Katrina's Lesson of Impermanence

I've stepped away from blogging for the past few weeks for a lot of reasons...

I've been completely taken aback by the devastation in the gulf coast region. I've found myself glued to CNN, MSNBC, and other news sources looking for a glimpse of the landscape that consumed my summer months for most of my life.

My grandmother lives in a small town on the gulf coast of Mississippi called Bay St. Louis. We would drive down every year during summer vacation and stay in her house. We would pack the car until it was overflowing with luggage, pillows, blankets, travel games, books, snacks and anything else that would keep us occupied. After leaving Michigan, we would drive for two days... stopping in Kentucky or Tennessee for an overnight stay at a Hampton Inn or a Howard Johnson's or whatever else was convenient when my father got tired of driving. We knew we had arrived when we saw Highway 90. Somehow the sense of restlessness and cabin fever that built up from hours on end in a car would start to dissipate when the car found that small stretch of road that ran parallel to the beach telling us we were almost there.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, Highway 90 sits right next to the sand and takes you from Biloxi through Gulfport and Long Beach to a bridge (that no longer exists) that crossed the bay to Bay St. Louis. Along that stretch of highway you could see restaurants, shopping malls and strip malls, souvenir shops, piers and docks, fishing boats and leisure boats, huge plantation-style mansions mixed in with modern homes, houses on stilts (which I still don't understand) and more recently the casino boats. Having passed these landmarks annually for eighteen years, certain things were burned in my memory. From what I can tell watching the television screen, most of them are gone. The only thing I've been able to discern is a boat that washed ashore during Hurricane Camille that was converted into a souvenir shop. Everything else, even the highway itself, appears to be in varying states of disrepair.

Miraculously, my grandmother's house is still standing with all of the windows intact. She lives less than a mile away from the beach in Bay St. Louis, but her neighbor reports that the garage door was the only thing Katrina took from her. We can all live with that. I was extremely relieved to know that she was safe, staying with a couple of my aunts in Jackson, watching Katrina on television like the rest of us until their power went out. Reports on members of our extended family have trickled in. Cousins, second cousins, and other "numbered" or "great" relatives in the region are all alive and well.

It has been difficult to watch it all unfold... the storm, the aftermath, the hospital slayings dubbed mercy killings, the flooding, the filth, the starvation, the devastation, the agonizingly slow response. While most of us sit and watch from the comfort of our homes where we can still shower, prepare meals, store food, wash clothes, and enjoy our accumulated positions, it seems that the common responses include anger, sadness, compassion, charitable giving, and heaping spoonfulls of blame.

Blame Bush. Blame FEMA. Blame state and local governments if you must. If you are inclined towards blame, there is always a lot of it to go around. I don't really want to go there right now... plenty of other blogs are covering those angles if you need to read them. What I do know is that this storm is one of the great tragedies of the century. Ninety-five years from now when some reporter or historian reflects on the significant events of the past 100 years, Katrina will be remembered.

When I look at what Katrina did to the gulf coast region, I don't think about blame as much as I think about impermanence. My hope is that it becomes a great lesson in impermanence for all of us. Those who have lost everything cannot choose to learn this lesson. They are living it. As for the rest of us? Let us be mindful:

The woman who gathers the flowers of desire,
whose mind clings to pleasures,
is carried off by death in the same way
that a sleeping village
is swept away by a great flood.

[...from Chapter 4 FLOWERS in The Still Point Dhammapada, pg. 23]

It shouldn't require a storm... but since we have one so readily available let's use it. Let's use it to look at all the things we cling to, all of the things we desire... and let's see those things as hurricanes that are not seasonal. Be they category two, four, or five... these things that we cling to ravage and destroy us as efficiently as Katrina took out the gulf coast.

You can just look
at a beautiful person
who has died
now a heap of bones
and see that nothing lasts.
Nothing.

[...from Chapter 11 OLD AGE in The Still Point Dhammapada, p. 73]

So whatever it is you think you require for your existence... a high speed internet connection, cable television, a hot shower... realize that it can be taken from you. It could've been you sitting in a stadium turned cesspool without plumbing, food, water, soap, tampons or medical care. Would you sit in anger and lament about the tragedy that has befallen you or could you be grateful for that next breath? Could you take it all on (with smiles or laughter) as a great lesson in impermanence? I don't know if I could meet the situation with that level of calm, humor or stillness... but I think that is the sign of a great master, a great bodhisattva warrior, the stuff of kong'ans and other zen legends... I think that's what we strive for when we do this practice... the ability to meet life as it comes, to accept the cards we are dealt, and be skilled in letting go.