Dec 24, 2024 – Day 1 of Bhutan Survey_Travel from Delhi, India to Trongsa, Bhutan
Hello. This is the first day of the Bhutan survey. Today’s schedule involves traveling all day. After departing from Delhi, India by plane and entering Bhutan through Paro, Sunim will travel by car for 7 hours from Paro to Trongsa.
After finishing his morning practice and meditation, Sunim had breakfast at 7 AM. He left the accommodation at 9 AM and moved to Delhi Airport to board a 12:30 PM flight to Paro. Although the plane departed about 30 minutes late, fortunately, it arrived on schedule. The sky was exceptionally clear today, allowing for a clear view of the snow-capped Himalayan mountains.
Upon arriving at Paro Airport at 3:20 PM and completing immigration procedures, Rinchen Dawa and Ishi from the Bhutan central government warmly welcomed Sunim as he exited the airport.
For this itinerary, a new driver from Zhemgang named Bassang will be accompanying Sunim.
Sunim and his group aim to reach Trongsa by tonight. As the journey is long and far, Sunim hurried to depart.
After traveling for about an hour from Paro, Sunim met the manager of restaurant Sanmaru in Thimphu.
Sunim planned to gift soap to the residents of Phumzur village, which Sunim will visit tomorrow, and the manager of restaurant Sanmaru had prepared it for them. Sunim thanked the manager by presenting barley bread he had brought from Gyeongju.
The manager of Sanmaru expressed sadness that she wouldn’t be able to see Sunim when he goes to India in January. She exchanged farewell greetings, wishing for Sunim’s good health during the remaining schedule.
Sunim and his group set off again towards Trongsa. By the time Sunim passed Dochula at an altitude of 3,000 meters, the sun had set and darkness had begun to fall, but the drivers continued without showing signs of fatigue.
Around 9 PM, Sunim went to a restaurant to have dinner.
“Ishi, Indians usually have dinner at 9 PM. Is it the same for Bhutanese people?”
“Yes, we usually eat at 8 or 9 PM.”
“It’s exactly dinner time now.” (laughs)
“But I’m a bit hungry because we had lunch early.” (laughs)
After enjoying dinner, Sunim traveled for about two more hours towards Trongsa, finally arriving at their accommodation just before 11 PM.
Jamyang, a government official from Trongsa who had arrived earlier, welcomed Sunim and his group.
Sunim will stay overnight in Trongsa and plan to move to Nangbi village in Zhemgang at 6 AM tomorrow.
This year, Sunim has been working on sustainable development in Bhutan. He has been traveling between Trongsa and Zhemgang provinces, surveying villages, and carrying out projects that could become models for sustainable development.
Since February, Sunim has visited Bhutan eight times to survey villages.
He visited households in each village to examine the conditions of both well-off and poor homes, and checked whether infrastructure directly related to living standards, such as schools, health facilities, roads, electricity, water channels, and drinking water, was well-equipped. He also investigated the specialties of each village and the health status of the villagers.
Whenever Sunim surveyed a village, he always communicated with the residents, asking “What is inconvenient in your current life, and what do you need?”
However, people in villages who had only lived in traditional ways didn’t know what was inconvenient or what needed improvement. Sunim first remodeled the house of the poorest person in the village to show and let the villagers experience what convenience in life means.
Sunim revisited the villages he had been to several times, talked again with the residents he had met, planned projects based on these conversations, and checked on the progress of ongoing projects. Through these continuous village visits and conversations with residents, he complemented production facilities and improved village infrastructure by repairing kitchens, creating agricultural waterways, repairing collapsed roads, repairing water sources, and constructing drinking water pipes.
The direction of sustainable development projects gradually took shape.
Sunim did not hire people for any of the projects. The most important principle of sustainable development projects was for the villagers to do the work themselves.
When improving infrastructure such as constructing drinking water pipes, creating agricultural waterways, and repairing roads, he ensured that the work was carried out in a way that preserved the natural and traditional state, and had the villagers do the construction themselves to improve their own infrastructure.
At first, the participation of the villagers was low because it wasn’t immediately beneficial to individuals. However, as the projects progressed, the Tshogpas (village leaders) demonstrated leadership, and a cooperative atmosphere was formed among the villagers, leading to an increase in construction participants. The villagers who completed the construction felt proud, and their mindset changed to “We are building our village together.”
In April, Sunim visited Bhutan with experts from various fields such as forestry and agriculture from Korea to research potential specialized projects utilizing the ecological environment of each village.
In September, about 30 leaders, including central government officials and Gewog leaders from Zhemgang and Trongsa provinces, gathered for a workshop on ‘sustainable development’.
During the process of contemplating ‘sustainable development’, these 30 leaders gained a deeper understanding of JTS principles and realized the importance of these principles. The Tshogpas (leaders of Chiwogs) shared their gratitude to Sunim and JTS, noting that they felt the revival of village community spirit and cooperation that had been lost a decade ago as they presented the results of projects carried out in their villages.
Observing the issue of Bhutanese youth leaving the country, Sunim also conducted lectures on ‘sustainable happy life’ for students at Thimphu University and Yebilaptsa School.
The pilot projects carried out in 4 villages in Trongsa province and 10 villages in Zhemgang province over the past year are planned to be expanded to the entire Zhemgang and Trongsa provinces starting next year.
Before expanding the project, Sunim is starting another survey. Over the next 15 days, he plans to survey all 30 Chiwogs out of the 40 Chiwogs in Zhemgang province, excluding the 10 Chiwogs that were part of the project last year. This is to conduct a thorough preliminary investigation before fully expanding into Zhemgang province. In this way, sustainable development in Bhutan continues to progress.
As there was no Dharma talk today, we are introducing the content of the Dharma Q&A held at the Jungto Social and Cultural Center on November 15th.
Why Do Relationships Always Fall Apart in the Early Stages of Dating?
“There’s no problem at all.”
“I often saw my parents fighting when I was young, and my mother passed away when I was little. I think that might have had an impact.”
“If you saw your parents fighting and thought, ‘People can fight sometimes when living together,’ and considered it normal, there’s no problem. However, if you saw your parents fighting and thought, ‘I shouldn’t get married. It would be terrible if I met a man like my father,’ and were hurt by it, you might unconsciously develop a resistance to marriage.
If a teacher scolded you saying, ‘Shut your mouth!’ when you tried to speak in elementary school, and you were hurt by it, you might always feel your words getting stuck in your throat and hesitate to speak later in life. Such people can only confess their love after drinking alcohol. So, if someone confesses their love while drunk, there’s a high possibility they’ll make a scene when drunk after marriage. This is because this person usually can’t express what’s in their heart. They can only say what they want to say after drinking.
It’s possible to be hurt, but it doesn’t mean you can’t get married just because your parents fought. Even if your parents fought a lot, or even if everyone in the neighborhood fought, some people see this and have no problem with it. This is because they think, ‘Marriage naturally includes fighting.’ And if no one around you is divorced but only your family is, it might become a trauma later, but if all your neighborhood friends live in divorced families, it becomes normalized and doesn’t cause any trauma. In American society, most families experience divorce, so children accept it naturally. When I lived in the countryside during my childhood, we were much poorer compared to the city. However, I have no trauma about being poor because all my friends in the neighborhood were the same. Maybe a child who couldn’t even eat properly might have been traumatized, but since I was somewhere in the middle, I had no trauma. Although we were all poor compared to the city, we didn’t have any particular trauma about poverty because we only lived among poor people. Of course, if parents have trauma about poverty, children can also be affected by their parents’ influence. So, the question of whether you were traumatized because your parents often fought is something you need to examine yourself.”
“Yes, I start thinking that the person should do certain things because they might become the father of my child, but I want to let go of these expectations.”
“If you want to let go, you can just let go. The problem is not wanting to let go, not that you can’t let go if you want to. But the issue is that you want to get married, but there’s no man who treats you as well as you’d like. It’s always difficult to get married because you’re always looking up at someone above your level. It’s problematic that you’re looking up, but the man you’re looking at is also looking up at someone else. So he doesn’t see you. Conversely, when a man looks at you, you don’t see him. Because it’s always mismatched like this, for someone like you to get married, the other person needs to deceive you a little. Even if they don’t have money, they should say they do, and even if they don’t really want to treat you well, they should force themselves to act like they do. Then you might fall for it. So if you want to get married, you should have the perspective of ‘Any man will do.’ If you want to scrutinize everything as you mentioned, it’s best to give up on marriage and enter a temple.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Even people who are already married, they don’t say it, but they scrutinized a lot before getting married and ended up stabbing their own eyes. (laughs) The reason isn’t that they chose poorly. Scrutinizing a lot means their expectations were that high. No matter what they choose, they’re never satisfied. So they can’t help but feel they made a wrong choice.
If your expectations are too high, you’re bound to be disappointed after marriage. You need to lower your expectations to the level of ‘Any man will do,’ or ‘Even someone who’s been married twice is okay,’ for your married life to be happy. The French President Macron married a woman 25 years older than him, right? And she was his friend’s mother and his teacher at the school he went to. But they’re living well. I’m not saying you should choose someone much older, but I’m saying that even a man who married a woman 25 years older than him became the President of France. The next U.S. President married a woman 25 years younger than him. In this day and age, why scrutinize so much? Just roughly consider and get married. If you keep scrutinizing, you’ll end up living like a monk like me.” (laughs)
“Thank you.”
