So Close to Heaven
Page 33
He is so convinced of Bhutan’s potential for success that he has decided if Germany will not see his seed program through several planting and harvesting cycles, he will ask Bhutan to allow him to stay as a private citizen-expert. He made this point in an audience with King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, an event he describes as “a great honor.” In that thirty-minute conversation, he said, “I committed myself to His Majesty.”
And so a modern seed-producing farm with European technology flowers on a hill not far from the holy spot where the Guru Rinpoche’s walking stick took root and produced a miraculous tree. There is room in Bumthang’s heart—and maybe Bhutan’s—for both. For many Bhutanese, this is critical to their survival and maybe to their brand of mountain-grown Buddhism. There is an unspoken sense that somewhere a place must be saved for the Buddha’s next appearance on earth.
“From this place, since early times,” records the Special Commission on Cultural Affairs, “arose kings and ministers, scholars and saints. Here were built marvelous, sacred temples. This glorious tradition will remain alive: such illustrious personages and such magnificent structures for worship will continue to appear in Bumthang, which is destined to be the seat of the future Buddha Maitreya”—the Buddha-to-come.
AN AFTERTHOUGHT
ONE AFTERNOON in Kathmandu, I sat down for a while to draw on the wisdom of His Holiness Ngawang Tenzing Zangbo, the abbot of Tengboche monastery, which rests in the lap of Mount Everest. I asked him how much it mattered whether or not the last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom, Bhutan, survived.
“As far as the survival of the Bhutanese is concerned,” he answered, “I believe this: We must work everywhere to save our religion and culture, not in Bhutan alone. Ladakh, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal—everywhere in the Himalayas.”
The rinpoche fears the effects of materialistic success on Buddhism; for him, hewing to Buddhist purity is central to the salvation process. But he also said that all Himalayan Buddhists and those who value their teachings should ponder the hubris of Tibet, where he studied.
“In Tibet they thought that Tibet was the only one, and that this would last for all time. Tibet had everything, and kept everything to itself. When that went, everything went.
“Now we know that our religion must be preserved everywhere. Only that way can we also save Bhutan.”
A GLOSSARY OF COMMON WORDS
bukhari Bhutanese metal woodstove
chhu river
chogyal king in Tibet or Sikkim
chorten; stupa; chaitya religious monument, square or dome-shaped in a variety of sizes, often containing relics of a holy man or religious scripts and objects
dasho nonhereditary title conferred on high officials in Bhutan
dewan Indian adviser to chogyal of Sikkim, functioning as prime minister
druk dragon; thunder or thunder dragon
Druk Gyalpo king of Bhutan or the Drukpas; translated ceremonially as Precious Ruler of the Dragon People
Druk Yul Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon; Bhutan
dzong Himalayan monastery-fortress; in Bhutan, headquarters of a dzonkhag
dzongda; dzongdag district administrator in Bhutan
dzongpon administrator of semiautonomous subregion in Bhutan
dzongrab deputy district administrator in Bhutan
dzonkhag administrative district in Bhutan
gho national dress for men in Bhutan
gomchen lay religious leader in Bhutanese villages
gompa monastery
je khenpo Buddhist head abbot in Bhutan
kabne scarf showing rank in Bhutan
khenpo Buddhist abbot
kira national dress for women in Bhutan
la mountain pass
lam road or street
lama religious teacher who may or may not be a monk
lhakhang temple
ngultrum Bhutanese monetary unit, worth about 3.3 cents
penlop regional governor in Bhutan
rinpoche religious teacher or scholar
sadhu Hindu mendicant holy man
terton discoverer or revealer of Buddhist treasures or writings
thangka religious painting mounted on a silk or brocaded scroll
thrimpon magistrate in Bhutan
torma flour-and-butter cake left as a temple offering
tshechu religious festival held in a dzong
tsho lake or other body of water
tulku a reincarnate lama
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MANY PEOPLE in the Himalayas helped and inspired me in the writing of this book, and an exhaustive list would be impossible to compile, since countless men and women and lots of children whose names I never knew—monks, novices, students, householders, shopkeepers, artisans, practitioners of traditional medicine, and farmers among them—all contributed something to my impressions and understanding, if only in fleeting encounters. In Bhutan, the last country in the world where Himalayan Buddhism and a Tibetan-based language have official status, a number of government officials, initially wary of journalists, gave hours of their time in conversations about their country and its policies. Two of them, Foreign Minister Dawa Tsering and Home Minister Dago Tshering, also apparently smoothed the way for lengthy interviews with His Majesty, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. Dzongdas, governors of the country’s geopolitical districts, were unfailingly hospitable and made it possible for me to spend many hours in monasteries and temples normally closed to foreigners. In particular, I would like to thank Dasho Lhakpa Dorji, Dasho Pem Dorji, Dasho Phub Dorji, and Dasho Rinzin Gyetsin.
Sonam Tobgay, chief justice of the Bhutanese High Court, not only explained the functioning of a unique justice system that starts with the teachings of the Lord Buddha but also introduced me to a rich secular folklore. In matters of religion and culture, I owe much to Sangay Wangchuck, now director of Bhutan’s National Library, and to Dasho Rigzin Dorji of the Special Commission on Cultural Affairs. Sadly, Rigzin Dorji, a man of great verve and spirit, died as I was writing this book. Kinley Dorji, editor of Kuensel and the person who knows more than just about anyone about the stories and trends behind the news, has been both a source of information and the object of admiration as he steadily builds his newspaper into an independent voice in all of the nation’s three official languages. During my years of reporting from Delhi, I was helped in understanding Tibetan Buddhism and its organizations in exile by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his staff, especially Tashi Wangdi.
In New York, Ambassador Ugyen Tshering, head of Bhutan’s United Nations mission, gave me many useful tips about the Bhutanese, and also helped me arrange trips to the country as an independent researcher with considerable freedom to travel. Robert A. F. Thurman, a Buddhist and scholar who at this writing is Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, was willing to answer questions and give encouragement, although I certainly would not qualify as a student of Tibetology. Leo Rose of the University of California at Berkeley, a lifelong scholar of the mountain kingdoms and the author of several valuable books, provided me with introductions to Nepali experts, including Purna Harsha Bajracharya, a Newari Buddhist from a long lineage of scholars and the former head of Nepal’s Archaeology Department. Purna Harsha was among those who initiated the excavations at Buddha’s birthplace in Lumbini. In Kathmandu I was also helped by Charles Ramble, a British anthropologist and Tibetologist who has amassed a store of knowledge about the daily lives and prospects of Himalayan Buddhist communities, and by Kesang Tseten, a writer born in Tibet, who had many useful ideas and suggestions to share. Thanks also to Kanak Mani Dixit, founder and editor of Himal, for creating a magazine that—however controversial—is setting the agenda for intellectual debate across the region.
Everyone who travels in the Buddhist Himalayas owes an enormous debt to a small number of fine Western scholars who have devoted their lives to the difficult work of sorting legend from historical fact in a region replete with mysteries. David L. Snellgrove and Michael Axis are two on whose discoveries and analyses I relied most. Françoise Pommaret, a French expert in Tibetan Buddhism and author of the only cultural guide to Bhutan, was generous with her knowledge of the Himalayan kingdoms accumulated over years of travel and living in the region. I still have the rough family tree of Bhutan’s Wangchuck dynasty that she sketched on the back of some scrap paper during an evening we spent in the restaurant of the Tushita Guesthouse in Kathmandu. Her Illustrated Guide to Bhutan, academically researched yet attuned to village life, filled an unusually wide gap in a country with few explanatory publications. With its glossaries and sensible standardizations of Bhutanese spellings, it became an encyclopedia.
In Ladakh, Helena Norberg-Hodge provided insights from more than a decade of work in a former kingdom trying to retain its identity. Several prominent Sikkimese, including some connected to the last chogyal and his family, spoke candidly to me about the sad history of that realm. They do not want to be identified, but they know who they are.
On a personal level, I owe thanks to Steven Powers, a family friend who at a still-youthful age has trekked over large areas of Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh, and Sikkim in his years in the Himalayas. In Kathmandu, he provided many books I would not have found myself, along with names and phone numbers of people to meet, from rinpoches to some of the businessmen who are Buddhism’s patrons. As always, I would never have been able to write this book without the encouragement and critical interest of my husband, David Wigg, who dissuaded me more than once from abandoning the project.
Finally, thanks go to Jonathan Segal, vice president and senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf, who was willing to take a chance on the esoteric idea of the Himalayan Buddhist world and its endangered civilization.
B.C.
VINTAGE DEPARTURES
PECKED TO DEATH BY DUCKS
by Tim Cahill
In his latest grand tour of the earth’s remote, exotic, and dismal places, Tim Cahill sleeps with a grizzly bear, witnesses demonic possession in Bali, assesses the cuteness quotient of giant clams in the South Pacific, and survives a run-in with something called the Throne of Doom in Guatemala. The resulting travel pieces
are at once vivid, nerve-wracking, and outrageously funny.
“Tim Cahill [has] the what-the-hell adventuresomeness of a T. E. Lawrence and the humor of a P. J. O’Rourke.”
—Condé Nast Traveler
Travel/Adventure/0–679–74929–2
FALLING OFF THE MAP
SOME LONELY PLACES OF THE WORLD
by Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer voyages from the nostalgic elegance of Argentina to the raffish nonchalance of Australia, documents the cruising rites of Icelandic teenagers, gets interrogated by tipsy Cuban police, and attends a screening of Bhutan’s first feature film. Throughout, he remains both uncannily observant and hilarious.
“[Iyer is the] rightful heir to Jan Morris [and] Paul Theroux.… He writes the kind of lyrical, flowing prose that could make Des Moines sound beguiling.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
Travel/Adventure/0–679–74612–9
RIDING THE WHITE HORSE HOME
A WESTERN FAMILY ALBUM
by Teresa Jordan
The daughter and granddaughter of Wyoming ranchers tells the stories of her forebears—men who saw broken bones as professional credentials and women who coped with physical hardship and killing loneliness. She acquaints us with the lore and science of ranching, and does so with a breathtaking immediacy that recalls the best writing of Wallace Stegner and Gretel Ehrlich.
“A haunting and elegant memoir.”
—Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge
Memoir/Travel/0–679–75135–1
BALKAN GHOSTS
A JOURNEY THROUGH HISTORY
by Robert D. Kaplan
As Kaplan travels from the breakaway states of Yugoslavia to Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, he reconstructs the Balkans’ history as a time warp in which ancient passions and hatreds are continually resurrected.
“Powerfully argued … the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date.”
—Boston Globe
History/Current Affairs/Travel/0–679–74981–0