Predetermined

One often wonders why things happen.Is it all just by chance or is it predetermined. I wondered today as I watch the aftermath of the terrible event in Italy. I wondered that most often earthquakes happen at night a very large percentage of the time, more so in the early hours of the morning than any other time.  True-the Haiti quake happened during the day- but very few do. If it was by chance then it would be 50-50- but it is not. Why? Is there predetermination by a master planner?  Is it that people are asleep and should not witness the event?  Or is it that the angel of death does not want them to be conscious of the event?  They are mostly unconscious of the fact of what is happening around them. Why is that?

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. Are we? In some ways we are, in some ways we are not. Are we ruled by the forces of chance or coincidence or some cosmic force or karma? I do not think that things  just happen in this world and just pass away into oblivion  -always everything has a reason  which we may never know or comprehend. 
  

We do not live in an accidental, haphazard universe. All is in balance out there in the cosmos, so why would it be different here on this tiny planet? Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature and of karma. The law of karma, states that what you sow, that is what you will reap. Nothing falls outside the law of karma-for every action has a reaction. Often this is unclear to the human mind, such understanding lies beyond human understanding. 

All is a mystery because we are in the center of it-and do not see the forest for the trees, we do not understand why such a calamity has taken the lives of so many people as in Italy yesterday-but there is a reason. Such an event teaches many lessons to many-people within the event as well as without-it makes us think and put things into focus, we start to think about certain aspects of life. The “why” it happened-is irrelevant, the point is that it did and the reason is always fair, always directed from a higher ground-and always with purpose. Why did so many people die? Young and old ? We have no insight into their soul`s purpose nor into previous lives.  

Yes- we all want to live and try and hold onto life in anyway we can. Dying we think is a bad thing, especially for the ones left behind- but if we believe in spirituality and  that the soul is eternal, then in fact these souls are set free from the bonds of life and have left on a journey that is of a higher purpose than of what they have left behind. Buddhism teaches us that dying is liberation. Is life and death predetermined? I think so. By whom? Perhaps by us before  we are born.