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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NanuNana" data-source="post: 9630605" data-attributes="member: 264764"><img src="http://i56.tinypic.com/dddw0y.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />A religious statue in a tsunami-devastated area in Natori city, along the coast.                 <a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/14/how-japans-religions-confront-tragedy/" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/14/how-japans-religions-confront-tragedy/" target="_blank"></a>                                                                                                                                                         <a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/14/how-japans-religions-confront-tragedy/" target="_blank">How Japan's religions confront tragedy</a>     By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor Proud of their secular society, most Japanese aren't religious in the  way Americans are: They tend not to identify with a single tradition  nor study religious texts. "The average Japanese person doesn’t consciously turn to Buddhism  until there’s a funeral,” says Brian Bocking, an expert in Japanese  religions at Ireland’s University College Cork. When there is a funeral, though, Japanese religious engagement tends to be pretty intense. “A very large number of Japanese people believe that what they do for  their ancestors after death matters, which might not be what we expect  from a secular society,” says Bocking. “There’s widespread belief in the  presence of ancestors’ spirits.” In the days and weeks ahead, huge numbers of Japanese will be turning  to their country’s religious traditions as they mourn the thousands  of dead and try to muster the strength and resources to rebuild amid the  massive destruction wrought by last Friday's 9.0 magnitude earthquake  and resulting tsunami. For most Japanese, religion is more  complex than adhering to the country’s ancient Buddhist tradition. They  blend Buddhist beliefs and customs with the country’s Shinto tradition,  which dates back to the 15th century. “Japanese are not religious in the way that people in North America  are religious,” says John Nelson, chair of theology and religious  studies at the University of San Francisco. “They’ll move back and forth  between two or more religious traditions, seeing them as tools that are  appropriate for certain situations.” “For things connected to life-affirming events, they’ll turn to  Shinto-style rituals or understandings,” Nelson says. “But in connection  to tragedy or suffering, it’s Buddhism.” There are many schools of Japanese Buddhism, each with its own teachings about suffering and what happens after death. “There are many Buddhist explanations of why calamities happen: from  collective karma to seeing calamities as signs of apocalypse,” says  Jimmy Yu, an assistant professor of Buddhism and Chinese religions at  Florida State University. “And perhaps all of them are irrelevant to  what needs to be done.” Indeed, where Christianity, Judaism or Islam are often preoccupied  with causes of disaster - the questions of why God would allow an  earthquake, for example - Eastern traditions like Buddhism and Shinto  focus on behavior in reaction to tragedy. “It’s very important in Japanese life to react in a positive way, to  be persistent and to clean up in the face of adversity, and their  religions would emphasize that,” says University College Cork’s Bocking.  “They’ll say we have to develop a powerful, even joyful attitude in the  face of adversity.” Japan’s major religious groups are still developing responses to the  disaster, but experts say the impulse toward maintaining a positive  outlook will likely translate into calls for Japanese to help friends  and neighbors clean up and rebuild. At the same time, Japan’s Buddhist priests will be preoccupied with  rituals surrounding death and burial. Japanese Buddhism is often called  funeral Buddhism because of its concern with such rituals. Despite the Japanese penchant for blending their religious traditions  - even with Western traditions like Catholicism - the overwhelming  majority are buried according to Buddhist custom: cremation and  interment in a family plot. With many bodies swept away in the tsunami, many Japanese will have to come to terms with having to forego that ritual. After burial, Japanese typically continue to practice rituals around  caring for the spirits of the deceased. Most Japanese keep Buddhist  altars in their homes, Nelson says, using them to pay tribute to dead  ancestors. “In the days ahead, you’ll see people praying, with hands folded, for  the spirits of those killed,” he says. “It goes back to a really early  understanding of human spirits and rituals designed to control those  spirits, which can take 49 days or, depending on the type of Buddhism,  could go on for up to seven years.” One popular school of Japanese Buddhism, called Amida - or Pure Land -  believes in a paradise that spirits of the dead can enter with help  from living relatives. Despite what is likely to be a mass embrace of Buddhist rituals after  the earthquake, there may also be some grievances expressed over those  traditions. Many young Japanese have left Buddhism, accusing priests of profiting  from grief because of their paid roles in burials. Critics say the  priests spend money from funerals on temples without playing a broader  role in society. “The earthquake is an opportunity for Buddhist priests to step up and  show they are still relevant,” says Nelson. “Young people just aren’t  buying it anymore.”</blockquote>

Verification: Nawa warak dahaya keeyada? (Namaya wadi kireema dahaya)

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