Why Would You Go Back?

" Buddha himself had defrocked a monk for performing a miracle in public, declaring that the transformation of the human heart was the only miracle that really counted." - from Cave in the Snow: Tenzim Palmo's Quest for Enlightenment by Vicki Mackenzie

I happened to be vacationing in the island of Phi Phi, Thailand when a wall of water rose up from the Andaman Sea and engulfed me. It was much later before I learned it was a tsunami. And so I became an accidental "citizen journalist'" in the days that followed December 26, 2004.

This blog is intended to answer Why Would You Go Back? and many more Frequently Asked Questions about TARA Trek, my artisan journalism / citizen journalism / solo journalism / backpack journalism call it what you will return to the tsunami-struck countries including Thailand, Sri Lanka for six to eight weeks beginning in early December.

What's artisan journalism? It's the celebration of the amateur. In this project, I'll be capturing oral histories of how people create meaning out of tragedy, how they exhibit compassion-based action, how they orchestrate their own grassroots reconstruction efforts. And writing about it. Uploading the audio and photos and video clips. And allowing them to write in first-person themselves if they wish.

Tara is the name of a Tibetan Buddhist Buddha, also known as a goddess of compassion. In Southeast Asia, she is known as Kuan Yin, but that would have been a long domain name! "[Tara] was compassion in action, said to have been born out of the tears of the male Buddha Chenrezig, who saw the suffering of all sentient beings but was unable to do anything about it. Tara, it was said, had the distinction of being the first woman to attain Enlightenment." (Cave in the Snow, Vicki Mackenzie). 

p.s. This isn't about women, if you know anything about Kuan Yin, you'd know gender is irrelevant. Yep, been steeping myself on Buddhism and Hinduism for the trip and for my own spiritual expansion.  But that's not unusual: I was reading a 500-page tome on the Adhyatma Upanishad sitting on faded green slung chair on a shell-flecked beach a few days before the tsunami too. But only near-death experience forced me to truly digest that stuff; before it was purely scholarly. 

December 24, 2004 (another snippet from last journal entry before long lost journal found again somewhere in vicinity of Phi Phi, Thailand):

The day you realize that all running is futile you come to a dead stop right where God is. The day you come to know that you have not gained anything by running, you do not run anymore. - Finger Pointing to the Moon, by Osho

Getting my journal back among the wreckage seems like an omen: write.

Comments

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