New Year’s eve is when many of the promises, which won’t be kept anyway, are made. It is the time when resolutions are listed as we get tipsy and sing the old year goodbye.

Here is a better proposition.

How about that we take a moment to reflect, ponder and be grateful. We simply take too many things for granted – good health, good life and good people around you. And yet, we know that not everything is the same for everyone on the planet. We are the fortunate ones, actually.

Instead of saying, I want to be healthy, maybe you ARE healthy, instead of resolving to be better, maybe you ARE good enough. And if you are thinking of striving, you ARE already thriving.

When you believe you are enough you feel contented. You enjoy the inner peace. You refrain from desiring for more.

So, at least the New Year’s Day, take a time to be grateful. If you look around carefully you will find hundreds of things you can, or should, be grateful for.

If you find nothing, don’t forget that you are still alive. Not everyone made it through 2023.

(Take a moment to list down 10 things you are grateful for. Write them down on a piece of paper. Fold it and keep it in your purse. Later during the year, when you are down, go through the list. And smile 😊😊😊)

(Picture: On a boat off the coast of Bali, Indonesia. July 2023)

😎😎😎
OK. Jokes apart, this is big, and very prestigious in our world – the rarefied ivory towers of academia, where your whole research work done in your PhD years is recognised. It was conferred at the National Communication Association in Washington, DC – the world’s biggest association of academic peers in the communication and social science.

I am coming back to speak of it again for two reasons.

In recent days, seeing some of my good friends being recognised, some acquaintances on the victory pedestals, and some of my mentees going triumphant – all made me extremely proud as a Bhutanese. In spite of all our misplaced egos, we must remember that we are a nation of less than a million and to be doing well as a country, as a nation, and as individuals is something we need to take pride in. So, I thought this piece might also warm up many hearts on the even of the National Day.

Second, and more importantly, there are many young Bhutanese who are doing their postgraduate studies. Anything academic is stressful. We all know that. Postgraduate years are even more stressful, and frustrating and exasperating. PhD time is actually a very lonely journey. Very very lonely. And depressing at times. You wake up every morning and start rethinking your life’s choices. “Who forced me to do this?”, “I am dumping everything and going home. NOW!”, “Why is everyone’s research topic smarter than mine?” “Why does mine sound so dumb?”.

How many times have such deprecating thoughts crossed your mind?

With this post, I thought, maybe all those who are going through such dilemma and the pain of finishing the dissertation, and those who plan to pursue the highest that modern academia has to offer, will be encouraged to believe that this over-glorified thing called PhD is not only within their reach, but that they could also produce something that others in the field will recognise and acknowledge. It is within everyone reach.

I have taught three nationalities – in large cohorts, I mean. And let me say that Bhutanese are no less than anyone. In fact we are as smart or even smarter. Our problem is: we are bit laid back and one ugly thing is: we refuse to acknowledge each other.

So, to all of you, lonely people (read as PhD and maters candidates), out there, keep going!

You can’t imagine how many times I kicked myself. I even had to go back to the field, and write the main summary chapter, in the midst of pandemic, when I was also protecting my 30+ clan members from coronavirus.

And to all those who are not in this business of postgraduate studies, just tag your friends or family members doing masters or PhD, so that this simple message gets to them.

Happy National Day (On Dec 17th)

NB:
Anyone who wants to read my super Dissertation, which actually no one will read😁😁😁, can drop me your email

(Sorry! No photo of mine with the award. I couldn’t travel to Washington DC to receive it because of prior work commitments. My guru and PhD supervisor, Prof Sandel, received it on my behalf on Nov 15 🤩🤩🤩)

This hidden sacred paradise is my favourite of all the sacred places in Bhutan – even more than the super famous Taktshang.

The temple was established by Sacha Rinchen (1710-1759) – the ninth Je Khenpo, and perhaps the greatest of them all.

Chumphu was built as Tsari Nyipa (Second Tsari) – with reference to the famed Tsari (Crystal Mountains) in Tibet, which is believed to be the eternal abode of Dorje Phagmo. Story has it that Sacha Rinchen in his vision saw Dorje Phagmo telling him that in future the first Tsari would see a decline, and Chumphu Nye will be her main abode. 

The main inner relic is a 5-feet tall statue of Dorje Phagmo (Vajravarahi), which according to one legend is rangjung (self-arisen) and not man-made. The other legend is that it was discovered in a lake – located some 30 minutes up the temple.

Whichever be the true story, the marvellous thing about this statue is that it is levitating – meaning it is floating. 

I first visited this place in 2010 with a friend of mine called Sherub who grew up down in the valley. Sherub remembers playing with a bow string, by holding each end and making an arc, and throwing the string behind the statue, like a magician, and pulling both the ends from the gap below. This was done to prove that the statue was not anchored to the wall behind it.

Some 20 years back, a framed altar was built and the statue is sealed behind the glass, now, no one is allowed to do that. However, the levitating left foot can still be seen.

Chum(o)phu (meaning Female Water Mountain) can be reached from Paro Lhakhang Saarp after a gradual 4-hour climb and can be done as a pleasant day hike.

Dorje Phagmo (Skt: Vajravarahi; lit: Thunderbolt Sow) is the wrathful form of Vajrayogini, known as the foremost, supreme queen of all dakinis and a divine consort of Heruka Chakrasamvara (Khorlo Demchok). She is the Samantabhadri of wisdom, activities, and accomplishments, and therefore known throughout as the “Mother to all Buddhas”—the Ultimate Refuge for all deities, practitioners, and meditators of the Buddhadharma.

#vajravarahi #dorjephagmo #vajrayana #buddhism #paro #chumphunye #bhutan #temple

Story #1 – A young boy is in a long coma – somewhere in a hospital in New York. He was born with cerebral palsy. The doctors have given up hope and have asked the family to prepare for the worst – and to sign off to pull the plug. His sister, however, reached out to me through a common friend from the US with a “Heard you say they do miracles there in Bhutan. Can they do something for my brother?”.

My friend and I were trekking up to the Dodeydra Monastery in Bhutan, which was good timing – a good tendrel (auspicious coincidence), as we believe. When we get to the monastery the abbot compassionately listens to our request. He told me to instruct the family in America to gather around the boy at noon the next day, and face towards the east and pray, while he, the abbot, would launch blessings and prayers from Bhutan.

The next day, 15 minutes after the rituals were over, my friend’s phone rang again. There was screaming and sobbing on the other side. My friend thought the boy was gone. Nope. The boy woke up, and the family was crying out of joy. The doctor rushed in saw what was happening, and left the room in tears. “I have been doing this for 35 years. I don’t what you are doing but keep going,” he was quoted saying.

Story #2 – Recently, this same friend from the US told me that another friend of ours in LA was feeling low. His brother (a practising Zen Buddhist) has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and has been getting treated. He was going for the last radiation, followed by his review two weeks later. The doctors cautioned any optimism.

I invoked the blessings and conducted prayers for him in several places. My lama, Dorje Phagmo Rimpoche, after blessing him in absentia assured me that he would be alright.

Two weeks later I got a long text from my friend in LA. His brother’s lungs were clear and the doctors couldn’t believe their eyes when the CT scans came back. 

I have more such stories from recent years. A newborn, who was breathing but not moving in a hospital in the US, and who moved her tiny finger after I invoked deity Palden Lhamo. Someone I know, again in the US, who felt fine receiving chemo after we commissioned the monks of Dodedra to chant Sangye Menlha (Medicine Buddha) mantra. He eventually recovered too.

Do these make sense?

I was born in a traditional Bhutanese family – of Buddhist dharma, rituals, prayers, and ceremonies. As a child, I used to accompany my grandfather, who was a lay lama, to conduct rituals for ordinary people in their homes in upper Tashigang in east Bhutan. For me these “things” are normal.

I was sent to a Catholic boarding school and later was sent off to Italy to major in microelectronics and engineering at the University of Bologna. Meaning, science and technology have been my better half, with spirituality and mysticism being the other side. Besides, I was exposed to other spiritual traditions – in that I lived among them.

In my third career in academia I have looked at the relationship between society and spirituality, and the role it plays in individuals. I still a have long way to go, but to answer the question, of whether rituals work, my reply is, it looks like it does. Of late, I have attended to around nine requests for spiritual help from outside the country. Only one did not make it through but the rest are doing fine.

To put it more aptly – medical science can take you very far these days, but it ends somewhere. There is a wall, and that’s where spirituality seems to take over. To put it simply, miracles appear where medicines end.

Of course, the two need not be linear. As my good friend, Nadya, says, the two can go alongside. Meaning while you get medical attention, you can also resort to religious ceremonies and shamanic rituals. After all, science has been with us for not more than 300 hundred years but the magic and miracles have been around for 5,000 – if not more.

As someone who has seen the power of the supernatural in many religious traditions, again, I am not advocating or promoting only the Buddhist rituals. Both Hinduism and Christianity have stories of miraculous power and recoveries. I myself recovered from a bad case of malaria when I was a child – after a mysterious Hindu priest appeared in front of our house in south Bhutan and tied a string around my arm. I started recovering moments later. 

The point is science and technology have made us lose our innate power of healing, to start with, and have also made us skeptical of anything other than modern hospitals to attend to our health. The choice I believe is not to go simply for one or the other – but for both.

Science has made us lose our instincts, our sixth sense, and the power to feel the place and people – and by extension to absorb the energy of any kind, other than energy bars and synthetic painkillers. In short, we have become numb.

Of course rituals cannot cure all the cases but at least, the road of hope is longer than just relying on modern medicines.

And in that last stretch of hope one may find eventually the cure.

And not to forget

The traditional medicines (sowa rigpa) that is mainly based on medicinal herbs are, at times, a better choice than western allopathic medicines. Bhutan was known as Menjong (Land of Medicines) in ancient times – largely exporting rice and medicines to Tibet in exchange for salt, tea, and turquoise.

From my own experience, traditional medicines work better and have no side effects, for chronic ailments like gastritis, elevated bilirubin, bad cholesterol, and hypertension. Whenever I run some blood tests and these things show up, I drop by the Traditional Medicines Hospital in Thimphu to request some pills.