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While western
people look for meaning and essence of life to the wisdom of eastern culture
particularly Buddhism, we are increasingly trying to copy western culture. Look
at the food our people eat, the clothes we wear and our desperation to look
different with makeup and weird hairdos and with all these we also see
violence, drugs, smugglings, thefts, robberies, frauds, corruptions and many
other evil offshoots of those cultures taking roots in our society.
Just the other day,
I was watching a BBS programme. It was a discussion programme with two monks,
one was a Khenpo and another was a doctor-turned monk. Both were insisting on
the need for lay people to take a break from their works and take vows of the
sangha for a short period to get better perspectives of life. I did not realize
such a provision exists and it is indeed a wonderful opportunity for lay people
to take monastic vows for any period of time they wish and partake in the daily
routines of a monastery or a nunnery like regular monks and nuns.
I couldn’t agree
more with the doctor that this could in fact be a potent antidote for the
insatiable desires of our mind that leads people to take evil paths ultimately
bringing them more sufferings. I think this is a wonderful opportunity for
people to get their perspectives on the right track and will contribute
tremendously to the ideals of a compassionate and caring society. I don’t see
why government and corporations should not allow their workers short leave from
their jobs for this kind of retreat. I am sure when they rejoin their work they
will become more productive and also become positive influence on their peers.
I was also struck
by the truth of their assessment of how our society is increasingly transiting
from traditional value based and caring society to a more self centric and
artificial one trying to copy alien cultures. One basic example is the way we
celebrate our children’s birthday today. It is not just in towns and cities that
families celebrate their children’s
birthdays the western way, this culture is even making inroads in rural
countryside where people with little education and understandings are trying to
imitate birthday celebrations with cakes, candles and balloons like their cousins
do in the towns, setting a less then desirable trend in the villages. If we
really observe deeply, we are making the auspicious birthday of our children
with everything inauspicious. We have birthday cakes with names of our children
on them. When we cut the cake, we cut the name of the child which is quite
inauspicious in our culture. We blow out candle and that is extremely
inauspicious representing something like blowing out life and then poke
balloons with needle while others clap.
I share the panelists’
view that we can celebrate birthdays in our own auspicious ways. We can have
cakes adorned with Tashi Delek written on them and placing it on the altar as
offerings first. It would be a good idea to invite a monk and perform a short
cleansing ceremony (Lhabsang Thruesoel) and recite long life prayer (Tshedrup)
for the child and do something good and wholesome in your child’s name like saving a life of an animal or donating
something to a more needy ones around us. This way we instill values in our children
right from the young age and they will grow up to be a more compassionate human
being.
Like what the monks
said we must encourage our children to say Apa to father and Ama or Aie to
mother rather than Daddy or Mommy which are not our language in the first place
and phonetically inauspicious. Daddy sounds like (Dredre) which means
separation and Mommy sounds like (Ma Mey) no mother. These may sound trivial
but, for Bhutanese there is nothing as important as Tendrel which is the custom
of believing in the importance of auspiciousness in everything we do and it
would certainly make sense to care about small things closer at home than
trying to emulate things we hardly understand from far away.
Happy reading.
Gyembo Namgyal
Pemagatshel
August 30, 2015
