God's Name and Natural Disasters

God’s name and Natural Disasters

The 22 February earthquake in Christchurch once again brought to me how great is God’s name. We lost many lives this time around, the damage to the city is horrendous and it will be long time before anyone can be ‘normal’, if ever.

I was at work when the quake struck. At first I though it was just another of the hundreds of aftershocks we had experienced since last September. But no, this was going to be different as people started screaming and things started falling down off the desks and from the ceiling as the building swayed back and forth and the ceiling-height unbreakable glass window shattered.

When anything out of the ordinary happens I mentally say my name mantra “Sairam”. This is something that is ingrained me, something that I have been doing for the past 20 years. I found that the violence of the quake was so much that my mind was going blank. It took an effort to say “Sairam”. But when I finally did say it, a sense of calm descended on me. All this took place in less than five seconds – which is a lot of time in an earthquake.

The calm allowed me to carry out my duties as a fire warden for the floor I work in. It allowed me to herd out those people who were not out for lunch. As I waited on the fourth floor stair landing to allow people from the fifth and sixth floors to file past (we have well over a thousand people in one single building), I worried about my daughter who was in the central city and my son who was at home. That one single ‘Sairam” was all I had said but I knew, deep in my heart, it was enough to keep them safe.

But the mind plays its own games and as we wardens came out of the building last, my thoughts turned to my kids again. Had they said “Sairam”, were they alright? Was my son lying under the rubble of our house? How would I ever find my daughter in the city? People were trapped under rubble of buildings that just down the street from us, the Christ Church Cathedral, two blocks down, had crumbled. All communications were down.

To remember God in your direst need is enough, I found out. My son was okay, the house was still standing but almost everything inside had been damaged. My daughter had been in Cathedral Square with a friend, right in the thick of things (she took a picture as the Cathedral spire crumbled). Yes, she had said “Sairam” and yes, it did make her calm. And no, she had very little fear although people around her screaming. My son had also resorted to “Sairam”, and then started calling his sister on his mobile, to no avail. Being alone when a natural disaster strikes is not a situation anyone would want to be in. But then you are really never alone, are you?

The name of God is a very powerful weapon against adversity. Religion is as simple as this. To remember God’s name when you are in trouble, and when you are not. But as I had found out, it is very hard to remember God’s name when a force like a bomb blast is going off under the ground below. The mind starts going blank as the sensory receptors try to make sense of the overload of information coming in: the floor bucking, the lights and fittings swaying out to incredible angles, the sound of glass shattering, computer monitors flying off desks, people screaming, and the grinding, awful sound of the earthquake itself.

For me the five second lapse before I could force my mind to say “Sairam” was worrying. Thankfully God does protect people “as the eyelid protects the eyes” – instinctively and without thought. To go about your daily business knowing God is looking after you is a beautiful thing; to know God will look after you come what may is a thing of wonder.

I have found religion to be simple – it is a one-to-one with God. Identify one Isht Devata and stick to Him/Her. Posit everything on that one name, be it father, mother, guru, friend or kin. Make that relationship a living one, putting as much into it as you would with a relationship with your mother, your father, or your friend. Get rid of anything that hinders this relationship.

For me, God is Sathya Sai Baba, in his aspect of Sai Shiva. As a Hindu, you can choose from the hundreds of names and forms that we have given the One God over the past few millennia - just make it yours, as truly as you would give a name to a child when it is born and make it yours. Imagine all the time, effort and love you pour into a child and do the same for God.

Remembering God’s name comes from practice, so that it forms an unbreakable habit. There are two ways to do this: constantly reciting the name or the mantra mentally and, as some people find it easier to do, substituting everyday things with the name or mantra. What we as a family do is an example (it may right, it may be wrong but it works for us): we say “Sairam” to virtually everything when we are together. We have replaced our good mornings, hello, exclamations, etc with “Sairam”. Uttering “Sairam” with different nuances gives it different meanings – it can replace ‘Oh my God’, ‘excuse me’, ‘please’ just in the way it is said. It took years of practice but it is now a family habit.

Another thing we do as a family is the reverence we offer to Mother Earth. I have talked much about Mother Earth in the article “The Earth Owns Us” in this site. Bhu Devi/Bhoomi Devi is our mother. We say this a lot at our religious gatherings but we must mean it, not just pay lip-service to this hoary adage. It should not just be a thing understood at an intellectual level but be an integral part of our lives.

When I say pay reverence I don’t mean doing pooja. Mother Earth does not need special rites and rituals to be respected. There are everyday things we can – give thanks for the food we eat, respect trees by not cutting them down unless we have to and loving the animals around. In an urban environment, it could the birds that we complain about making a mess of our compounds. It is better to keep your environment clean, and thereby pest free, than whipping out the canister of poison for the flies, mosquitoes, rodents and cockroaches.

Sometimes we just have to kill them. In that case, do as the so-called primitive people do when hunting: they thanked the animal they killed for giving up their lives to feed the hunters. When you kill pests, take a moment to apologise. They are pests because of their nature, their Karma, if you will have it. They are not out to get you.

Keeping with older traditions, I will not shorten the life of a flower by plucking it; I will pass a tree and touch it if I can, seeking its blessing. It could a simple thing like brushing my head against the leaves and saying a mental ‘hello’, caressing the trunk, or actually hugging it when no one is around.

One of the most important thing is actually asking the tree/plant its permission when picking its fruit. You can pooh pah it as an old wives tale but science has established plants have a consciousness of their own and will react to response, positive and negative.

Modern life has divorced us from Mother Earth. We no longer really appreciate the bounty Mother Earth has in store for us, nor the life She has created for us. Instead we see our food coming from supermarket shelves. To hear a child say milk comes from the supermarket shelf and not knowing it comes from a cow is disheartening in that we are so separated from the natural things around us.

Too many young people in urban centres don’t know or don’t care of the primary industries that is the fuel of our lives. They see products coming from factories into stores and that is a fact for them. By unhinging ourselves from the lifeline of the earth, we have divorced ourselves from nature. For too many, nature has now become walking tracks, the beaches, the ‘wildlife’ in zoos, the camping in hi-tech vehicles, something we see on TV - a subset of life apart from the “reality of everyday life”.

And then when nature strikes we can’t believe what is happening. It is unacceptable. Yet, it is but a fact of life that natural disasters will happen. There appears to be no ‘cure’ or prevention for natural disasters. But hopefully this article is clear in saying there is a way of ensuring safety.

These ‘random’ acts of violence will happen, again and again. I have lost count of the number of cyclones I have been through in Fiji, and then these two earthquakes in Christchurch have had a major impact on my life. All through this, the name of God and the reverence for Mother Earth have been the only stability to rely on in making it through unscathed. It is a humbling aspect as well as wondrous phenomenon – that a power exists that can look after you because you have established a relationship with it.

It is a loving relationship, with all its concomitants: including the tiffs, the exasperation, the uncertainty, the withdrawals. Even with the anger and frustration, I have noticed that God will come through to protect you, anywhere, anytime. This protection is a verified aspect of God in all our scriptures, in Hinduism, in Christianity, in Buddhism, in any faith that posits a loving and caring God.

All these scriptures clearly show the way of establishing this one-to-one relationship with God. It behoves us as human beings to look for these ways of establishing the relationship for it may be the only way to be stable in an increasing unstable environment.

It is time for the Hindu to become a better Hindu, the Muslim a better Muslim, the Christian a better Christian. Don’t believe that your faith is the only right one – if it was there would not be any other faith at all. See any particular faith as a path denoted by the forefathers to show a people the best way designed for their temperament. Religions are designed as paths to godhead through processes that worked before and continue to work today. Only much of the real message is lost among the multitude of processes and God has become hidden in mechanical routine. Seek and ye shall find. Call His/Her name and you will be answered.