Pompeii - immortalized death by volcano eruptions

[DS Star]

"In 79 CE, a year before the Colosseum was finished, Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying both the city of Pompeii and Herculaneum. At Herculaneum there were very few human remains found, and it was assumed by archaeologists that the inhabitants were able to flee. However, in the 1980?s, almost 300 skeletons were found on the nearby beach, perhaps attempting to flee into the ships that archaeologists found sunken near the shore. The presence of only bones suggests that the people suffered through a pyroclastic blast from the volcano, burning off their skin and killing them almost instantly. Red staining found on the insides of the skulls confirms this theory; with the inhabitants dying a thermal shock, the heat literally melted their brains.

At Pompeii, the remains are not bones, but rather casts of bodies made from volcanic ash. The pyroclastic surge that killed the inhabitants of Herculaneum in an instant was not as kind to the people of Pompeii. They were hit by painful hot and lethal gases, that slowly killed them as they tried to flee. Pumice and ash fell from the sky. Once the combination hit anything wet, including their internal organs as they inhaled the combination, it turned into a cement. As they slowly died from the gases or ash, they were covered with pumice and ash; a rainfall shortly after causes the bodies to become cemented into human sculptures. While the flesh of the preserved people at Pompeii would have decayed, the cement sarcophagi from the ash preserved the outline of their form in which they died in." Katy Meyers, mortuary archaeologist and bio-archaeologist.

http://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/bones-abroad-pompeii/




When I read the above blog post, my heart sinks thinking how those victims died in horrible pains and suffering... I could hardly imaging how their physical bodies and panic minds were tortured... they could had gone to 3 lower realms due to their disturbed minds... They died in confusions, they don't understand what had happened as they don't even have the word 'volcano' in their language. They thought Mt Vesuvius was a beautiful mountain.

Mt Vesuvius’s eruption hit Pompeii together with Herculaneum, at the Bay of Naples, Italy. Within an hour Herculaneum was destroyed and then with 24 hours Pompeii was buried too, it was not seen again for almost 1700 years. The only clue for what really happened that day was a letter by Pliny the younger. Some scientists believe that this volcano will erupt every 2000 years. It has been almost 2000 years now since the last tragedy in AD79...

I surely do not wish anyone to go through such a great pains and fears... In term of Buddhists' view, we can say that they have created very very strong collective negative karma for this disaster to hit them.

What's your take on this?

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[Tammy]

Thanks for sharing the post. I agree that this is the result of collective negative karma. I would take a wild guess that maybe these victims were, in one of their past lives, a group of soldiers or hunting animals which had claimed many lives as a group. Hence they would suffer the ill fate of dying a horrific death together.

We also come across news that in air disasters, few people survived despite the severity of the situation. People around them died while they survived miraculously. There could have a few explanations :
1. The survivors were extremely lucky, or
2. The survivors did not have the karma to die in the accident, or
3. The survivors had the negative to die in the accident, but because of some good deeds that they had performed (intentionally or unintentionally) prior to the accident, their karma had been partially purified.

[hope rainbow]

The catastrophe of Pompei is typical of our life as a human.
If we have the karma for it, we may have it all, we may have the health, the wealth, the profusion, the sophistication of an advanced civilization, the abundance, the success, the good reputation, the protection of a powerful army or society, the beautiful aesthetic of refined architecture, arts, poetry, music, food... We have all of this in total comfort. Then disaster strikes, in this instance a volcano eruption. In other instances, it may be a tsunami, it may be an earthquake, it may be a suiscide bomber, it may be an epidemic disease (remember SRAS...).
And we may think that the odds to suffer such a catastrophe are very slim, and maybe they are, but the catastrophe can be something else WITH EXACTLY THE SAME RESULTS, it may be a cancer, a car accident, a heart attack...
Our Pompei for all of us is our death! So we may escape from a volcanic eruption, but we cannot escape from our death. And when we die, it's just like Pompei, everything, EVERYTHING that we have enjoyed in our human form VANISHES, DISAPPEARS! There is no difference between Pompei and the time of our death, no difference.

[Big Uncle]

I am sorry, i think it is sad the way these people died but I think their suffering is no greater than those of animals being slaughtered on a daily basis for their meat. They go through the same shock and they are worse off because they are often placed in cages knowing their fate and they cannot do anything about it.

At least, most of the people of Pompeii died instantaneously with a handful of survivors who had a long prolonged death right after. That happened once but the suffering of animals are unending and it is all just so they will end up on our dinner plate. How can we as humans, who have a choice of what we can eat to allow that to happen.

[DS Star]

And we may think that the odds to suffer such a catastrophe are very slim, and maybe they are, but the catastrophe can be something else WITH EXACTLY THE SAME RESULTS, it may be a cancer, a car accident, a heart attack...

Our Pompei for all of us is our death! So we may escape from a volcanic eruption, but we cannot escape from our death. And when we die, it's just like Pompei, everything, EVERYTHING that we have enjoyed in our human form VANISHES, DISAPPEARS! There is no difference between Pompei and the time of our death, no difference.

Dear Hope Rainbow, the END RESULT may be the same but the PROCESS of HOW it happens could be different and this is where our KARMA plays a very big role to determine it…

Before succumbed to their death, people of Pompeii suffered great physical pains and also great mental tortures from fear of death, knowing that they cannot escape…

As Buddhists, we know as long as we are still alive, we have the ability to change our karma ‘chart’ in order to avoid unnatural and horrifying fate like the people of Pompeii…