05 Jan Bhutan — The Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom

As autumn closes in, temples throughout Bhutan celebrate with festivals. Monks blow horns. Or drum drums. Or gong gongs. Men dance. Women dance and sing. Old folks sit on mats. Children run around. Dogs bark, and people dressed up like demons and heroes and gods whack each other with dildos.

A god and a demon brandish dildos before doing battle with one another

Dildos are everywhere: dangling from rooftops, swinging from front desks in hotels and from counters arrayed with buffet lunches. They’re worn as amulets around the necks of children and wielded as weapons in mock combat at the festivals. Most are deep red but some, in what may be an attempt to be more female friendly, come in soft pink. In at least one festival, they aren’t dildos at all. They’re the real thing.

That one takes place at midnight in late October in the Bumthang Valley, and is the most sacred festival on the calendar. Dozens of men with flour sacks over their heads and nothing over anything else, dance and frolic around a bonfire and, sometimes, line dance through the crowd of onlookers. I would have a picture of this except, if you show up with a camera they not only confiscate your camera they turn into a mob of naked men and try to kill you, which happened to a fellow a few yards from us.

This being the middle of the night, late October being late October, and the Bumthang Valley being in the middle reaches of the Himalayas, the air is not warm and the real things on display are displayed at their most minimal. Except for one guy. This one guy either had his own source of heat, or was predestined to be very popular with the ladies.

The men were from nearby villages and were young, and athletic and – Bhutan not having a single MacDonald’s or Ben & Jerry’s – fit and trim and, in the dark with bags on their heads, difficult to tell apart. All except for the one guy. Which suggests the flour sacks were an act of loving compassion. At the very least they afforded the other guys plausible believability when confiding within earshot of young ladies that, “I don’t want to make too big a thing out of this . . . but . . . you know that one guy? I’m the one.”

Dildo-wise, the ball was set in motion 500 years ago by a celebrity sex toy known as The Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom: ten inches of bone and wood and ivory carried down from Tibet on the back of a flying female tiger by a defrocked monk named Drupka Kunley who, if Buddhists are right about the past-lives thing, could only have been the preincarnation of L Ron Hubbard.

Not one to let a trivial matter like being cast out of a monastery discourage him from his godly calling, Kunley stepped to the edge of the Himalayan Plateau, nocked an arrow to his bow, and let fly. Then, Thunderbolt in hand, hopped aboard the tigress and flew hundreds of miles through the air until he found his arrow lodged in the wooden steps of a farmhouse.

The Tigress Nest Monastery: on the exact spot the tigress rested when she flew down from Tibet. Apparently, flying tigers operate out of nests, not lairs.

Surprised to discover an uninvited guest, the farmer and his two wives were nothing but hospitable . . . until the evening the farmer discovered Kunley beneath the sheets with the younger, better-looking wife and began rummaging through the storeroom for weapons.

“Did I mention the part about the tigress?” Kunley asked when the farmer emerged from the storeroom.

“She can fly, you know,” the younger, better-looking wife chimed in. “She’s a tigress and she knows how to fly.”

Possibly at the urging of the older, less good-looking wife, the farmer allowed them to leave. The older wife may even have packed a lunch to speed them on their way.

Kunley and the young ex-wife set off on an evangelizing tour of Bhutan, singing and dancing, hunting and feasting and, Kunley at least, overindulging in alcohol and other men’s wives as he spread enlightenment, and more than a few legs, among the people of Bhutan. All this may have something to do with why the country fancies itself as the land of Gross National Happiness.

Along the way he became known as the Divine Madman by some, as The Saint of 5,000 Women by others. He also accumulated a reputation as a poet, holding forth with such timeless wisdom as: “The best chung wine lies at the bottom of the pail/and Happiness lies below the navel.” As with all truly godly people, he lived his words and refused to offer a blessing or give spiritual guidance to anyone who did not offer him a bucket of wine and a beautiful woman in return.

He had his way with demons, too. He proselytized them with The Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom until they swore allegiance to him and converted to Buddhism. To this day, some of Bhutan’s most devout Buddhists are reformed demons. The demon of Dochula Pass was made of sterner stuff, though. Or, at least, she was a demoness scorned. When she invited him to make love Kunley laughed at her as too smelly, and too ugly, and what she’d intended as a romantic tryst turned into an all-night battle

Toward dawn, he dragged her downhill to a village where, “behold,” he announced as the sun broke over the mountains, “the mighty demoness has turned into a black dog.”

“My stars,” the villagers said, “You conquered a demoness so powerful she could turn into a black dog? Here, take our wives.”

The villagers built a monument on top of what’s now a 500-year-old dead dog. It’s still there and you can visit it if you need proof of what happened in Dochula Pass that night. It’s next to the Chimi Lhakhang Fertility Temple, built to honor Kunley’s other special power.

A supernatural guardian stands erect outside a gift shop near the Chimi Lhakhang Fertility Temple.

Inside the temple you can visit the Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom. Unlike the way with most sacred relics, you even get to touch it. Or, rather, the head monk will tap you on the head with it if you’re in need of a bit of fertility. Gratuities are welcome.

Peg and I got tapped for the sake of being multicultural, but she declined to cradle the Thunderbolt in her arms and run three times clockwise around the temple. Like a lot of experienced parents, we draw the line at starting over with another child.

But other ladies must have grabbed it with gusto. The monk trotted out a scrapbook filled with testimonials. Letters from all over the world . . . the US, Europe, Australia, lots of places in Asia and Latin America . . . every one bearing photographs of smiling parents cuddling wrinkly newborns, all testifying to the everlasting power of . . . something or other.