January 17, 2010

Taktshang Goemba - also known as The Tiger’s Nest - is a magnificent monastery plastered on the face of a sheer cliff 900 meters above the Paro Valley, and moored to the mountain by the hairs of angels. There are only three ways to reach it. The best is to ride on the back of a flying tiger, which was the method used by the great saint Guru Rinpoche in the 8th century. He flew into a sacred cave on the cliff face, subdued the local demon, and meditated there for three months before continuing his mission to establish Buddhism in Bhutan.

If you can’t find a flying tiger, you can ride up to the Tiger’s Nest on a tough little mountain horse. (You can’t ride down, though; the path is too steep.) Alternatively, you can walk, which is the way I got there last month. The hike takes three or four hours.

It is a steep and brutal climb in the thin Himalayan air, not easy for sedentary folk of ripening years. I was grateful for Tashi, the nimble young guide who took my little backpack. We got a break at a wooden tea-house halfway up, lunching on Bhutanese specialties like ema datse, hot chillies with cheese. Nearby is a rock with the footprints of Guru Rinpoche burned into its surface.

Then the climb continued. In the end, I didn’t get into the monastery. I reached a viewpoint at the same height - but between the viewpoint and the Tiger’s Nest is a deep gorge, negotiated via a 700-step staircase cut into the rock face. My knees were weak and I was slightly giddy from the altitude. The steps are uneven, there is no hand-rail, and a misstep would mean immediate reincarnation. Nope.

The landscape of Bhutan is peppered with sacred places. Above the Tiger’s Nest are several shrines or “chortens,” as well as temples and meditation huts. The many temples on the valley floor include Kyichu Lhakhang, one of 108 temples built in a single day in 659 by a Tibetan king aiming to pin down an ogress and liberate the Himalayas for the advance of Buddhism.

There are chortens along the trails, chortens in the fields, chortens on the banks of streams, where water-wheels turn prayer-wheels that ring bells and send off prayers as they spin. Thickets of vertical white prayer flags stand high on the mountains, and brilliantly-coloured strings of square flags flutter on buildings, fences and bridges. The land virtually pulses with visual testimony to Buddhist reverence.

Underlying Bhutan’s Buddhism is a much older animist religion known as “Bon,” which populates the landscape with innumerable demons, sprites, local deities, gods and goddesses of lakes and rivers, lords of the earth and air. The most famous of the many lucky charms to ward off evil from these omnipresent spirits is the image of an erect penis.

Even this is evidence of devotion, which you see constantly in Bhutan. But you do not see mines, quarries, clear-cuts, industrial smog, huge landfill sites, plastic bags (which are illegal), chemically-nurtured golf courses, mills and factories blowing smog into the air and waste into the rivers. The Bhutanese use only what they need. Houses and farms are built of rammed earth, straw, slate and wood, and they occupy minimalist clearings in the woods. They enhance an already beautiful landscape.

All of which raises a huge question
.
Bhutan’s sacramental attitude towards the natural world - that the world is literally alive and sentient - is the normal human view. It’s shared by my Celtic ancestors, by virtually all ancient civilizations, by aboriginal peoples worldwide. Industrial society, by contrast, views the natural world as inert, dead, a mere source of materials and a blank slate for industrial manipulation. It exists for us to pillage. That arrogance has led us to a crisis unparallelled in the history of our species.

The Bhutanese evidently don’t think they’re lords of creation. Their land is sacred, and because they treat it with reverence, it sustains and enriches them. Superstition? Or wisdom, clothed in poetry? Bhutan takes us back to the future, reminding us that our species cannot persist on the earth without understanding, in our bones, the genuine sacredness of the world that is our only home.
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You can see photos of the Tiger’s Nest (and other Bhutan pix) here: http://picasaweb.google.com/silverdonald/Paro#