The Dragon's Voice

by Bunty Avieson

  In the wall beside his mattress is a window, which he slides open. It looks over the courtyard, and if we angle our heads we can see a breathtaking view across the valley of Thimphu.

  Yeshe explains the practices that he is doing, and that his day starts at 3 am. I ask how cold it is at that hour. He says that when he wakes, the glass of water beside his bed is frozen.

  He digs out a plastic sleeve of photographs that show his family, other monks and a younger, bearded version of himself. It was taken on the day he finished his last three-year retreat. His voice is wistful.

  ‘That was a happy day?’ asks Mal.

  He grins, his face so open and full of joy that it feels good just to look at him. Those three years were the best of his life, he says, and that’s why he’s back to do it again.

  On his table is a booklet in Tibetan. It is advice from a great master about how to treat all beings with generosity. From the lowly to the highest born, everyone deserves respect and compassion. He explains it is not part of his retreat but something extra he reads. He considers our visit a blessing as it is providing him with the opportunity to be generous. He bustles about at his gas ring making tea, and produces a tin of biscuits. They are obviously a treat, but he is pleased when we both take one.

  He chats about his retreat. In a few days the temple will be sealed and then things will start in earnest for the five monks. The hours of meditation will increase. Four sessions a day, starting at 3 am and ending at 9 pm. An attendant will hike up and down the mountain every few days to get food supplies from Thimphu. He will be the only person to pass through the high walls for the next three years, three months and three days.

  The five monks won’t talk to each other, directing all their energies on focusing their minds. Nor will they shave or cut their fingernails.

  Yeshe explains the pastel-coloured dough figures on his altar, which are moulded into geometric shapes, and the cage surrounded by blood-red spikes on a low table. These strange artefacts are his armoury. While meditating and reciting his prayers, he performs elaborate and violent visualisations of scary deities to slay his ego. While the modern world goes about its business, he will be alone inside these very close walls, hour after hour, wrestling with his mind in a major battle. For all his mild manner and boyish smile, this is not a pursuit for the faint-hearted. Or the weak-willed.

  We say our goodbyes, wishing him well. What do you say to a young man with a happy, shining face, who is about to be sealed up for three years to draw out and then fight his demons?

  When we tell him we will be thinking of him he is pleased and says he will remember us in his prayers. Our last sight of him is that broad, open grin – and the realisation that he is looking forward to the next three years with relish. I don’t know anyone who looks forward to a day in the office with that kind of enthusiasm.

  We climb down the mountain, through the forest of prayer flags, past the transmission tower, and descend into the valley. Now that we know it is there, we realise Yeshe’s little temple is visible from just about everywhere in Thimphu. We see it from Tashi Pelkhil, my office, the new children’s playground by the river, the traffic-heavy main street of Norzin Lam. Wherever we go, we know that little flash of white amid the dense dark green high on the ridge is the ancient temple where Yeshe is doing battle.

  He is part of Bhutan’s hidden, esoteric, tantric face. In the West the word ‘tantra’ has come to carry New Age and sexual connotations. In the practice of Vajrayana Buddhism, however, it is more complex – and interesting – as explained by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Cutting through Spiritual Materialism.

  More than 30,000 Bhutanese are monks or nuns, living in monasteries. A further 15,000 are lay monks, or gomchen. The gomchen tradition is specific to Vajrayana Buddhism, and brings the esoteric practices of tantra out of the high-walled monasteries and into the lay community. Literally translated, gomchen means ‘great meditator’. They study and meditate as vigorously as monks and nuns, undertaking three-year retreats like Yeshe. But unlike monks and nuns, they can marry, have families and live in the villages, where they offer spiritual guidance. They are highly accomplished and respected.

  When Mal was filming Travellers & Magicians in 2002, half-a-dozen gomchen appeared in a scene. I lined up with them in the breakfast queue before they were called onto the set, and could not take my eyes off them. They each had long grey hair, wore distinctive robes and radiated charisma. They also seemed amused by everything around them.

  While not all Bhutanese want to embrace such a spiritual life, the whole society supports those who do – not only in terms of infrastructure and material support but also, and more importantly, through cultural affirmation and respect. You won’t find Bhutan’s wayward youths throwing stones at a yogi’s retreat hut. This form of religious practice provides the philosophical backbone and cultural values that underpin everything about this society. And it begins to explain some of the absenteeism at Bhutan Observer.

  The arts editor takes off whenever an important lama is giving teachings, and people work around his absences. Another becomes unavailable when his father-in-law dies and it is his responsibility to co-ordinate 49 days of mourning for the extended family.

  Phuntsho puts aside her many important projects during the week that 12 monks perform pujas at her apartment. Her family, like most in Thimphu, have pujas performed at least once a year. She spends days preparing for it, explaining to me the logistics of supplying a dozen adult men with three suitably hearty meals a day, endless tea and the various offering substances they need (such as rice and fresh fruit) for each stage of the puja, which will be performed in the living room of her small apartment. But two days after they start, some of them have to go to Punakha to perform a puja for the Fifth King. They return to Phuntsho only to be called out to the Queen Grandmother. Monks are always in high demand, particularly those who have done three-year retreats for certain deities associated with specific practices. When Phuntsho finally returns to the office she is exhausted.

  Respect for the spiritual underpins and permeates every aspect of Bhutanese life. It always takes precedence over getting the newspaper out.

  8

  Happy, Happy, Happy

  Rabi Dahal is the sort of reporter that editors want in their newsroom. If he is sent somewhere to do one story, he comes back with five. While most of the reporters manage three or four stories a week, he averages around ten. In his downtime, he runs the newspaper website and helps with advertising. He is a one-man network, always ready with ideas and enthusiasm. Rival news organisations have tried to poach him, offering almost twice his salary at Bhutan Observer, but he is not motivated by money. He enjoys his job. He explains to me one day that the most important thing for job satisfaction is that your employer matches your own philosophy of life. He shares the vision of Tenzin, Phuntsho and Needrup, for a socially responsible newspaper that will help the Bhutanese transition to democracy. He’s very at home at Bhutan Observer.

  Rabi returns from a trip to the far northeast with a head full of stories. He travelled with officials from the Gross National Happiness Commission (GNHC) who were crossing the country to check on the happiness levels of the population. In the 2005 census, 96.4 per cent declared themselves to be ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’. Only 3.5 per cent said they were ‘not very happy’. Rabi followed as the survey team walked up mountains and through forests, going from village to village, asking people if they were happy and recording their responses in official ledgers. Faced with these important men from government, the people unanimously agreed that they were happy.

  But Rabi, remembering his own childhood growing up in a poor village in the south, was not convinced officials were getting the full picture.

  ‘I suspected they were just being obedient Bhutanese, telling the authorities what they wanted to hear, afraid of getting into trouble. So I went back and asked them if they were happy. I said, “
I am a newspaperman, you can tell me the truth.” They said, “Of course we are not happy. We don’t have enough food to eat.”’

  He recounts the story to Needrup, Phuntsho and me as we sit in her office, drinking tea. Rabi tells of a woman he interviewed who was so poor she could barely afford food but nonetheless gave eggs to a GNHC official.

  Needrup and Phuntsho are visibly moved. Their hearts are back in their own villages, with their families. They understand exactly why the elderly woman would do that.

  Phuntsho’s eyes fill with tears. ‘They are so innocent,’ she says.

  She and Needrup tell Rabi he must write about his trip, exactly as he saw it, for the newspaper. And he does. Beautifully. He starts his piece by saying: ‘My visit to Ungar in Lhuentse was one of the best experiences of my journalistic life.’

  During my visit to Ungar, I observed that the people there were only concerned about eking out a mere existence. Their concern was about food, shelter and survival. They struggled endlessly. For them, it was simply what life meant.

  Coming from a similar community, I have come to realise that it is a pity that these poor people are burdened with mere reasons for survival rather than contributing to nation building as equal partners with their fellow-citizens. Their common parlance is, ‘We are happy as we are’ while they hardly have any reason to be happy … Indeed, the truth is, they aren’t happy. They suffer a food shortage for at least six months in a year. Many of them are indebted to financial institutions. An old woman told me that she couldn’t pay off her debt even if she ‘piled life upon life’.

  Marauding wild animals ravage their crops every season leaving them with little of the little they grow … There are no roads and electricity. They cannot send their children to school for numerous reasons. The villagers, who have resigned to their fate, say that many government officials came to their village with pen and paper, asked questions, and never returned.

  The story brings a huge reaction. Thimphu readers, most of whom also have families living in villages, are deeply moved, and Needrup publishes some of their letters. A former World Bank vice-president, Mieko Nishimizu, sends an email from Japan, saying that she read the story on Bhutan Observer’s website and calls Rabi ‘a shining journalist’.

  ‘Real life-experience like yours is the only way to see the world through the eyes of the invisible people,’ writes Nishimizu. ‘It was a joy because I am convinced that good journalism, like yours, is critical.’

  Even the GNHC seems pleased that Rabi has unlocked something that its own survey team was unable to. Rabi positioned the role of journalist as neutral and safe, outside the rigid social hierarchy that governs so many Bhutanese interactions. This is the independent media functioning just as the Fourth King intended – going beyond the government view. And it’s Bhutan Observer doing what Phuntsho hoped – giving ordinary people a voice, particularly rural people. It is a wonderful moment where the best ideals of the media are demonstrated.

  In the country’s first media awards, a panel of judges present Rabi with the accolade of Most Valuable Story.

  I understand why the story struck such a chord. Gross National Happiness must be the most discussed topic in Thimphu. The acronym GNH is used so much that it becomes a word – ‘Jeenaich’.

  I hear it in just about every Bhutan Observer news conference, if not every conversation with Phuntsho. Upholding its principles is part of the newspaper’s mission statement, published on their website.

  Letter writers often use it in their arguments. On the television news each night, government ministers refer to it at every opportunity. Schoolchildren write essays trying to define it. International journalists report on it, and tourists flock to Bhutan seeking to observe it. Academics give papers on it at conferences. It’s considered Buddhist yet secular, applauded for being deeply profound and also criticised for being vague and woolly. But what exactly is GNH?

  As with most things in modern Bhutan, it comes back to the King. The Fourth King coined the phrase and launched the concept. It is his greatest legacy. When his father died in 1972, making him the world’s youngest monarch, the Fourth King already had some idea of life outside his own isolated country. He had attended a prestigious Indian college, St Joseph’s, and then Heatherdown Preparatory School in Ascot, England (also attended by Prince Andrew, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and actor David Niven), before returning to Bhutan to be taught by a personal tutor from Oxford University.

  In his coronation speech in 1974, the Fourth King declared: ‘The most important task before us at present is to achieve economic self-reliance to ensure the continued progress of our country in the future.’

  During his first few years on the throne he became concerned by what was happening in the world beyond Bhutan. He saw that development, when left unchecked, turned into consumerism. The equality sought by globalisation also caused the homogenisation of cultures. He worried that adopting similar development policies, or even allowing them to spread into his country, would undermine Bhutanese culture as well as any hope the nation had of becoming self-reliant. He began to speak about a different path to development, one based on Bhutan’s own cultural values. He talked about happiness, not wealth, as the goal.

  He told London’s Financial Times in 1987: ‘We are convinced that we must aim for contentment and happiness. Whether we take five years or ten to raise the per capita income and increase prosperity is not going to guarantee that happiness, which includes political stability, social harmony, and the Bhutanese culture and way of life.’

  Much of this culture and way of life developed from Buddhist beliefs, which provide a fundamentally different worldview to that of Christian-based societies. In cultures based on Christian ideas, the emphasis is on the individual, which is considered a precious and unique being with a soul. Out of this, according to sociological theorist Max Weber, capitalism evolved.

  Buddhism, however, doesn’t focus on the individual. It is primarily concerned with the interdependence of all things: no-one and nothing exists independently of everything else. This concern with interdependence is the foundation on which Gross National Happiness was built. Karma Ura, of the Centre for Bhutan Studies, articulated the philosophy of GNH in a government paper. He wrote: ‘Members of a GNH society would cultivate a third eye, which can elevate our vision beyond individual self-interest to address the happiness of all, as a collective goal … Equity is central to GNH.’

  The Fourth King’s vision was for policies that, first, don’t cause harm to anyone, and, second, will benefit all sentient beings. Economic growth and change are not necessarily good. They are desirable only if they meet those two criteria.

  The Financial Times interview marked the first time he presented these ideas to the wider world, and the article covered the front page of the magazine section of its highly read weekend edition. It was a bold move by a newspaper whose readers were bankers, economists and businesspeople. At the same time the British financial establishment was reading about this novel concept, Hollywood was making the movie Wall Street, with Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) giving his famous ‘greed is good’ speech. The film, released in the US in December 1987, perfectly captured the economic rationalist view that prevailed in developed countries at that time. Perhaps it was because the Fourth King’s vision provided such a startling contrast, a perfect bookend, that GNH got so much international attention.

  The Fourth King wasn’t the first to identify the limitations of a strictly economic model for measuring progress. Robert Kennedy expressed similar concerns in 1968 in a rousing speech to students at the University of Kansas: ‘Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things … Gross National Product … measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that
which makes life worthwhile.’

  Unlike Kennedy, however, the Fourth King had absolute power over his country and was able to implement his vision. He created an alternative measure of progress that recognised interdependence. His government established a framework of four ‘pillars’ of happiness: economic development, environmental preservation, cultural preservation and good governance. By changing the focus to happiness, Gross National Product became just one pillar of success, and economic development became a means rather than an end in itself.

  The Fourth King gave the Centre for Bhutan Studies the task of creating metric indicators to measure the success or failure of progress under these pillars. He created the Gross National Happiness Commission, and every new policy would have to be approved by that department.

  In 2008 the government further divided the four pillars into nine ‘core dimensions’: psychological wellbeing, time use, community vitality, culture, health, education, environmental diversity, living standard and governance.

  Gross National Happiness has its critics. Mostly they argue that happiness is subjective and can’t be measured, or they point to the confusion surrounding its definition. Conferences are conducted both in Thimphu and abroad to explore what it means. At the first international GNH conference, held in Thimphu in 2004, one group said happiness was the objective of GNH. Another emphasised GNH as leading to a situation where happiness may develop but it was not explicitly happiness itself. Some saw happiness as a personal matter; others, as a social condition.

  Thimphu hosts its fourth GNH conference in November 2008 and interested guests fly in to share in the discussion. Mal attends each day and comes home with stories of the sessions. A Bhutanese civil servant presents graphs and charts that show women in Bhutan are significantly less happy than men. Another session reveals Thimphu valley is the most miserable region in the country.

  Conversations about GNH continue all around me – in the government, among the business community, and between ordinary people working out how they should uphold GNH, which is considered part of everyone’s responsibility as a Bhutanese citizen.