Monks as Social Workers: How Buddhism Helps Development ~ Huffington Post

This is an article from the Huffington Post - an interview which is part of a series of conversations led by Katherine Marshall for the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, with faith-based activists. The full interview can be found on the Huffington Post article.

I would like to share it with my readers because I have written about the need for the role of religious practitioners in Bhutan to be socially engaged and this article is about "Monks as Social Workers: How Buddhism Helps Development."

I won't say more because this interview says most of what I stressed in my earlier article "Root Causes" under Buddhism/Religion which can be found on this blog as well as Drukpa Magazine November issue about the need for our religious institutions to find a role through social work and not just prayers and rituals.

Bhutan Anti-Tobacco Act; Buddhist monk first to be charged

So, the first “victim” or “violator”, depending on which way you look at it, of the Bhutan Anti-Tobacco Act is none other than a Buddhist Monk!! According to Kuensel and Reuters the poor monk had bought 72 packets of Chewing Tobacco from the Indian border town of Phuntsoling.

I would like to say “Hats off to him” because he has involuntarily proven to us that while Bhutan tries to build up this image of Shangri-la and GNH through its draconian laws, the truth is that we were, in many ways, a Shangri-la of sorts even without them. A Shangri-la where even our monks were free to chew tobacco while the religious, and “holier-than-thou” tried to say that because of Buddhism, Karma etc etc. smoking/chewing tobacco was bad. We lived with and forgave these flaws even if you were a monk. Now, thanks to the moral authorities like our parliamentarians our laws pass judgment over our personal choices and decisions making them crimes punishable with prison sentences.  

What made us happy as a society was the freedom for us to make choices and society’s willingness to accept them. Now that we make criminals out of smokers, what will we do or what are we asking society to do to people who commit worse crimes? 

According to reports, the 24-year-old said he was unaware of the new law. He was unfortunately not carrying the famous “tax receipt” from the customs department that would have absolved him of this “sin” or “crime”.  This had been my worry all along, that a person an illiterate/farmer or a villager would not know about the law or even if he did, wouldn't understand the implications would now be serving 3 – 5 years of his life behind bars. 

What a waste of a person’s life and time over tobacco, thanks to our MP’s decisions. I’m wondering if they feel like they have really put away a person so dangerous to Bhutanese society or feel an ounce of guilt that they are putting away a monk – perhaps a good monk whose only vice was that he happened to love chewing tobacco.

Does this make me less Bhutanese?

I stumbled upon this Kuensel online discussion/reaction to my piece on asking for religious tolerance after a man was sentenced to 3 years in prison on grounds of proselytizing by coercion. Some of them are amusing.

Thanks to those who supported my views, I know there is hope in Bhutan because of people like you, more broadminded; more tolerant; thinking globally but acting locally. On the other hand I realize that some feel that I am in no position to comment or say anything about what is happening in Bhutan because -

i) I am not living there (if only for now)

ii) that I am married to a Chilip


Does that make me less Bhutanese? Does that take away my right to speak/write about Bhutan?

I still hold a valid Bhutanese citizenship ID (not updated yet because of the bureaucracy and padlocks on offices in the little time that I am there, but thats another story)
So I am a citizen of Bhutan, very much like any of those who have dared to comment.

Anyhow, I thought I would share it as I got a kick out of some of the comments :) especially the one who felt that my contributions were my" two Chultrum bit." To which I would like to say dear commenter (named digger here), even though I am away from Bhutan I know that the Bhutanese coin is a Chettrum and not "Chultrum" as you have written :). Just goes to show that we may not know as much as we always like to think we do, right?

I have posted only page 1 of the discussions. You can hit the top link (Kuenselonline) to get to page 2 (diggers "two Chultrum" comment is on page 2)

Is Bhutan's GNH going up in smoke?

Off with your head

A few years ago, before Bhutan’s first ever Democratic elections, I was invited to dinner at the house of an aspiring politician who joked that if he were elected to office he would make it his personal task to ensure that the policy of GNH (Gross National Happiness) was implemented. And just how would he do this?

He put his hands behind his back and strode around the room with a serious face. Suddenly he stopped, “Why is that man not smiling?” he bellowed. “Where is your smile? Not happy?” he asked of imaginary people. “Off with his head!” he said, sending us, his guests, into peals of laughter. He continued striding around the room until he stopped abruptly again upon another imaginary person. “And you! Are you happy? No? Why not? Why aren’t you happy? Off with his head!” he said swinging his arm across in a flourish, as we cracked up again.

While we may have been laughing then, it’s no laughing matter now.  The person never made it to office, but it looks like he was not wrong about how misguided Bhutanese officials have become in implementing policies while trying to achieve GNH.

It may not be a literal “Off with his head,” but it is as good as that when, in trying to crack down on Tobacco, proselytizing etc. Bhutanese officials have become ever ready and eager to send people packing off to prison.  Perhaps they don’t realize what it means to send a person to prison; never having been in the shoes of someone who is going to prison; or never having had their relatives being sent off to prison. Then it would be a different story, wouldn’t it?

Ill-thought policies like the TOBACCO CONTROL ACT, to prove what?

Government actions/policies/legislations like these, in many countries would have taken people out on the streets in protest, but in Bhutan people have simply taken to the Internet to let it be known how they feel. The media has also asked some hard questions. Business Bhutan correctly pointed out how equating the lack of “the receipt” to smuggling and making it a crime and felony of the fourth degree –  punishable with 5- 9 years in prison –  and placing them in the same category as a human trafficker, abductor, rapist, arsonist, robber etc. can be justified.

I do bear some guilt on this issue. In 2004, I wrote an article for Kuensel, and although it was not about smoking, I mentioned how in New York, Mayor Bloomberg was banning smoking from bars and nightclubs.  I also mentioned how that, while the west “pumped millions of dollars into ads and campaigns to discourage American’s, especially their youth from smoking, it caused American consumption to dwindle and overseas markets to proliferate.” 

Call it coincidence, but in 2005 Bhutan came up with its smoking ban. While I can hardly be reassured that my article was its doing, I can take consolation in the fact that I was not the policy maker. Fast forward to 2011. If anything today, the officials should have learnt that enforcing a law like that didn’t do much for smokers. So, instead of learning how this could be implemented practically, it seems they’ve gone the other extreme – throw them in prison.

“No smoking” in public places/offices etc. is now the norm the world over. Why does Bhutan have to go the extra mile? What are we trying to prove? That yet again, we can be an example to be upheld? Not at this rate.

Bhutan:Criminalizing the Use of Tobacco Stirs Outrage

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/01/08/bhutan-criminalizing-the-use-of-tobacco-stirs-outrage/

Finally weighing in on Wikileaks; perspective from a Bhutanese

 Since the Wikileaks drama in the press last year, most of my friends (on FB and Twitter) might have tired of my obsession and fascination with clippings and comments on – not so much the contents of the leaks itself – but of the larger debate on whether what was done was right or wrong, ok, not ok, journalism, not journalism, hero, villain etc. 

I didn’t want to write about it because I wasn’t sure about what I felt about the whole thing:

i)               It is such a big/vast topic (the internet and the technical details of how it functions) of which I, a tech illiterate, really don’t know much about. Eg. (DDOS’ing as sit in’s etc. all new to me.) I’ve been more content to read and learn from the experts than write about something I don’t know.

ii)             I am still unsure about whether indiscriminate dumping of information is the way to go, or not the way to go. I support some of the information that has been leaked but I also feel some information is better kept where it belongs (just for greater good)

iii)            I am still divided about the way I feel about Assange himself. After reading the New Yorker  I admit I have more sympathy for the guy now.

iv)            And last but not least, who would want to hear my views anyway, when there are so many more important ones out there from the experts.

But then while the world was abuzz and debating Wikileaks the Personal Democracy Forum held a symposium on “Wikileaks and Internet Freedom” in New York which I attended with great interest. While tweeting from there, I received a message (from, shall I say, a friend because I consider him one) that read, “I'm curious to hear what you think of it all. Are you going to blog about it?”