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Posts Tagged ‘Bhutan’
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
May 23, 2010
After hiking four hours up a Himalayan mountainside, we have reached an elevation of more than 3000 metres. Breathing heavily, we stop for refreshments. Our Bhutanese guide reaches inside the folds of his traditional gho, whips out a cell phone, and calls the hotel about dinner arrangements.
At a meeting in Halifax, the phone line for the conference call is being balky. As the organizer struggles with the phone system, the woman across the table types furiously with her thumbs, sending instructions and receiving email reports from the Sydney member through her Blackberry.
When you give a village woman a cell phone and a solar charger, says Bunker Roy, the director of India’s Barefoot College, you have given her a business. Now she can make phone calls for other people, send text messages and emails, do research on the internet. You have brought the resources of the modern world to that isolated village.
At the pub, my friend Jack is showing me how easy it is to create and transmit video using an iPhone. He holds his phone up in the air, and slowly pans across the room. He taps his finger on the screen a couple of times, and turns to me with a smile. There, he says. That video is in your inbox.
In the ruins of Haiti, a victim taps out a text message on a cell phone. NAN DELMA 33 NAN PAK T.OKAP LA NOU BEZWEN TANT, SI LAPLI TONBE NOU MELE! In Creole — and you can almost pick it out if you know some French — this says “At Delma 33, at the park, we need a tent. If the rain falls, we are in trouble.” The message arrives at an emergency response centre, and is forwarded to a worldwide network of Creole-speaking volunteers. They translate it, locate the park on a global positioning system and and send the message onward with a map attached. Moments later it reaches the Red Cross, just minutes after it was sent.
“Wherever I’ve been in the world — in Africa, in South America — the telephone industry is just exploding,” says Dan Jacob, a young management trainee working for Telus. We’re talking at a restaurant in Montreal. “The use of cell phone technology not just for connecting people, but for m-commerce — mobile commerce — is just phenomenal.”
And that’s just the beginning, he says. Universities are planning to make their courses available by cell phone, which means that a university in Alberta could offer distance education to people in Africa who have no computer. And have I heard about the new emergency phone for people with heart disease? The phone is wirelessly connected with a pacemaker. If the person has a heart attack, the phone instantly consults the GPS and uploads the patient’s health records and precise location as part of an automated emergency call to the nearest paramedics.
Nobody ever expected this. The original developers of the cellular phone system thought they were building something for a niche market of business travellers. Instead, the cell phone has created a whole new reality. Half the earth’s people now have cell phones. Whole nations have simply skipped the process of wiring their communities with landlines. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but 25% of its people have cell phones — which proved invaluable in the aftermath of the earthquake.
In the Philippines, cellular airtime serves as a form of currency. In Argentina, farmers sell their products by cell phone. In Kenya, cell phones have brought banking into the lives of the poor, allowing them for the first time to create savings accounts. During Kenya’s last elections, cell-phone users were able to report electoral violence to the police as it happened.
A great tool solves a million problems that its inventors never imagined. Decades ago, electronic visionaries imagined a computer so unobtrusive and powerful that users would carry it with them and treat it as an extension of themselves. It seemed hard to imagine, and nobody suspected it would look like a telephone. But here it is, and that’s what it looks like, and it has transformed the world.
– 30 —
Tags: Bhutan, Blackberry, Bunker Roy, cell phone, Dan Jacob, Haiti earthquake, iPhone
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Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
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.
– 30 –
You can see photos of the Tiger’s Nest (and other Bhutan pix) here: http://picasaweb.google.com/silverdonald/Paro#
Tags: animism, Bhutan, Buddhism, environment, Guru Rinpoche, Tiger's Nest
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Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
January 3, 2010
Filled with educators and visitors, the bus climbs slowly out of Bhutan’s Thimphu Valley through terrain that looks increasingly like an Oriental watercolour — steep, heavily-wooded slopes covered with fluffy trees, farms made of up terraces stepping down the hillsides towards rushing rivers. Some terraces have rice stubble, a few have winter wheat, and a surprising number are orchards. The hillsides are dotted with white half-timbered buildings in the Bhutanese traditional style, which even new buildings are required to use.
Up, up, up, through tiny villages, past isolated farmhouses, along a one-lane road as twisted as a snake’s intestine. This narrow, winding track is Bhutan’s central highway, the only real highway in the country. Up, up, up — and as we go, Goenpo, our guide, a thoughtful and polite former Buddhist monk, tells us stories. That temple on that distant mountain top is near a particularly lovely village where the Fourth King, still living, found four congenial sisters, and married them all. Each now has her own palace.
We will soon arrive, says Goenpo, at Dochu-la, the first high pass of the journey, 3140 meters high. On this side of the pass, the forest is blue pine, oak and maple. All the land around the summit belongs to the Royal Botanical Garden. The Garden is part of the 50% of the land area of Bhutan committed to national parks, which are connected by wilderness corridors so that the wildlife can migrate undisturbed.
On the other side of the pass, the road will descend through — unbelievably — a whole forest of magnolias and rhododendrons. Of the world’s 1100-odd species of rhododendron, 46 are native to Bhutan, and the young Fifth King is trying to grow all 46 in his alpine botanical garden. Then, as the bus descends, bursts of brilliant red flowers will appear — poinsettia trees in full vivid bloom, growing as high as a bungalow. We’ll even see a grove of orange trees — a lusty variety, presumably, since trees are growing at about 8000 feet elevation.
But all of that is on the far side of the pass. At the summit itself, Goenpo says, stand 108 memorial shrines, also known as chortens, erected by the Fourth King in 2005 in memory of battle losses two years earlier. An Assamese separatist force had been raiding India from refuges in southern Bhutan, and India was pressing Bhutan to eject them — or face the possibility that Indian troops might do it themselves.
The Bhutanese made numerous fruitless attempts to persuade them to leave. Eventually the king himself went to visit the Assamese camps, bearing a gift of apples. He put his case to the Assamese directly, and personally gave an apple to every fighter. He also warned them that if they didn’t leave, his army would have to force them out. But they still wouldn’t go
So the king came home, added several hundred volunteers to his untested 9000-man army, and personally led his inexperienced forces into battle. He knew the Assamese strength and deployment, because he had seen their camps, and he had counted his apples. His army prevailed, with a loss of about 10 Bhutanese and numerous Assamese. Far from being jubilant, the king was so appalled at the loss of life that he forbade any victory celebration. Instead, he caused 108 chortens to be erected at the high pass to honour the dead on both sides, and speed them on their way to their next lives.
At Dochu-la, the air is alive with fluttering prayer flags — yellow, red, green, white, orange. And yes, there is a big shrine, a new temple — and, on a small hillock, 108 white chortens standing like ghostly sentinels.
Beyond them, the view is breathtaking. We stand on the crest of the mountain we have climbed, looking over narrow but fertile valleys, with miles of virgin forest in every direction. The land drops thousands of feet and then ripples across lower mountains to the horizon, where it sweeps upward again to a jagged rim of cruel, white-crowned mountains. That’s the Tibetan border. Those peaks include seven of the highest mountains in the world.
We’re standing, it seems, on the roof of the earth, surrounded by flags whose every motion sends a prayer upward on the wind. We may never get nearer to heaven.
– 30 —
Tags: Bhutan, chorten, Dochu-la, Royal Botanical Garden, Thimphu
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Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
December 27, 2009
“Nature cannot continue to absorb the abuses that we are throwing at it,” the Prime Minister told me. “The world is finite, and economic growth cannot continue to take place except with considerable cost to this generation and generations in the future.
“It is time that the world understood that we should talk about growth with a different understanding — growth of the individual, growth of the mind, growth of happiness. What really constitutes wealth? What is prosperity, and what is being rich? I think these have to be understood more in human terms, in terms of relationships and in an ecological sense.”
The Prime Minister of Canada? Ah, I wish! But no: the speaker was His Excellency Jigme Y. Thinley, the Prime Minister of Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom smaller and less populous than Nova Scotia. Nearly 40 years ago, Bhutan’s Fourth King declared that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product,” bravely setting his tiny nation on a unique path to development. In 2006 he abdicated in favour of his 27-year-old son. In 2008, ancient Bhutan became the world’s youngest democracy, its commitment to Gross National Happiness intact.
Gross National Happiness sounds like wide-eyed California mind-mush, but it’s as rigorous as most economic measurements — and far more useful. GNH rests on “four pillars” of value that almost everyone accepts. The first pillar is environmental conservation, caring for nature and others. Second is cultural promotion, preserving the wisdom of an ancient and cherished culture. Third is sustainable and equitable development that benefits all citizens, past and future as well as present. Fourth is “good governance,” the inculcation of active and responsible citizenship.
These “pillars” are divided into nine “domains,” which in turn are broken down to 72 measurable variables. One variable reflects Bhutan’s commitment to maintain at least 60% forest cover forever. In actual fact, 72% of Bhutan is forested, 52% is protected, and Bhutan presently absorbs three times as much carbon as it produces. Similarly, between 1984 and 1994, life expectancy rose from 48 to 66 years, while infant mortality was cut in half. The country now has universal health care and universal free education.
That’s solid data. And that’s GNH in action.
Bhutan has serious problems, including the controversial status of Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin, a relentless rural-urban migration that has created a restless cohort of unemployed urban youth, and the advent of western-style materialism resulting from the introduction of TV and the internet a decade ago — all of which make GNH even more urgent.
To help entrench GNH values in Bhutan’s civic consciousness, Prime Minister Thinley turned to GPI Atlantic of St. Margaret’s Bay, the creators of Nova Scotia’s own Genuine Progress Index. Assembling educators and others from 16 countries, GPI convened a workshop in Thimphu, the capital, in early December, on “Educating for Gross National Happiness.”
So I found myself in Bhutan, listening to a sparkling five-day debate on education attended by both the Prime Minister and the Education Minister. What would the graduate of a GNH-infused education look like? How would you develop and nurture such a student?
After two days, Ron Colman of GPI made an amazing announcement. Overnight — literally — the government had adopted the workshop’s findings as government policies. Now, how should those policies be implemented? Two days later, the government had committed to an immediate GNH workshop within the education department, followed six weeks later by a workshop for all school principals in the country. Within a year, the new policies would reach every schoolroom in Bhutan.
As the workshop ended, I asked the Prime Minister how Bhutan would be different in 10 years, if the GNH education program succeeded.
“I would like to see an educational system quite different from the conventional factory, where children are just turned out to become economic animals, thinking only for themselves,” he said. “I would like to see graduates that are more human beings, with human values, that give importance to relationships, that are eco-literate, contemplative, analytical.
“I would like graduates who know that success in life is a state of being when you can come home at the end of the day satisfied with what you have done, realizing that you are a happy individual not only because you have found happiness for yourself, but because you have given happiness, in this one day’s work, to your spouse, to your family, to your neighbours — and to the world at large.”
– 30 –
Tags: Bhutan, GPI Atlantic, Gross National Happiness, holistic education, Jigme Y. Thinley, Ron Colman, sustainability, Thimphu
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