You must leave your home and go forth from
your country,
The children of Buddha all practice this
way.
-
The Thirty-Seven
Bodhisattva Practices
Bhutan, small Tantric
Buddhist kingdom……Bordered by Tibet in the north, India in the south and east,
Sikkim to the west. Entirely mountainous (altitudes ranging from 150 to 7,000
meters above sea level). Capital: Thimphu. Language: Dzongkha, related to
classical Tibetan, plus various other dialects. People: in north and west, of
Tibetan origin; in the east, Indo-Mongolian; in the south, Nepali. National
sport: archery. ………..Never colonized.
Modern economic development had begun in Bhutan in the 1960s
with the construction of a road linking Thimpu to the Indian border. Until
then, the economy had been based on barter; money was virtually nonexistent,
and taxes had been paid in kind. Thirty years later, the feudal nature of rural
Bhutanese society seemed largely unchanged. Virtually everyone owned land, but,
except for the lowlands along the southern border, the terrain was too
difficult to permit much more than subsistence farming. Buddhism permeated
daily life, and many families still sent one son into the monastery. Relatively
few foreigners visited the country; foreign aid was limited, and tourism
discouraged.
Did I realize that there were no phones in the eastern part
of Bhutan? That most Bhutanese lived in villages and hamlets dotted across one
of the most difficult terrains in the world?
Bhutan is all and only mountains.
…..Thimpu’s official population is 20,000.
The Bhutanese are a very handsome people, “the best built
race of men I ever saw,” wrote emissary George Bogle on his way to Tibet in
1774, and I find I agree. Of medium height and sturdily built, they have
beautiful aristocratic faces with dark, almond-shaped eyes, high cheek-bones
and gentle smiles, Both men and women wear their black hair short.
I search for the right word to describe the people, for the
quality that impresses me most – dignity, unselfconsciousness, good humor,
grace …….
Historical records
show that waves of Tibetan immigrants settled in Bhutan sometime before the
tenth century, but the area is thought to have been inhabited long before that.
In the eighth century, the Indian saint Padmasambhava brought Buddhism to the
area, where it absorbed many elements of Bon, the indigenous shamanist
religion. The new religion took hold but was not a unifying force. The area
remained a collection of isolated valleys, each ruled by its own king. When the
Tibetan lama Ngawang Namgyel arrived in 1616, he set about unifying the valleys
under one central authority and gave the country the name Druk Yul, meaning
Land of the Thunder Dragon. Earlier names for Bhutan are just as beautiful –
the Tibetans knew the country as the Southern Land of Medicinal Herbs and the
South Sandalwood Country. Districts within Bhutan were even more
felicitously-named: Rainbow District of Desires, Lotus Grove of the Gods,
Blooming Valley of Luxuriant Fruits….. Bhutan…..is thought to be derived from Bhotanta, meaning the “end of Tibet” or
from the Sanskrit Bhu-uttan, meaning
“highlands.”
While the rest of Asia was being overrun by Europeans of
varying hue but similar cry, only a handful of Westerners found their way into
Bhutan. Two Portugese Jesuits came to call in 1627, and six British missions
paid brief but cordial visits from the late 1700s until the middle of the next
century.
Someone asks about relationships. The group leader says that
the Bhutanese are very relaxed about sex, especially the eastern Bhutanese.
Usually, people get married by moving in together. They get divorced by moving
out. There is no stigma attached to divorce or having children out of wedlock.
“You’ll find that if you do have a relationship with a
Bhutanese, the village will be quite accepting of the whole thing……they say
there are no secrets in Bhutan, especially in eastern Bhutan, so you can expect
everyone to know about it by the next day.”
In Buddhism, there is no devil, no external dark force –
there is only your mind, and you must take responsibility for what you want and
how you choose to get it.
For a small country, Bhutan has an extraordinary number of
languages and dialects; at least eighteen have been recognized, some confined
to a single village.
Chortens are complex Buddhist symbols representing the body
of Buddha…..Inside there are precious stones, written prayers, relics. In
Nepal, most chortens have been desecrated and robbed, but, in Bhutan, this is
extremely rare. The Bhutanese still believe in the sanctity of these monuments,
and would expect divine retribution if they disturbed one.
Across the river, hanging from a cliff is the monastery of
Taktsang, the tiger’s nest, where Padmasambhava and his flying tigress landed.
The flying tigress does not seem half as incredible as the monastery itself,
which looks as if it has been glued to the cliff face.
The Indian teachers freely admit they are here because they
could not find jobs in India, and they almost seem to resent the fact that they
have to take orders from the Bhutanese. ………Mrs Joy tried to give me a whispered
account of “the problem with these people,” meaning the Bhutanese, but I pulled
away….
I am always amazed at what the upper portions of these ghos
can hold: books, plates, cloth bags, a bottle of arra for me, rice crisps,
dried apples, a cucumber, a handful of chillies to eat in class………….
Before school, after school, Saturday afternoon, Sunday
morning. There is always someone at my door and it is making me crazy. Sick
kids, fighting kids, kids with boils, scrapes and gashes; kids offering
potatoes, garlic, enormous bitter white radish; kids wanting to see snaps, play
the keyboard, listen to the Walkman, look at things (“Miss! What is these?” they
ask, holding up sunglasses, a nail file, a box of tampons) Kids wanting just to
come in …….Big kids wanting help with English homework, wanting to help me with
my housework or cooking or shopping, if miss is ever needing anything, they can
help. Fellow teachers, coming for tea, coming to chat, have I settled myself
up, do I have a boyfriend at home, why did I come here actually, and do I want
to sell my camera? ………Men and women from the village coming to ask if I want to
buy cloth, handwoven kiras, belts, bags, do I want balls of cheese or butter, a
bottle of milk or arra, anything at all? …..they ask. What do I need? They will
find it, they will bring it.
I need to be alone. After a full day of talking, smiling,
listening, showing, nodding, translating, I want to be alone. ……..But no, this
is not to be. They feel sorry for me because I am here alone. Miss, poor miss,
she lives all alone. Cooks alone, eats alone, sleeps alone……..they want to
help. ……….People in Bhutan are rarely alone.
I decide to go for a walk every day, out of town, along the
curve of the mountain….. The first day, I lock my door – not because I fear
theft, but because I know from experience that if I leave it unlocked, I will
have a houseful of people waiting for me when I come back…….Sangay Chhoden
comes running out of her mothers shop……. “Miss, where going?”
“Korbe,” I say.
Roaming.
“I coming, miss?” she asks…….smiling shyly, and I cannot say
no. Soon we are joind by Phuntso Wangmo. Sangay and Phuntsho practice
English……..The next day, several more students join us. Soon, half my class is
waiting for me after school. They insist on carrying my jhola because “in
Bhutan student is always carrying lopen’s things,” and we continue our lessons.
………We move on to adjectives and human traits, and I learn that it is okay to be
poor if you are kind, it is even okay to be lazy if you are generous, but the
very worst thing to be is arrogant. “Showing proud,” the kids tell me, their
faces wrinkled in disgust. “……….This is very bad.”
There are no janitors here: in Bhutan, the students are
responsible for school maintenance. This is called social work, and it is
officially part of the curriculum. At breakfast, I look on uselessly as the
students line up for a breakfast………There is actually no need for a teacher to
supervise……The students are exquisitely well-behaved.
I am still not used to nightfall in Bhutan, the way it
really does fall, suddenly…..
In the school……In the lower classes, the girls are still
bold and confident, but they become increasingly shyer as they move into the
upper grades. They put their hands over their mouths and giggle when addressed;
they defer to the male students and seem to shrink a little more each year. I
wonder if sexism is somehow a by-product of Western-style development, or the
number of Indian teachers in the school system, or if chauvinism is just as
deeply embedded here as anywhere else.
Everything is more meaningful here because there is less of
everything. Every brown farm egg is precious.
The cultural competition begins with a traditional Bhutanese
dance. The men and women move slowly in a circle, raising and lowering their
hands in front of them in simple, lulling gestures as they sing. The beauty is
in the measured, synchronized movements; this is not a dance about performance
but participation. There is no instrumental accompaniment, only the voices
rising and falling in the melancholic, pentatonic scale, and lingering over
microtones that no tempered instrument could ever match. The style is called zhungdra, the oldest form of music in
Bhutan, and the melody climbs and climbs and then falls suddenly, rhythm
changing unpredictably………
What I love most is
how seamless everything is. You walk through a forest and come out in a
village, and there’s no difference, no division. You aren’t in nature one
minute and in civilization the next. The houses are made out of mud and stone
and wood, drawn from the land around. Nothing stands out, nothing jars.
…he tells me that there is trouble in Bhutan, between south
and north, Nepali and Drukpa. “They don’t want us to be Nepali anymore,” he
says. “We have to wear their dress and speak their language. We can no more be
who we are.”
Tony says that all lakes in Bhutan are considered holy. His students
warned him not to pollute the lake, or bring meat anywhere near it, or leave
any garbage nearby.
Nepali immigration into Bhutan began as early as the end of
the last century when laborers from the lowlands were recruited for timber and
stone extraction; the laborers eventually cleared plots of land in the
malaria-infested jungles of the south and settled there.
In Bhutan, the 1958 Citizenship Act gave citizenship to
anyone who had lived in Bhutan for at least ten years and owned land. With the
implementation of the country’s first economic development plan in 1962, there
was plenty of work to be found building roads, schools and hospitals, and
Nepali immigrants continued to move into the country. Integration did not seem
to be a concern; apparently, travel to northern Bhutan was restricted for the
southern Bhutanese until sometime in the 1970s. South was south, north was
north.
The south became an issue in 1988, when census records
indicated a disproportionate increase in the population in the southern
districts. In the neighbouring Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam, Nepali
immigrants were being evicted……….Gorkha National Liberation Front in Darjeeling
began calling for the establishment of Gorkhaland, which would spread across
northeastern India, including parts of southern Bhutan.
….we travel overland to Delhi. Northern India is exhausting.
Along the way we are stared at, glared at, honked at, swerved around, groped,
grabbed, pinched, poked, fondled, bullied, propositioned, lied to, proposed to,
and sang to.
There is no quick confess-and-forgive formula in Buddhist
practice. Buddhism requires a constant, relentless internal honesty………
Dogs are a problem all over Bhutan, especially in towns,
wherever there are institutions with kitchens – schools and hospitals and army
camps. The packs belong to no one and to everyone. It would be a sin in
Buddhism to round them all up and kill them, since all sentient beings are
considered sacred, even these horrid, diseased, deformed dogs.
One of the students has died in the night………it was Tashi……two
students sit by Tashi’s side. A plate of food has been placed beside him. His classmates
will take turns sitting with him until his family arrives for the cremation. I sit
with the students, the prayers rising and falling around me, and try to pray
but I cry instead. “You should try not cry, ma’am,” Chhoden tells me, ……. “We
say that it makes it harder for the spirit to leave, if people cry.”
It takes Tashi’s family three days to make the journey from
their village. For three days, his classmates continue their vigil in shifts,
never leaving the body alone………the body does not burn properly, and the lama
heading the ceremony says it is because of the spirit’s attachment to this
world. Tashi’s classmates bring his flute and his paints from his room and cast
them onto the fire, admonishing his spirit. “You’re dead now. See, all your
things are gone. We don’t want you here. Go now.”
“How awful,” I say to Chhoden.
She shakes her head. “No, madam. We have to tell like that. If
we show how much we loved him, his spirit won’t want to leave and then it will
be stuck here. It has to know its dead.” She says some people know immediately
that they are dead, but others just wander around, sitting down with their
family to eat, wondering why no one will speak to them. “That’s why we leave
food out near the body, so that the person will not feel so bad.”……..
There is none of the sanitized grief that I associate with
death in my own culture. Tears are hidden not for the sake of appearances –
there is no need to hold up well in the eyes of the community – but for the
sake of the dead, so that they will be able to leave behind this lifetime.
Grief is everywhere, in the stunned expressions of Tashi’s friends, in his
mother’s collapsed face, but there is also a stoic acceptance.
“Everyone dies,” Nima tells me after the cremation. “This is
what the Buddha taught.”………
“But see, miss. If I think how many countless times I have
been reborn in this world, we say millions of times, then how many times have I
been happy already? How many times have I married and had children and
fulfilled all my goals, and how many times have I suffered and died? Then I think
I must have experienced everything by now, but I am still here, so I have not
learned anything. Then I feel tired, miss. I feel tired of this life and I think
I should become a monk and go to a cave and find a way out of all this coming
and going in circles.”
Later, in meditation, these words come back to me. It is
like something opening in my head, too fast for words. I must have experienced everything by now, but I am still here, so I have
not learned anything. In a moment, I grasp it. Not the Buddhist theory of
the self, how there is no essential Jamie Zeppa, how she is only a collection
of changing conditions, attributes and desires common to all sentient beings,
but the experience of that fact. Everything falls away. It is the experience of
pure freedom, a momentary glimpse of how it would be – to be in the world and
not be attached to it, to move through it, experiencing it and letting it go. It
is impossible to put the feeling, the certainty into words, but later, I know
that this is the moment I became a Buddhist.
…….a verse from the Buddhist canon: “Mindfulness is the
abode of eternal life, thoughtlessness the abode of death. Those who are
mindful do not die. The thoughtless are as if dead already.”
“You know, miss, in Buddhism, we say that life is like
housekeeping in a dream. We may get a lot done, but in the end we wake up and
what does it come to, all that effort?”
In Bhutan, I often felt frustrated by the absence of
questioning, and constrained by the strong social mores. In Bhutan, you should
because everyone else does. You should because that’s the way it has always
been done. You should because if you don’t, you will be criticized, perhaps
ostracized, and ostracism is dangerous in a village. Here [in Canada] I feel equally frustrated by the whining and the
self-absorption. I can see the advantages of the mindset in Bhutan, the
cohesiveness it generates, the social security net, and the disadvantages as
well, the fear of critical questioning, the rigidity that stifles creativity. …………..In
Bhutan, the lack of privacy could infuriate me, but I always felt safe. Bhutan does
not cultivate serial killers: people live too closely together, their lives are
too interconnected for such atrocities to grow unnoticed and unchecked.
It seems to me that the two worlds represent extremes in
many ways. Extreme individualism and extreme social conformity. Extreme privacy
and extreme communalism. On one hand, a society of too many freedoms; on the
other, too many constraints.
I feel slow. I think slowly, I talk slowly, I react slowly. In
the blur and rush of everything around me, I am more mindful. The mindfulness
has grown quietly and surely, perhaps more a result of my slow, sparse
environment in Kanglung than my own efforts. I can see how it would evaporate
here [in Canada] without a consistent
daily practice.
………..into the hallway where we stop to kiss, and I feel a
million tiny windows flying open into my skin………I close the door and lean
against it, feeling the wood against my back, blood running in my veins, warmth
in my palms, the trace of the last kiss.
Energy is eternal
delight.
………it is true that Bhutanese who marry foreigners can not be
promoted past a certain level……
The worst are full of passionate intensity, the best lack
all conviction.
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