How Hindus and Buddhists view Nepal's
quake
By Daniel Burke CNN Religion
Editor
POSTED: 10:37 PM CDT Apr 26, 2015
Jack Tiwari, president of the America Nepal
Society, begins most mornings with a short prayer to the dozen or
so Hindu deities who sit atop the altar at his home in Northern
Virginia. He thanks the gods for giving him another day, offers
them some sweets and asks for good health and happiness.
On
Saturday, though, Tiwari was awoken at 5 a.m. by news that a
massive earthquake had devastated his Himalayan homeland. For the
next several hours, he frantically tried to reach his parents and
extended family, who still live in Nepal, and pored through
pictures on Facebook and other social media searching for hints
about their fate.
Fortunately, Tiwari said, his immediate family is safe. But like
thousands of Nepalese-Americans, he's still concerned about the
many close friends and loved ones he left behind when he moved to
the United States in 2005. As they gather funds and supplies to
send abroad to the earthquake's victims, many Hindus and Buddhists,
the predominant faiths in Nepal, are also turning to ancient
rituals and prayers, consulting monks and temple elders and
invoking divine aid to salve the vast and sharp
suffering.
More than 3,000 people have died in Nepal
alone this weekend, casualties claimed by a magnitude-7.8
earthquake and several powerful aftershocks. Nearly 100 people in
Tibet and India were also killed by the quake.
Tall towers and pagodas, monuments to
Nepal's deep Hindu and Buddhist roots, were toppled and reduced to
rubble. The majestic temple devoted to Shiva, the Hindu deity and
its twin, the Narayan temple pagoda, which drew centuries of
pilgrims to Kathmandu, are now in ruins.
An isolated, but diverse,
land
Todd Lewis, an expert on Asian religious at
College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, says that Nepal's
religious history has been shaped by its geographic isolation, its
cultural diversity and its many ethnic groups. More than 80% of the
population is Hindu, with smaller numbers of Buddhists (9%),
Muslims (4.4%), Christians (about 1%) and practitioners of animist
religions.
As news of the earthquake spread, religious
leaders from Pope Francis to the Dalai Lama offered their prayers
and condolences. In the United States, several Nepalese-American
groups held candlelight vigils on Sunday night, and a number of
Hindu temples will be offering special services for the
earthquake's victims, said Season Shrestha, head of the Newah
Organization of America. (Newahs are an indigenous people within
Nepal.) Many services may focus on Brahma, the creator deity,
Tiwari theorized. "He is the person who created the world, and so
we hope he can save lives as well."
But unlike Abrahamic traditions, in which a
single God is thought to be omniscient and all-powerful -- and
thus, in theory, responsible for allowing natural disasters --
Buddhists and Hindus have another way of looking at tragic events,
Lewis explained.
Some place the blame at the feet of karma
-- human actions that result in future consequences. But many
others just see earthquakes and tsunamis as amoral events, neither
caused by angry deities nor visited on deserving
sinners.
"Buddhist and Hindu texts make it clear
that there are all kinds of causal contingencies that just happen,"
with no cosmic rhyme or reason, Lewis said. In one famous Buddhist
book, "The Questions of King Milinda," the Buddha teaches that the
majority of things that happen to people, good or bad, are not
related to karma at all. To put it very simply: Stuff
happens.
Springing into
action
Still, Buddhists and Hindus are not
fatalists, sitting idly by while the world spins toward an
apocalyptic end. Many members of both faiths have sprung into
action as news of the earthquake has spread.
On Facebook, for example, a number of
followers of Tibetan Buddhism are sending aid and prayers to
several monasteries from that tradition in Nepal. One phrase comes
up again and again: Om mane padme hum, which can be translated
several ways, most commonly as "jewel in the lotus."
Known as the "heart mantra," the phrase
invokes avalokiteshvara, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion.
(Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who forgo nirvana in order to
help others.) When the mantra is chanted, Buddhists, particularly
in Nepal, believe avalokiteshvara appears and helps people in need,
Lewis explained. The earthquake struck as Nepal was holding a
centuries-old ceremony dedicated to avalokiteshvara, the scholar
said.
Now, instead of wheeling around the
bodhisattva's chariot, Nepalese victims are building funeral pyres
to burn their dead. The practice may seem strange, even gruesome to
Westerners, who dress their dead in fine clothing and bury them in
boxes.
But in Nepal, a country with no graveyards,
Lewis said funeral pyres are seen as the most compassionate way to
treat the dead, for both Hindus and Buddhists believe in
reincarnation, that we cycle through not one life but many. When we
die, our corpses may lie lifeless but our spirit -- Hindus call it
a soul; Buddhists call it consciousness -- lives on, and looks for
another body to inhabit.
If the corpse is not destroyed quickly
after death, the soul lingers and get trapped between realms,
forced to wander Earth as an agitated ghost. When the skull bursts
open on the funeral pyre, that means the soul has left the body,
Lewis said. The ashes are then tossed in the Bagmati River, holy to
Hindus and Buddhists, and born downstream.
"The body is gone," Tiwari said, "but the
soul will be alive."