Psychoanalysts, psychologists, and grief counselors talk about several different stages of grief people go through as they struggle to come to terms with the void left by the deaths of loved ones, and even the loss of treasured material belongings, or pets. For instance, when I interviewed Dr. D.V.J. Harischandra, one of Sri Lanka’s most eminent consultant psychiatrists who regularly appeared on television panels discussing the tsunami and its aftermath, he talked about four stages of grief survivors experience after a death of a loved one. In moving, informative books about grief work, Vamik D. Volkan and Elizabeth Zintl [1] mention five stages, while Kathleen O’Hara [2] outlines seven. But all agree survivors must accept the loss and overcome their despair to move on with life.
However, it is not to psychologists but to religion that the vast majority of Sri Lankans turn to cope with grief, and Rev. Tatedera says the same is true in Japan. This is because besides providing a worldview, religions also provide us with an ethos - the complex of ideals, beliefs, or standards characterizing a way of being in, and relating to, the world. One dimension of this ethos is religious ethics like the Five Precepts in Buddhism or the Ten Commandments in Christianity. Another is religious ritual.
Rituals, whether religious or not, are symbolic, routine, and repetitive activities that enable us to connect with those dimensions of life we consider most valuable. In all societies death rituals are among the most important, and both Sri Lankan and Japanese Buddhists perform a series of traditional funerary ceremonies based on Buddhist teachings. Religious Studies professor, Amanda Porterfield, points out that it is religious experiences of this type that are the most essential aspect of religion, for without them religion would be empty, abstract, and meaningless. [3] But because they are performed within a particular environment of belief, she says that for anthropologists trying to understand and interpret the religion of another, understanding their religious experience is also the aspect that is most difficult to grasp and to describe because all that observers see are the actions of the mourners; the inner intensions are invisible. So, in this chapter, I describe and analyze in detail the meaning and significance of the rituals Japanese and Sri Lankan Buddhists perform before cremation, and talk more briefly about the periodic rituals that follow. I hope that this discussion will convey to readers some insights about the inner intensions of the mourners as they perform the last rites for their loved ones.
As mentioned, Sri Lanka follows the Theravada tradition while Japan follows the Mahayana tradition. In both countries, except in cases such as tsunamis which may necessitate mass burials, people normally cremate the dead. Particularly villagers in both societies keep the bodies of deceased loved ones at home, and keep vigil even through the nights. And after the cremation, bereaved families in both societies share a meal with family and friends, and perform periodic rituals in the memory of the deceased loved ones.
Funeral rituals in both countries are rooted in Buddha’s advice to his disciples – to Arhat Mokuren according to Mahayana belief, and to King Bimbisara according to Theravada belief – to help their deceased loved ones reach a state of existence where they would not suffer. However, as we will see, the different perceptions of that next state of existence mean very different funeral rituals in the two countries.
Sri Lankan Buddhists perform three different funeral rituals. The first is pansukula, which I describe and analyze below. The second, malabatha, is a meal shared with family and friends after the funeral. The third, dana is the most elaborate. As noted in Chapter Two, The term means ‘benevolent giving’ and in the context of death, it means the offering of food, robes, and other items to monks. Dana offerings are made seven days, three months, and a year after the death, and often, annually.
Though I attended five dana ceremonies for tsunami victims during the course of my research, I did not witness any tsunami-related pansukula rituals. However, all Sri Lankan Buddhists belong to the Theravada School of Buddhism and with the exception of minor regional differences that may vary its performance, the meaning and significance of this and the other funerary rituals remain the same for all regardless of urban/rural and class/caste dichotomies, and whether survivors live in Sri Lanka or elsewhere. I have participated in many pansukula rituals, including those for my parents. So, even though I recognize that the degree of grief and despair experienced by tsunami survivors who lost loved ones may be far worse than emotions experienced by others who lose loved ones in less traumatic ways, I provide an emic (insider) account and analysis of the experiences, meanings, and intention of this ritual, and how it helps mourners to cope with their grief. My discussion of Japanese funerary rituals too provides an emic account, based on information imparted to me by the Japanese priests, my friend Yuki, who returned home for her mother’s funeral, and was there when her father passed away, and anthropological and other published sources.
The pansukula ritual takes place immediately before the body is removed for cremation. Like in Japan, Colombo and other big cities now have commercial funeral parlors where some families keep the body, but in villages families keep the bodies of their loved ones at home till the cremation. Sri Lankan villages may have two or three temples and families might support all of them, but they tend to associate with one more closely. When people are dying under normal circumstances, monks from any temple may be invited to chant pirith to help the dying persons purify their minds because according to the Buddha, it is the final thought in a person’s mind that determines his or her next birth. But when they pass away, family members invite the monks of the temple they normally attend to perform the pansukula ritual.
When monks arrive for the ritual, immediate family members of the deceased gather on a mat on the floor near the coffin. Chairs are available for the monks and other guests. The ritual, which has several distinct components, begins with all Buddhist attendees paying obeisance to the Buddha, and then reciting the following words three times:
Buddham Saranang Gacchami,
Dhammam Saranam Gacchami,
Sanghang Saranam Gacchami
They mean, “I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dhamma, and I take refuge in the Sangha.”
The Encyclopedic Edition of The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language defines the word “refuge” as, “shelter or protection from danger, distress or difficulty / a place offering this / or person, thing, or course of action offering protection.” Buddhists believe that the wisdom and the noble characteristics of the Buddha, the truth of his teachings, and the strengths of his past and present disciples offer protection to them, so all Buddhist rituals begin in this manner. Next they observe Pan Sil, the Five Precepts (see below,) repeating the Pali stanzas administered by one of the monks.
After this preliminary part is over, a family member offers a white cloth, measuring at least two and a half meters, to the monks in the memory of the deceased. If soft drinks or fruit juices are offered as refreshments to them, those will also be kept near the cloth. As with all items donated to them, the monks accept these items on behalf of the whole community of Sangha of the past, present, and future, which minimizes desire for “ownership.”
The cloth, called the Mataka Vastra, is symbolic of the ancient Indian funerary practice when corpses were wrapped in a white cloth and taken to graveyards or jungles, and the monks use the pieces of donated fabric for various purposes. They may dye them and sew robes for novice monks, donate them to hospitals, or give them to a needy family to make uniforms for their children to wear to the Dhamma school, or to sew the outfits lay people wear when observing sil. After the Mataka Vastra puja (offering) one of the monks delivers an eulogy and a short dhamma sermon, the essence of which is about the uncertainty of life, and the certainty and universality of death.
In Buddhist philosophy and the Sinhala society and culture, the topic of death is never avoided as in the U.S. where the famous psychologist, Kubler-Ross said death has been traditionally “viewed as taboo, discussion of it is regarded as morbid, and children are excluded with the presumption and pretext that it would be ‘too much’ for them.” Her ground breaking work on death and dying led to an increased awareness and acceptance of the dying process in the U.S., and today, many universities even teach courses on the topic.
But the Buddha portrayed death as the lens that enables us to view and comprehend in depth the value and meaning of being human, the highest among living beings. So, in his talk, the monk reminds the people about the importance of reflecting on death and on the right way to live. If we uphold the Five Precepts which ensure the well-being of others as well as ourselves, we will live and die without fears and regrets, and also gain good rebirths, he says. Such reflection is commonly encouraged even when life is going smoothly, and helps the people to view death as a natural occurrence.
The first lesson the Buddha taught the world after he gained enlightenment was to show gratitude to those who helped us. And in his talk the monk also comforts the family by reminding them they are fulfilling their obligations to the departed loved one by giving him or her a proper funeral, and by transferring the ‘merits,’ as explained below, to the deceased. The monk’s talk may be followed by short eulogies by other monks who knew the deceased well, and a lay person or two. Then a family member thanks all the attendees for any assistance rendered, and for their presence.
After the speeches, the pansukula ritual shifts towards a short meditation on death, rebirth, and Nirvana (enlightenment) as the monks chant in unison:
Aniccavata Sankhara
Uppada Vaya Dhammino
Uppacchitva Nirujjati
Thesan Vupa Samo Sukho
This means, “Impermanent are all component things. They arise and cease, that is their nature; they come into being and pass away. Release from them is bliss supreme (meaning Nirvana).”
This ritual, as well as dana people give in memory of deceased loved ones, end with punya anumodhana or the “transferring of merits” to the departed one. This is the moment when the deepest inner feelings and intentions of the survivors are expressed by the outer form of the ritual. But before explaining how and why we transfer merits to the deceased, I will briefly clarify the concept of “merits” because many non-Buddhists seem to think that punya or “merits” are something tangible like money that Buddhists want to accumulate for the benefit of future lives. This is not so.
In the Buddhist context, “merits” (punya) means the happiness or contentment that is generated by kind, generous, compassionate thoughts, words, and deeds, as long as they are done with no attachments, conditions, ulterior motives, or through dishonest means. Such words, thoughts, and deeds or ‘meritorious activities,’ purify our minds, and reflecting upon them brings us a great deal of happiness and sense of peace as long as we live. Of course, such happiness is not confined to Buddhists. When people of any religious background are kind and generous to others, they gain deep satisfaction or merits from the results of their thoughtfulness and generosity. By contrast, “unwholesome” thoughts and actions based on hatred, stinginess, selfishness, and so on generate thoughts that pollute our minds and make life more stressful and unpleasant. According to the Buddha, cultivating wholesome thoughts, habits, and behaviors is important because what we carry forward to the next life is not a “soul,” but the stream of consciousness we have been cultivating through our samsaric journeys.
The New World Dictionary of the American Language defines soul as “an entity which is regarded as being the immortal or spiritual part of the person.” It is said to exist permanently by itself once the body is gone. But as mentioned before, according to the Buddha, nothing exists independently or forever, everything in this universe is interconnected and interdependent, and all component things, as well as our mental states, are subject to change. Thus he said we are anatma or “soul-less” and what we carry forward into future lives is the stream of consciousness we develop in each life. [4] Therefore, the focus of the Buddha’s teachings is mental purification or the right mental cultivation with acts such as dana, seela (discipline of mind and body,) and bhavana (meditation.) In the final part of the pansukula, the survivors “transfer the merits” they accumulated, to their deceased loved one.
This transfer is done with close family members pouring water from a pitcher to a bowl until it overflows. This act is called pan wedeema and the overflowing water symbolizes the overflowing merits being transferred. While pouring the water, survivors focus their minds, filled with thoughts of loving kindness, on the deceased and chant this stanza three times:
Idhamme gnathinam hothu
Sukhitha hothu gnatiyo”
It means, “May these merits reach my deceased relative/s.” The rest of the attendees also engage their minds similarly, although they do not participate in the pouring of water. Once the pan wedeema is over, the monks chant:
Yathavari Vaha Pura
Pari purenthi sagarang
Eva meva itho dinnam
Pethanang upa kappatu
Meaning: “Just as rivers fill the seas, may merits given here reach those who have passed away.”
Merits are thus transferred because in the Buddhist cosmology, there are different realms of existence, some higher than the human existence in spirituality and materiality, and others lower. According to the teachings, when a person dies, he or she will be born in the human realm, or in one of the other realms as determined by his or her karmic energies, but none of those lives are permanent. Among the realms of existences, there is one known as paradatthupa jiivi, meaning ‘Those who are waiting to gain merits – in this case the purity of mind – from meritorious actions of others.’
The Buddha talks about how paradattupa jivii benefit from meritorious actions performed in their memories in Tirokudda Sutta (Sutra.) But it should be understood that this unhappy state of existence is not the same as the Catholic idea of purgatory. Purgatory is understood to be a condition or place of purification where the souls of the departed, though in a condition of grace, are purified by suffering before they enter paradise. [5] In the Theravada Buddhist cosmology, we are reborn countless times, and as mentioned, there is no agency of a Creator in any part of our lives and deaths. The Buddha identified tanha meaning desire, greed, grasping, craving, attachment, as a primary factor in all suffering as well as in rebirth; as long as we harbor tanha, whether positive or negative, we remain dissatisfied and grasp for more.
So, according to the Buddha, all individuals are responsible for their salvation through their own actions and efforts and neither the Buddha, the deities, nor the monks can “save” another and confer on them Nirvana. The Buddha himself was a human being who was born as a prince in ancient India, and discovered the path to enlightenment through his own efforts, and in numerous sermons, taught others how to achieve it. Like him, all individuals are capable of attaining Nirvana themselves by eliminating the tanha that steers them towards future lives by cultivating equanimity of mind. So, what is the point of the above ritual? The Buddha said survivors can help paradatthupa jiivi in their rebirth process because we are all an integral part of the universe and what we think, say, and do, have an impact on others. And when we perform the funeral rites for the deceased, if they have been reborn as paradattupa jiivi, our thought waves can reach them. Or, if they are capable of hearing and seeing, they will see offerings made in their memories, and hear the chanting. The meritorious feelings or the happiness they feel then will purify their minds and consequently, they may be released from their helpless state of existence and gain a new birth, or gain material benefits in the world where they are now living.
Of course, nobody knows if their deceased relatives or friends are in need of meritorious help, but it is critical to understand that none of the death rituals are performed to ensure right relationships with those in the unseen world because of a fear that they might harm the survivors if the rituals were not performed. Tirokudda Sutta shows the compassion with which the Buddha viewed the paradattupa jiivi, and most often, along with sadness, the overwhelming feeling that survivors feel during pan wedeema are love and compassion for their deceased loved one. They may also feel guilt because they could not or did not fulfill their duties to the person while he or she was alive. So, transferring the merits has very important psychological benefits for the survivors because they are engaged in constructive action for the welfare of the deceased, and all pansukula rituals as well as dana offerings made in the memory of deceased loved ones end with the transferring of merits, done through pan wedeema.
At the end of the pan wedeema, a monk usually blesses the people, saying, “May all of you and all of us enjoy healthy and productive lives and benefits of the higher realms, and may everyone ultimately attain the bliss of Nirvana.” They then return to the temple, and the body is removed for cremation. After the tsunami, families performed funerary rituals and transferred merits for missing loved ones too, and as mentioned, the absence of the body at the rituals in no way lessened its meaning and significance. Let us now look at the first funeral ritual that Japanese Buddhists perform, at which it is very important to have the body present, because their perception of life and the afterlife differs significantly from the Theravada perspective.
***
Although Buddhism became Japan’s principal religion in the historical period, “It was a Buddhism which already reflected its composite Chinese form and which was to be largely accommodated to the ethos of Shinto, Japan’s older religious tradition” says Geoffrey Parrinder. [6] Both these traditions subscribe to the concept of a soul so, even though the Buddha negated the theory of atma, and Japanese priests are familiar with the teachings, Rev. Fujimoto told me that “The popular Japanese Buddhist belief is we have souls, and many Japanese Buddhists who nominally follow the Mahayana tradition in practice may not subscribe to the anatma theory”.
Both the Mahayana Buddhist and Shinto traditions also assert that we owe our existence to our ancestors, a belief that does not exist among Sri Lankan Buddhists. Ancestors include all members – young and old, male and female – who die in the husband’s side of a stem family and whether one knew them or not, they remain an integral part of the descendants’ family life. But because the Shinto religion perceives death as a polluting state that humans cannot purify, most Japanese funeral rituals are conducted by Buddhist priests. [7] In this section, I will first describe and analyze the first funeral ritual that Japanese Buddhists perform, and then talk about the role of ancestors in the lives of their descendants.
While Buddhist priests of any sect perform funeral rituals, they are based on ancient Zen Buddhist funerary traditions for ordained priests. Therefore, Rev. Tatedera explained to me, “Even for lay people, the object of the service is to enable the dead person to become a Buddhist monk; the funeral ceremony is essentially an ordination of the deceased person because though the physical body is dead, the spirit is still here. So, we start by giving the deceased person a Dharma name to make him or her a Buddhist monk. Then we give the person some teaching of the scriptures through the recitation of the Sutras. During the chanting we tell the dead person, ‘With this learning, may you practice Buddhism in your next life.’ At the end of the ordination we send the spirit off to another world, to another dimension.”
For this posthumous ordination, the body is traditionally dressed in a white cotton kimono to give the appearance of somebody going on a pilgrimage though nowadays, men may be dressed in suits also. My friend, Yuki, who attended the funerals of both her parents, reached home only after her mother died. When her father died, however, she was by his side. Both her parents died in the hospital and she said hospital workers cleaned their bodies and put on the white kimonos. Her mother was already in the casket when Yuki saw her, “But,” she recalled tenderly, “When my father died, my brother, sister, and I put on the white gloves on his hands and the special white shoes on his feet, and hung the little pouch with the coins around his neck so he can cross the river to get to the other realm.”
The river Yuki refers to is the Sanzu River or the River of Three Crossings. It is thought to be located in Mount Osore, a desolate and remote region in Northern Japan. The popular belief is that the dead must cross it on their way to the afterlife and as indicated by its name, the river has three crossing points. The point at which each person crosses depends on their karmic actions while alive. Those who did much good cross over easily on a bridge adorned with seven precious substances. Those with relatively even karmic balance between good and evil cross at the ford, but those who did more evil than good have to wade through deep water infested with hideous serpents. And when they reach the other bank, it is said that a female demon strips the dead of their clothes, and a male demon hangs the clothes on the branch of a tree to determine the weight of their offenses. [8] Yuki said she did not understand the greater part of the Sutra teaching and chanting the priests performed for her deceased parents. But a small part she understood said, “You did everything you could in your real life and now you are ready to go the different world. Everybody is watching you and protecting you and there is nothing to worry about.” The deceased is thus reassured because the journey takes 49 days and as seen above, it may be fraught with danger.
Yuki showed me photographs of her parents’ funerals. The caskets lay on decorated wooden altars, which also displayed large photographs of her parents, tablets with their posthumous Dharma names, more tablets with names of close family members, the box into which the remains will go following the cremation, and offerings including rice, fruits, sweets, water, vases of white chrysanthemums, and incense. Hearses transporting the coffins to the crematorium are elaborately decorated as well. “A family member who is chosen as the chief mourner always accompanies the casket when it is taken to the crematorium. The rest of us go in our own vehicles.” Yuki said. At her parents’ funerals, her older brother was the chief mourner.
In Japan, said Rev. Fujimoto, the first ritual in particular plays a vital role in strengthening family bonds because, “Nowadays families don’t get together as often as they did in the past and the deceased brings family members together so that they can reflect together on the causes and conditions (meaning ancestors) that make them who they are. Thus even though the deceased becomes part of the infinite and they are beyond time and space, they will always be a part of the family and of who you are.” And of course, fulfilling their obligations towards the deceased by performing traditional funeral ceremonies is psychologically enormously beneficial to descendants.
After her father’s cremation, Yuki and her siblings picked up the pieces of the bones with chopsticks and put them into the wooden box that will be placed in the family tomb. Family tombs, as explained below, are located in family temples. Yuki said, “We keep the remains at home until the 49th day; that’s how long it takes the dead person to reach the next realm of existence. During that period we invite the priest to come home and chant every seventh day, so they will have a safe journey.”
Since she had to return to the US soon after the funerals, Yuki was not present for the 49th day ceremonies for her parents. But her siblings and close relatives took the remains to the temple and after the priest chanted, placed the boxes in the family tomb, located in the grave yard of their family temple. The family tomb is the abode of all the ancestors of the family. David W. Plath writes that if the family line continues and descendants perform the periodic ceremonies, the oldest ancestors may be remembered a hundred or more years after their deaths. By then, the dead have left the memories of the living because their contemporaries too have died and by losing their personal characteristics, they achieve stable ancestorhood. [9]
With generations of ancestors resting in the family tomb, there is a tight bond between families and their family temples, priests, and grave yards. It is in large part a legacy of Western hegemony and of Christian and Catholic missionary activity in the East. In Ritual Practice in Modern Japan, Satsuki Kawano shows how missionary activities led to the political empowerment of Buddhist temples and the upliftment of traditional values during the Edo period. Seeing Christianity, which gave priority to one’s relationship with God as a threat to the traditional power base built on loyalty to the feudal lords and the shogunate, the Tokugawa shogunate required people to formally register their households with Buddhist temples, and each family to worship their ancestors. The shogunate also forbade conversion to Christianity, and authorized temples to verify members had not done so by performing Buddhist ancestral rituals for them, and by maintaining temple records identifying members of households, their family temples, Buddhist school of affiliation, places of birth, and current addresses. [10]
By 1660, temple registries had become standard practice. Though the system was later abolished, people continue to turn to their family priests for help when loved ones die because it is in the grave yards of those temples that their ancestors lie. Descendants also tend to visit them on the annual death days, the two equinoxes, during Obon, the Festival of the Dead celebrated between July 15 and August 15, depending on the sect and region in which people live, and the New Year, and make ritual offerings. But some may go on other days too and if the family line continues, generations of a deceased person’s descendants may perform the periodic tsuizen kuyo meaning “later-practice-good deeds” for the peace and prosperity of the departed person, [11] to help the deceased first reach stable ancestorhood, and then Buddhahood, the ultimate goal in Mahayana Buddhism.
Theravada Buddhists believe while anyone can attain Nirvana, only individuals who set themselves the goal of becoming a Buddha, and then diligently work towards it over countless lifetimes can reach that noble goal. Mahayana Buddhists believe every human being can become a Buddha by becoming spiritually awakened. [12] In the Zen tradition, Buddhahood is achieved through meditation. In the Jodo Shin tradition, it is achieved with the assurance of entry into the Pure Land, the abode of the Amida Buddha. Rev. Fujimoto said that Amida Buddha is a symbol of the essence of Enlightenment characterized by wisdom and compassion, and that “Amida Buddha promises those who uttered his name even once will enter Pure Land.”
In both traditions, families have domestic shrines where they venerate the Buddha, but in Japan, the domestic altar is also where families regularly worship and appreciate their ancestors. So there, domestic altars usually contain a statue of the Buddha as well as photographs of those who died recently, ancestral tablets in which the ancestral spirits are believed to reside, and which are inscribed with the posthumous names of the dead, and the utensils needed for their ritual worship such as lanterns, rice dishes, tea containers, vases, offering trays, incense bowls, candle holders. Altars also have drawer where amulets, passbooks, seals, sutra books, and a booklet containing the names of the dead family members are kept. [13]
As mentioned above, ancestors, though no longer alive, remain an integral part of the descendants’ families, and it is believed that they help descendants in times of difficulties or with other needs. So, Japanese Buddhists not only pray for the welfare of their ancestors, they also pray to the ancestors for their own welfare. Rev. Fujita, for instance, said “My grandmother believed very, very strongly that our ancestors protect our family. I used to see her talking to them. I don’t know what she said, but people report important family news, like ‘I got married, or your granddaughter entered college,’ as well as bad news to their ancestors. They also ask for help from ancestors to give them good health, good fortune, longevity, and so on.”
Rev. Fujita’s words were echoed by Yuki. She said her mother always offered a small bowl of freshly cooked rice to their ancestors along with a glass of water so they will not be hungry, before serving the family. Yuki’s mother too reported important family news to their ancestors and asked for help and even though she lives in the US, Yuki continues the traditions. When she buys Japanese sweets or fresh fruits, she offers some to her mother first. She told her mother the happy news of her little son entering kindergarten, and asks for help when she has disagreements with her husband or other problems. The authority of ancestors over domestic matters too is such that Kawano says that elders even discipline the young saying “What will your ancestors think of what you have done?”
In fact, ancestors are so important that Yuki said that “For us, Buddhism is more like ancestor (worship.) For us ancestors are very precious. We have to protect them, we have to respect them. We protect them from the same things they protect us. We clean the grave stones so they will not be uncomfortable. A few days before Obon (the festival honoring the dead when people believe the souls of the departed visit their homes,) we go to the temple and pay the monk to pray for our ancestors, and we go to the grave yard and pray for them, so they will have a safe trip home. And after three days when they go back, we again pray for them, but usually at the home altar.”
Rev. Fujita conveyed the same sentiments when he recalled how, when his father was offered a very good job in another town when the priest was young, his grandmother said, “No way! Who is going to take care of our grave yard?” and refused to move. So, his father remained at his old job. The priest continued, “If our house was burning, my grandmother would save our ancestor’ spirit tablets in the altar first.” Talking about the altar he said. “The altar is the foundation of a family’s strength. It connects them with the ancestors and through the grave yard the family is connected to the land under which ancestors are believed to be sleeping.” He was referring to the family graves located in the temple grounds, seen as the outside abode of the ancestors.
So, referring to the tsunami devastated region Rev. Tatedera said, “You can see how dreadful the situation is for evacuees! Not only have they lost their family members, they have also lost their family altars, the family temples, and the grave yards….everything that connects them with that place is gone. Their traditional spiritual ideal is under threat and they must find a way to deal with this. So as priests, we have to give them hope that they can make it. The temple priest has a big responsibility.”
“How do you give them hope? What do you say to them?” I asked.
“For most people it is very important to give the deceased person a formal funeral, to feel they took care of their deceased love one and did the right thing. So we console them saying ‘We cannot do the ceremonies now, but gradually we will recover and then we can do them. So let’s be patient and resilient.’”
Rev. Fujita added, “As long as they have a strong sense of connection (to their ancestors) they will recover.” Thinking of the total loss of all that connected the people to their ancestors, I asked, “Even if the ancestors are not there?” He answered, “Ancestors never go away. The material items through which they communicate with the ancestors and the graves through which they can feel the connection are gone, and these very big losses. But their spirit is always there.”
Rev. Fujimoto said, “The very act of being human creates death and suffering, but death doesn’t mean we have lost that person for ever because all the moments of life we shared, all the lessons we received, did not disappear because the person is gone. We are all interdependent and inter connected. A part of other person becomes you, and vice versa. So even when someone dies, a part of that person continues with you, and by continuing what he or she gave, by passing on what that person transmitted to others, that person lives infinitely. We need to understand that all those who have been part of our lives create who we are. Sharing what you got from your ancestors with others is the best way to honor those who are gone.”
Rev. Tatedera said that in almost every temporary shelter he visited, survivors were reconstructing domestic altars, even if they could spare only a small space for it. “Many people in the Tohoku region preserve the traditions even when they have been exposed to modernization, they value their traditional lifestyle” he said. And according to one report on the 49th day after the tsunami, 170 priests came together to organize the ritual in the debris-strewn town of Soma, and about 1200 mourners filled a hall to overflowing. Many carried photographs of their loved ones. Some brought wooden tablets containing Buddhist names assigned to the dead. But thousands of people still remained missing and one man who was still searching for the body of his elder brother had told the reporter, “It is very difficult because we couldn’t have a proper funeral. This (ritual) gives us some feeling of closure….It was comforting to have so many priests come to pray for our relatives. Maybe someday my brother will be found, (but) maybe not. But he has at least he had this (49th day ritual.)” [14]
There is no doubt that the rituals go a long way in helping those left behind to find some relief from the unbearable pain they must feel. But when the monk, my landlady and I visited some tsunami survivors in our village who had lost loved ones, it was evident that even when they had been able to perform the rituals with no shortcomings, their grief was so deep, and they were psychologically so fragile, it would be a long time before they could come to terms with the tragedy and rebuild their shattered lives. I realized this again when my landlady enabled me to meet two more survivors who lost loved ones.
***
It was on a warm evening that my landlady and I walked through the village with the monk to meet families who had lost loved ones. A young couple had lost their two little girls, their only children. With their home also destroyed, they now lived in the home of the husband’s parents, located inland. When we got there, his mother came out and said the bereaved parents were too distraught to talk to us. Three months later, the monk invited me to attend the third-month dana the family offered, but even then they refused to talk to me.
At the next home, pain was written all over the face of the widow of a hotel worker who had died at his work place. Speaking with an effort, the woman said people initially told her that her husband had survived the tsunami. I met others who had been similarly misinformed, probably because in the confusion that followed in the immediate aftermath of the disaster no one knew who died and who was missing.
The widow went on, but she seemed to talk more to herself than to us. “I visited the spot where my husband died, but I cannot understand why he died. He only had a little blood on the head.” She stopped speaking and looked at the ground. Then she looked hard at us and shouted harshly, “Some people were cleaning up the hotel. They were villagers who worked together with my husband, but they hadn’t even bothered to look for him! His body was under some bushes.” After this outburst, her tone changed again abruptly to one of quiet reflection. “What could anyone have done? It was his time to go…. I gave dana and did all that, what else can I do?” She stared into space. The monk spoke a few words to her. “Riding such an emotional roller coaster, what enormous pain she must endure,” my land lady said when we departed.
Dusk was setting by the time we reached the third home. Located inland, it belonged to an elderly village couple. Their son, Sisira, had lost his wife, all four children, and his home. He had escaped because he had gone on an errand at the time and he was now living with his parents. Sisira’s father-in-law had perished also, but a sister-in-law and a niece who had been visiting his family when the tsunami hit, had survived.
When we visited, Sisira’s mother sent for the two survivors who lived next door. The older survivor, Priya, could only hobble; her right foot and left calf were swathed in white gauze bandages. But the young girl appeared to be fine. When the monk asked if they could tell us their experiences, Priya started her narrative with no hesitation, but her eyes were fixed on the floor. She described how the family clung together when the sea surrounded the house, how the second wave threw all of them into the sea, and how she lost the child she tried to save and all her clothes. Two men who saved her covered her with a sarong floating in the water and sent her to a hospital in a three wheeler.
When she reached this point in her narrative, Priya stopped speaking and stared at the floor, but she did not cry. None of us said anything; we waited till she was ready to continue. But before she did, the grandmother of the deceased children started wailing. “There were all these coffins lined up next to one another right here, in this very room….Oh, we have never seen anything like this….I hope no one else ever goes through such a thing!” Priya sat still. The monk consoled the grandmother, reminding her about anitya, dukkha, and anatma, fundamental concepts in Buddhism.
Anitya means impermanence; nothing remains the same forever. Our bodies, thoughts, mental states, and all other animate and inanimate things are subject to change, the Buddha said, because everything in this universe is conditioned, relative, and interdependent.
Walpola Rahula Thero, one of Sri Lanka’s foremost scholar monks, observes that many scholars translate the term dukkha in its ordinary sense meaning “suffering,” “pain,” “sorrow” or “misery,” which leads to the view that the Buddhist perspective of life is rather pessimistic. But as he points out, the term as used by the Buddha has a much deeper philosophical meaning and connotes enormously wider senses such as “impermanence,” “imperfection,” “emptiness,” and “insubstantiality,” or as David Loy would say, “ill-being.” And life is dukkha in the deeper sense because everything is anitya and anatma.
Anatma, as explained, means soulless-ness. However, says Walpola Rahula Thero, humans are psychologically deeply rooted to the idea of self-preservation and thus we cling to the concept of atma, and grasp onto people, material things, to ideas, ideologies, sensual pleasures, and so, we experience dukkha.
The monk told the grandmother, “We understand the immense dukkha you are feeling now, but we must remember that misfortune and death is universal. Thousands of people died in the tsunami not just in Sri Lanka, but in several other countries as well, and we will all die too. As the Buddha told us, the nature of all component things is that they are anitya and anatma. Even if some things may remain for very long periods of time, everything is subject to change, and ultimately passes away. Nobody can change this natural law….”
After she calmed down, we asked the little girl how she survived, but she did not know. Her father said when people found her the girl had cried, so they sent her to hospital. At this point, Priya started to cry, saying she did not want to talk about this anymore. We changed the conversation to some happenings in the village.
I had hoped to meet Sisira too, but he was not to be seen. A woman said he vacillates between feelings of utter hopelessness and planning for the upcoming third month dana. Another person said he went missing a few nights before and that the family finally found him at a nearby temple. “Now one of the brothers sleeps near him,” said the man. “Yes, we have to protect his life now,” the monk counseled. “It is really important he understands that this did not happen only to him. I know it will take time, but the only solution to his predicament is the dhamma,” he said. We left the family with these thoughts and headed back to the temple.
The next morning my land lady took me to the home where Aravinda Samarajeeva had lived. The father of a two-year-old, he was the only tsunami victim in our village. Others who died there had been outsiders. Aravinda’s mother said that a driver of a three wheeler told her that when he was fleeing from the rushing waves he saw Aravinda near the Galle Fort, and stopped his vehicle. Aravinda almost climbed in, but then refused. His mother sobbed, “My son was a very shy person. He probably did not get in because the other passenger in the vehicle was a woman.” What a needless tragedy this was! Sri Lankan culture does not dictate gender segregation and many village schools are co-ed. But villagers fear being seen with members of the opposite sex unless in group settings because it may result in harmful gossip. So, Aravinda let go of the chance to save his life.
The ninety-acre Galle Fort, built by the Portuguese and the Dutch, extends about 700 meters North-South. It stood firm against the deluge and the many offices, homes, and businesses located within it escaped harm. But the Fort heightened the death and destruction in the adjacent area in the Galle town center when, unable to get past the structure, the sea backed onto the town center which faced an onslaught from the opposite direction as well. Readers might even remember the terrible television scene shown repeatedly of four teenage girls desperately trying to save themselves by hanging onto a flimsy bus shelter. The location of that scene was the central bus station in Galle. Along with the bus station, the fish market, vegetable stalls, restaurants and other shops in Galle town vanished. Major Hewawitharana told me they transported some 600 dead bodies to the hospital from the town center area in the first two days after the tsunami, and unearthed more in the next few weeks.
As I viewed the videos of the grieving people that evening, I realized that even with all my cultural expertise about Buddhist teachings and funeral rituals, I may never really comprehend the process of adjustment that survivors must endure as they try to pick up the threads of their shattered lives. I talked about these issues with my land lady and she said I would benefit from talking to Dr. Harischandra, the consultant psychiatrist mentioned above. He is her relative and when she called, he invited us to come to his clinic one evening. His clinic, located in Galle, was also ravaged by the tsunami. But since it was a holiday he was at home.
The doctor said he asked us to come that evening because he was expecting a patient who survived the train tragedy and that if she agrees, I could be present at the consultation. But he cautioned me that her relatives say the patient is still mentally extremely fragile. Before she arrived I talked with the doctor and recorded the first of only five interviews in English, of more than a hundred conducted during this project.
Dr. Harishchandra is a highly respected Buddhist scholar as well as a western-trained psychiatrist, and when I asked him how tsunami survivors might adjust to the disaster, he both enlightened me and intrigued me by drawing parallels between Buddhist psychology and western psychotherapy theories about death and grief management. [15]
“A whole lot of things in Buddhist scriptures enlighten us on issues related to the grieving process,” the doctor told me. “For example, modern psychotherapists talk about four stages of grief survivors go through. People grieve in different ways, but generally, in the first stage, the survivor must acknowledge the reality of the loss. Sometimes though a bereaved person may not accept that the loved one died, and/or that the loss is permanent. He or she is in denial about what happened. In the second stage, the survivors should effectively express their grief and work through the emotional turmoil without avoiding or repressing the emotions. If they succeed in this, they come to terms with the fact that they must adjust to life without the deceased. This is the third stage. In the fourth stage, they begin to lessen the ties to the deceased, reengage with their social networks, and carry on with life.”
Then Dr. Harischandra related the well-known story about Kisagotami, a woman who lived in the time of the Buddha. Kisagotami’s infant son died, but stricken with grief, she could not move beyond the first stage; she would not accept his death. She went from one person to the next, pleading with them to cure him until she came to the Buddha, who told her, “Yes, I will cure this baby if you bring me some mustard seeds from a family where no one has died.” So, carrying the corpse, she went from house to house asking for mustard seeds. In every house, people brought her some, but when she asked “Has anybody died in your family?” they replied, “Oh yes, our ancestors are all dead, and my mother, father, sibling, or child – as was the case – died too.” Then of course, Kisagotami refused the mustard. “All this grief work corresponds to the first stage of despair,” the doctor said.
Through her fruitless search, the distraught mother ultimately came to realize that everybody dies. With this realization, she went to the cemetery and disposed of her child’s body. Now Kisagotami had completed the second stage in the healing process and was ready for the third. She went back to the Buddha, who counseled her about the universality and inevitability of death. At the end, she adjusted to living without her son and became a Buddhist nun. “So, you see,” said Dr. Harishchandra, “According to Buddhist philosophy as well as modern psychotherapy, when disasters happen, most people go through these four phases of grief.” After a moment’s thought he added, “And in our case, we had to go through them as a nation as well.”
When the train survivor, Ramani (not her real name,) limped into the room she did not object to my presence. But as her story unfolded, I was quite humbled by her consent to let me remain; it turned out that like the young parents who lost their daughters and Sisira, she too loathed meeting people; she did not want to answer questions about the tragedy.
Ramani and her parents were returning home on the train after visiting some relatives in Colombo. When the first wave hit she said, “People went mad with fear. Some yelled and screamed obscenities at the driver, demanding him to move ahead, others began weeping.” Ramani scrambled up onto the seat with her mother and urged her to recite the Ithipiso gathava. These are stanzas that describe the noble qualities of the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, and they too are taught to children at a very young age. Almost every Buddhist utters either these or pirith when in danger, but her mother became hysterical about what would happen to her daughter.
Though the doctor had warned me about Ramani’s extreme emotional fragility, I was not prepared for the vast grief that consumed Ramani as she recalled how her mother’s grip on her arm slipped away as the second wave hit the train. She trembled involuntarily, and moaned as she struggled to describe what happened, and to talk about the deep bond that existed between her mother and herself. Her mother was her closest friend. She couldn’t bear the thought that her mother would not be there at her marriage. She blamed herself that she will never care for her beloved mother in her old age….She just could not accept the fact that her mother would not come back. Here indeed was another Kisagotami, still in the first stage of grieving….All through her narrative, I felt like an intruder and tried to remain very still, not wanting to encroach on her, not even wanting to be seen, wondering if she would ever get beyond these fathomless feelings. Ramani’s father died too. She herself lost consciousness, but the upper half of her body had distended from a window and a stranger had pulled her out when the water started to recede. He half-carried, half-walked the semi conscious Ramani until they reached a temple. There, other strangers put her onto a truck that took her to the Batapola hospital.
Dr. Harischandra listened closely to Ramani and then counseled her drawing on Buddhist teachings. He reminded her that we all die, and that we cannot control the niyama dharma, the five universal laws in Buddhism. The first, utu-niyama or the natural laws, bring seasonal changes. The second, dhamma-niyama or the laws of geo-physics, explain tsunamis and other natural hazards as periodic occurrences. The third, bija-niyama or biological laws cause such things as hereditary diseases. The fourth, citta-niyama or psychological laws, influence the thought processes that enter our minds. The fifth, karma or kamma niyama are moral laws that provide the ethical framework for Buddhists.
As mentioned, the Buddha talked about different realms of existence and the doctor also consoled Ramani with the thought that her mother, who had done many meritorious deeds, may have been reborn in a good place from where she could see her daughter, and feel happy about her progress. He told Ramani to do meritorious activities and transfer merits to her parents. He also counseled her to tell inquirers only as much as she wished.
When she left the doctor’s office about four hours later, Ramani had quietened down considerably and seemed to be in better control of her emotions. She had finally poured forth her relentless despair to a doctor she trusted and who listened to her most attentively, in a setting that made her feel comfortable, and received enormously compassionate help from him. After meeting Dr. Harischandra, I also accompanied members of Damrivi Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers Buddhist-based counseling on television, who took along Buddhist nuns to counsel IDPs in camps. Then too, I witnessed similar scenes.
***
Parrinder writes in World Religions that the Japanese masses found the cultural aspects of Buddhism far easier to grasp than the more difficult ideological or metaphysical concepts, and Rev. Tatedera said Buddhist priests consoled survivors through rituals and the chanting of Sutras. “We also encourage them to laugh as often as possible, even at something stupid. Laughter is very healing too” he added. The priest also said that the government sent psychologists with deep listening skills – listening wholeheartedly without interrupting, judging, analyzing and so on – to help the traumatized survivors and that the technique was particularly helpful in the current situation. As noted above, Dr. Harishchandra too had listened deeply to Ramani’s grief, and so did the Buddhist nuns. The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine in the US has also discovered that Buddhist teachings and the Mindfulness Meditation techniques are a tremendous resource for psychological counseling and the Association offers many on-line workshops for practitioners and others based on the techniques.
But in a chapter entitled “The Wave That Brought PTSD to Sri Lanka,” Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, reveals that as part of its billion-dollar pledge of assistance, Australia sent multiple teams of counselors to tsunami hit Asian countries, with the intent to bring mental health services in the region “into the modern era.” And he says that Robin Davies, director of the Australian group, Aus AID, observed that the aim of their effort in Sri Lanka was not to restore or rebuild the mental health care capacity in the country; "Restore is the wrong word because there was nothing much there before," Davies had pronounced. [16]
This colonial mindset was not limited to Davies. Watters says that besides Australia, Britain, France, and New Zealand and the US also rushed armies of trauma counselors and teams of researchers from various nongovernmental organizations, universities, and private groups to Sri Lanka, to diagnose Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among thousands of camp dwellers, using a diagnostic method developed in the US to treat returning veterans of the Vietnam War in the 1960. To find out the survivors’ susceptibility to PTSD, these Western traumatologists, who believe that truth telling is better for the mind than stoic silence, required the traumatized survivors to retell or rework the memories of the trauma, often in emotionally charged settings, within hours or days of the event.
Clearly, this is entirely different to the ‘deep listening skills’ employed in Japan and by Dr. Harischandra. And Dr. Gaithri Fernando, a Sri Lankan psychologist now teaching in University of California, Los Angeles, is one of growing number of professionals who argues that the American method is ill suited to diagnose PTSD among people of collectivist societies, and she has developed a culturally relevant method for the purpose. Watters writes that doctors and university professors in Sri Lanka made pleas asking the teams of foreign counselors not to intervene in the lives of the traumatized camp dwellers; but they obviously fell on deaf ears. And their interventions did not stop with their visits to camps. Watters says they trained many locals, who would in turn train hundreds of others, in workshops that often lasted only a day. And since translators with a good command of English were already employed by other relief providers these people used the drivers as translators. I know well that drivers’ English knowledge usually extends to no more than a few sentences they learn to so they can tourists around!
As Watters says, those armies of traumatologists came to advance the idea that psychological rehabilitation is best managed by mental health experts certified and sensitized to the Western understanding of how humans suffer and heal, without an iota of consideration for the facts that the PTSD diagnosis cannot be usefully applied in all human cultures, or that people from different cultures might have fundamentally different worldviews about, and reactions to, traumatic events. But what is most disturbing about their intervention is that study after study published during the 1990s, the heyday of trauma counseling, showed that early intervention – as done by them – is ineffective, and might actually be harmful (italics mine.) Among examples Watters provides of those who were harmed by early intervention is a study conducted among several hundred car accident victims over a three year period, some of who were debriefed. When the people were interviewed three years later, those who were debriefed were found to be more likely to be anxious and depressed, and harbor a nagging fear of riding in cars. Watters writes that this study, which was published in the British Medical Journal in 1996 concluded, “Psychological debriefing is ineffective and has adverse long-term effects. It is not an appropriate treatment for trauma victims.”
As important as Watter’s documentation is a New York Times report citing a new study that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2011 that disaster-hit countries should keep in mind about trauma treatment. It said that researchers have reported that, “Drugs widely prescribed to treat severe post-traumatic stress symptoms for veterans are no more effective than placebos and come with serious side effects, including weight gain and fatigue.” The study had focused on one medication, Risperdal. But, according to the report, “experts said that its results most likely extend to the entire class, including drugs like Seroquel, Geodon and Abilify.” [17] All disaster-stricken will avoid serious harm to survivors if they kept these warnings in mind.
I continue this discussion about PTSD in Chapter Eight, where I apply Fernando’s PTSD diagnostic method to analyze my own findings of how several survivors who lost loved ones are coping a year after the disaster.
***
Humans want a predictable process to give coherence to life, and following complex disaster, people everywhere search for answers to metaphysical questions such as ‘Why did this tragedy happen?’ ‘Why did some people who did not even live or work in affected areas die?’ and in the case of the tsunami, ‘Why did some who were swept by the waves die while others survived?’ During research, I often fell into conversations on such matters with the villagers.
Scientific findings help us to understand how and why tsunamis occur, and like the CCD officials, several villagers asserted that the destruction of coral reefs and other natural resources heightened the tsunami disaster. But metaphysical questions such as ‘why some people survived while others died’ are beyond the dissecting lens of science, and most people turn to religion to seek answers to such questions. This is because whether they result from the human recognition that there is an ultimate order and meaning within the mystery of our lives, or from the human impulse to create order and meaning, religions tackle questions that are difficult to answer and thus fill the gap left by science. They provide models for ethical or moral action for living and engaging with the world and when disasters strike, concepts of social and cosmic justice and the nature of existence come to the fore. This is because how people construct and perceive good and evil, fate and peril, good and bad fortune, safety and uncertainty, and so on are basic features of religious worldviews that shape the thinking and actions of individuals and communities in very specific ways.
Like cultural perceptions of human-nature relations, cultural perceptions of disasters and mortality also convey a great deal about ideologies of human-earthly and human-supernatural relations. Muslims in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and Christians in Haiti and elsewhere, believe the tsunamis and earthquakes are God’s will. Some Buddhists who subscribe to the Hindu pantheon of gods also speculated that the tsunami was a sign of retribution from the gods for a people who had become increasingly greedy and corrupt. But the most common explanation one heard from Buddhists in those days was that people died the way they did because of their karma.
The term karma seems to have entered the popular discourse of mainstream America also, and is usually understood to be the negative consequences of one’s actions in the present life. But this concept, so central to Buddhist philosophy, has a much wider meaning in the Buddhist context. It applies to the consequences of both good and bad actions done in past lives as well as the present life; consequences that bring results in present or future lives. So, many people said those who perished or suffered losses in the tsunami must have done something terrible in a previous life. But as many monks and other Buddhist scholars observed, the karmic concept is not the only answer to this question, or the definitive one. Before I explain why, however, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of the term as used by the Buddha.
The literal meaning of the Sanskrit term karma (kamma in Pali) is action, and not its consequence. And in the Buddhist context, karma means not every action; only willful or volitional action (chethana.) In other words, it is only when one acts with good or bad intention that it becomes a karmic action, with positive or negative consequences to follow. And although most Sri Lankan Buddhists generally refer to the consequence of karmic action as ‘karma,’ the correct term is karma vipaka or karma phala, and I employ the term karma vipaka below.
In the context of the tsunami, the karmic concept is a plausible explanation for believers if we look at the first of the Five Precepts that make up the basic code of moral and ethical behavior for Buddhists. This is the precept that one abstains from willfully taking the life of any living being. (The other four are: abstention from stealing, sexual misconduct; uttering lies, slander, etc; and consuming alcohol and other mind-altering drugs.) The vipaka for willful killing is said to be a short lifespan, constant sickness, having to experience a great deal of sadness due to separation from loved ones, and having to live in fear. But for the act to bear consequences, it should have been premeditated, in which case it would be preceded by four other factors: that the object destroyed was a living being, the destroyer realized this fact, he or she intended to kill, and developed a plan to do so. Thus, if someone accidentally killed an animal while driving for instance, there will be no negative karmic consequence.
We still cannot attribute all tsunami deaths and other tragic occurrences to karma vipaka, however, because in Buddhist philosophy, even if someone killed intentionally, all karma do not yield vipaka in a uniform way. If for example, somebody reforms himself or herself and lives mindfully following the Five Precepts which ensure one does not engage in wrong conduct that harms oneself and others, the good karma the person accrues can mitigate or erase some consequences of bad karma he or she committed before. Even otherwise, except for the most serious ones, karma vipaka, both good and bad, are said to bring results in any lifetime only when right conditions exist. They may become exhausted after a period of time if the necessary conditions do not arise to bear the consequences. Therefore, the monks said, while the notion that karma vipaka does occur cannot be disputed according to Buddhism, it is impossible for us to determine if anyone died in the tsunami because of their karma vipaka. Moreover, they reminded, we must also understand the world, and disasters that befall us, in relation to the other four Niyama Dharma mentioned above.
On the other hand, if some people died or suffered more because of karma vipaka, it is also possible that they had engaged in unwholesome (akusala) karmic acts together in a previous life – for people do good and bad alone or collectively. But according to Buddhism, since karma is volitional action, the vipaka vary depending on the mental state of the person while committing the act – such as the degree of hatred or the degree of desire for revenge he or she harbored when the killing (if the act was killing) was committed. Based on the premise that rebirth and karma vipaka do occur, one can make sense of the diversity in tsunami victims’ experiences. Conceptualizing their experiences in terms of karma vipaka helped survivors to make sense of what happened to them and it also reminded everyone that we bear responsibility for our own actions; that no one else can purify us if we commit unwholesome karma.
The karma concept was central to not only how villagers conceived the world and our existence, but to urban, educated, Westernized Buddhists like Ciranthi as well. In her narrative Ciranthi did not speculate on metaphysical issues, so when we met I asked how she explains what happened to them. “The way I look at the tsunami experience, it is something to do with the three of us – my daughter, son, and myself. I know for a fact that the three of us were in a similar situation together in a previous life,” she replied. “I do not mean that we were there as the three of us as we are now, but as three individuals who were together. I don’t know which life time or life form it was, but we did something terrible together. But we also did a meritorious deed at some time and this is why we survived. And the way we survived was so unbelievable! Some will say it is a miracle, but I don’t believe in miracles.” She thought for a moment. “It is karmic.” She said decisively. “Either we did something enormously meritorious to escape death, or it was not our time to die.”
“It was not our time to die” is another way Sinhala Buddhists explain death. In the Buddhist worldview which does not subscribe to a Creationist theory, individuals are the architects of their own lives. Based on their karma, everyone brings at birth a certain life span (ayukkhaya) and a certain span of karmic energy (kammakkaya.) They die when one or the other, or both, are spent. Karmic energy differs from karma vipaka in that karmic energy is the accumulation of all the good and bad karma, mental, physical, and verbal that we have been engaging in every life, whereas karma vipaka is the result of particular karma. Someone may be born in an era when the average lifespan of humans would be around 80, but that individual may die at 10, 40, or 50 years of age. This early death occurs because that was the length of the life span he or she brought at birth. On the other hand, one may die in infancy because of a karma vipaka, even if the average lifespan for human beings of that era is 120, and he or she brought a longer lifespan. In contrast to these early deaths, Buddhism says that those who live to be a ripe old age relative to the average lifespan in a particular era and place may die having exhausted both the life and karmic energy spans they brought forth in that particular life.
Thus the teachings explain sudden deaths such as those resulting from a tsunami or road accident in several ways. In such cases, neither the life span nor the karmic energy that was brought forth at birth may have been spent completely. Instead, those who died in the tsunami may have been victims of the tragedy simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or else they did not perceive the true nature of the danger. Or the deaths may have occurred as a result of karma vipaka.
Like Ciranthi, Latha and Nihal believe they lost their little girl as the result of an unwholesome karmic act they committed in a previous life. But of course the concept of rebirth is not shared by all religious groups, and it is inevitable that when peoples of different religious persuasions meet, words like “afterlife” become relative. Readers who do not share the concept of rebirth will naturally question it, and rightly so. People questioned even the Buddha himself about this concept. He said that nobody should accept anybody’s teachings (including his own,) simply based on faith, a teacher’s reputation, bribery, or coercion and he advised that if the concept does not make sense, one need not believe in rebirth. But, he also said, if one lived without harming others or himself or herself, such an individual would have a peaceful life in the present, and be assured of a good rebirth if it happens.
In several discourses, however, the Buddha talked about the importance of memories in recollecting past lives. In Sri Lanka and other Theravada Buddhist countries as well as in India, when young children who refer to people, places, and events they are yet to become acquainted with, or when children display unusual talents at early ages, these are normally interpreted as recollections or talents they have carried forward from a previous life. The first published book based on scholarly research in Sri Lanka on this topic is of a little girl whose recollections of her previous life as a boy culminated in a team of Sri Lankan and American researchers reuniting her with her former parents and other family members. When they met, the girl not only recognized them all, she also referred to them by the kinship terms she used in her previous life. [18]
Published findings of scientific investigations by an international team of researchers of those who recall their previous births in Sri Lanka and India also provide strong suggestions of rebirth. [19] Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation Of A World War II Fighter Pilot, in which the parents of a young American child recount how they unearthed their son’s previous life as a fighter pilot based on the child’s recollections, [20] and Looking for Carroll Beckwith: The True Story of a Detective’s Search for His Past Life,” [21] in which an American police detective in Indiana provides another fascinating account of how he traced his past life as an artist, are two among several books documenting cases of rebirth in the US.
***
So far I have talked about mourning only in the context of death, but Volken and Zintl define “mourning” as the psychological response to any loss or change, the negotiations we make to adjust our inner world to reality. In this section, we hear the voices of Amal and Suneetha, a couple who lost their home and a furniture business that supplemented their marginal incomes as low-level government employees and enabled them to be upwardly mobile, as they struggle to make sense of the tragedy. Their story also shows how integral Buddhist teachings and practices are to the daily lives of many Sinhala Buddhists.
Amal and Suneetha survived because Suneetha (the wife) had seen the first wave, and they fled to the temple with their three month old baby. Their older son and Suneetha’s mother, who lives with them, had observed sil, so they were already at the temple. When I asked if they would tell me their tsunami experience, the couple took me to where their home and the business had stood. All that remained were the foundations. Talking in a hushed tone, Suneetha said, “I never thought that our house would be gone. I thought it might have got flooded and that some furniture might have got toppled, but not for a moment did I think that our home would be gone….We had every thing we needed - furniture, electrical goods, crockery, cutlery. We never had to borrow anything for any event. Other people borrowed things from us for big dana and other gatherings….”
Her husband agreed. “Yes, we were used to a certain lifestyle, a certain standard of living. We fulfilled our obligations to our children, the community, and the temple. But now, having fallen to the bottom, we are unable to do anything. That is hard to bear. We don’t need millions of rupees, but it is very difficult not to be able to fulfill the basic needs and obligations. When you have been stable and are suddenly pulled all the way down, it is hard to bear.” Clearly, they were mourning not only the loss of material things, but also the degree of socioeconomic independence and lifestyle they used to enjoy.
“How do you cope with all this?” I asked, expecting to hear one of them say it is their karma, but that is not what they said. “Well, there are moments when we feel awful. But we cope by reflecting on the fact that everything is anitya,” said Amal. “And before all this happened, our lifestyle was intertwined with whatever duties we had to do for our families, our country, our nation, and especially for our religion. We always looked after the needs of the monks and the temples, so, we now have some inner peace,” he said.
His wife elaborated, “From the furniture shop, we donated a suite of chairs, a cupboard, and mattresses to the temple. We also planned to give a big cabinet, but now that is no longer possible. If we had been able to do that, that too would have remained….We have been office bearers of our temple, but we also help other temples a great deal. A meditation center nearby built a Dhatu Mandiraya [22] and we donated coconut lumber for that. If ever that monk said he needed something, we sponsored some part of that project. Now our shop is no more and we cannot do that, but as I told Amma, whatever we gave to the temples remains and when we see them we feel at peace….”
Amal said again, “Yes, we gave generously of the things we earned through our own efforts to the temple, and in the end that is all that we have left. We can put our minds at ease knowing that we did meritorious deeds like that. I don’t know how people who did not fulfill obligations, and who lost everything, feel today. I also feel that because we did our duties things will not go wrong for us.”
Pabbathupama Sutta [23] is a discourse about the importance of generosity the Buddha gave to his friend, King Kosala, who habitually dropped by to see him. In it, he talks about four natural processes that every human being is subject to, regardless of their place of birth or status in life. These processes are: aging, when we progressively lose our physical and mental prowess; illness, when we are unable to function as we wish; the various obstacles and calamities that interrupt or prevent us from achieving our expectations and wishes; and death. The Buddha likened these four processes to four boulders that are unavoidable and unpredictable. “Therefore,” he advised the king, “To avoid regrets, we should be mindful of our own and others’ welfare, and fulfill our obligations to family and society.” So Buddhist parents try to cultivate the practice of dana in their children from a young age and now, in the aftermath of the greatest natural disaster to strike Sri Lanka, Amal and Suneetha were finding out the truth of the Buddha’s advice.
There was no doubt that our traditional cultural values helped them to be resilient and brought them much mental peace when they most needed it. But in the next moment it became evident that the reality of downward mobility was too much for the family to bear when Suneetha’s mother said, “Yes, as the Buddha said, the nature of life is that things arise, they are sustained for a while, and then fade away. I constantly reflect on this truth and it helps to come to terms with what happened, but it is not easy….We are still attached to the life we knew, to everything we lost, and even though we live in a new place now, it is somehow very comforting if I step into the old property, where we used to live, even for a little bit.”
Suneetha wiped a tear rolling down her cheek. Glancing at her, Amal said, “We can also look at our losses this way. You can earn lots of money and you may sometimes lose it, but it is possible to recover your losses. But when it comes to life, there is no second chance, and we did not lose anybody. We didn’t have to suffer that sort of tragedy. I am not saying we don’t feel terrible about our losses, but we have the strength to accept what happened because we did our duties and we also know things don’t remain the same forever.”
Despite the fact that all of them were trying to adjust to their downfall by trying to view life through Buddhist philosophy, as Suneetha’s mother said, they were still clinging to the past and grieving for what they had lost. So, I was not surprised when her daughter confided that the trauma was beginning to affect her mother’s cognitive functions. “She sometimes asks if I closed up the house when we go somewhere, meaning the house we lost. There is no need for her to remind me of that past, is there?” Suneetha said unhappily. Concerned that her mother was becoming emotionally unstable, I asked if her mother had seen a doctor. Suneetha replied that she thought the best thing for her mother to do was to listen to pirith and dhamma because that would help to calm her mind, and said she bought a radio and cassette player for her mother on a long-term payment scheme. In their current financial situation, this demonstration of her shraddha (faith with conviction) about the beneficial aspects of Buddhism was extremely significant, and I hoped that her preferred solution would help her mother to recover.
When I met Dr. Harishchandra, I had asked if gender differences play a significant role in the recovery process of those who survive traumatic experiences and he had replied, “Grief does not affect everybody in the same way. The variation is not determined by gender as a biological factor, although gender roles as culturally constructed entities may cause some differences. For instance, even though many women are employed, since the men are traditionally seen as the breadwinners in our culture, men who lost their livelihoods may become more despondent than women.”
This turned out to be the case with this couple. Amal identified closely with his role as the main bread winner, and was very unhappy about his inability to meet the needs of his family. To achieve that, he had to rebuild his business but he did not have the resources to achieve his ambition. Suneetha’s identity was intrinsically linked with her role as a mother, and her former socio-economic status. Both yearned to regain what they had lost, but living in a rented home with two children to provide for, and having to start over from scratch, their combined wages from their government jobs were not sufficient for them to rebuild their lives to their satisfaction anytime soon. Still, living in a single family home, they were much more fortunate than the survivors I met who had to move into tents.
Volkan, Vamik D. and Elizabeth Zintl. Life After Loss: The Lessons of Grief. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993.
O’Hara, Kathleen. A Grief Like No Other: Surviving the Violent Death Of Someone You Love. New York: Marlowe and Company, 2006.
Porterfield, Amanda. The Power of Religion: A Comparative Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
See What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula for a comprehensive discussion of the ‘Anatta’ concept. London: Gordon Fraser, 1959.
The New Lexicon Webseter’s Dictionary of the English language. I also thank the Jesuit, Catholic, and Christian friends who helped me to understand the concept of purgatory in the Christian religion.
Parrinder, Geoffrey. World Religions: From Ancient History to the Present. New York: Facts on File.
Davies, Roger J. and Osamu Ikeno. The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2002.
See Wikipedia.
Plath, David W. “Where the Family of God is the Family: The Role of the Dead in Japanese Households.” American Anthropologist 66:300-317.
Kawano, Satsuki. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2005.
This definition is from the pamphlet on Kuyo, published by the Soto Zen Buddhism North America Office in Los Angeles, and given to me by Rev. Fujita.
missing
Kawano, Satsuki. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2005
“Buddhist rite honors tsunami victims.” San Jose Mercury News/Associated Press, April 29, 2011.
Worden, William. Grief counseling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner (2nd ed.) J.. New York: Springer, 1991.
Watters, Ethan. The Globalization of the American Psyche. New York: Free Press, 2010.
“PTSD drugs questioned” in San Jose Mercury News/New York Times. August 3, 2011.
Nishshanka, H.S.S. The Girl Who Was Reborn [Nevatha Upan Deriya.]. Dhiwela: Buddhist Cultural Center, 1964.
Senanayake, Nimal, MD ed. Trends in Rebirth Research: Proceedings of an International Semiar. Sri Lanka: Sarvodaya Vishva Lekha, 2001. See also Cases of the Reincarnation Type: Ten Cases in Sri Lanka. Ian Stevenson, M.D. Sri Lanka: Sarvodaya Vishva Lekha. 1977.
Leininger, Bruce and Andrea, with Ken Gross. Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.
Snow, Robert L. Looking for Carroll Beckwith: The True Stories of a Detective's Search for His Past Life. Pennsylvania: Daybreak Books 1999.
A special chamber to house the relics, generally believed to be those of arhats, that exist in Buddhist temples.
See Kosala Samyutta in the Samyutta Nikaya.