Haiti’s Earthquake—Why Not Me? January 13, 2010
Posted by Jill S. Schneiderman in Buddhist concepts, earthquakes, Haiti.add a comment
This is cross-posted at Shambhala SunSpace.
“Awareness of impermanence is encouraged, so that when it is coupled with our appreciation of the enormous potential of our human existence, it will give us a sense of urgency that I must use every precious moment.“–The 14th Dalai Lama.
I awoke this morning from my peaceful perch in Barbados to news of a massive earthquake yesterday in Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. In the BBC report that alerted me to the event, a British Geological Survey geologist commented that the 7.0 quake, centered ten miles west of Port-au-Prince, hit a bad trifecta: large magnitude, poor country, dense population.
But that’s not really so remarkable; one need only think back to the 1988 Armenia; 1999 Izmit, Turkey; 2005 Kashmir, Pakistan; or 2009 Sichuan, China earthquakes to know that accumulated stress in the earth always finds release in geologic, if not human, time. But for those who pay attention to these types of “natural” disasters, what was more startling was the location of this earthquake.
Pakistan, Turkey, Georgia, Afghanistan, Iran, India, China. This litany of earthquake foci may unsettle but not surprise us because we know that these locations trace the arcs of great mountain ranges at the suture zones between colliding continents. Expected Caribbean “natural” disasters, on the other hand, usually center on volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and landslides. Indeed, Haiti has not experienced an earthquake of this magnitude since 1770. But in a corollary to the caution that “where there is smoke, there is fire,” to the geological savant, where there is volcanism there are earthquakes. And indeed, the collision of the Caribbean Sea and North American lithospheric plates is the agent of both these Caribbean phenomena.
Barbados, in the easternmost Caribbean, is a coral platform rather than an active volcanic center. Still, I wondered if I had felt the shaking. Depending on magnitude, lithospheric ruptures anywhere in this region could be perceived by others islanders because, to seismic energy, the Caribbean is a small place. We know that Haitians felt it horribly. And according to the BBC, their spontaneous responses have included prayer. Such responses connect Haitians to other people who have endured this kind of trauma. Like the Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 that inspired debate among common people as well as luminaries including Voltaire, Alexander Pope, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the subject of God’s place in the natural world and human affairs, along with concerted efforts at disaster control, the Haiti earthquake spurs entreaties for intercession and appeals for compassion.
The earthquake caused me to recall Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein’s response to the question “Why me?” spoken when extraordinary lamentable conditions arise. “Why not me?” teaches Boorstein. The earthquake in Haiti reminds me that the Earth is home to myriad creatures who are but temporary global residents; at every moment, all living beings are the Earth’s subjects. Yet social and economic circumstances cause some living beings greater vulnerability to such disasters. I’m glad that, according to my children, in Barbados study of “natural” disasters is part of the social, not natural, science curriculum. It underscores that indeed these phenomena are both social and “natural” and that our responses must include compassion, kindness and prayer as well as scientific questions and explanations.
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‘Natural’ Disasters, Suffering, and Joy December 11, 2009
Posted by Jill S. Schneiderman in book review, Buddhist concepts, climate change, disasters, earth community, geology.1 comment so far
This is cross-posted at Shambhala SunSpace.
In an interview published about her recent book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (2009) in The Rumpus, a new online magazine focused on culture, Rebecca Solnit comments that “there are disasters that are entirely man-made, but none that are entirely natural.” In the book, Solnit examines five disasters and the behavior of regular people in the aftermath of the events: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires, the Halifax munitions cargo ship explosion of 1917, the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Solnit’s interview comment caught my eye because as a self-proclaimed jubugeoscientist I recognize the truth of her important observation. I teach a course on Geohazards at Vassar College, so named to help students avoid the misperception that any modern-day disaster is completely ‘natural.’ The causes of so many of Earth’s disasters—not least among them climate-change augmented hurricanes—have roots in actions we humans undertake on the planet to satisfy our desires; the effects of our activities result in suffering among all living beings.
Even more remarkable to me than Solnit’s accurate observation about the agents of disasters is her assertion that while hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes are not to be wished for, they are among disastrous events that elicit our best responses and provide common purpose. Solnit maintains that “fleeting, purposeful joy fills human beings in the face of disasters. Everyday concerns and societal strictures vanish. A strange kind of liberation fills the air. People rise to the occasion. Social alienation seems to vanish.” Solnit’s affirmation causes my Buddhist heart to swell with joy because I see that she has unearthed evidence of metta (lovingkindness) and karuna (compassion) in unlikely events and places. It seems to me that Solnit shows us that in these moments of crisis, human beings become awake.
To describe the responses of ordinary people during these episodes, Solnit uses phrases such as: spontaneous caring, rational generosity, courage under duress, brave altruism. They illustrate Solnit’s main point that in these circumstances people are mostly kind, generous, brave, resourceful and creative. Rather than seeing civilians acting during times of crisis as, at best, a merely frightened and disoriented mass of humanity and at worst, a dumb, thieving, murderous mob, Solnit reveals invigorated and capable citizens. Solnit writes:
“Disaster requires an ability to embrace contradiction in both the minds of those undergoing it and those trying to understand it from afar. In each disaster, there is suffering, there are psychic scars that will be felt most when the emergency is over, there are deaths and losses. Satisfactions, newborn social bonds, and liberations are often also profound. Of course one factor in the gap between the usual accounts of disaster and actual experience is that those accounts focus on the small percentage of people who are wounded, killed, orphaned, and otherwise devastated, often at the epicenter of the disaster, along with the officials involved. Surrounding them, often in the same city or even neighborhood, is a periphery of many more who are largely undamaged but profoundly disrupted — and it is the disruptive power of disaster that matters here, the ability of disasters to topple old orders and open new possibilities. This broader effect is what disaster does to society. In the moment of disaster, the old order no longer exists and people improvise rescues, shelters, and communities. Thereafter, a struggle takes place over whether the old order with all its shortcomings and injustices will be reimposed or a new one, perhaps more oppressive or perhaps more just and free, like the disaster utopia, will arise.”
Solnit’s message echoes the three jewels of Buddhism: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. In the aftermath of disaster, people wake up to the reality that suffering is inevitable and also recognize that the way we respond to the suffering in our communities dictates whether that suffering will be alleviated or exacerbated.
An August 2009 New York Times book review calls A Paradise in Hell, an optimistic book and The Rumpus recommends that one read it with Solnit’s earlier work, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities because together these books reassure us that our actions are important even when we don’t see—or can’t recognize—results in our lifetimes. I’ll be reading these books during the Copenhagen climate change meetings in the hope that negotiators will be able to wake up before the next wave of disasters roll in from the rising seas.
Jill S. Schneiderman is Professor of Earth Science at Vassar College. This year she received a Contemplative Practice Fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She is editor of and contributor to For the Rock Record: Geologists on Intelligent Design (University of California Press, 2009) and The Earth Around Us: Maintaining a Livable Planet (Westview Press, 2003).
For more about Buddhism and Green Living, visit our special page on the topic here on ShambhalaSun.com.
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Island as Paleo-Sangha November 24, 2009
Posted by Jill S. Schneiderman in Barbados, Buddhist concepts, climate change, contemplative practice, earth community, geology.add a comment
This is cross-posted at Shambhala SunSpace.
I’ve been thinking about the upcoming Copenhagen United Nations climate change conference—the opportunity to secure agreements to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions that will replace the Kyoto Protocol before it expires—because this year I’ve been living on a tiny coral island in the Atlantic Ocean. Here in Barbados, everywhere I look with my geologist’s gaze I see evidence of past climate change. And in the daily newspapers I read reports that record the nation’s worries about the effects of climate change on islander’s livelihoods. As is true for other small island nations, the future of all living beings on Barbados depends on productive conversations in Copenhagen.
Barbados is a coral island that rose roughly 1200 feet above sea level in the last one million years—in other words, Barbados is a geological infant. Still, it has much to teach us. I’m reminded of a verse from Pablo Neruda’s poem “Keeping Quiet”:
“If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
As when everything seems dead
And later proves to be alive.” *
Though some sandstone and shale form a nucleus of the island, more than 85% of the exposed land consists of coral rock, known to geologists as limestone, naturally lithified from broken debris of ancient coral reefs. The island is unique in the Caribbean. Unlike the Bahamas that consist largely of windblown sand cemented together by the action of rainwater, or other Caribbean islands so vividly volcanic, Barbados today is comprised of nothing more than subaerial coralline remnants of dead communities and submarine fringes of currently living colonies of organisms—corals. Tiny animals called polyps that are related to and look like sea anemones, each coral encloses itself in a stony cup of limestone that it secretes. As they grow, the polyps divide to form coral colonies that build up on top of each other and manifest as a reef. Over thousands of years, coral reefs respond to fluctuations in sea level as well as changes in water temperature and other environmental conditions.
Abiding on this island I traverse slopes telling me that where I now walk, ocean waves once lapped. Hillsides shaped like treads and risers of a coralline staircase, coastal terraces in geological parlance, mark ancient shorelines. These old coastal features some distance above the modern coastline indicate that with changing climate and consequent sea level fluctuations some colonial organisms have become extinct while others have succeeded them. As a Jewish Buddhist geologist—or jubugeoscientist as I’ve come to think of myself lately—I think of these ancient reefs as paleo-Sanghas, communities that lived and died together.
In thinking about Buddhist responses to climate change, I’ve come to believe that Buddhist scientists must emphasize compassion and the ethical conduct components of the eightfold path—wise speech, wise action, wise livelihood. Though we scientists lead with our heads, I believe that we must add our hearts to our enterprise. From my observations of impermanent coral communities, my head knows that the living communities of Barbados will be vulnerable to inevitable sea level fluctuations. But as I behold the Barbadian’s Earth, I realize that scientist-negotiators going to Copenhagen must bring to conversations more than scientific wisdom; they must bring scientific heart.
Just before I left for an extended silent meditation retreat with Sylvia Boorstein and Sharon Salzberg last week, I read that world leaders had concluded that it would be unrealistic to strive for a legally binding agreement at the upcoming climate conference. Instead, the Danes have suggested that some Copenhagen aspirations could be salvaged through a “first-stage series of commitments rather than an all-encompassing protocol.” I have an alternative suggestion for the U.N. climate conference organizers prompted by my recent sit with Sylvia and Sharon: let negotiators not speak; let them live together and practice karuna and metta meditation as a community of retreatants for the twelve days set aside for the conference. By the end of that period, perhaps negotiator-retreatants will feel connected enough to one another and the home countries they each represent so that true giving will be possible. In preparation for the retreat I’d be happy to send them a piece of Barbados limestone for the altar.
* Italics mine
Jill S. Schneiderman is Professor of Earth Science at Vassar College. This year she received a Contemplative Practice Fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She is editor of and contributor to For the Rock Record: Geologists on Intelligent Design (University of California Press, 2009) and The Earth Around Us: Maintaining a Livable Planet (Westview Press, 2003).
For more about Buddhism and Green Living, visit our special page on the topic here on ShambhalaSun.com.
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