Even in Bhutan, Happiness Is Hard

“In a consumer society, there are two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.” — Ivan Illich

Since Khyentse Norbu is about the only film director around who is also known as His Eminence Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpochea, you might think, as an incarnate lama, he would have something different to tell us about the world we live in.

His previous feature, The Cup, revolved around some soccer mad monks trying to watch the World Cup. Almost all of the characters were played by ordinary people, not actors, and the film had a leisurely pace and naturalism that was as aimless and easy as a summer day. His new film, Travellers and Magicians, has similarly unhurried feeling.

But slowness is the one thing that drives the central character almost mad with impatience. Dondup is a young government official who wants nothing more than to be a part of the biggest consumer culture on the planet. He’s anxious to leave behind the sleepy, beautiful Bhutan for America, which he sees as a country of pop singers and white sneakers, and he can’t wait to do it.

Bhutan looks a lot like my childhood home in the Kootenays. I’m guessing that anyone who also grew up in a rural area where there wasn’t much to do other than stare at the distant mountains can relate to Dondup’s sense of frustration. He wants to be where there are movie theatres and restaurants and, most importantly, lots of cool girls. So he does what any young man would do and hitches a ride out of town.

It’s the going, not the leaving

While waiting on the side of the road he meets a monk, an old apple seller, and a farmer and his beautiful daughter. Since this motley bunch don’t have very much to do other than wait for a ride, sit in the back of a bumpy truck and then wait for another ride, the monk tells a story to pass the time. His tale corresponds to Dondup’s own dilemma. Should he stay or should he go?

The parable that parallels their travels is the tale of two brothers. The elder brother is Tashi, a lazy no-goodnik who thinks only about girls, even while he is supposed to be studying magic. His younger brother is the smarter of the pair, but he has to stay home and help dad down on the farm.

One day the younger brother mixes a magic potion into some wine, and gives it to his brother. Before long Tashi is seeing things that aren’t there, like a beautiful horse in place of the family donkey. But when is a horse not a horse? Why, when it’s a symbol of course. In his drunken horse love, Tashi takes the mysterious beast for a ride and ends up somewhere he never expected to be.

Lost, alone and wandering about in the rain and the dark, he stumbles upon a mysterious cabin. This humble shack is home to a old wood cutter and his much younger wife (Deki). The old man is a bit of a jerk, he smacks Deki around, drinks too much and resembles an old goat right down to the scruffy tuft on his chin. Events take the course you would expect. The young, hot people fall in love and wish to do away with the old goat. It’s the Tibetan version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

It’s a little hard to tell what Dondup learns from this story, or if he learns anything. That reality is illusion? That love is always trouble? And just what is happiness anyway?

Terrifying, beatific wrinklies

Questions about the nature of happiness also plague us, here in the West. We generally assume we can buy our way there; check out the PBS pledge drives and their obsession with juicing and Wayne Dyer. If you’ve got the cash you can buy your way to inner peace and happiness at Hollyhock. Their catalogue arrived the other day with a delivery of vegetables. You’ve never seen so many beatific wrinklies in your life. Truly terrifying. But happiness is a slippery subject, just when you think you have grasped it, it slides through your fingers. No matter how much money you throw at edifying and ethical commerce.

British author Richard Layton’s new book, Happiness (Penguin 2005), based upon his Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures, given at the London School of Economics, uncovers some startling facts. Happiness doesn’t have much to do with money, and women are happiest when having sex and least happy while commuting. “People in the West have gotten no happier in the last 50 years,” Layton says. “They have become much richer, they work much less, they have longer holidays, they travel more, they live longer, and they are healthier. But they are no happier. This shocking fact should be the starting point for much of our social science.”

If we’re so well off, why aren’t we happy?

Bhutan may have a few answers about that. A recent Time magazine article (“What About Gross National Happiness?”) examines the lead that Bhutan has taken in accounting for this intangible mysterious quality. “When Jigme Singye Wangchuck was crowned king of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan in 1972, he declared he was more concerned with “Gross National Happiness” than with Gross Domestic Product. Bhutan’s GDP is a mere $2.7 billion, but Wangchuck still maintains that economic growth does not necessarily lead to contentment, and instead focuses on the four pillars of GNH: economic self-reliance, a pristine environment, the preservation and promotion of Bhutan’s culture, and good governance in the form of a democracy.”

The joy of eating apples

It all sounds simple and straightforward, so how come it all goes so horribly wrong for the rest of us? The film offers no answers. Does Dondup go or stay? Does he choose love or dreams? When he finally put-puts off into the distance on what looks like a souped-up lawnmower, there is only silence and the occasional bird song. It’s almost as though he’d never been there at all. The answer lies not so much in the events themselves but in how they happen. This is a film infused with easy joy, the happiness of sitting in the sun and eating an apple.

Every traveller that Dondup meets has a lesson, and often it’s as simple as being kind. Which is what the Dalai Lama is always on about. Says his Holiness, “Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, the very purpose of our life is happiness, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.”

This motion towards happiness sometimes involves the most unlikely journeys, and the strangest of travelling companions.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Norbu said he made the film partly as a means of capturing Bhutan as it is right now, before it has “50 Starbucks and McDonalds.” There is that sense of a fleeting glimpse of time and place. The hordes of western wisdom seekers may be on their way, marking Bhutan as the next place to spend their vacation dollars. And they’ll need coffee while they’re there.

Dorothy Woodend writes about film for The Tyee on Fridays.