Tsunami 2004
A Practical and Spiritual Response

By Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami

Kauai’s Hindu Monastery

OVER THE LAST FEW DAYS, I HAVE BEEN ASKED BY A NUMBER OF INDIVIDUALS TO SHARE some thoughts on the massive global death and destruction caused by the South Asia Tsunami that ravaged such a large part of the world in the last days of 2004. The first and foremost response, of course, is the need to awaken our compassion and offer our prayerful thoughts to those who have passed on and give expression, inwardly and outwardly, to our deep-felt sympathy for the relatives and friends who survived.

The natural second response is to provide practical help as millions face the challenges of the aftermath of this awesome natural catastrophe, the worst in our lifetime. I have noticed a remarkable welling up of such support among devotees of the monastery and the general public in many countries, and seen people go to extraordinary lengths to collect medical supplies, raise funds at work and even offer to fly to the affected areas to provide succor with their own hands. These are life-saving, life-affirming reactions, for without the generous financial and in-kind donations that reach the affected areas many more could die in the days ahead for lack of food, medical supplies and temporary shelter.

Medium term, communities need to be rebuilt and resources provided to individuals to enable them to resume supporting themselves through their chosen occupation. For the longer term, governments need to ponder the issues of providing effective warning systems, such as currently exist in the countries in the Pacific Ocean region, to protect their populations against future tsunamis, and to better prepare their populations for any large-scale disaster, whether from earthquakes, storms, droughts or other threats to security. On all levels, we need to learn from this experience so we face our next massive threat better.

On the personal level, major disasters in the world cause everyone to stop and think — think about ourselves, our family, friends, community, nation and the world itself. If our faith is not strong, our thoughts can be of a negative nature. You have heard people wondering aloud why God would allow such a thing to happen, why good people are suffering so, how can there even be a God if such tragedy can occur on Earth? However, if our faith is strong, then our reflections and our reactions remain positive.

From the Hindu point of view, our soul is eternal and through its many lives on Earth undergoes a variety of experiences, many joyful others sorrowful, but benefits spiritually from all experience, whether seemingly good or bad. Gurudeva, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, boldly proclaimed that everything is as it should be, including the occurrence of major disasters: “When a large group of people pass on to the inner world, drop off their physical body unexpectedly through a natural disaster, it is called a group karma. They were all born to have this experience at the same time in togetherness.”

It is natural when confronting such a disaster for those with strong faith to step back from life’s daily routine and look more deeply at themselves to see if there are changes they could make to add deeper meaning to their life. The physical and psychic power of this tsunami offers such thoughtful people an opportunity to examine and change their own lives, for life-changing moments are rare and are often provoked by something bigger than us.

Perhaps there are changes you have been considering for years but always end up putting off. Now is the time to implement them. Perhaps there are new patterns of life, new habits, new commitments that can take root at this rare moment in our personal and global history. Perhaps our love for family members needs to be verbalized more often. Now is the moment to begin. Perhaps we have plans to improve our community. Now is the time to set these plans in motion. Perhaps we always wanted to deepen our spiritual efforts and expand our charitable work. Now is the time to make such ideals real. In all these ways, we can take the energy surrounding this catastrophe and transmute it into something that benefits our lives and our community, rather than diminishes them. As Gurudeva would often say, “It matters less what happens to you in life than how you react to all that happens.”

Though small when compared to Tsunami 2004, our experience of hurricane Iniki in 1992 brought much devastation to our island community of Kauai. It was a challenging and often life-changing experience for island residents. Many had to endure the loss of their homes, and parts of the island were without electricity for up to ten weeks. In the aftermath, one of the consequences was a closer working together of island residents, a pulling together to meet an urgent common need. Kauai has a wealth of ethnic diversities — Japanese, Filipino, Polynesian, Chinese, Portugese, newcomers from the mainland, Thais and, of course, a small Hindu community. During normal life, members of these ethnic groups keep to themselves a good deal. However, the need to rebuild the island after the hurricane brought them closer together, had them shoulder to shoulder as they rebuilt their lives and returned to normalcy. Fortunately, much of this greater closeness and cooperation has remained in place in the years since, even 12 years later.

Perhaps Tsunami 2004 will impact countries in Asia in a similar way, causing the factions in the countries that have civil wars — Sri Lanka and Indonesia — to soften their demands and seek greater compromise. For in times of major crisis, and the consequent struggle for survival, naturally the oneness of humanity comes to the forefront of consciousness and the differences caused by ethnic and religious identity fade into the background. At such moments, the truth that there is ultimately only one race, the human race, seems the right perspective to hold.

Saiva Siddhanta Church has close ties with Sri Lanka, where its founder Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami was initiated by Siva Yogaswami. Of its many activities there one was an orphanage in Batticaloa which was destroyed. Those wishing to make contributions, to the following links:

• Thirunavukkarasu Nayanar Gurukulam (orphanage)
• For general relief for Sri Lanka, India and other affected areas, please see our list of reliable organizations at: www.hindu.org/aid-relief/

The Manoharan Sangarapillai family from Southern California and originally from Sri Lanka, has been on Kauai for several days.

The family had a nice meeting with Bodhinatha and enjoyed establishing a connection with him as Gurudeva’s first successor.

Manoharan’s wife said that at Kauai Aadheenam she feels a similar tranquil, natural vibration as at Tiruketeeswaram Siva Temple in northern Sri Lanka. She also has many short stories of Yogaswami in her memory because her father used to visit Yogaswami’s hut frequently.

Finally, with a break in the weather, we had a chance to show them around Kauai Aadheenam. The last time they were here was shortly before Gurudeva passed on.

At the temple site we find Shanmugam Sthapathi working on a stone that needs a complete facelift. We don’t usually get to see his skills in action like this.

Sathya and Prashanthi are fascinated…

Shanmugam Sthapati even had Prashanthi help him draw a floral design on an official temple stone!

Later the family tried their hand at carving simple Aum symbol and flower designs on a sample stone.

After that the family enjoyed performing personal abhishekam to our Narmada Lingam.

Despite the surrounding ground being very muddy from the heavy rains yesterday…

They were moved to make their personal abhishekam to the Narmada Lingam.

Sathya…

and Prashanthi…

We take a moment to look back at the trip to Malaysia… Sannyasin Yoginathaswami shared with us a brief exchange he had with the Malaysian priest who did the archana at the orphanage when Bodhinatha arrived.

A Malaysian born student of Pitchai Gurukkal of Pillaiyarpatti, India, he is one of Malaysia’s few native born formally trained and initiated Sivachariyas. He has been serving at a Muniandy temple for sometime.

He related how, one day, several years ago, as he was looking at the image of Muniandy, a white face appeared over the murthi, a tall figure with white hair and white beard. It was a conscious vision of an inner being superimposed on the temple Deity. For weeks afterwards he asked people if they knew what it could mean. One day, someone showed him Gurudeva’s picture. He was shocked “That’s who I saw in the temple vision!” Then, recently when he heard that Bodhinatha was coming and was Gurudeva’s successor, he took a break from his temple and drove all the way to meet Bodhinatha and perform the archana.

We were blessed with clear skies today…

Iraivan looked magnificent in the morning sun…

Sadhaka Dandapani has brought out the wooden hundi (offering box) to give our tour day guests an opportunity to earn some punyam by donating to the temple.

About 30 bright souls today… the crowd is thinning as the holidays come to a close…

The ever fascinating rudraksha beads are picked up….

These newly weds live on our neighbor island, Oahu. The gentleman works as a mechanical engineer in a submarine for the US army. They decided to visit the monastery today and stumbled upon the tour so they joined in and had a great time.

Woody and Mila were among our guests today. They shared with us how much they enjoyed the tour this morning. What good timing – our first day of clear skies and sunshine for 2005.