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Some shrine commemorating the Dragon King of Bhutan’s wedding
The Kingdom of Bhutan loves to portray itself as a happy and peaceful little slice of Buddhist heaven called Shangri La, “a special environment where communion with the divine [is] possible through contemplation and meditation.” “Since time immemorial,” the Bhutanese monarchy boasts on its website, “ascetics, mystics, scholars, philosophers, and pilgrims have been drawn irresistibly to these remote and rugged mountains in their personal search for wisdom, inspiration, solitude, and happiness.” They don’t tell you about the wretched living conditions in the Kingdom of Bhutan and they don’t bother to mention that there are only two political parties in the Kingdom of Bhutan, both pro-monarchy, that a person can legally join. Western countries, they seem to insinuate, could learn a lot from the Bhutanese monarchy: “The Bhutanese have treasured their natural environment, as it is seen as a source of all life and the abode of the gods and spirits. … Given this prevailing ethos, it is not surprising that the Bhutanese have lived in harmony with nature and that Bhutan’s environment remains pristine and intact today.” In the enlightened realms of the Bhutanese King, “all forms of sentient life, not just human life, are precious and sacred.” In other words, insurmountable poverty is the eternal law of the Kingdom of Bhutan, i.e. the natural order of things.
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Leader of a 1959 revolt of feudal landlords against the People’s Republic of China
As most of our readers are probably already aware, there are very few things in this world that infuriate the scientific editors of Selecting Stones more than the continued existence of monarchy in the twenty-first century (frivolous lawsuits against scientific editors, maybe). Theocracy, however, takes something that’s already deplorable and somehow manages to make it even worse. At least the European kings and queens could be beheaded and thrown away in the trash. But as Mao learned in the course of liberating the Tibet Autonomous Region from the tyranny of the Mahayana Buddhist feudal order, what’s the use in beheading a king who’s just going to be “reincarnated” a few weeks later in some crappy village? Theocracy is indeed a special type of religious poison. Science and atheism, of course, are the only antidotes. If the 28 or so remaining monarchs in today’s world are zoo animals protected on the endangered species list, then the scientific editors of Selecting Stones are the opportunistic Congolese warlords who are putting ample supplies of guns and ammunition into the hands of illegal poachers looking for some exotic trophies to hang up on the wall.
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The Bhutanese monarchy undertook an ethnic cleansing campaign during the 1990s to expel its entire Nepali population, such as these refugees who wound up in America
Why can’t Buddhists look at the truth in the face? It’s not hard to understand why Westerners are so hopelessly enamored by the Tibetan theocrat-in-exile, Tenzin Gyatso. He takes some of the most complicated problems facing humanity and acts like they’re simple, and then he pretends that the practical solutions to these oversimplified problems can be found through religious observances which just so happen to place him at the very top of the pantheon of enlightened Buddhist deities that unenlightened Westerners are supposed to bow down before and worship. Karma negates the need to take matters into your own hands and make history under conditions of your own choosing. It negates man’s need to prove the truth, the reality and power, the “this-sidedness” of his thinking in practice. Karma takes care of everything and balances the whole universe. Did the King of Bhutan just throw your brother in jail for joining a banned political party? Oh well… he’ll get what’s coming to him in the next life when he’s reborn as some other sentient being who also experiences pain and suffering (i.e., when he’s reborn as the next King of Bhutan).
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From the Lonely Planet guide to Bhutan: “Bhutan is straddling the ancient and modern world and these days you’ll find monks transcribing ancient Buddhist texts into computers as traditionally dressed noblemen chat on their mobile phones. If you do visit Bhutan, you will become one of the few who have experienced the charm and magic of one of the world’s most enigmatic countries – the ‘last Shangri La’ – and you’ll be playing your part in this medieval kingdom’s efforts to join the modern world.”
It was of course the fourth Dragon King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who first shocked the world back in 1972 with his supposedly innovative (but in reality highly reactionary) concept of “gross national happiness,” which was originally intended as nothing more than an offhand comment, until a man named Karma Ura, head of some Center for Bhutan Studies at the time, reinterpreted the phrase and twisted it around until it had become a bold signal of the fourth Dragon King’s commitment “to building an economy that would serve Bhutan’s unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values.” How did the bold modernizer, the fourth Dragon King of Bhutan, manage to build up the economy of his enlightened domains in such a way that would above all else preserve the Kingdom of Bhutan’s unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values (i.e., preserve its theocracy)? Naturally, by promoting tourism – cleverly manipulated with annual quotas limiting the number of foreign visitors into the King’s realms in order to make the journey to the Kingdom of Bhutan seem all the more exotic and spiritually auspicious in the eyes of dehydrated wisdom seekers who feel as if they’re wandering aimlessly in the desert of western civilization. Tourism is in fact the only form of economic development that the modernizing Dragon Kings have shown any real interest in encouraging or supporting.
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The reality of Per-Capita Gross National Happiness
In the newly modernized Kingdom of Bhutan, the metaphysical balance between material and spiritual happiness has been concretely achieved by means of a worldwide advertising campaign that aims to sell the pristine image of an enlightened land where people suffer in happiness, non-violently, a Himalayan Garden of Eden with no serpents and no apples. And no more Nepali residents, either, after nearly one-fifth of the population of the Kingdom of Bhutan was forcibly expelled from the country in the 1990s on the grounds that the Nepali population was growing too fast and might cause events similar to the ones that brought down the Kingdom of Sikkim in 1975.
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Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck
In marked contrast to his father, however, the fifth Dragon King in the royal line of Bhutanese monarchs, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, has figured out how to sell himself as a “People’s King.” He is, indeed, the Buddhist Napoleon. Ascending to the throne in late 2006, the fifth Dragon King, who is adored in the west for his boyish good looks and gentle demeanor, has already been credited with successfully completing the transformation of the Kingdom of Bhutan into a democratic constitutional monarchy (a process that actually started with reforms instituted by his father after one-fifth of the population of the Kingdom of Bhutan had been successfully expelled). Apparently he’s even redistributing land to smallholding peasants. According to the kingdom’s official website, the people of Bhutan are very grateful for these gifts from the king. Don’t you Buddhists have sickle cell or something?
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