A Buddhist burial in the rain for Japanese tsunami victims
Ten flimsy wooden coffins were laid on two sturdy rails at a hastily prepared cemetery of mostly mud as Keseunnuma began burying its dead from the tsunami that ripped apart the Japanese coastal city. Desperate municipalities such as Kesennuma have been digging mass graves, unthinkable in a nation where the deceased are almost always cremated and their ashes placed in stone family tombs near Buddhist temples. Local regulations often prohibit burial of bodies.
The number of dead in Kesennuma was 551 as of Saturday, far too many for local crematoriums that can typically manage about 10 bodies a day but are now facing shortages of kerosene. Another 1,448 in the city of about 74,000 are missing from the tsunami two weeks ago that has left more than 27,500 people dead or missing across Japan.
“This disaster has created a tsunami of tears,” said Shuko Kakayama, master of the Jifukuji Buddhist temple, which lost 300 members to the tsunami that also heavily damaged temple grounds.
Kakayama, who presided over the funeral of one temple member and prayed for all souls laid to rest, said there was a time when Japan permitted burials. But the government has for decades sought cremations due to a lack of cemetery space in the densely populated country.
“If we are returning to the earth, then we are returning to nature,” Kakayama said.
Read the full story by Jon Herskovitz here.
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from Tales from the Trail:
Haiti … Too Much Suffering
Having hurtled by car through the Dominican Republic to the ramshackle Haitian border, I and four other foreign journalists were desperate to reach Port-au-Prince by nightfall. So after exchanging Ramon's beaten-up taxi for the the back of a modern pickup owned by one of Haiti's elite families, our speed stresses were soon put into terrible perspective.
Just a mile or two into Haiti, a group of people stood disconsolately by the road, trying to flag down any vehicle that would stop, and pointing to the collapsed face of a nearby quarry. "There's someone inside there," one of them said, pointing to a pile of rocks.
Before we had time to even consider helping them, our car -- like all the others in the convoy -- had sped off, kicking up dust. The Haitians driving myself and four other foreign journalists into the earthquake zone took the morally nightmarish decision for us. After all, they had their own missing friends and family to find fast in Port-au-Prince.
Later in the day, after several hours winding round collapsed buildings, and corpses which at first we had mistaken for people sleeping, we found a hotel prepared to take us in. Or at least let us sleep in the open-air by the swimming pool. (The Hotel Villa Creole has generously opened its doors and facilities -- despite considerable damage -- to aid-workers and foreign reporters for free.)
As we pulled up, we were stopped by dead bodies lying in the road, and then a crowd of injured Haitians lying and sitting in front of the hotel lobby where some minimal medicines were being dispensed. As we hauled our four large boxes of drinking-water bottles out of the car, one injured lady held out her hand and asked for water. Then another, and another, and another. Perhaps mindful of the horrors of the quarry, we entered the hotel with half our water supplies gone.
Reuters photos by Eduardo Muñoz and Carlos Barria.
Me, logic, and ‘God’
If I were made in ‘his’ image, and ‘he’ was a parent like I, then I have a bit of a problem, here. Because I am a parent of three daughters and one son. If I had to give up my son to save the whole world, I would NOT be happy with jerks like Robertson getting away with dissing the very people I was attempting to save. I would not hire him to work for me. Instead, I would want intelligent representatives who incite the peace my son represented, not fear. I would like to think that anything I would be fashioned after would be more intellectually stable than that (when I was a Christian, this was my justification in rejection of people like Robertson).
Of course, if I were ‘him’ I would do that to them, because if I were ‘him’ I would be callous enough to be able to give up my ‘only begotten son.’ Unlike any real parent could ever do, even if it were to save the world.
That all being aside, biblical mythology has absolutely no bearing on Mother Nature – That’s a human’s idea, not hers. She’s just doing her own thing, the circle of life, one moment at a time, marching right along. Not now or has she ever been subject to humanity. That’s why so many don’t like her, and turn to male deity instead. Or think they do…….. Christianity has many gods, including The Devil, Jesus, Trinity, God, Yahweh, Mother Mary (Maria), Mary Madelena, John the Baptist, Moses, Father Abraham, Michael, Gabriel, just to name a few. That’s not to mention the mythological beings such as demons, angels, and dragons. Oh…….. and flying chariots. So while Christians believe they are ‘monotheistic,’ in the intellectual theological community they are considered multi-theistic. Like those awful Pagans, Native Americans, and (ahem) some traditional Haitians, who haven’t been lost to the fear of an afterlife of hellfire and brimstone by some ass who goes in there disrespecting an entire people’s cultural history. He goes there with the agenda to wipe out their history and culture and make them believe as he does. Sad, sad loss of humanity in the name of Christianity.
Buddhist charity turns bottles into blankets for disaster victims
A plastic bottle thrown into a Taipei recycling bin could be reincarnated as a blanket to warm disaster victims in any of 20 countries, thanks to a unique project by the world’s largest Buddhist charity.
The Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation has been taking plastic bottles from the waste stream of Taipei, a city of 2.6 million, for three years to convert them into about 244,000 polyester blankets intended for disaster zones. It has sent volunteers with relief supplies to some of the world’s biggest disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 and last year’s devastating Sichuan earthquake in China.
This week, Tzu Chi expanded its one-of-a-kind recycling effort to begin making shirts, scarves and cloth shopping bags. It sends the plastic bottles to a factory that breaks them down into a polyester fabric, which is then sent to crew of volunteers who fashion it into blankets or garments.
“They’re faster than a normal factory because they’re driven by kind-heartedness,” said lead volunteer Wu Yueh-yin, as more than 100 others cut, stitched, folded and boxed the grey polyester fabric into blankets and scarves for the next crisis.
Here’s a video from Tzu Chi USA called “Green is the new Black” on the foundation’s use of recycled plastic bottles:
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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JAPAN – BEACON OF CORRECT SPIRIT
“Tsunami Survivor Adoption Program”
A tsunami slammed into Japan’s northeast coast on March 11, killing well over 10,000 people. The 1,000’s of survivors huddle in makeshift shelters. Food, clean water, medicine, toiletries, warmth, comfort, medical and trauma care and other essential supports for survival are in scant supply, in some places non-existent. They are in the darkest of dreams from which they cannot awake, haunted by the loss of loved ones, their familiar home which is in a pile of rubble scattered across a six-mile signature of ravaging horror…Whole generations of family have become tortured ghosts wandering the coastline of the Northwest, evaporating until the sun sets and rises again. At all times, survivors demonstrate impeccable conduct to the shocked world looking on – reminding them of their failings by contrast, inspiring them with new insight on the potential nobility of the human spirit…
It’s true: the government, the survivors, the ninky? dantai who provide disaster relief services faster than the government, the indescribably self-sacrificing workers (Tsun Tzu is the only name appropriate) combating the nuclear plant shambles to protect Mother Japan, and faint smatterings of the outside world community lend a helping hand. After all, in any confrontation to the reminder that we will each face a “final moment”, we are all members of the same family, the frail, evil but simultaneously wondrous and inspiring specie, Homo sapiens.
The code of jingi (justice and duty – where loyalty and respect are a way of life) is the essence of the Japanese people. Worldwide, nothing resembles it.
The multiple, escalating, compound disasters Japan faces are incomparable to any in history. They will survive, rebuild, even fortify beyond their past dignity as a people.
New strategies are needed, which is why I pen this blog. I ask every able-bodied Japanese citizen to reach out their individual hand and home to a survivor. Bring them into your home. Within your means, care for one or more survivors. Work collectively to establish a network of such volunteer homes, a transportation network to bring those survivors to their new “adopting home”. Greet them with love and kindness and nurturing support as you can. Do this as immediately as possible. New and great risk will beset them unless you act with aggressive action to make this possible and tangible. I beg you as a previous Japanese life which memory is alive within me, Kotoamatsukami. Blessings and hope and love and respect for you…
Dominic.MacCormac@MedstrataSystems.com