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Early this month, parts of the Italian island of Stromboli were evacuated after a volcano erupted throwing a plume of ash and rock up to two km into the sky
Nature is on a rampage, bringing destruction in all areas of our planet. So far in the two months of June and July 2019 alone, much has happened on our planet that is the work of nature.
A magnitude7.1 quake struck near the town of Ridgecrest, California, this month, just a day after the same region experienced a magnitude6.4 quake. Experts say the fault system is growing and even more quakes are likely in the coming days.1
The quake hit on Friday night (local time) and was felt as far as Mexico, with preliminary magnitude estimates making it the largest the region has had in 20 years. It was followed by at least 16 aftershocks of magnitude4 and above, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). It also warned of a 50% chance of another magnitude6 quake in the days ahead.
California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in areas affected by the earthquake, including San Bernardino Country, which suffered damage that is of “extreme peril to the safety of persons and property”.2
Also early this month, parts of the Italian island of Stromboli were evacuated after a volcano erupted throwing a plume of ash and rock up to two km into the sky. According to Italian news agencies, local priest Giovanni Longo described it “like being in hell because of the rain of fire coming from the sky.”3
On Independence Day, the temperature in Anchorage soared higher than at any other time on record as a massive heat dome sprawled over the state. The city’s high temperature of 90 degrees topped its previous record by an astounding five degrees.
To break the June 1969 record of 85 degrees by such a margin was extraordinary. Even breaking such a record by one degree would have been notable.
The forecast for Anchorage and southern Alaska calls for the continuation of exceptionally hot weather through early next week, with temperatures frequently at historically high levels well into the 80s.
“This is an unprecedented heatwave for #Alaska,” tweeted Steve Bowen, a meteorologist with reinsurer Aon.
Anchorage wasn’t alone in posting record heat on 4 July. It was joined by several other locations across the coastal region of southern Alaska.4
In late June, all time temperatures have been broken in the heatwave sweeping the European continent. Deadly hot weather has set records across Europe as a heat wave baked the continent. Monthly and all-time temperature records5 were broken in parts of Germany, Poland, France, Spain, and the Czech Republic. At least two people died from the heat in Spain. Clermont-Ferrand, France reported a record high of 105.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But the country’s all-time temperature record of 113.2 degrees Fahrenheit6 in the village of Villevieille.
“The whole government is mobilised,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters. Public health warnings for heat have also been issued in Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland.7
In India this month, heavy incessant rain has paralysed Mumbai and left at least 19 dead in the city and neighbouring area. Mumbai has received the heaviest rain in a decade. The weather office has warned of more rain in Mumbai, Palghar, Thane and Raigad.
Local trains in Mumbai, which were cancelled by the Western and Central Railways citing “nature’s fury”, have resumed services. Over a dozen people were killed as a wall crashed in Malad around 2 a.m.; efforts to save a tragedy as rescue team pulled out her body after a 14-hour operation.
Pictures from Nalasopara showed the railway station waterlogged. Flights have been diverted as the main runway of the Mumbai airport was blocked by a stranded plane. The runway is likely to be functional by Thursday, officials said.8
Also early this July, more than one million people across the Japanese island of Kyushu have been ordered to evacuate, amid warnings of landslides and floods brought on by heavy rain. Authorities urged residents in parts of Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures to move to safety immediately.
One elderly woman in Kagoshima city died after a mudslide hit her home.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has told residents of the cities to “take steps to protect their lives”.
Kagoshima prefecture has asked Japan’s self-defence forces to help9 with the relief efforts, Governor Satoshi Mitazono reportedly said. The entire populations of Kagoshima city, Kirishima and Aira were ordered to leave. Another 930,000 people in the south of the island were also advised to move.
Also early this month July heavy rains have resulted in floods in Irkutsk Oblast region in the Siberian Federal District, with 18 dead and eight people missing.10
The US President declared a state of emergency in Louisiana (13 July) as a growing tropical storm nears landfall. On 8July dangerous flash floods hit Washington DC area.11
Also in July, millions of people have been displaced across India, Nepal and Bangladesh after monsoon rains triggered flash floods and landslides over the past week.
India’s north-eastern state of Assam has been hit hard by the floods brought by the monsoon, with at least 1.5 million people displaced and 10 dead.
In the Chittagong division of Bangladesh, there have been 10 deaths and about 500,000 displaced as 200 villages have been flooded.
The disaster’s death toll has been highest in Nepal, which recorded 55 fatalities on Sunday, with 30 missing and 33 injured, the Government said.12
In Colorado USA, in March this year National Guard troops were using specialised vehicles to rescue stranded drivers as a powerful “bomb cyclone” was expected to continue its march on Wednesday the 13th, unleashing heavy rain and snow on the midland plains. The storm which blasted a mix of snow, rain and wind across the central United States was blamed for a crash that killed a Colorado State Patrol trooper.
More than 1,300 flights had been cancelled at Denver international Airport, where a wind gust of 80 mph was reported on Wednesday 13th morning. All runways were closed around early afternoon and remained closed into Wednesday evening.13
Also in April this year, unprecedented, catastrophic Cyclone Kenneth slammed into storm-battered Mozambique.14
Six million people were affected by hurricane-strength Tropical Cyclone Vayu, which wasbarrelling toward northwest India (12 June) and was expected to skirt the coastline of Gujarat beginning Thursday morning (June this year).
Almost 300,000 people were set to be evacuated to 700 shelter homes, a spokesperson for India’s Home Ministry said Wednesday. Schools and colleges in the area were closed until Friday, officials said.
With winds of 170 kph (100 mph), Tropical Cyclone Vayu could become the strongest cyclone to strike northwestern India in decades. It comes a month after powerful Tropical Cyclone Fani15 slammed into India’s northeastern coast.16
Dozens of flights in and out of Sydney Airport have been cancelled due to damaging winds battering New South Wales. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) recorded gusts of up to 78 km per hour at Sydney’s airport earlier this afternoon (13 July), shortly after issuing a severe weather warning for both NSW and Victoria.17
The four great elements, earth, heat, air and water, are battering planet Earth and its residents and those four great elements are its own constituents. Then, why this self-infliction? Almost all people, that includes scientists, world leaders, United Nations and other multilateral agencies, say this is due to global warming caused by the uncontrolled emission of mainly carbon dioxide into the atmosphere due to burning of fossil fuel, coal and other fuels. There may be some truth in this, but the real culprit is elsewhere.
This planet though termed the world is not the world. In the Hemawatha Sutra, the Yakka asked Buddha, “In what has the world arisen? In what does it acquaint? From clinging to what is the world? In what is the world afflicted?”
In reply, Buddha said, “In the six is the world arisen. In six does itmake acquaintance. From clinging to the six is just the world. In the six is the world afflicted.”
Also to a question from BhikkuSamiddhi, Buddha said, “Where there is eye, where there is form, where there is eye-consciousness and things to know with eye-consciousness, there is world.” So it is for the other five touch-agencies of ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. The world is not there without the six touch agencies. The two biggest commodities of our six agencies are craving and hatred. If one were to measure the quantum of these two commodities (say where weight can be given) emitted each day to the atmosphere by human beings, it could probably run into trillions of tons.
The things that are most emitted now to the outside atmosphere are not necessarily carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other gases or the plastic and other waste but that of hatred. Hatred today is evident everywhere.
Global trade friction is causing much chagrin to people causing huge hatred emissions. Political situations in almost all nations too are resulting in hatred amongst their citizens. War and arms trade is creating enormous hatred within nations and between nations, between different groups, etc. There is much friction between USA and China, USA and Iran and even USA and EU.
Also the leaked emails in the case of Ambassador of UK to USA and the extraordinary attack launched by President Trump on outgoing British Premier and Ambassador to USA has now resulted in resignation of Sir Kim Darroch, the Ambassador. This has already caused some harsh words amongst the political fraternity in UK.
Then there is the ongoing tussle between President Trump and four of the Congresswomen. The only result of this is the emission of hatred to the outer world.
Each day the situation in Hong Kong is getting worse with more and more street protests. All what is happening is the emission of more and more hatred.
Then social media is creating havoc, and some politicians tweet all the time accusing others. Electronic media is making mountains out of molehills.
There is enormous friction and hatred amongst people in Libya, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, etc. Here in our country Sri Lanka too, political tension is rising with the approach of Presidential and Parliamentary Elections. The attack on Christian churches and hotels on Easter Sunday caused enormous chagrin and consternation to all in Sri Lanka. Despite few skirmishes, a great majority of the Sri Lankan people have come around to live like one nation people barring a miniscule of people.
The four great elements that constitute our planet donot remain static and are conditioned. Buddha told the Bhikkus, “Bhikkus all conditioned things have three characteristics, arising can be seen, ceasing can be seen, and what seems to be permanent there is change from this to that”. In other world there is arising and ceasing at extreme velocity. These great elements do not exist by themselves, but in each element the other three are also there. Water has the earth, heat and air elements too.
Hatred too has extreme high frequency, and huge emissions of hatred as is now, can impact the normal pattern of the four great elements causing them to react negatively. Natural disasters that have happened can be more due to the impact of the hatred on the four great elements and not just due to the emissions of fossil fuel gases.
The best example of how mindfulness can help is the case of the 12 young Thai soccer players trapped in a flooded cave who practiced mindfulness meditation
Dr. Masaru Emoto, the Japanese scientist who revolutionised the idea that our thoughts and intentions impact the physical realm, is one of the most important water researchers the world has known. For over 20 years until he passed away in 2014, he studied the scientific evidence of how the molecular structure in water transforms when it is exposed to human words, thoughts, sounds and intentions.
The extraordinary life work of Dr. Emoto is documented in the New York Times bestseller, ‘The Hidden Messages in Water’.In his book, Dr. Emoto demonstrates how water exposed to loving, benevolent, and compassionate human intention results in aesthetically pleasing physical molecular formations in the water while water exposed to fearful and discordant human intentions results in disconnected, disfigured, and “unpleasant” physical molecular formations. He did this through magnetic resonance analysis technology and high speed photographs. https://thewellnessenterprise.com/emoto/.
A teacher in Curitiba, a southern region in Brazil, decided to illustrate the power of words to her students by using two cups of sealed rice.
Physical education teacher Ana Paula Frezatto Martins arranged the class in a circle around the two cups of grains. Then, she asked the students to say bad things to one of the cups — things people might hear in everyday life, like “you are useless”, “you are stupid”, and “you can’t accomplish anything”.
To the second glass, the teacher asked the kids to say things they would like to hear from everyone. The kids used such expressions as “you are special”, “you can accomplish anything”, and “you are smart”. Days later, the rice in the “love cup” fermented naturally while the rice in the “hate cup” became dark and mouldy.
Martins says she has always tried to show her students the importance of highlighting positivity.“In my classes I explain the importance of saying nice things to each other, but kids need more tangible physical expressions of our examples,” says Martins, according to Globo.
“When you say something nice, like ‘you can do it’, you feel that in your heart,” says 10-year-old student Anita SantiniTrevisan. The youngster says that because of the experiment, she has tried to be more positive every day.
Another student, Henrique Kloster, had a similar conclusion: “The damage of negativity is bigger than we can imagine … there are two ways to say things, the right way is to praise the good side of others with the eyes of the heart, not the eyes we see.”
Of course, there are many sceptics who fully rejected these findings saying such can also be manipulated, and some fully discounted the Dr. Emoto findings. They do so because they have no understanding of what the world is, what the four great elements are and that they are conditioned.
The good side to all this is that there is also a solution. That solution can come only if people start to stop hating others, political leaders stop saying or doing things that create hatred in others and all different sectoral people come to the fundamental understanding that we are all of the same species, Homo Sapiens and belong to one family and that we all have the same four great elements in our body.
Thus, as advised by Buddha in many of his discourses, learn to build mindfulness and spread loving-kindness, compassion and build in equanimity and altruistic joy in ourselves. Unless we do so, our days not just for few but for all may be numbered.The best example of how mindfulness can help is the recent case of 12 young Thai soccer players trapped in a flooded cave practiced mindfulness meditation and where even the nature of four great elements may have relented.
(The writer can be reached via [email protected].)
Footnotes
1.www.livescience.com/65883-bigger-quake-strikes-southern-california.html
2.www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-06/southern-california-7.1-earthquake-
3.https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/07/05/record-crushing-heat-torches-alaska-anchorage-hits-all-time-high/?utm_term=.4747e1b796d9
4.https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/07/05/record-crushing-heat-torches-alaska-anchorage-hits-all-time-high/?utm_term=.4747e1b796d9
5.https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/dangerous-extreme-heat-wave-tightens-grip-on-france-spain-and-other-parts-of-western-europe/70008660
6.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/world/europe/europe-heat-wave-wildfires.html
7.https://www.vox.com/world/2019/6/26/18744518/heat-wave-2019-europe-france-germany-spain
8.www.ndtv.com/mumbai-news/mumbai-rains-live-updates-suburban-trains-stopped-after-heavy-rain-floods-many-parts-of-mumbai-2062441
9.https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/03/national/japans-kagoshima-orders-600000-residents-evacuation-centers-safe-areas-due-heavy-rain/#.XTReBY4zbDd
10.http://floodlist.com/asia/russia-irkutsk-floods-june-july-2019.
11.https://www.foxnews.com/us/president-trump-declares-state-of-emergency-in-lousiana-sends-federal-assistance-ahead-of-tropical-storm-barry
12.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-15/floods-on-indian-subcontinent-displace-over-a-million/11308502
13.www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/03/13/blizzard-powerful-storm-hit-central-u-s-heavy-snow-winds/3148910002/
14.www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/25/cyclone-kenneth-slams-into-storm-battered-mozambique/3575504002/
15.https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/02/india/cyclone-fani-evacuations-india-intl/index.html
16.https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/11/world/cyclone-vayu-india/index.html
17.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-13/sydney-airport-flights-cancelled-due-to-damaging-winds-in-nsw/11306690
