She convulses into another round of giggles. I smile politely but finally confess I don’t find it rip-roaringly funny. This sends her off again into peals of laughter. When she can compose herself, she tells me Westerners were present at the teachings, but even when the jokes were translated into English, they did not understand them, looking confused as the Bhutanese fell about in hysterics. Phuntsho finds this the funniest thing of all.
While Tibetans also revere Drukpa Kinley for his crazy wisdom and sexual openness, the Bhutanese are on their own in the way they celebrate the phallus. Erect penises are on display everywhere. Paintings of penises and testicles adorn houses, and the images are not subtle. Some have curly black hair around the shaft, even froth coming out of the tip. Creative rural people sculpt the phallic form into useful things like satellite dish holders and fountains. To the Bhutanese, there is nothing lewd about publicly displaying the phallus.
I’m told that the simple explanation, which tour guides pass on to tourists, is that phallic symbols ward off evil spirits, protect against the evil eye or increase fertility. A more complex explanation is that the phallus, representing the human body and its inherent wisdom, is an antidote to the evil of materialism and the suffering caused by attachment.
People hang a wooden phallus from the eaves on the four corners of their home. They ‘cross’ the shaft through the centre with a sword. The phallus and the sword represent opposite impulses – the phallus is earthly desire, or ego, and the sword represents wisdom. Together they negate each other, leading to the symbolic taming of the human mind.
In central Bhutan, hosts are likely to dip a wooden phallus in your tea before serving it to you. At the tshechus, a man dressed like a crazy court jester weaves through the crowds while waving a vivid red phallus and poking it suggestively at everyone – old women, monks, nuns, children, parliamentarians. The audience falls about laughing. It is not rude or sexual. It is irreverent and very, very funny. Everyone is in on the joke.
At a news conference, reporter Rabi talks about a remote town where the women have unique anatomy. After entertaining everybody with the ribald details, he decides he really should investigate the story and disappears for a week. He returns with a story for the features pages.
Crooked female genitalia and the legend that straightened things out
Phu is crooked and so are vaginas, say the men of a remote village in Lhuentse. Rabi C. Dahal explores this quaint little story.
Some distance above Ungar village in Metso Gewog in Lhuentse is a curiously tilted ridge, which the locals say houses and represents the village’s guardian deity, Phushing Liphung Tsangpo. The ridge lists to the right, supposedly the result of a right-handed slap on the deity’s face by her husband, Numgmabri.
The legend goes that, one day, Phushing refused to entertain Numgmabri as she was busy weaving. Numgmabri got annoyed and tried to steal the weaving thread and run away but Phushing was quick enough to stop him by hitting him with the tam (weaving beater), resulting in a deep cut to the head. Numgmabri responded by slapping her so hard her face became tilted.
It is said that Numgmabri and Phushing parted ways thereafter. He settled down in Tongebi-Galiping village in the same gewog while she stopped weaving altogether. To this day, her remorse continues to be borne by the women in Ungar. None of them weave.
Like all the men in the village, Ugyen Tenzin, 63, believes their women bear the after-effects of Phushing and Numgmabri’s fight in another way. ‘The elders used to tell us that the vagina is crooked because Phushing is crooked,’ he said.
The women, though, beg to differ. They said the men’s belief is a fallacy. Phushing may be crooked but the vagina is straight.
16
New Ideas
In my daily meetings with Phuntsho, we come up with lots of ideas for the company. It is exhilarating. She is always thinking of the children, Bhutan’s next generation, and how to help them. As levels of education improve, the need for books will increase. She suggests a range of children’s books telling Bhutanese folk tales. The elders pass on these tales orally, and it would just be a matter of collecting them. Perhaps we could also translate into Dzongkha the Jataka tales, stories of the Buddha’s pre-incarnations before he gained enlightenment.
The lifestyle pages of the newspaper have started publishing favourite family recipes, the ones passed down from ama to ama. We could publish an annual cookbook, preserving Bhutanese traditions while appealing to tourists.
The company already distributes newspapers across the country, so perhaps we could try book distribution? A book club? A weekly lift-out television guide? There is a never-ending conversation about finding new channels of revenue using the company’s limited resources.
Tenzin, who is knowledgeable about all things to do with printing, looks into the idea of security printing. The arrival of sophisticated photocopy machines has opened new opportunities for fraud, and Bhutan sends its sensitive printing – such as lottery tickets, exam papers and share certificates – to India or Thailand. It’s a great idea, and Tenzin applies for funding from a Danish aid agency for purpose-built presses. His vision also includes facilities for the disabled. In 2004, he visited Kentucky as part of a Bhutanese delegation and was profoundly moved to see disabled people at a printing press, working alongside able-bodied people. Blind people operated machines, doing folding, collating, inserting, counting and whatever else was required. He would like to provide employment for disabled people in Bhutan.
I find a Japanese–English magazine on the internet that looks interesting. It publishes one paragraph of a story in Japanese, immediately followed by the same paragraph in English. Phuntsho and Tenzin are always trying to offset the costs of the Dzongkha edition, which attracts no advertising but requires translators, an editor, and all the costs of printing and distribution. Each week the best stories in Bhutan Observer are translated into Dzongkha. This means every week the newspaper produces a mirror copy of stories, so a bilingual edition could be a new stream of income at little extra cost. We talk about the feasibility of a small monthly paper with a selection of features, presented in the two languages side by side. It would be helpful to anyone trying to learn the other language. It could be a wonderful resource for schoolchildren, civil servants and parliamentarians. Dzongkha is the language of government, and those who don’t speak it well are disadvantaged. The Dzongkha Development Commission, responsible for promoting the language, might consider sponsoring it. It could sell for the same cost as the newspaper, or a little more.
I show the Japanese–English magazine to Phuntsho, and she asks me to present the idea at the next management meeting. The response is not quite of the level of enthusiasm I was expecting. The editors are wary. We discuss it again at the next management meeting and I think I detect a mild stirring of interest. We discuss names, and I suggest Double Feature, Two Worlds, The Monthly. No one says directly that they hate them, but it is clear they do. I feel gauche. They want something more … Dzongkha-like.
The Dzongkha edition of Bhutan Observer is called Druk Nelug, which they explain means ‘as it is’. It is not a direct translation because it is not possible to give one. Druk Nelug encompasses all sorts of nuances that the English language cannot accommodate. They throw around possible Dzongkha titles. Rigphel looks like a winner for a moment, then one of the editors suggests Lophel. They all consider the word, repeating it again and again before deciding that they like it. They tell me that, once again, there is no English equivalent but it conveys a sense of gravitas. They find it evocative: even the word itself sounds beautiful. It means ‘wisdom’, but in a special way. They may as well be explaining a colour I’ve never seen, but at least they have chosen a name that means something to them, which I think means they are coming around to the idea.
Later, Phuntsho asks me if I like the name. She is clearly pleased with it. It is rich with layers of meaning for her, truly lovely in some w
ay I fail to appreciate. To me the word means nothing and even sounds a little clumsy. I confess to her that I’m not a big fan but only because I don’t appreciate the nuances of the word and Dzongkha sounds are foreign to me, but I assure her I am pleased that everyone else is excited about it. She looks disappointed and I feel gauche again. We have a different verbal aesthetic, I offer lamely. I ponder it for days afterwards and find myself wondering what English sounds like to the Bhutanese ear. Bland? Lazy? What does it sound like to Germans? Italians? I try but simply am unable to will myself into the mindset of another culture.
We discuss Lophel at the next three management meetings but don’t get anywhere. Each week we talk ourselves into it and out of it again. The features editor says that if the Dzongkha Development Commission advertises in the publication, we can’t ask people to pay for it. This mystifies me. But people buy Bhutan Observer and that has government advertisements, I explain. That is the business model for the newspaper. He looks unconvinced.
The following week he says he thinks it would be detrimental for the newspaper’s image if we brought out something that was no good, so perhaps it would be best not to do it. It’s paralysis by analysis. I feel my frustration rise: it shouldn’t be this hard, but it is. I can’t put my finger on why there is such reluctance. It seems everything to do with Dzongkha is complex. The scholars cannot agree on words and keep changing the rules. Phuntsho says a lot of what she learned at school has now been changed. But there is more to it, something about the status of the language that I am not grasping, a subtle snobbery or respect for Dzongkha that goes beyond how I view my own language. They view Dzongkha as being inherently sacred. The script, which is related to Tibetan, is elegant and drawn in fluid strokes. But their reverence goes beyond its physical form. The Buddhist masters talk about language and letters in profoundly spiritual terms. Not all of the management team are devout Buddhists, but those teachings are in the air they have been breathing since birth. They share a feeling for Dzongkha that is outside my experience.
Despite their reservations, we agree to proceed with a trial edition. Two editors collect features for the next four weeks and Sushil lays it out. He designs a glossy brown cover with an orange title Lophel in English and Dzongkha. It is printed in Thimphu on A6 pages, small enough to roll up and carry in the front of a gho or kira or in a handbag. I think it looks pretty good.
Lophel is a failure. The first and only edition is riddled with errors. I can’t see them myself, because they are in the Dzongkha sections. In our next management meeting we discuss why. It soon becomes apparent that whoever was supposed to proofread it failed to do so, but we skirt around this obvious fact. It may be a cultural reaction: to lay blame on a senior member of staff in front of the others might involve too much loss of face. Or it may be something else, something about what Dzongkha means to this society. Certainly no-one seems to share my disappointment that it did not work. The team is unanimous that we should not produce another issue and that is the end of that.
Mentally I file it away among the things I will never understand and we move on. Tenzin is printing calendars, featuring Bhutan Observer cartoons, for advertisers. Phuntsho wants to hold an education conclave to improve our schools page. And the advertising department has suggested a distribution drive getting taxi drivers to sell copies of Bhutan Observer to their passengers. There is lots to do.
Phuntsho decides we should start working on a second edition of Faces of Bhutan. The media impact study of 2008 showed that Bhutanese want to read about what’s happening in their own country, and see their own faces and traditions reflected in their media, so we decide this edition should be about Buddhism in Bhutan. There are some extraordinary masters here who draw huge crowds when they travel to the West to give teachings. There are also sacred sites of great power and relevance. The magazine could have a story about the mad, phallus-waving Drukpa Kinley, master of crazy wisdom. As well as being a Bhutanese hero, he is an object of fascination for any practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism, as his life and teachings demonstrated a mind free from constraints.
We could feature Yeshe, an example of the thousands who are undertaking private retreats in caves and mountaintops across the country. A lhakhang above Thimphu has deep grooves in the wooden floor, which have been gouged there over the past decade by a monk doing daily prostrations. They are a hauntingly beautiful sight. Bhutan has a wealth of such stories.
As well as showing Bhutan its own remarkable spiritual heritage, we expect this edition to appeal to Western Buddhists. Three Buddhist magazines are published in America: Tricycle, Buddhadharma and Shambhala Sun. They carry advertisements for books, retreats, tours and teachings of various Buddhist masters. We would hope to capture the same international readership and target some of their advertisers.
Given that distribution inside Bhutan is always a challenge, getting copies to America sounds almost insane. But Mal suggests that a digital edition might work. Since we moved to Bhutan, he has received his monthly Mac/Life magazine as a digital download. He loves it and says he doesn’t want to go back to print. I investigate this possibility and discover Zinio on the internet: it is a digital magazine company that does just what we need.
The newspaper staff contribute stories, and Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche agrees to let us publish a chapter from his new book, What Makes You Not a Buddhist. A Welsh monk, Lama Shenpen, works with troubled youth in Thimphu and is a good friend of Phuntsho and Tenzin. He proposes an article on ethics for a Buddhist media. ‘In countries that preserve Buddhist wisdom, understanding of interdependence should form the core of news reporting,’ he writes.
Karma Ura, an Oxford alumnus and perhaps Bhutan’s foremost intellectual, writes about the distinctly Bhutanese flavour of Vajrayana Buddhism and the spiritual meaning of the phalluses. He argues that Western media flaunts the female body on billboards, while in Bhutan it is the opposite. The phalluses drawn on walls instead ‘collapse’ male sexuality. I find myself still thinking about his words days later.
Professor Bob Thurman, an expert on Bhutan and Vajrayana Buddhism from Columbia University, has just left Thimphu after giving a public talk. Now back in New York, he agrees to an interview over the phone about Buddhism in Bhutan and whether a Western form is evolving. It is a prickly subject in the Buddhist world: the cultural trappings of Buddhism can make it inaccessible to Westerners, who can baulk at the sight of a shrine or the concept of a guru. But separating the essence of Buddhism, the universal teachings of the Buddha, from the cultural aspects can be fraught. Professor Thurman has lots of interesting things to say.
I find my way to an exiled Tibetan lama, Mynak Tulku Rinpoche, who is great friends with the Queen Grandmother. Over tea in his apartment, I ask whether he would write about the very special relationship between the Queen Grandmother and the late great master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. Her Majesty is a spiritual inspiration to the Bhutanese. They adore her. Dilgo Khyentse, who was the Dalai Lama’s principal teacher, was a spiritual giant. The Queen Grandmother and the Third King gave him safe haven when he fled Tibet. She was both his royal patron and devout student. Mynak Tulku Rinpoche says he will ask.
The Queen Grandmother not only says yes to being interviewed, but also gives us photos from her private album. She believes it will benefit others to know about the life of the great Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
On the internet I discover that the award-winning American photographer Mimi Kuo-Deemer has just completed a photo essay on the nuns of Bhutan for a UN project. I email her a request to use her photographs – once again explaining we have no money to pay for the images. Nevertheless, she sends me back ten stunning portraits of nuns, aged seven to 75, each with a short story about their lives. The faces are compelling, looking straight down the lens. Nuns throughout the Buddhist world are treated rather shabbily. They are considered lucky if they get to serve the monks tea during a teaching, and they get a fraction of the monks’ funding a
nd resources. To choose that life, and then dedicate yourself to it, takes a remarkable human being. Their stories are both heartbreaking and heartwarming.
The chief photographer for Reuters in India, Desmond Boylan, photographed the coronation of the Fifth King and puts all his photos at the disposal of Bhutan Observer. We can use them in this magazine or any other that the newspaper chooses to produce in future. This is truly astounding behaviour in the publishing world.
While browsing online I find some rare early photographs of Taktshang, Bhutan’s most sacred site, before the great fire of 1998 that almost destroyed the original buildings. Taktshang, or Tiger’s Nest, is an ancient monastery that clings to a cliff face 900 metres above the floor of the Paro valley. It is said that Guru Rinpoche, who took Buddhism from India to Tibet, flew here in 747 AD on the back of a tigress. He meditated for three months in a cave and concealed a teaching about spiritual materialism, to be discovered in the degenerate age, when it would be needed. The monastery was built over and around the cave. In 1968, a young Tibetan lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was passing through on his way to Europe and stayed at Taktshang, where he ‘discovered’ that teaching. When he came down from Taktshang, he had a vision for how he would spread Buddha’s teachings in the West. He went on to found the Naropa University in Colorado, and established more than 100 meditation centres in America and Canada. He was often controversial and is considered another master of crazy wisdom.
Although he died in 1987, the website Chronicles of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche continues to publish his teachings, and it is there that I chance on a slideshow of his legendary visit to Taktshang. I email them asking if we can publish the photos in Faces of Bhutan. They send back three original photos and a story from a British student who was on that journey. His account of how Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche revealed the ancient hidden teaching is riveting, and the photos of the sacred site, which is so much a part of the Bhutanese psyche, are bound to generate a lot of interest.
The Dragon's Voice Page 13
