This World is Yours

To My Son

The sun has the whole universe,
and you too have all—
in front of you, a vast stage
to play the game you have never played.

You have everything:
generosity, merriment, tears, hurt,
love, care, good, bad—all of it.
It's how you see,
how you move forward.


To me,
you are always joyful,
with a piece of a good heart.
You are optimistic as you are,
and as powerful as a man needs to be.
A person's personality
shines through joys and goodness.


You are good in all.
To become the best, you try.
And sometimes in life—independence.
Bother not what others do;
bother only what you do.

Let no one hurt you in the end.
Let others speak well of you.
Self-hope sometimes lifts you—
you need that expectation.


Your future is as shiny as coral,
for you have everything
that a man sometimes doesn't have:
health, wealth, character,
good rapport, confidence, persuasiveness—
these will truly win you through life.

May God bless you always.
And my wish is God's wish, my son.

The Canned Dream

People care about the fruits, not about how a tree is nurtured and taken care of (I wrote a similar topic in this blog called "The Roots of a Seed").

We admire the harvest but forget the soil, the water, the sunlight, and the countless hours of care that went into growing the tree. This is human nature: we celebrate results while ignoring the process. But what happens when the fruit we so eagerly awaited turns out to be a disaster? Or worse, when the entire tree is axed or uprooted from the soil? What then?

The hope of life is the root. If the root is uprooted, there is no hope more hopeless than that. When a person pours their heart, sweat, and years into something—only to see it crumble—the despair is immeasurable. For some, the most desirable thing in life arrives not as a reward but as a tragedy. Many friends have described such moments as "killing the life," "demoting the life," or simply, "what is this?" Then come the blames—blame on your life, blame on the people around you, and finally, blame on God.

A few of my friends repeatedly blurt out, "I know everything, but what's wrong with this result?" It is like saying, "Life is empty, but why this suffering?" The contradiction haunts them. They believed that knowledge and effort alone would guarantee success. Yet here they stand, empty-handed.

It is almost time to complete our courses, and for many dreamers, the end of the course will feel like the end of their lofty dreams. But that is not so. It never ends. I tell myself that always. Endings are merely new beginnings disguised as closures.

My house owner was once a rickshaw puller. He told me his story. Now he owns twenty-seven buildings. He eats gold, I think. No one can predict life. One day you are pulling a rickshaw; the next, you own a city block. So I say: just dream and relax, but be ready to jump and hold tight when that dream knocks at your door. My door always remains open to welcome dreams. I hope I have not missed mine. Sometimes, the future—which seems illusory and out of reach—does not concern me at all. What concerns me is whether I am ready when opportunity arrives.

Anyway, I mock those "canned dreamers"—people who speak of dreams but take no action, who wait for success to fall into their laps. I think to myself, "Nobody knows everything; only God knows." But deep in my heart, I ask many times: how unequal it is that God seems not to know some people—those who truly deserve recognition and reward. Yet there is always a "but" in life. Why so much contrast and comparison? Why do the undeserving often prosper while the deserving struggle?

"God is the one," say politicians, as if they have a direct line to the divine. But ask any ordinary person, and they will tell you that their god is the best—implying that all others are false. That is a huge debate. When it comes to answering for an unseen thing like God, I give up. I cannot prove or disprove. I can only observe the world as it is: unequal, unpredictable, and often unfair.

And that brings me to George Orwell's Animal Farm. Let me leave you with this famous line: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

Perhaps that is the only truth we need to remember.

Sometimes

Sometimes, darkness can be too dark—
not having a single spark.
Dingy, long unending days
with no light at the end.
All things look empty and vain.
Things fall apart.
There, I wish for hope.



Sometimes, silence can be too silent—
without any rustle or any breath.
In a lonely place, alone,
feeling and sensing so down,
feeling so diffident and so forlorn.
There, I wish for love and joy.



Sometimes, stresses can be too stressful—
without any prospect of solution.
When troubles are troubling
and things are all in a hotchpotch,
there, I wish for peace and homely beauty.



Sometimes, love can be so hurtful—
when a wounded heart breaks into pieces
spread all around me, everywhere—
on the carpet, on the sofa,
on the pillows, the beds,
everywhere.
There, I wish for a true love.



I wonder why I am the only one at fault.
Alone, bearing all these pains,
my mind goes over the brink.
Where will I set my foot?
Where will I rest?
Why do I get sucked into this tunnel
so often?

So dark. So indistinguishable.
I try to hide—
but especially from myself.

Darkness.

Uniforms to Help Financial Crunch

In this so-called financial crunch or crisis, one must be ever careful with cash transactions. Money has become tight. One must know what to buy. The burning desires for material things have been tempered by economic inflation. With no salary increase and government budgets being slashed across developmental activities, money has become genuinely hard to come by.

The real problem is the rupee shortage against our ngultrum. Government reports paint a scary picture, suggesting it may take five or more years to recover from this financial crunch. Millions in debt remain to be cleared. Meanwhile, millions of our currency notes are floating in border towns, now useless. I was told by a storekeeper in Jaigaon that these notes are being eaten by rats inside their cupboards. That's it. I don't really understand the full picture. Now the cost of everything has skyrocketed. Yet, on the other hand, millions of rupees are earned every day from power exports. It is difficult to comprehend our economic situation.

At this juncture, some schools in Bhutan have come up with a good idea to help themselves and to teach people how terribly wasteful it is to spend money across the border—buying more than we need. Teacher uniforms, for instance, have become widely popular in schools. Darla MSS is a living example: teachers have adopted a dress code during working hours. Excellent! This helps not only individually but also financially. It helps one's family, society, and the government. The help may be just the tip of an iceberg, but it still makes a difference.

Our lady workers have kiras competing anywhere. They tend to buy very expensive kiras and tegos almost every month to show off to their friends. This is costly. To curb this trend and to reduce the accumulation of many useless kiras in favor of one useful dress, I think the uniform is a good idea. But of course, there are again personal rights—freedom to choose, freedom to wear—but that is another side of the coin.

Our male workers are done with five or six ghos in a year; they don't need to dress extravagantly. They already have dresses. Their ash-white, ash-black, or blue ghos are sufficient. There is one Lopen in Darla who always wears an ash-white gho the whole year round. That is too much on one extreme. On the other extreme, there was a southern Bhutanese math teacher (my fellow countryman) at Jigme Sherubling HS in Khaling who had just one ash-white gho for two years. I stayed there for only two years, and I didn't expect him to continue with that single gho alone. But I was truly struck when I saw the school magazine of one of the schools (name withheld). There he was, seated in the middle with his old ash-white gho—that man has become a principal! He is a calculating man, I guess. He really understands plus and minus.

Now, feeling somewhat hyped, I counted my own ghos. I breathed a sigh of relief. I have not been a real jerk when it comes to ghos. Within eight years of earning, I have sixteen ghos stuffed inside my cupboard shelf. They barely fill the whole step of shelf number one. Not so much, I thought. I have also given many old ghos to my people. I remember clearly that I have given away almost seven or more by now. I am not a gho freak. I have only two very expensive ghos: one Lungserma given by my parents, and a Sershog gho that my wife forcefully bought for me. These two expensive ghos are staved and bedded inside a suitcase. I hope they won't lay eggs and double. The last time my wife looked at them, there were some bugs creeping in between. Soon, they will make a home out of my precious but useless ghos.

Like all men, my favorite ghos are plain ash-blue and ash-white ones made across the border. I have five or more ghos in these colors, and I am afraid that some people may feel I have learned from my math teacher in Khaling.

The Dead Days

Except for a few short travels, I have been on a long break from this mundane world. Unlike before, this break has not been as mundane as it might have been. And even now, I still have time to enjoy it—time to drink life to the lees. Until now, I have done nothing productive. I simply wanted to see how life passes without doing anything, and life did pass. I had no big thoughts, dreams, works, or projects on my mind. My mind was simply empty, and I wanted to keep it as empty as a newborn child's. So I slept, ate, drove, watched television, talked, drank, and did nothing. Useless as it may seem, and indeed it was. The truth is, there is nothing as meaningful as we like to believe. Everything is as useless as stale food. Time passes. Life moves on toward decay. Nothing truly exists.

The weather outside was very cold, though not so inclement. From time to time, I went outside to watch the snow-capped mountains and take photographs. It was beautiful. But the nip in the air forced me to roll myself up inside blankets or sit near the bukhari (Bhutanese heater or fire) all day. Winter is cruel, and rightly so. My son and I had to fight to keep ourselves warm. Most of the time, he would be fully engaged playing games on the computer. My wife got her exercise through kitchen chores, and I assisted her as much as I could. When she felt cold, she would bundle herself up in several layers of clothing—around seven or eight shirts and a jacket at this time of year.

There is a kitchen garden near our kitchen. It holds a few vegetables, mostly radishes, broccoli, leafy greens (sags), large turnips, and coriander. Everything is so natural. In this artificial world, we now love nature—everything that comes from nature. That is what we truly care about. I dug the garden and even extended it. But even after extending, our garden grew to no more than the size of a spacious bathroom. We sowed seeds—maize, beans, cucumber, potatoes, and others—for the coming months. We hope for a bountiful harvest from this red soil. Yes, the soil was as red as a rose, and we needed to spread dung as thick as a fingernail to enrich it. So we gathered different kinds of dung—cow, chicken, and horse—all in the hope of a plentiful harvest. Now, let us wait and see. Hope remains.

Apartness

Life swings
between joy and sadness,
togetherness and loneliness.

Today,
now, I hold out—
but succumb.

It's gone.

Compressed in the same room, all alone,
I'm not really fine.
Inside, all I have is a missing of love.
My heart deadens with dazed glimmers.
I've drawn myself to these cold things.

My soul numbs and drifts apart—
all alone in this apartness.

All I do now is talk to myself,
so wretched and trapped,
betrayed by myself
to the terrors of my life.

Each step I take makes me think back
to the days of fantasy.

But the only thing that keeps me breathing
is having a hopeful wish:

These thrills will come again
and never leave me.

Happiness Redefined?

Zagpa NgAAR Nye Shigpa la ko....From FB.

Happiness Redefined?

A concept like happiness—or freedom—poses problems for definition. Abstract words like these are quite open to interpretation and have no single real-world referent. For some, happiness is based solely on being part of a loving family that is safe and well provided for. For others, happiness is rooted in material possessions or power. Although people may have quite different interpretations of such concepts, in our everyday conversations we seem content with a general understanding of meaning, accepting that any utterance is open to some variation depending on the person speaking.

Briefly, there are two types of happiness: temporary and permanent. But by all measures, happiness is transient. There is no such thing as permanent or absolute happiness. It is a feeling—or rather, a series of feelings—born from the loss of mental consciousness. Happiness is the accumulation of many good activities, through which your mind becomes engaged. These many good actions sustain a good life. Physical or external happiness brings internal happiness.

Why GNH is NOT Successful

Why are we not happy? All of us are born blank—clear as crystal, with a simple mind. There is no question of "what is life?" when we begin. But once we grow, everything pours in: religion, culture, society, norms, fears. We are tuned like machines to act. Our lives are conformed and ruled. I have briefly considered some hitches, with references to particular consistencies.

The First Obstruction: Religion

The first obstruction to happiness is religion. A slightly deeper understanding of the spiritual world brings greater unhappiness, just as greater knowledge subsumes a major portion of happiness. Religion teaches concocted falseness about life—sufferings, sorrows, sins, death—that alters our lives and every action. Religion corrupts with many unrealistic imaginations and theories, and creates fears not only in this life but also in a next life, troubled by imagination. On the other hand, you feel compelled to follow the dogmas of religion from fear of excommunication by parents and community. You believe that religion is the only secret and your own way to reach heaven. Since religions say all are born as sinners, and if you don't purify in this life, you believe you will be condemned to hell by God. Thus you live under constant fear about whether your works are right according to religion. Your mind is filled with worry and anxiety about hell. So your life becomes fearful of living. It truly confuses your existence. For example, phallicism adds shame, and people secretly spit on and demean its values.

Religion teaches you to be like the Buddha, Lord Krishna, Christ, and so on. When you fail to attain that, you hate yourself and slowly become bad and corrupted, thinking you are not worthy to live. These doubts and superstitious beliefs ultimately dehumanize you. When you hate yourself, you hate your partner, your family, people, animals, your community, and society. You carry a cesspool of hatred. And hatred leads to an unhappy life.

The concept and search for emptiness in religion in turn fills your mind—making you god-fearing, not god-loving. You tend to suffer in real life because you live in the imagination, a world outside this world, infecting imaginary pains and suffering onto your surroundings, to a great extent. You are caught up in doubt. You are afraid to make decisions. You skip from one belief to another, always doubting whether you have found the right path. For example, a desire to be in an imaginary perfected heaven taunts real life more, and diminishes when you imagine hell. You become increasingly aware that your mind trembles between religion and life, likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure. This is the basis of the problem of suffering, and you distort the very nature of life. Religion sucks your life. There is no transcending happiness.

Consider this: a drunkard is often a happy man. He lives in the moment. He enjoys. He has no past, no present, no future—a buoyant life swings him with laughter. The effect of drugs can produce a state of happiness, but if you know you are drugged, your happiness fades. Religion is like drugs. If you don't know how to incorporate it into your life, you bungle a good life.

The followers of religious sects, in my view, are often among the most despicable people in the world. Monks, suppose, are a miserable group of species on earth. They sneak out of monasteries and play snooker or caroms in the Hong Kong market in Thimphu. They rape. They commit all kinds of illegal acts. The first tobacco offender in Bhutan was a monk. And he deserved three years in prison because he set a bad example for good people.

I have defined happiness as a collection of happy activities. Yet religion forbids many pleasurable, enjoyable activities. Where is happiness if these activities are not allowed? For example, religion prohibits playing degor or archery, or imposes a set of principles if one indulges too much. These activities provide short-term joy, and the recurrence of short-term joys is the essence of long-term inner peace and happiness. Happiness is also a manifestation of external or physical happiness. External happiness brings internal happiness.

Happiness is lost when there is no good love. And religion forbids this too. Where is happiness without attachment, affection, love, or passion? The cruel intention of religion is to isolate you, destroy your self-worth, and separate you from personal love and affection. Personal love and happiness radiate to others. Religion does not reflect life; it does not show good ways; it never touches life. In fact, it creates the illusion of separateness—the illusion that there is you and a totally separate other.

Religious superiority widens gaps and builds tensions. Some religious sects think their religion is true and superior and all others are false. For example, Muslims believe Islam is the true religion and all others are false. Because of these differences, religious tensions, racisms, gaps, problems, and violence are widespread. The perennial conflicts between Muslims and Buddhists in Burma make thousands of families unhappy. British colonizers used Christian missionaries to colonize people's minds. The history of wars tells us that many wars are based on religious rifts and conflicts. For example, the religious atrocities between Sunnis and Shiites tear thousands of lives apart. The early European conflict between Protestant Christians and the Catholic Church from 1524 to 1648, and the Crusades, are further examples of religiously motivated wars.

I am not against any religion per se, but I am against its principles, its sects, its confining customs. Religion confines and harms one internally rather than alleviating life. It prohibits the freedom to do and enjoy, even when no one else is harmed. I am against its superfluous interpretations, especially those coming from half-baked religious practitioners.

The Second Obstruction: Society

The second obstruction to a happy life is society and the people around you. To live life according to the control of others, to rely on others' opinions, to conform, and not to be true to yourself—this is so paltry that you lead a pitiful life. You mask your face. You imitate the pattern. You have no creative pattern of your own. You never improve because of these people and society. They devalue individualism. It is difficult to mind your own business, think about yourself, believe in yourself, and lead a happy life. For example, you may like fashion and want to learn about it. That is your interest. You will do something different from your villagers. But your environment lacerates you. You must walk the same trodden path. You don't have your own small path. What a heck? There is no "self." Instead, you live in a mix of anxious shadows—shame, unworthiness, rage, mistrust, rejection, desolation—that simmer below the surface of your face value.

True happiness is self-reliant. It listens to oneself, not to society, not to others' bullshit—not to your neighbor or your environment. Last weekend, I watched a gripping movie, The Stoning of Soraya M. This true story is a tale of horrific injustice from a feigned society. It represents the stilled practices and norms of society in many Middle Eastern countries. The story occurs in a village where stoning as capital punishment drives away the happiness of women and men alike. Zahra's revelation to French journalists about the stoning of Soraya is a revolution against the secret evils of a sadistic, misogynist society that fabricates superstitious beliefs to terrorize and brutally execute a woman.

The Third Obstruction: Material Development

The third obstruction to happiness is material development. Development materially does not bring happiness. For example, the expansion of road networks harms the environment. Wanting happiness is not about doing away with desire, but about being self-contained. Self-reliance does not mean economic self-reliance alone. It is individual self-satisfaction, mental self-realization. You are poor because you think you are poor, or because you cannot save what you get. What do riches and position do for a life? It is just a psyche. The basic way of living a life is enough to be happy. There are many clutches to be freed—hindrances to our happiness. You want things, and it is okay to want things and to want to succeed, but tell yourself that you will be happy even without them.

Development like technology and media instead brings more depression. For example, you tend to imitate movies, which are reflections but not real life. You hunt for a movie-like life and feel depressed when you cannot achieve it. Development pushes you further away from life. Social media like Facebook brings more harm. It not only erodes human values like love, relationship, and ethics, but it also kills a lot of time. At a New Year's riverside family gathering, I saw a man engaged with his laptop on Facebook the entire day. His family connection was completely lost. Family concerns were given no importance.

Happiness is Also Good Relationship

Happy wife, happy life—or happy husband, happy life. A virtuous relationship, a good sex life, good understanding—these make a happy life. They are basic sources of happiness at times. Good relations include not only your family but also everything that surrounds you: your dog or animals, your home, your kitchen garden, your friends, your neighbors, your environment—everything around you.

Worry about your own family, your own sons and daughters at home, rather than worrying about the Darfur war or Somalia's hunger. You worry so much more about the outside than your inside world, bringing unhappy pictures into your life, to your spouse, to your family. You watch more programs on television than you watch your family or neighbor. You talk more about the world's problems than your own family matters or matters with your neighbor. You barricade your neighbor with a wall. You bother more about other buildings than your own. You don't know your next-door people. You create such an awkward environment where you live. The world has fallen apart. City life is fast sweeping into rural country. You compare so much: you compare your spouse with another, you compare your relationship with others', you compare your children with movies or some other "best" children, you compare life as a whole. You live in a world of comparison, and when you compare, you compare what is not in you. Sometimes, being self-righteous, being individualistic, and being contained are the true ways of living.

The GNH Pillars Themselves

The Gross National Happiness pillars themselves are obvious manifestations of immeasurable deterrence to happiness. To bring equitable and equal socio-economic development, sacrifices must be made to the environment, culture, and spiritual heritage. Equal economic development is not attainable—not even fair equality—if these pillars are strictly followed. For equality to exist, your mind must first be tamed. The preservation and promotion of cultural and spiritual heritage only help you go backward to the primitive. And they cannot be barred. Imported cultures make you happier and give you a sense of development and belonging. How many of you don't like to watch Hollywood movies? How many of you like to impress others with a typical foreign accent? How many of you don't want to pursue Western education? How many of you still want to read Kanjur and Tenjur in your room? How many of you want to adopt and change? The questions continue, and these questions are not recipes for happiness, but rather pillars to a happy life. The Countess of Blessington says, "There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness." It is true.

You cannot be taught values, aesthetics, and spiritual traditions—the so-called pillars of happiness. They must be practiced on your own.

You cannot say governance is good governance. Your good governance will be another's bad government. Government and bureaucracy comprise many antagonistic characters and sinecure workers. The so-called upholders of rules and regulations are themselves perpetrators in the country. Recent political parties bray out false promises to woo voters. For example, the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa's prime minister asking unashamedly for kidu (royal benefaction) of Prado cars for themselves from the King is inappropriate. Kidu is only meant for the unfortunate poor. Is this good governance? On the pretext of keeping old customs and traditions, there is much corruption, nepotism, and sycophancy.

To have good governance, people work to the maximum trying to achieve it. A very bad life has to be lived to gain good governance. Tough National Assembly discussions project an image of governance. Civil rights movements, anti-corruption moves, fraternity, and equality are all sores of the human desire to change the system without changing themselves.

So What is Happiness?

The precept of happiness is being kind, loving, and true to yourself. In other words, it is self-loving, self-kindness, self-forgiveness, self-preserving, self-protection, and non-self-judgment. You need love and appreciation. But you cannot find them in others. You find them in yourself. You make yourself happy. Only then can you please others. Do first what pleases you without harming others. Build empathy and compassion within yourself, and this can ultimately lead to self-satisfaction, fearlessness, confidence, and strength against any other account.

So, happiness is no hue and cry about GNH parameters, religious dogmas, the outside world, comparison, or imaginary beliefs. It is simply the basic, necessary life of your own.

Bertrand Russell says in his book The Conquest of Happiness:

"A man who has once perceived, however temporarily and however briefly, what makes the greatness of a soul can no longer be happy if he allows himself to be petty, self-seeking, troubled by trivial misfortunes, dreading what fate may have in store for him. The man capable of the greatness of soul will open wide the windows of his mind, letting the winds blow freely upon it from every portion of the universe."

Note: This article is not entirely baseless; it is quite analytical. It is not so well researched but has argumentative aspects. The writer's view does not go against any individuals, sects, or the government, nor does it challenge any facts. But it is a personal defiance of the concepts described. The essay will be continued soon.

“If with a pure mind you speak or act, then happiness  follows you as a shadow that never departs.” (The Buddha)