One of the unseen and underestimated aftershocks of the 25 April earthquake was the psychological stress it had on individuals and families.
As a teacher of Vipassana, I feel the meditation technique holds special importance to reduce stress and help us deal with disasters like this. After all, Vipassana means seeing things in a special way. In Buddhism, we have a word for the consequences of our own deeds: ‘sankhara’. It is our own sankhara that brings about misery, suffering, dukkha. They are the cause of our fear, and our life ends when it has to end, and our sankhara determine the kind of death we will face.
So, with or without an earthquake, it is our own sankhara that brings us misery, fear, and we die when we die, not earlier not later. If the things we do out of our own volition have such consequences we need to be careful when we carry out those deeds. Unwholesome deeds will bring misery and suffering sooner or later. We carry with us a huge stock of past deeds and at the appropriate time we may suffer the consequences to oneself or a dear one, or have an illness. One such life event could be an earthquake.
Many people view events in life as fate or destiny, or something preordained. It doesn’t need to be. With Vipassana we can rid ourselves of our sankharas, thus reducing the intensity of suffering. Whereas fate or destiny is viewed as something that cannot be changed, we can make good events happen in our life by performing wholesome deeds. As the Buddha said: Keep away from all unwholesome deeds, accumulate wholesome deeds, and purify your mind.
The Buddha gave a sermon listing 38 proper deeds in Mangala Suttam. Some of them are relevant in the aftermath of the earthquake: avoid company of rumour-mongers or people who spread fear or who make unfounded predictions, do not stay in damaged buildings, take care of your family and do not cause them anxiety, help fellow beings, there will be ups and downs in life but your mind must not tremble, etc.
