THREE MARKS OF FAITH
Bhutan is a deeply spiritual country where the values of the people are strongly influenced by religious customs. Common among these are three marks of faith that shape the Bhutanese personality.
The Power of Prayer
The first mark of faith is the importance of prayer. The pattern of prayer ranges from short daily individual acts to group liturgy involving professionals like monks or lay-priests that continue for a number of days.
The purpose and duration of prayer vary greatly. More typically, prayers are related to what people desire in life, but the scope of prayers may also stretch into an individual’s next life. Rituals or petitionary prayers are conducted extensively to solicit gracious and compassionate actions by protector deities and divinities. Prayers may consist of mantras or sutras (Buddha’s teachings). It may be profoundly lyrical and non-sectarian or profoundly philosophical. Prayers may represent narrow interests or be soul-lifting aspirations for justice for all life-forms. It is traditional for most prayers to have stirring lines wishing for the well-being of all innumerable life-forms and for the path that leads them to well-being and happiness.
As teachings, prayers should stimulate reflection and practice on central values of Buddhism such as compassion. The function of prayers is ultimately to shake off our convoluted and cloudy conscience that so easily relapses into individualistic self-centredness. At a more sophisticated level, prayers help us to discover what Buddhist philosophers have described as the wisdom mind that can distinguish between the ultimate realities of things from mental constructions which we take to be real.
Building Spiritual Infrastructure
Another mark of faith or shared trait among the Bhutanese is the spirit of volunteerism for the construction of community temples and installation of spiritual offerings in temples.
A 2004 national survey confirmed that no communal activity for infrastructure takes up more labour than temple-constructions and maintenance, because of their scale and complexity.
The annual labour contribution of each household for community-temple constructions and maintenance overshadowed the voluntary labour provided for community schools, drinking water supplies, and suspension bridges. This practice explains the profusion of temples, one of the physical expressions of Buddhism, all over the country.
There are about 2,000 temples in the country and such a large number means that people are never too far away from their objects of veneration.
Serene statues are the centerpieces of temples. These statues contain scriptural teachings of the Buddha and body-relics of eminent Buddhist masters. Thus, temples signify the presence and representations of the Buddha and help to project Buddhist insights.
The origin of stupas also points to the primary purpose of temples: to be reminded of the important teaching about opening our minds towards understanding of interdependence of everything (as taught in the text: Interdependent Origination). That is, to realize that every person can contribute to others’ happiness and well being, and that each of us needs contributions from others to realize our happiness. Happiness depends on maintaining a pattern of giving and meaningful relationships.
Not Taking Life
The third shared trait relates to the strong Bhutanese belief in the wrongness of killing any life-from, including livestock and wild life. In the ideal Buddhist world, even flies or rats that can potentially spread disease, should not be killed. Poultry, swine, fishery and beef should not be raised as food for human beings.
In a pragmatic world, however, Bhutanese are consuming an increasing amount of meat as income rises. The only difference is that they seem to feel morally more comfortable if the meat is imported or if the slaughter is done by others to minimize the direct implications for the taking of life. It is likely that the future demands of an urban society may clash with the very strong notion of not taking life, one of the virtues taught by Buddha.
Human behavior everywhere is a delicate and a dynamic balance between the ideal and the pragmatic, between pursuits of happiness of an individual and social justice.
Lay Buddhist ethics include both constraints on an individual’s behavior as well as duties for social action. Together, they can shape the basic relationship not only between individuals (like human rights do) but also between individuals and other sentient beings (which human rights do not).
By Karma Ura, Director of the Centre for Bhutan Studies, a research centre.