Little Buddhas under threat

Picture: Bhutan Observer

(This article was first published in Bhutan Observer in 2007)

I was in Class V when the first – and the oldest – choeten in my village lost its nangten (relics). Then, the people in my village did not know what it was. Was it vandalism? Theft? Robbery? Sacrilege? It was simply beyond their knowledge and imagination. The police were, however, immediately alerted. Two uniformed men rushed to the site, looked into the small empty hole in the choeten and left. Barely a year later, another choeten in the village was robbed of its nangten. Once again, everybody looked into the empty hole in the choeten and went back home.

Within a few years, my village became poorer by a few of its treasured choetens. Although the holes in the desecrated choetens were routinely plugged by village masons, there was nothing the villagers could do. And, indeed, there was nothing the government could do.

Ta She Gha Chha: A book review

(This book review was first published in Rabsel: The CERD Educational Journal in 2005)

Long time ago, while meditating in a cave in the mountains, the great Tibetan saint Jetsun Milarepa wanted to move to another cave on a particular day. He knew that the day was inauspicious to undertake the journey. But he thought that for a yogi like him, who had moved beyond the influence of the ordinary, there was no such thing as auspicious or inauspicious. So he left his cave for the other one with his prized possession, a clay pot.

The belief could not influence Jetsun Milarepa’s decision. But he, nonetheless, believed in the inauspiciousness of the day. Likewise, we have numerous beliefs which influence and guide our behaviour and conduct, or at least our thinking. This is what Ms Karma Pedey’s 154‐page book Ta She Gha Chha: The Broken Saddle and other Popular Bhutanese Beliefs, the latest book by a Bhutanese author, is all about.

Ta She Gha Chha. The title of the book itself could be an enduring metaphor for the fundamental characteristic of popular Bhutanese beliefs – supernatural elements taking the centre stage in the human drama of trials and tribulations, sins and retribution, death and disaster. It could also be a metaphor for the established link between human world and the world beyond. In the context of popular beliefs, the moment something happens to us, we attribute the cause of it to something, and that is often supernatural and otherworldly.

Tracing the source of Gamri

(I wrote this article eight years ago when I first visited Sakteng)

Children of Sakteng                               Photo: Bhutan Observer

From Trashigang town to Phongmay to Joenkhar to Thragthri to Sakteng, the lamentable cry of Gamri is loud and clear. The journey from Phongmay to the plain of bamboos is long and tiring. One climbs up the mountain ranges with Gamri always flowing by one’s side – now by right, now by left. One imagines that one would reach the source of the stream long before one reaches the plain of bamboos.

After hours of walk, Gamri ceases to make its lamentable noise. One fancies that the stream has suddenly disappeared altogether. But next moment, Gamri reappears – this time in all its beauty. It quietly flows across the plain of bamboos. Sakteng is here, but the source of Gamri is lost beyond many high mountains.

This is a fairy land. With identical little houses clustered together against the vast emptiness of the glacial valley, the majestic mountains surrounding the valley still snow-capped and sparkling at the approach of summer, the gently undulating plains dotted with grazing yaks and woolly sheep, and silvery Gamri flowing across the length of the valley, it is idyllic and picturesque. This is Sakteng, the plain of bamboos.