Rethinking the Hailstorm and the Naga Illness
The devastating hailstorm attacked our village last night and the damage was worsened by the following rains. Due to my suspicious attitudes towards Tibetan amulets, I did not purchase those sold in Deer Park last week. It turned out that these amulets did work in the way as they were described; people who bought them were unharmed whereas all others who did not buy them lost a great amount of wealth due to the hailstorm. Now, my house was damaged and the following rains soaked many of my hand-copied sutras. There was no doubt that I should be fully responsible for my own loss, since it was me who did not believe in the effectiveness of the amulets, but who should be responsible for the loss of the entire village? Many people in the village had the same question in mind; we needed to find out who should be responsible, not because we wanted to blame others, but because we needed to take this hailstorm as a lesson and get better prepared for future events. A village meeting was thus held. After a thorough discussion, our villagers reached a conclusion that the ritualists should be blamed for their unresponsiveness to the gossip and the entire community should also be condemned for its lack of planning.
The ritualists were the ones who should conduct rituals to repel the gossip. Now, we knew that the gossip was valid since the hailstorm did happen, but back to that time, it was solely an unreliable gossip. The ritualists did nothing; they did not conduct proper rituals to turn back the gossip and to find out the “gossip girl.” As a consequence of their unresponsiveness, the gossip circulated in the village and caused panic. The ritualists defended themselves by saying that the panic had a positive effect, since it was because of the panic that some people went to buy the amulets that protected them from the damage caused by the hailstorm. But our argument was that they should better have foresight rather than hindsight; suppose there was no hailstorm and the gossip was produced by the evil “gossip girl” that was alien to our community, in this case, people who bought the amulets wasted their money on something that was useless. We all agreed that next time, when a gossip came out, the ritualists in the village should conduct rituals at first to test its validity.
As to the entire community, the lack of planning was a fatal problem; it somehow directly caused this loss. There were no hailmasters in the village, since the training of a hailmaster took a long period of time. In order to become a qualified hailmaster, people needed to accomplish enlightenment in four sequential prior activities and only then could focus on activities associated with hail protection; someone who wanted to become hailmaster needed to receive training at a very young age. Apart from the complexity of training, the ritualists in our village thought that hail protection was a dirty business that they wished not to learn, because hailmaster needed to fight with the unseen beings, preventing the spirits to accomplish their goals of bringing hailstorm. So, if our village wanted a hailmaster, we would need to hire one from other places. However, in order for the hail protection ritual to work properly, a hailmaster must be invited to the village before the hail season, usually in the third month of the Tibetan year. He needed to write down rules that needed to be obeyed by every single villager until the day of the ritual performance; otherwise, the ritual might not work. The problem was that our village at that time had a debate on this issue; some argued that there would be no hailstorm in the upcoming winter, hiring a hailmaster was just wasting money. Although others realized the necessity of hiring a hailmaster, problems such as when should the master come and where to find the master could not be solved. When everything was finally settled down, it was too late to conduct the ritual.
Though we had a great loss due to the hailstorm, we were still happy that we realized our problems and decided to improve together in the future. When the meeting was about to close, a breaking news forced us to stay and make further discussions — the next village was stricken by naga illness; we must make a decision whether our doctors and ritualists should go to help them. One of our villagers responded quickly by saying no. He argued that the naga illness was not a physical disease; it was an imaginary disease, like a psychosomatic illness, which was caused by the spirit related to lakes, trees, and forests. It must be that the residents in next village had polluted the territories of the naga spirit and thus angered the naga, so the naga caused such illness as a consequence. In other words, it was the manifestation of the karmic effects; those villagers deserved what they got and they should be left alone to experience it. Many others in the meeting agreed with him, but I did not. I challenged him by arguing that people who shared the same opinion with him were all sick; they all had phlegm disorders that were caused by their close-mindedness. Their heart was closed to the people who were suffering in the neighboring village, such lack of generosity did not align with the basic spirit of Buddhism. It might be true that the suffering in the next village was due to their craving for things that did not belong to them, but if we did not go to help, our close-mindedness would generate similar karmic effects such as suffering sinus problem, pneumonia, asthma, and rheumatism. The Gautama Buddha could sacrifice his body to feed a hungering tiger in his previous life, as faithful Buddhists, how could we see sufferings but remain unmoved?
Fortunately, most people agreed with me, our doctors and ritualists would go to help the people in the next village tomorrow. I accompanied a farmer on my way home; he complained to me that it was tragic to lose such big amount of resources when winter was approaching. I answered to him that life in this phenomenal world was itself a tragedy; the Buddha has made this very clear by saying life was duhkha, nothing in this phenomenal world was permanent and reliable, suffering of the sudden change caused by the hailstorm was therefore inevitable as long as we were still in the samsara. But we should not be too pessimistic about this since Buddha had left us with his teaching, which would eventually bring us out of the samsara and free us from this endless suffering.
