Of Holy Sites and Garbage Dumps
Here's another post from back when I didn't have an internet connection in October.
Oct. 26, 2007
On the way back to Trashigang from Bidung and Bartsam, two rural villages in eastern Bhutan, Prem suggested that we stop by a tree that was planted by the Body reincarnation of the Shabdrung, after he had come to Bhutan and before he was assassinated. He planted the tree, willing his next incarnation to take place in Bhutan. As long as the tree lives, he will try to return to Bhutan.
The tree is an unassuming broadleaf oak in the midst of a pine savannah on a dry, southwest facing hillside covered with lemongrass. Just after a hairpin turn in the road, a path leads perhaps 50 meters up to the tree, which is adorned with katas [ceremonial white silk scarves]. We had bought katas in Bartsam for the purpose of offering to the tree.
Amidst much picture-taking, each of us in turn tied a kata securely around a tree branch while making a wish. Tshering suggested that my wish should be that in my next incarnation, I be born in Bhutan. In the golden late afternoon sunlight, our katas added to the holy glow of the tree.
A stone wall had been built around the tree to protect it, but the rains had washed away some of the wall. Still, the stone and concrete wall demarcated the holy site of the Shabdrung’s tree, which was further demarcated by a ring of rocks at its base, separating it from the surrounding grasslands. So powerful is the energy of the tree, that it withstood a forest fire that charred all the surrounding trees. (It may also have held more moisture, since it appears that people come to care for the tree.) Prem pointed out the charred trunks of the surrounding pine trees as evidence of the holy tree’s power.
After completing our worship of the holy tree, we headed back to the truck, and Prem casually dropped the piece of newspaper in which the katas had been wrapped. I was struck by the incongruity of the previous eight hours of asking questions about where people put their garbage (with the implicit agenda that there is a ‘right’ place to put garbage), and the casual, apparently unthinking disposal of garbage near a holy site. The paper was dropped outside the boundary around the tree, in the unimportant lemongrass that surrounded the site. I didn’t say anything to her as I didn’t want to make her self-conscious, and was so busy marveling at the incongruity of the moment that I was speechless. It is stunning to me how deeply ingrained the habit of just dropping wrappings anywhere is. I would never think of dropping a wrapping, and much less nearby a holy ground. But apparently the ground outside the holy site is entirely profane and doesn’t benefit from the protection of holiness.
It seems that holy sites make their surroundings ever more likely to become dirtied, as the contrast between sacred and profane is so sharp. That is, the holy area must be kept very clean and cared for especially well. But the remaining areas are by definition profane, and not subject to any of the rules of the holy sites, and therefore more likely to be free to be used in any manner people wish. They pale in the shadow of the holy sites. All the effort of care and concern is placed on the holy sites, which may be quite small in comparison to the surrounding landscape. After such concern is lavished over a small and designated place, little concerns remains for the surrounding areas. So rather than contribute to environmental protection, the holy sites could detract from it, by focusing all effort, care, and concern on small sites, and deflecting that concern from the actions that could maintain larger sites, up to and including cities and road sides.
This is a testable hypothesis, and I could study the garbage found nearby a holy site to see if it differs in quantity and quality from that found elsewhere. I have not seen remarkable amounts of garbage around holy sites – at Chador Lhakhang and at the Shabdrung tree, I did not notice extraordinary amounts of garbage on the outskirts of these sites. Maybe people hold onto their garbage just long enough to get away from the all seeing eyes of the gods, and then drop the garbage right outside the god’s area.
Perhaps more accurately, though, the fact that people don’t throw garbage at sacred sites is the aberration in their behavior. For the most part, people drop wrappers wherever they are when the open a package. The fact that they don’t drop the wrappers when they are in a sacred area is almost the exception that proves the rule – shows how religious fear trumps convenience. So if people could be convinced to have that religious fear – or some sort of fear – elsewhere, they might not drop their garbage everywhere. This is apparently the goal with the threat of fines from the health workers – they know people are mainly motivated by fear and threats, so they dangle the threat of a 500 ngultrum fine to keep people in line.
After visiting the Shabdrung tree, we went to the Trashigang garbage dump. And what a dump! An open ravine with a stone and concrete wall at one end. The wall was built recently – several months back, so the amount of garbage in the dump is not huge. I was surprised to see a lot of burnable materials – cardboard boxes, wood, doko baskets. In the villages, people said that they burned cardboard and plastic. Here in town, people obviously can’t burn plastic, but I was surprised that they weren’t using the wood and cardboard for heating fires or other purposes. One upside of the dump is that some of the food material may decompose because it is not compressed by bulldozers every night.
Prem and Tshering went walking across the sidewalk-like top of the wall, while I marveled at the lack of public safety paranoia in this country: although the dump is fenced with barbed wire, the gate was open, and the 30-foot-tall wall was an inviting place to climb and play. I walked part way across the wall – like walking across a dam at the end of a lake. I wonder if the dump will become a fetid lake during the rainy season. Soon, though, used to the safety measures of America, I began to feel a bit of vertigo, and became convinced I would fall off the wall into the garbage heap. I retraced my steps with the ostensible purpose of taking better pictures from the other side of the dump.
On the side of the dump, Tshering found a pamphlet from a UN program that had pictures of the king and queens – a holy item that should not be desecrated in such a way. As Tshering flipped through the book with a stick so that he wouldn’t have to touch it, Prem told him that he should take it, and she wouldn’t tell anyone. Apparently, taking something from a garbage dump carries the stigma of garbage – it hasn’t yet been re-cast as in America with the noble glow of re-use.
Even more surprising was the Ganesh figure that someone had placed in the cliffside next to the dump. Apparently the Ganesh had been discarded and someone had rescued it. Or perhaps it had been placed there by workers to ensure the effectiveness of their work while dumping garbage.
Here the sacred and profane met, at the boundary of the garbage dump. The Ganesh figure sacralized a small area of the garbage dump. The area around the Ganesh figure was free of garbage, and Ganesh seemed to look down on the dump from a holy elevated place. However, Ganesh could sacralize only a small area – perhaps a couple square feet around him. The rest was squalid with waste.
Oct. 26, 2007
On the way back to Trashigang from Bidung and Bartsam, two rural villages in eastern Bhutan, Prem suggested that we stop by a tree that was planted by the Body reincarnation of the Shabdrung, after he had come to Bhutan and before he was assassinated. He planted the tree, willing his next incarnation to take place in Bhutan. As long as the tree lives, he will try to return to Bhutan.
The tree is an unassuming broadleaf oak in the midst of a pine savannah on a dry, southwest facing hillside covered with lemongrass. Just after a hairpin turn in the road, a path leads perhaps 50 meters up to the tree, which is adorned with katas [ceremonial white silk scarves]. We had bought katas in Bartsam for the purpose of offering to the tree.
Amidst much picture-taking, each of us in turn tied a kata securely around a tree branch while making a wish. Tshering suggested that my wish should be that in my next incarnation, I be born in Bhutan. In the golden late afternoon sunlight, our katas added to the holy glow of the tree.
A stone wall had been built around the tree to protect it, but the rains had washed away some of the wall. Still, the stone and concrete wall demarcated the holy site of the Shabdrung’s tree, which was further demarcated by a ring of rocks at its base, separating it from the surrounding grasslands. So powerful is the energy of the tree, that it withstood a forest fire that charred all the surrounding trees. (It may also have held more moisture, since it appears that people come to care for the tree.) Prem pointed out the charred trunks of the surrounding pine trees as evidence of the holy tree’s power.
After completing our worship of the holy tree, we headed back to the truck, and Prem casually dropped the piece of newspaper in which the katas had been wrapped. I was struck by the incongruity of the previous eight hours of asking questions about where people put their garbage (with the implicit agenda that there is a ‘right’ place to put garbage), and the casual, apparently unthinking disposal of garbage near a holy site. The paper was dropped outside the boundary around the tree, in the unimportant lemongrass that surrounded the site. I didn’t say anything to her as I didn’t want to make her self-conscious, and was so busy marveling at the incongruity of the moment that I was speechless. It is stunning to me how deeply ingrained the habit of just dropping wrappings anywhere is. I would never think of dropping a wrapping, and much less nearby a holy ground. But apparently the ground outside the holy site is entirely profane and doesn’t benefit from the protection of holiness.
It seems that holy sites make their surroundings ever more likely to become dirtied, as the contrast between sacred and profane is so sharp. That is, the holy area must be kept very clean and cared for especially well. But the remaining areas are by definition profane, and not subject to any of the rules of the holy sites, and therefore more likely to be free to be used in any manner people wish. They pale in the shadow of the holy sites. All the effort of care and concern is placed on the holy sites, which may be quite small in comparison to the surrounding landscape. After such concern is lavished over a small and designated place, little concerns remains for the surrounding areas. So rather than contribute to environmental protection, the holy sites could detract from it, by focusing all effort, care, and concern on small sites, and deflecting that concern from the actions that could maintain larger sites, up to and including cities and road sides.
This is a testable hypothesis, and I could study the garbage found nearby a holy site to see if it differs in quantity and quality from that found elsewhere. I have not seen remarkable amounts of garbage around holy sites – at Chador Lhakhang and at the Shabdrung tree, I did not notice extraordinary amounts of garbage on the outskirts of these sites. Maybe people hold onto their garbage just long enough to get away from the all seeing eyes of the gods, and then drop the garbage right outside the god’s area.
Perhaps more accurately, though, the fact that people don’t throw garbage at sacred sites is the aberration in their behavior. For the most part, people drop wrappers wherever they are when the open a package. The fact that they don’t drop the wrappers when they are in a sacred area is almost the exception that proves the rule – shows how religious fear trumps convenience. So if people could be convinced to have that religious fear – or some sort of fear – elsewhere, they might not drop their garbage everywhere. This is apparently the goal with the threat of fines from the health workers – they know people are mainly motivated by fear and threats, so they dangle the threat of a 500 ngultrum fine to keep people in line.
After visiting the Shabdrung tree, we went to the Trashigang garbage dump. And what a dump! An open ravine with a stone and concrete wall at one end. The wall was built recently – several months back, so the amount of garbage in the dump is not huge. I was surprised to see a lot of burnable materials – cardboard boxes, wood, doko baskets. In the villages, people said that they burned cardboard and plastic. Here in town, people obviously can’t burn plastic, but I was surprised that they weren’t using the wood and cardboard for heating fires or other purposes. One upside of the dump is that some of the food material may decompose because it is not compressed by bulldozers every night.
Prem and Tshering went walking across the sidewalk-like top of the wall, while I marveled at the lack of public safety paranoia in this country: although the dump is fenced with barbed wire, the gate was open, and the 30-foot-tall wall was an inviting place to climb and play. I walked part way across the wall – like walking across a dam at the end of a lake. I wonder if the dump will become a fetid lake during the rainy season. Soon, though, used to the safety measures of America, I began to feel a bit of vertigo, and became convinced I would fall off the wall into the garbage heap. I retraced my steps with the ostensible purpose of taking better pictures from the other side of the dump.
On the side of the dump, Tshering found a pamphlet from a UN program that had pictures of the king and queens – a holy item that should not be desecrated in such a way. As Tshering flipped through the book with a stick so that he wouldn’t have to touch it, Prem told him that he should take it, and she wouldn’t tell anyone. Apparently, taking something from a garbage dump carries the stigma of garbage – it hasn’t yet been re-cast as in America with the noble glow of re-use.
Even more surprising was the Ganesh figure that someone had placed in the cliffside next to the dump. Apparently the Ganesh had been discarded and someone had rescued it. Or perhaps it had been placed there by workers to ensure the effectiveness of their work while dumping garbage.
Here the sacred and profane met, at the boundary of the garbage dump. The Ganesh figure sacralized a small area of the garbage dump. The area around the Ganesh figure was free of garbage, and Ganesh seemed to look down on the dump from a holy elevated place. However, Ganesh could sacralize only a small area – perhaps a couple square feet around him. The rest was squalid with waste.
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