A broken heart is an open heart
29 May 2009
The recent floods struck unexpectedly. The tragedy
that unfolded was a single day’s punctuation in a long sentence of peace but it altered the meaning of many lives. Lives were lost, families
were displaced, flustered tourists fled their riverside resorts and national life was disrupted. A concerned government
watched in utter helplessly.
This was not a day when Bhutan resembled ‘a peaceful kingdom that lives in harmony
with Mother Nature’. The tragedy elevated the principles
of GNH above an abstract concept. The strict environmental
codes we practice mitigated
a larger tragedy in the making. In our neighbouring countries, the losses and destruction
was exponentially higher.
In the hours of destruction, an elderly woman remarked sadly, “Our collective karma
is on a downward spiral when the elements of nature act against us with such fury. This is what our masters and elders have always warned us about. Where are we heading as a society?”
The destruction wreaked by the floods broke our hearts. But a broken heart is an open heart. In the least, the old women’s words should ignite
in us a deeper ecological
understanding. It should pronounce the ominous sign that our traditional pattern of living, while still loftily pronounced, is certainly on the wane.
The modern era is rapidly re-orienting our way of life. Cement houses is rapidly replacing
our environmentally friendly traditional houses. It is matter of deep concern that even the over-populated city of Delhi has more greenery
than our capital city. We even have the hypocritical gall to use plastic cups and plates in a GNH conference. These, and many more failings,
should sound the warning
bells of a natural calamity in the future.
The engine of the modern era is driven by self-interest, to exploit and dominate, to conquer and waste. While our ancestors built ‘chortens’, we rob them with increasing frequency despite the highest
punishment of a lifetime of imprisonment. It would be too simplistic to conclude that the present generation has suddenly become more evil. The behavioural patterns
that are emerging is conditioned by the direction of the new era, far removed from our sustainable and holistic
traditional values.
To reflect on the lessons of a natural disaster is to elevate
it beyond just bad luck or blame. It is our chance to redeem our traditional way of life and serve the planet by living within its limits. It becomes
our common fate, our common project. The wrath of nature teaches us about the nature of things.
We see that it is foolish to curse our fate in such matters,
as if we wished that rivers might be designed differently.
By the same token, once we discover that it is the fate of a modern direction and un-wholesome social orientations, we realize that we are dealing with a pattern of life that cannot be altered by just some clever political maneuver or quick budgetary fix.
The strength of our traditional
values lies in the belief of ‘relational origination’. In modern development parlance,
this can also be construed
as ‘sustainable development’.
A natural disaster or any particular event does not arise in a vacuum. It teaches us to re-think the paths that have led to the imbalance of nature. The doctrine of ‘relational
origination is not only the beginnings of harmony with other beings, but more important, the sustenance of harmony within the changing
natural world.
It takes a flash flood to resonate the inextricably link of culture-environment-economy-good governance. All it will take is ‘one flap of the butterfly’s wings’ and we might all get swept away.
By Phuntsok Rabten
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What is your point? You mean to say that the flood is due to our modernization. One thing for sure, we are far behind in technology but so are all poor countries. We must develop more and come up with technology in the form of warnings, remedial measures, river training works, hazard zonations, etc. Old woman’s stories amy not help here.