Lessons from the Storm

We know that we can learn from everything and everyone, and the storm is such a big opportunity for spiritual learning, especially for those of us who aren't directly affect and can more easily step back to contemplate it. (One of the main reasons I write this blog is so that others can learn from my experiences without having to experience them directly for themselves. For me, having cancer has been wonderful for my spiritual practice, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone.)

This disaster reminds me of the things I take for granted. I have renewed gratitude for the living beings who provide everything I need. In particular, I have been appreciating that I can flick a switch and have light, and that the heat comes on automatically. It's been raining a lot here, but the roof keeps us dry, as does my raincoat when I go out for walks with the dog. We have a fridge and freezer and pantry full of healthy food, with more where that came from just down the street. I can get in the car, travel a smooth, safe road, and go wherever I like. All thanks to the kindness of others. That's not even mentioning all the workers who have been rescuing the stranded, looking after the injured, providing shelter for the displaced, keeping the streets safe, clearing downed trees, pumping water out of roads, tunnels and buildings, getting transportation moving again, and on and on.

Renunciation also comes quickly to mind. We often convince ourselves we are in control, but a huge storm like this reveals otherwise. It is a natural disaster - this kind of sudden disruptive event in our lives is entirely natural in samsara. Whether it is losing a job, getting sick, or dying - it happens all the time. I don't want to live in a world where such dangers could strike anyone at any time.

That feeling slides easily into compassion for all the manifest suffering created by the storm. I saw an interview on TV with a couple who had a lot of water damage to the house they had been working on themselves for years. The man described how he had laid every plank of the floor and built every wall in the house. There was a lot of sadness at the loss but also the fortitude to fix it. It did, however, make me think of an elaborate sandcastle inevitably swept away by the incoming tide. My body is like that: I can build every cell of it, over and over, but there is no ordinary way to prevent it from being eroded by the tides of aging and death.

Speaking of death, I'd like to quote from a beautifully written New York Times article titled Storm Deaths, Mystery, Fate and Bad Timing

They stepped in the wrong puddle. They walked the dog at the wrong moment. Or they did exactly what all the emergency experts instructed them to do — they huddled inside and waited for its anger to go away.
Hurricane Sandy, in the wily and savage way of natural disasters, expressed its full assortment of lethal methods as it hit the East Coast on Monday night. In its howling sweep, the authorities said the storm claimed at least 40 lives in eight states.
They were infants and adolescents, people embarking on careers and those looking back on them — the ones who paid the ultimate price of this most destructive of storms. In Franklin Township, Pa., an 8-year-old boy was crushed by a tree when he ran outside to check on his family’s calves. A woman died in Somerset County, Pa., when her car slid off a snowy road.
...
Most of all, it was the trees. Uprooted or cracked by the furious winds, they became weapons that flattened cars, houses and pedestrians. But also, a woman was killed by a severed power line. A man was swept by flooding waters out of his house and through the glass of a store. The power blinked off for a 75-year-old woman on a respirator, and a heart attack killed her.
And the storm left its share of mysteries. A parking lot attendant was found dead in a subterranean parking garage in TriBeCa, the precise cause unclear. The body of an unidentified woman washed up on Georgica Beach in East Hampton, on Long Island.
Some people died and no one knew, not for hours, not until the storm backed away and moved on. ...

Death is coming, one way or another; let's make the most of this precious human life while we still can.