of a family or group surviving while all others succumb to the utu niyama, like the tsunami. It is on record that when the first tsunami that "invaded" Portugal's capital Lisbon in November 1755 swept back, a curious crowd rushed to the floor of the bay to see this unique scene. Minutes later came the second wave killing large numbers. What propelled them there if not the kamma niyama the law of action (in previous births) and their consequence. That is how I see it. Southern To come to our own times, it was in the late 60s that a tidal wave swept into the southern part of Tamil Nadu. It crashed on the railway line, just when the Madras bound train from Dhanushkodi was on the Paamban bridge, bringing down the bridge and the train with over 1,000 passengers. Was it just a coincidence that the train was on the bridge, when the tidal wave a manifestation of the utu niyama, came crashing in! (It was after this disaster that Rameshwaram became the terminus on the Indian side of the ferry service across the Palk Straits. Earlier the terminus was Dhanushkodi). |
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After much persuasion the father had agreed to join the daughters and
their families on this long-anticipated holiday to the East coast.
