Arriving in Bhutan
First view of Jigme Singye Wangchuk School of Law, my home for the next four months
Kuzu zampo la, y’all!
Back in 2001, when I first worked in Bhutan, I sent out email updates to a list of Yahoo! and Hotmail addresses.
By 2007-08, when I returned for my doctoral fieldwork, blogs and Skype (remember that?) were the way to keep in touch.
Now, the independent media mavens insist that a newsletter/ website is the way to go, and here we are.
If you’re interested in learning where my adventures take me, please subscribe, and feel free to share with friends.
This first installment describes the internal weather that brought me back in Bhutan and shaped the idea for this newsletter.
In the next few installments, I’ll be sharing the trajectory that lead me here, some favorite spots around Paro, and the inevitable cross-cultural missteps.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn about Bhutan or the eastern Himalayas, I’m glad to bring you along!
Looking east up the valley from Jigme Singye Wangchuk School of Law
I learned the Sanskrit word kumbhaka from a yoga teacher who guided her class in gently observing the pause at the top of the in-breath, just before the exhale, and at the bottom of the out-breath, just before the inhale.
Once the class was comfortable observing the brief pause as the breath changed directions, we practiced retaining the breath at the top of the inhale and holding the breath out at the bottom of the exhale. This, she told us, was the kumbhaka: the pause of spaciousness and observation, a momentary suspension of time in which no visible activity was taking place. We could experiment with lengthening the pause and notice the sensations that arose. We could make the pause so subtle as to be barely noticeable.
Focusing on the kumbhaka helped us slow down our breathing and bear witness to the experiences and sensations of the present moment. In this yogic pranayama, or breathing exercise, breath cessation was not accompanied by struggle or striving but quiet observation.
JSW School of Law. Yes, I work in a castle!
Leaving home
When I jumped out of my ordinary life in mid-July, leaving my beloved family at home in California to teach at Bhutan’s first and only law school near Paro, in western Bhutan, I wondered if I had blown up my life.
Why leave a cozy home, cherished friends, an adorable two-year-old dog, a comfortable routine featuring lattes with my favorite brand of oat milk to live on top of a mountain half a world away? I wasn’t fleeing anything; the closer my departure date approached, the less I wanted to go.
I was also aware that I was perhaps overly comfortable in my middle-aged life, with numerous systems, structures, and strategies that made life easeful.
The annihilation of American democracy was and is a constant source of anxiety (and conversation with my students), but my day-to-day life and surroundings were extremely pleasant.
Losing a mentor
My first week in Bhutan, I wondered if I was still flexible enough to adapt to a new culture and cuisine (and lack of oat milk, though espresso machines have largely displaced the candy-sweet Nescafe that fueled previous visits.)
While feeling homesick, and dealing with jet lag and culture shock, I was also processing the decline and death of an important mentor, the 96-year-old Joanna Macy, an activist and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology, whose books had been formative in graduate school, and whose presence at my university helped draw me there. In her books, I discovered a connection between Buddhism and ecology that I had been pondering but that few other scholars were exploring at the time.
Macy was a pathbreaker in recognizing the internal and affective dimensions of environmental change, and in creating space for people to share their feelings about the loss of cherished places and beings. The Council of All Beings communal ritual she co-created with the Australian environmental activist John Seed has inspired profound and passionate discussions among my students.
Her book Active Hope, which argues that hope is not something one has, but something one does in working consistently to bring about a more harmonious world, is a staple of my environmental studies classes.
This giant prayer wheel contains prayers rolled inside and painted on the outside. To release the prayers into the breeze, to bless sentient beings, practitioners firmly grab the lower bar with the right hand and give a full-bodied heave to set the prayer wheel in motion. With each round, a bar at the top of the prayer wheel strikes a bell, creating a satisfying acknowledgment.
A timely teaching
I’ve long admired Joanna’s ability to flex, adapt, and embrace change into her tenth decade, a capacity likely supported by the Buddhist teachings of impermanence. As I read testimonials from the hundreds of scholars and activists she influenced, I came across a bit of writing from Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel of the Wilderness Dharma Movement, that resonated deeply:
Tibetan Buddhism has traditionally encouraged retreats in wild and solitary places. These environments provide a profound way to deepen and enrich a practitioner’s path. Leaving our familiar and cozy daily lives—our comfort zone and warm nest of habitual thoughts and actions—evokes challenges and provokes inner demons that often remain hidden beneath distractions.
In fact, in 11th century Tibet, a formal practice developed, where practitioners left home to wander in burial grounds and strong energetic power spots. This practice, known as Chöd, or “cutting through”, provides a powerful means that supports a practitioner to directly engage unwanted experiences, such as discomfort, fear, and dread, with playfulness, compassion, and insight. No matter what demons appear, we welcome them all with a loving attitude, which exposes our open heart with genuine confidence. In essence, the Chöd practitioner cuts through the “haunted dominion of his or her mind” knowing that only through facing our inner obstacles can healing take place.
Coming across this reading provided the reassurance I needed. All the “unwanted experiences” — fear, doubt, anxiety, control, grasping — were notably present in the weeks immediately before and after my departure for Bhutan.
These paragraphs felt like a teaching from the beyond to remind me to keep following the path that had been set in motion many months ago. How grateful I am that Joanna has continued to knit together a network of scholars and activists that led me to the writing I needed to read.
Perceiving that a departing consciousness requires time and guidance to move through various phases after death, Himalayan Buddhists conduct prayers and rituals for the dead often throughout the first week, and continuing on 14th, 21st, and 49th days after death as the deceased moves through the bardo, a gap between this life and the next incarnation. Families who are able may conduct the rituals throughout the entire twenty-one or forty-nine days.
Pondering Joanna’s death at this time also took me back to the last time I was here, in 2022 for a conference, when my dad suffered a sudden serious illness and died shortly after I returned to the US. In that time of grief, I found the Buddhist teachings of impermanence and the embrace of the forested mountains to be deeply nourishing and supportive.
At the same time, it seems that death and Bhutan are now linked in my mind — perhaps beneficially, as the Buddha advised people to think about death every day, recognizing the embodied life as a bardo between what came before and what follows.
As Namgyel writes above, Buddhists may engage with death even more directly by practicing in burial grounds, which can “cut through” attachment to the body in a certain state or appearance, as well as the attachment to experiencing life in a particular way.
With the reminder that the nature of things is to change, Namgyel’s words precisely articulated for me the benefits to be gained from shedding habitual practices. May we all find ways to confront, befriend, and vanquish our demons.
Until next time,
Tashi delek!
The Wheel of Life, depicting the various realms sentient beings may be born into, and the consequence of benevolent or malevolent actions, at Rinpung Dzong in Paro.