Just when I was thinking that grief has taken a vacation, the tsunami disaster came as a grim reminder of the supreme power of nature. God is kind, he is sending us gentle reminders of showing remorse and mending our ways. I do not intend to say that those who died or are homeless did a crime. The entire humanity is accountable.
Just as the Ents (giant trees) attacked Saruman, the evil wizard in his haven of Orthanc, I am noticing the world balance changing. Un-seasonal rains, cyclones, earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, temperature changes, they all to me are an indication of our abuse to earth.
I don’t see any indication of improvements in our ways. I forsee that our future generation will live on the moon and Mars. Then after billions of years, same will happen to those planets. The Dinosaurs were wiped out by global catastrophes. As said in Fight club, our life is diminishing one minute at a time, every minute.
I have felt many times, that our entire ecosystem is part of a larger whole. As we think that we have blood cells, bones and so on, similarly, we in fact might be the micro parts of a larger individual. Difficult to say in words, but there is a lot of science we don’t know.
The best life is that of the Hobbit, as described by Tolkien in his Lord of the Rings books. The ring is symbolic of our material desires, the attachments. We need to cast it back into the lava of Mount Doom, but the “I” sense does not allow us to do so. The Nazgyl continue to torture people, who can neither renounce the ring, or accept their dark side openly. I could go on and on about this analogy. Who shall be the ring bearer for the entire humanity. Christ did that long back. Also Krishna promises that whenever adharma will occur, righteousness will be forgotten, evil will rise, He shall take birth again. When Noah’s ark sets sail again, will there be a place for me, for you?
As we make nuclear bombs, fighter jets and missiles, a higher power sure is laughing at our foolishness. He says that, who are you to kill each other. I made all of you, whenever a life is taken, it’s because I decide to. Whenever a life is given, it’s because I decide to. And then when He sees us trying to snatch away those powers from Him too, his laughter turns into a grim smirk. It’s like AI (artificial intelligence). Some day, will we really enable too much AI into machines, as they would turn against humanity itself, as shown in Terminator. We are getting too smart.
I want to physically contribute somewhere. I want to fight as a soldier, I want to do manual labor in the relief operations, I want to clean dishes and sweep floors of a temple. There is a time bomb ticking in my mind, unless I release this energy, I cannot rest comfortably. For each piece of dirt I have thrown on the street, for each time I have thrown away cans to be recycled, for each piece of paper I have wasted, I feel I am responsible for some deaths in the tsunami.
I acknowledge the power of nature, I bow down before it. I don’t challenge it, by thinking of building warning systems, and colonies on the moon, and searching for water on Mars. I pray, and ask for His mercy. And promise that I will, as an individual, never harm It.
