Where the Hills Have More Prayer Flags than Trees

The Buddhist funeral ritual of offering 108 prayer flags has the potential of wiping off acres of forest every year. To get a perspective of the threat it poses, look at the hills stretch overlooking Lanjophakha to Taba, there are more prayer flags than trees. It’s so haunting to look into that direction and realize that it will continue to expand further. It's now buddhism against environment, which is not supposed to be. What have we done? 

The Prayer Flag Hill

 I have raised this issue before and even made a few tangible suggestions to make it sustainable. In one article, I suggested the need for every Bhutanese to plant 108 trees as a citizenry mandate so that we could equate that with the trees we would cut down for the ritual when we die.

 In another article, I floated a social business idea to startup prayer flag hiring company to help bereaved families deal with arduous process of hoisting prayer flag at an affordable cost by reusing old pole or finding alternative such as bamboo, plastic or steel poles. 

To do more on this, I have been part of a micro project where we promoted treated bamboo pole as an alternative flagpole. We couldn’t even make a dent because we realized that there is a huge resistance. 

 The big question we must address is, why 108 poles? It’s fundamentally flawed to count the poles when the ritual is about the prayers printed on the flag that will flutter in the wind. Shouldn’t we be counting the number of lines of prayers we are offering in the wind? 

 To make it worse, there is funny logic that states that bamboo and steel poles that are hollow inside cannot be used for offering prayer flags. Who is deciding this for us? Is it a wrong number? Otherwise, wouldn’t an offering that has done lesser harm be a more profound offering? 

Bamboo Flagpoles in Southern Bhutan

 I am not an extreme conservationist, I rather believe in sustainable harvesting of trees. I believe in felling a matured tree to build shelter and produce furniture. But I am opposed to the idea of felling young trees just to stretch a layer of prayer flags on it. Every tree is a golden goose and felling them for a mere pole is like killing the goose. It’s an unworthy sacrifice of a valuable natural resource. 

 There are more reasonable ways to make the offering; 

1. reuse old flagpoles that are lying all around uselessly. Make all the existing flagpoles public property that anyone can reuse once that prayers are faded. 
2. use ropes to stretch prayer flags between two poles or around one big pole. There are some fine examples. Make them popular.
3. explore recycle plastic poles. I think my friend Karma Yonten can do this. He has shown the possibility with his eco-green poles.
4. use steel poles. It’s far more economical because you can resell them. 
5. and I am wondering if it’s possible to cut out flagpoles from a big matured timber using some machine. (Business idea?)

Reusable Ru-dhar pole

 But as long as permits to fell young tree for flagpoles are freely available, why suffer a change? We are too lazy to explore better ways. We are happy with the old world, and there are old minds advising us to resist. People gossip about you not doing enough gewa if you don’t do it the old way. 

 Therefore, there should be a systemic effort to putting an end to this mindless culture of massacring young trees for nothing worthwhile: 

1. Department of Forestry, Forest Resources Management Division must stop issuing permit for flagpoles. We must put a ban on felling young trees for flagpole or any other purpose. 
2. Department of Culture and Zhung Dratshang must create awareness on how the offering is about the prayer on the flag that flutter in the wind rather than the pole. Pole can be anything or nothing. Prayers matter.

Let's state the truth that it's so sinful to cut a young tree for hoisting a prayer flag.

108 Prayer Flag Business- A Social Enterprise

In my last post I wrote about our tradition of offering 108 prayer flags for the departed souls, which means felling 108 young trees and therefore I proposed a green idea of making it a National service requirement ofeach Bhutanese citizen to plant 108 trees in one’s lifetime (within a given age range).

However, I stumbled onto another idea about the same issues and this time it’s a social business idea. Those of you who have physically gone through the process of finding, felling, peeling, and dragging 108 flag poles from deep woods over a long distance would know how arduous it is. Now, having to do it during the emotionally low time when you have lost someone in the family makes it heartbreaking. You would rather pay any cost to have someone else do it for you. Wouldn’t you?

Prayer Flag in the fields in Paro, Across my home

Now who could be that someone else? Here is the social business idea. We can build a social enterprise around this idea. There are already thousands of prayer flags standing along the hills in patches of clearings. They have done their job, prayers have faded and souls are delivered to heavens perhaps. What we could do is collect those old poles and store them up in warehouses in different regions and make sets of 108 poles ready to be delivered on a call and at a price.

During my difficult times, when my mother in-law passed away, I didn’t have the emotional, mental or physical strength to apply for pass from the forestry department, gather over twenty men and go deep into the woods to fetch that many poles. I remembered my good friend Tshering Tenzin, who knew the lam at Chhimi Lhakhang. I called him to help me because when his mother passed away we went there and the lam had kept more than 108 old poles ready. The same arrangement was made for me too. Amazingly it didn’t cost me anything though I would pay anything for such help.

Old flagpole at Chhimi Lhakhang

This social business will not only save bereaved families from any additional torment during difficult times but also safe trees greatly by reusing the poles for as long as they could last.

The enterprise can additionally explore new ways to replace flagpole with bamboo pole, metallic pole or any environmental friendly and economically sustainable options. 

And the good news is I am giving away this business idea to whoever wants to take it forward with the condition that you will aways keep it affordable. It's a social service more than business.

108 Trees in a Lifetime for Citizenship

Bhutan's first ever Guinness World Record 'Most Trees Planted in an Hour' made a statement of our relation with trees. Perhaps it must be one of the most meaningful records ever set, and coming it from a small nation like ours is a huge pride. To make it the most memorable event ever it was dedicated to the celebration of the 60th birth Anniversary of our beloved fourth king, who has placed environment at the heart of our constitution and all of our national development plans.

"Coinciding with Social Forestry Day on June 2, a team of 100 volunteers got their hands deep in the ground to plant a total of 49,672 trees in just 60 minutes, smashing the previous record by nearly 10,000."- Guinness World Record

 The record required each man to plant over 8 trees per minute, god knows how they did that. I would like to congratulate the 100 super humans, the organiser Karma Tshering and everybody in the team for the making us so proud.

Our Guinness World Record inspired a green idea. If an ordinary Bhutanese has the potential of planting 500 trees in an hour, can every Bhutanese citizen plant at least 108 trees in a life time? Easily. Therefore I think it must be made a citizenship requirement to plant 108 trees to rightfully call yourself Bhutanese.

I heard in some countries you have to serve in the military for at least a year to fulfil your requirement as citizen, and in some countries you have to have voted in an election to have access to public services. Likewise I thought we Bhutanese could do more than just being born here.

I chose the auspicious number 108 because that's the exact numbers of young trees we cut down to offer prayer flags when someone dies. So 108 trees will be felled for each one of us regardless of our environmental morals. However, incase of non-buddhists the number could be viewed differently or changed to another significant number, because after all it's the tree we are placing at the centre.

The 108 prayer flags ...

If this is taken seriously our 70% forest cover can be maintained for ages without affecting the developmental activities because we have the potential of planting 75,600,000 tress with our current population alone and it's only going to grow. This is well beyond any record on the planet and Bhutan's greatest gift to the world.