Why are our lakes sacred, while lakes in other countries are not? (A question on my Instagram from a young Bhutanese friend)

Basic fact: All the lakes in all the countries on Earth were once deemed as sacred. Every native culture – American, Finnish, Asian, African, Polynesian etc. have viewed every aspect of nature as sacred. Then, science and rationalism took over the popular narrative towards the end of the 18th Century and everything that was not rational or logical were slammed as archaic, obsolete and irrelevant. Still, in many countries, including in some native reservations in the US, many lakes and water bodies are considered sacred. In a recent move, New Zealand just gave human status (with the same rights) to rivers and lakes.

Our belief in Bhutan:

As to why we in Bhutan still hold them as sacred, it has got to do more with Bonism than Buddhism. While Buddhism treats every sentient being – including nature and the super-natural, as sacred, it was the Bon masters who insisted that the Buddhists accept some of their sacred places and their deities within the Buddhist universe.

According to a popular legend, the final truce between the Bonpos and the Buddhists was made following the race to the top of Mt. Kailash between Bon Narochung and Jetsun Milarepa, in which the latter won*. The Buddhist demanded that the Bonpos accept the core Mahayana practice of Loving Kindness and Compassion and refrain from animal and human sacrifice, and the Bonpos required the Buddhists to regard all their sacred spots – mountain peaks, water bodies, creeks, soil, trees, etc. as sacred. Following the famous truce, the reformed Bon came to be known as Bon Kar (white Bon) and some of their belief systems and ritualistic practices were integrated in Vajrayana Buddhism.

There are deeper nuances on this topic and more to the story (and young readers are invited to delve further), but in brief it explains fairly well the Himalayan traditions of nature worship like treating a lake as sacred.

*In Nalanda Monastery in Punakha there is a mural painting depicting this legend. Check it out.

(Photo: Athang Tsho – the sacred lake in Bhutan.)