The Bereaved and those with Hardened hearts

Caught the film ' Interstellar'.  The scene which affected me most was when Cooper, the pilot of the spacecraft rushed to watch the video recordings sent by his family after realizing he had lost 23 earth years when in actual fact he was only away from his spacecraft for 3 hours descending a wormhole in space to explore a planet. The video recordings showed his children growing into adults and his father aging, all wondering year after year when he will be returning to earth and if at all. There was very good acting when Cooper broke down grieving the years he missed out on his loved ones. His father had passed on too. The poignant scene brings out a sense of inevitability, the inability to control time fleeting past us and the feeling of being a helpless bystander in the lives of our loved ones. It also reminds me of the difficulty we will face when the time of our own departure arrives. Hence in Buddhism, when a person is dying, whilst surrounding him with love, his loved ones should give him permission and blessings to die so as to lessen his grasping and attachment.

Watching the news coverage on the carnage inflicted by Taleban terrorists in the Pakistani school massacre was heart wrenching. It is unimaginable how the grasping to a certain cause had hardened so much the hearts of the attackers to commit such a heinous crime against innocent children. The grief stricken faces of the victims' parents revealed the torment of their bereavement and brings to mind the sufferings from attachment. It would be  extremely difficult for the bereaved families to let go not only because the loss was sudden and unexpected but also its underlying brutal and cruel circumstances.

This incident, the Sydney cafe siege, the mindless sporadic killings of ordinary people everywhere leaves one feeling gloomy about our world. Yet we can only pray for the people who harbour such intense hatred in their hearts and for the bereaved that their pain can be eased.

 "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr.