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.

Face of Buddha on the Rock (Update)

My last post Face of Buddha reached far beyond my regular audience. It has fascinated people all over. I was counting happiness on my blog, it's the moment we bloggers dream to see. The story has done magic to my blog, it was as if the story was long waiting to be told. But more than what the story did to my blog, this time I pride in what my blog has done to the story. I was seeking attention for what seemed like an ignored Face of Buddha but it turned out that the people have never heard about it, not even the oldest of people here. It was as if they waited for this moment, now people are all over the place.

Face of Buddha

Before it went viral I accompanied group of my colleagues to complete what was left half done, to go up close to the face of Buddha. The path leading to the site was worn, it was walked by thousands across the generations. How the gigantic natural art piece never caught generations of eyes remains a mystery. Standing right before the overwhelming rock, it's hard to make out the face distinctly. The eyes, the cheek, the nose, the lips and the chin that look perfect from across the river are just natural fault lines on the almost flat rock face. This confirms that there is no human manipulation at all. The compelling image of Buddha's face is a natural composition of fault lines, their shadows, and the color texture. The rock is almost two dimensional but from a distance it three dimensional. It's magical.  

Close Up

It was on Sunday I posted the story and by Monday I started receiving pictures from people who went there to see for themselves. By Wednesday the site was crowded with people, and that evening authorities decided to put fence around it. Today when I went there I could see long queue of people across the river, and many breaking through the fence already. On the other side of the river cars and people are causing traffic jam on the national highway. This is more than the attention one can ever ask for.

From the View Point

Long Queue of People 

Some people jokingly call me Terton PaSsu Lingpa and I funnily wish but like I shared in the last post, I wasn't the one to see it first. My friend Yam Rinzin show me a picture from his phone a few months ago. Today he told me that he was told by his lady colleague Tshering Yangzom, who seemed to have seen it through her window, which was facing the hill. That makes her the tertonma. 

I humbly accept the credit of making it public. It gives me great pleasure to see overwhelming number of people gathering around there and wondering how on earth it happened. Number of people will increase by the day, and in seeing the compelling image on the rock, good thought will be evoked in their minds and prayers on their lips. Perhaps this is my parting gift to the place where I lived for seven defining years of my life.   

Visitors (Even a Mobile Bakery has reached there!)