SAXTONS RIVER — Not long before I arrived back in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I taught in 2005 and 2006, for an extended visit, a plethora of sad things happened throughout the world.
There was the cyclone in Burma (Myanmar), the earthquake in China, the tornadoes in the American Southeast, fires in Florida, bombs in Jaipur, India, and immigration-based riots in South Africa.
I spent the better part of a week phoning friends in Georgia and Florida, e-mailing former Burmese and Chinese students, and worrying about people I'd met in Jaipur but had no way of contacting. Then came the news of Ted Kennedy's brain tumor followed by word that someone I've known for years had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. All of this was followed, after my arrival in Asia, by the news of Tim Russert's untimely death.
The whole thing felt like Armageddon, a series of apocalyptic events that might be seen as fate or poor karma in some cultures, as signs of climate change in certain circles, as random bad luck events in others. I subscribe to the latter two explanations at the least.
Whatever the interpretation, the confluence of events made me feel deeply sad, and I confess, helpless in the face of such cosmic crises. I wrote checks to relief organizations, which might or might not be able to deliver supplies to thousands of waiting victims, but that just didn't seem sufficient in face of what was happening miles away from where I was. But what else to do?
Then, two days after I arrived back in Thailand, my good friend Laura was involved in a tragic accident resulting in the death of a young mother. The 18-year-old woman, who was not wearing a helmet, rode her motorbike into Laura's car, resulting in a fatal head injury. (Sadly, motorbike accidents happen every day here.)
It was heartrending to see a weeping Laura prostrate herself in apology before the woman's mother when we arrived at the hospital. And it was stunning to observe the calm demeanor of the woman who was about to lose her daughter.
In our culture we might say the mother was “in denial.” But here, I think she was in a state of acceptance, because central to Buddhism is the notion of impermanence. Nothing lasts forever; therefore, one must live each moment to the fullest, appreciating that our lives can change, or end, in an instant.
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Now that I'm back in Asia in a largely Buddhist country, it's interesting to reflect further on all the tragedies of recent weeks.
I don't want to sentimentalize the suffering of anyone; losing a child in a collapsed school in China or from starvation in post-cyclone Burma or in an accident in Thailand is universally the most painful loss anyone can experience.
But there is something to be learned, or contemplated at least, in the stoicism and acceptance of grief that people in this part of the world practice. Perhaps it comes with poverty and its resulting losses - even grieving is a learned behavior when one experiences it regularly.
Still, there is something more. It is a calmness in the face of calamity that comes, I think, within the culture of people who live each day appreciating the simple pleasures of daily life because they know that for a multitude of reasons those pleasures may be short-lived, slipping into memory sooner than hoped because of illness, violence, bad luck, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Also, the force of nature is understood and respected as well as its fragile beauty. Moments are grasped fully, for they may well be fleeting.
Although I do not understand it fully, I try to emulate this meditative acceptance, which I find easier to do here than in the West. It is one of the things I cherish about being here.
I just wish it didn't come with such magnitude of loss.