google hits

Buddhism how to deal with tragedy;
How might Buddhist make sense of/handle tragedy;
How would Buddhist deal with the tragedy in Japan

When it comes right down to it, I'm not sure what to make of these Google searches on Buddhism and tragedy. I guess I would still apply my previous post. Understanding tragedy isn't a matter of scope. Tragedy is tragedy, I shouldn't wonder.

Furthermore, I would find myself perplexed if there were any suggestion of Buddhists experiencing or dealing with tragedies any differently than anyone else. In my experience, there's no correlation.

Every individual has his or her own way of coping or not coping with tragedy. Anyone with a social support group or religious or spiritual affiliation can draw strength from it or not.

Buddhists have their practice, and if they've developed it wisely, it theoretically should help them through difficulties, but not necessarily so, such is the nature of tragedies.

And such is the nature of being human that we react emotionally. Intellectually we know tragedies are part of the deal of being alive, at least Buddhism actively emphasizes that. It doesn't lull people into any sense of 'everything will be alright'.

But theoretically being prepared for a tragedy is different from experiencing one, and Buddhism offers techniques to deal, but so do any number of religious and spiritual traditions. And I imagine none of them lessens the character of the tragedy. Just how we cope, and that's up to the individual.

Regarding the aspect of karma in a large-scale tragedy, it bears repeating that it isn't about what happens to us or what we do or what we deserve. I don't think there is some connective karma between people in a plane crash.

We live in the natural world and the natural world just goes on. Earthquakes occur, tsunamis occur, and they have nothing to do with karma. They're just natural or they're just phenomena that occur in the course of our human existence.

This aspect of karma, I'm proposing, is about the mind. It's a reflection of the plasticity of mind. At any given moment of a tragedy, every individual is constantly reacting and every moment is a karmic manifesting moment, meaning their reaction is the manifestation of how they were conditioned karmically to react.

Likewise, how they react creates karma that will manifest further. It might seem like a downer that this interpretation of karma doesn't reflect some grand design of the universe. All it does is explain why it is best to always cultivate, or strive to cultivate a positive state of mind, along with wisdom and compassion.