This conversation is really about the best way to respond to the Sayas and other sadness of the world ... please don't think we are talking about anything else.
I agree with Pontus. I chant
Metta for suffering folks with the feeling that a small drop of peace, compassion, kindness in my heart will be one more small drop of goodness in the world, like a ripple from a small stone. If all human beings added one drop by one drop, soon this would be a very different world. Kindness and peace in my heart really do tend to change the friends and family around me too, and how we relate, in very real ways (anger and disturbance tend to have opposite effect). When I "send some Metta", I really try to feel it figuratively reaching the person (
though I know that the feeling is mostly in my own heart). Some actions by me might have even wider effects as the ripples spread, a few now and then even helping to change events across the world. We can work to make this a better world, and someday we will ... in which all the children live in peace, war and violence are of the past.
That is magic enough for me. Beyond that, I am doubtful of overly magical and mysterious interpretations of it all ... as if mysterious auras and energies are moving across hidden astral planes to change events. I will not even attempt to re-interpret the meaning of those "auras" and "planes" and such to make them seem somehow real and reasonable ... for they are not. I will not encourage a ceremony or practice that smacks of such superstition, and that is what the "Gate of Sweet Nectar" is ... (
The ceremony, not the little song based on the ceremony. I am reminded of a conversation I spotted today on a Buddhist Forum by several folks discussing how to removing an Asura demi-god who is haunting a house. Have a read, it is fascinating ....
http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=9714 ).
Truly, though I would like it otherwise, I doubt that my bit of Metta here will have much of an actual impact to help poor Saya. Most good ripples never get very far, and even those that do may have unexpected results ... like that butterfly that may spawn a deadly hurricane, or the act of kindness which somewhere down the line starts a chain of dominoes leading to war. I do not believe in some simplistic Buddhist formula of "good actions have good effects" in some 1-to-1 correspondence. All we can do is aspire for our actions to have the good, intended effects ... try our best ... and hope it works out. Any aid or relief worker will tell you that even the best designed program will rarely go fully as it should, and so for our little actions as individuals. But if we are careful, much good can be done.
Still, I add a drop of Metta ... drop by drop ... with the aspiration that it will send out ripples of change, and change me, in positive ways. If, someday, the whole world would learn to wish each other such peace, contentment, equanimity and well-being, it will be a very different world. That would be "magic" and marvelous enough.
And, yes, this is a conversation about the best ways to aid and empathize with Saya and all those like her.
Gassho, J
