c. 2005 Religion News Service

KHAO LAK, Thailand _ A Buddhist monk garbed in bright orange came to Yan Yao temple to look for his missing father days after tsunamis battered the coastline here. He gave a DNA sample and was told his father was dead _ engulfed by a giant wave.

The monk calmly turned around, left the temple, and walked down the street,according to the volunteer who gave him the news.

“He was real graceful about it,” Greg Eickmeyer, 23, of Eugene, Ore., said. “He just walked away like nothing happened.”

As the corpses continued to pile up at the Buddhist temples being used as morgues in Khao Lak, just north of the island of Phuket, relief workers observed a surprising sense of calm among people who lost their livelihoods and their loved ones. Some thought it was a simple case of collective shock. But many attribute it to Buddhism, the religion practiced by more than 90 percent of Thais.

“It is the normal of everything,” said Bhra Satip, a monk at the Bang Muang temple. “Beings are born and collapse. It is the cycle.”

Satip, speaking through a translator, acknowledged that the sadness felt by a monk might be different than the grief felt by an ordinary person, but said the reality of death still must be accepted.

“When it happens, you must take it,” Satip, 38, said as he walked to attend a ceremony for the dead.

In the wake of a natural disaster that has claimed more than 5,000 lives in Thailand so far, that reality may seem too harsh.

“When I talk about it I want to cry,” said Warapoin Srinuandt, 50, a teacher who lost 36 of her students to the tsunami. “But you must accept.”

Her sadness is just as great for the survivors as it is for the dead, Srinuandt said. More than 300 of her students are now homeless, and many are orphans. Still, she does not shed a tear.

While Buddhists take great care in honoring the dead with ritual and meditation, they are not supposed to mourn the demise of the body. Buddhists believe that the body is merely a conduit between cycles of life, and that the soul will be reborn in another form.

“All is connected like a chain,” said Phra Saneh Dhammavaro, head of academic affairs at Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University in Chiang Mai. “Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. If we do not accept that fact, we will always suffer.”

Dhammavaro, who teaches philosophy, recounted an ancient story about a mother who lost her only son and obsessively tried to bring him back to life. Not until Buddha showed her that everyone has experienced a similar loss, and that life is not permanent, did the woman learn to accept and find peace.

“She had to realize that her son was not Superboy,” Dhammavaro, 41, said. “When she did, she started to cry. She learned to accept.”

Kanika Dulyapsisal lost her nephew in the tsunami, but still spent hours poring over photographs of bloated, decomposed corpses at Yan Yao temple and posted a `missing’ sign for him.

“At first I was very sorry,” Dulyapsisal, 61, said through a translator. “But now I feel a bit better. I have tried. Now I must begin to accept that the situation is natural.”

Grief counselors who have worked with both Thais and tourists notice a clear difference in the way Thais handle such a crisis.

“I worked in Oklahoma (City) after the bombing, and the emotional toll there was much worse than here,” said Patrick Bundock, 34, a scientologist from San Francisco who has been assisting the relief effort. “In Buddhism, a body is just a body.”

A terrorist attack is much different from a natural disaster, but the effect remains the same.

“Finally, everyone must die,” said Krich Nanakorn, a monk sitting outside the Yan Yao temple, as forensic specialists wheeled bodies into trailer-sized refrigerators.

Acceptance of fate and belief in karma, that one’s fate is the product of action in a previous life, provides solace to the most spiritually disciplined. For others, the answers are not always as clear.

Srinuandt, the teacher, must come up with a new lesson plan because her school is reopening. Explaining to children why their friends won’t be coming back to class will not be easy.

“Nothing like this has ever happened in this town,” Srinuandt said, her eyes welling up. “It’s terrible. It’s very upsetting.”

MO/RB END RNS