Royal Kiss

I wish happiness, joy and everlasting love to the royal couple 
of Bhutan who recently got married.



Associated Press photo

Launching the Hungarian Bhutan Friendship Society

With a few friends of mine, I have recently initiated the establishment of the Hungarian Bhutan Friendship Society that aims to provide information about the Kingdom of Bhutan in my home country, Hungary. The Society’s goal is to encourage and promote knowledge and understanding of Bhutan in Hungary and create links between the two countries. It's a very exciting venture we all look forward to. 

The inaugural event of the Society took place with great success on 15th September at ELTE University in Budapest with around 200 people attended. Our honorable guest speaker was Dr Karma Phuntsho, cultural expert and Buddhist scholar from the University of Cambridge. His talk was titled “The Journeys of the Thunder Dragon: Bhutan's transition from a medieval country to a postmodern happiness state”. 

"Bhutan is roughly the size of Switzerland with 38,394 km2, so less than half of Hungary" - said Dr Karma in his talk - "But, it is a vertical country. So, if we flatten our slopes, we will be bigger than you." 

Dr Karma Phuntsho was trained as a Buddhist monk in Bhutan and India, and received D.Phil in Oriental Studies in Oxford. He is currently Research Associate at the Department of Social Anthropology at University of Cambridge and Editor of the Oxford Journal for Buddhist Studies dividing his time between Bhutan and England. 

Dr Karma specializes in Buddhism, Tibetan & Himalayan Studies and Bhutan, and has published a number of books, translations, book reviews and articles on Buddhism, Bhutan and Tibetan Studies. He is also founder and trustee of the Loden Foundation, Bhutan’s first registered charity that supports education and youth entrepreneurship and where I was a volunteer.

In Budapest, Dr Karma talked about Bhutan, its history, distinctive culture and the country’s unique approach to social and economic development based on Gross National Happiness (GNH) as well as Bhutan's exciting transition from a medieval country to a postmodern state. His talk was very timely given that the UN General Assembly has recently adopted a non-binding resolution that aims to make happiness a "development indicator” - based on Bhutan’s proposal and with the support of 66 countries, including the UK. 

At the end of his talk, he presented us a Bhutanese thangka portraying the four harmonious animal friends and delivered his best wishes for the new friendship society. The event took place in collaboration with the Hungarian-Indian Friendship Society and generated excitement and interest among a number of Hungarians wishing to discover Bhutan.

Please read more about the event on Kuensel Online and visit the Society's website.

Growth in Buddhist Economy by Jeffrey Sachs

Recently my friends drew my attention to articles of Jeffrey Sachs, Professor of Economics at Columbia University, inspired by Bhutan. One of them titled 'Growth in a Buddhist Economy' can be read clicking HERE

I found the article very interesting and commented on it as follows:

"I'm happy that Mr. Sachs highlights Bhutan as a unique country with enlightened public policies and political leadership dedicated to put these policies in practice. Many other countries, including the US, many times lack both, but especially leadership.

I was a volunteer in Bhutan - which is about 6% of the size of France - working with young entrepreneurs funded by the country's first registered charity, the Loden Foundation. I saw many parts of the country and I spoke with various people from taxi drivers to elected officials, from drug abusers to monks and former monks, from journalists to tourist guides. I was impressed by the concept of Gross National Happiness and the way the government, religious leaders, and the King are implementing it.

However, I also became concerned about rapid urbanization and its side effects such as consumerism, pollution, crime, youth unemployment, drug abuse, social disintegration, imported bad quality food, new diseases, etc. Of course, these issues are still limited in scale, but dynamically increasing since cable television, foreign visitors and the Internet bring new dreams to people that in many ways challenge their traditional culture based on communal rural life, frugality and Buddhism. As new consumer goods, entertainment services and well marketed cultural habits such as Birthday parties, Valentine Day, wedding ceremonies, Halloween, even Santa Claus, are imported to the country, people's attitudes are gradually changing without realizing the long term negative consequences. They want more or different things rather than what they really need and what their natural environment can bear. I saw Coca-Cola drinks and potato chips piled on the altar offered to the temple which was located in the middle of the forest in high mountains! This means people bother to buy and then bring plastic garbage walking hours to their sacred places, because they attribute value to these unhealthy food items.

Such a transition Bhutan is currently going through, or any large scale economic and social change, requires good leadership as well as good experts and advisors independent from business interest to effectively influence and pressurize domestic and international leaders to make the right decisions that work for the majority of citizens and for the Planet. Meetings and discussions and articles and books are great and important, but I'm afraid we are all running out of time and we must act now to save Bhutan for a better world and create a better world for Bhutan."

More on Buddhist Economics in my blog HERE

Love is in the air, royal wedding coming soon.

Last February I posted about the public birthday celebration of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. There was also an invitation-only party, but my luck didn't bring me that far to be among the distinguished guests, I only managed to see the invitation. In my post I said the king was not only young, bright, and handsome, but still single. Now, it's time to revisit the latest statement: the king has announced to marry 21-year-old student Jetsun Pema and the wedding will take place on October 13-15.

Well, I can only congratulate the young couple wishing them true happiness and love from my heart and I feel sorry for thousands of women who may have dreamt about such a royal wedding for themselves. To further limit dreamers' chances, the King probably has no intention to follow the example of his father, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who married four women - all of whom are sisters. 

In case you would like to learn more about the history of Bhutan's monarchy, watch this public video: