Phallus Art Brings
Luck in Bhutan — and Tourists, Too
STEVEN LEE MYERS AUG.
24, 2017The New York Times
LOBESA, Bhutan — For centuries, Bhutan has
celebrated the phallus.
They are painted on homes, or carved in wood,
installed above doorways and under eaves to ward off evil,
including one of its most insidious human forms, gossip. They are
worn on necklaces, installed in granaries and in fields as a kind
of scarecrow. They are used by masked jesters in religious
festivals and at one temple near here in Lobesa as a blessing of
fertility.
Now, as Bhutan increasingly opens up to the
world, the ancient tradition has been evolving or, some say,
sullied — by commercialization.
Though still a religious symbol, it has
become, to some, a relic of a patriarchal past, something vaguely
embarrassing and not fit for the modern new democracy that has, by
all appearances, taken firm root in Bhutan after decades of
relative isolation and absolute monarchy.
It has also become a curio to peddle in all
sizes and colors to the increasing number of tourists visiting this
remote Himalayan kingdom, renowned for its pursuit of “gross
national happiness.”
“People still use it as a symbol,” said
Needrup Zangpo, the executive director of the Journalist
Association of Bhutan, who has written about the historical
inspiration for the symbol, “but the necessity of having it painted
on your house is going away.” He attributed this erosion of
tradition to “the exposure to Western culture.”
The symbol, like Bhutan itself, seems
suspended between two impulses: the country’s headlong embrace of
modernity and its preservation of traditions that made it unique to
start with.
“Stories of Bhutan’s engagement with the
phallus shed light on traditions and lifestyle that make Bhutan one
of the happiest places on earth,” Karma Choden wrote in the 2014
book “Phallus: Crazy Wisdom from Bhutan,” which was published here
and claims to be the first scholarly effort to document the
ubiquity of the phallus.
The tradition has been widely traced to one
lama, Drukpa Kunley, who spread the tenets of Buddhism through
Bhutan in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Called the “Divine Madman,” he was a holy
fool, a mendicant, drunkard and Lothario who subdued women and
demons alike with his heightened spirituality and what legend
called his “Flaming Thunderbolt of Wisdom.”
Drukpa Kunley is celebrated throughout the
country — and in Tibet, across the border — but his cult is
centered on Chimi Lhakhang, the “no dog” monastery, near Lobesa,
which encompasses a cluster of still smaller hamlets nestled in a
valley of terraced paddies of red and white rice.
The monastery was built in 1499 on a knoll
above the Puna Tsang River, though given the hazy mythology
surrounding Drukpa Kunley’s evangelism, there are contradictory
accounts of the monastery’s founding.
In the prevailing one, the lama subdued a
demon haunting a nearby mountain pass called Dochula by turning her
into a red dog, which he buried “with a pile of earth to resemble a
woman’s breast.” Hence the name “no dog.”
In the other, according to an oral history
compiled in the 1960s and translated into English as “The Divine
Madman: The Sublime Life and Songs of Drukpa Kunley,” the lama
built a stupa, or monument, on the spot where a follower died after
repeating a ribald prayer the lama had taught him. (“I take refuge
in the maiden’s Lotus,” one couplet begins.) The lama himself was
said to have lived to 115.
In neither scenario of the monastery’s
founding, Mr. Zangpo emphasized, did he use his penis, though that
is how the legend is often garbled.
“We don’t have a clear line between history
and mythology,” said Mr. Zangpo, who is compiling his own
translations of the oral histories that he hopes will set the
record straight. Like other scholars, he argues that the phallus
symbol can more likely be traced to pre-Buddhist pagan rituals than
to the Divine Madman’s legend.
Nevertheless, the tales of the lama’s sexual
appetite have prevailed — in no small part because of the oral
histories, in which Drukpa Kunley flouts both secular and religious
sensibilities by reveling in sex and alcohol on his path to
enlightenment.
To this day, hopeful couples traverse Bhutan
to partake of the monastery’s fertility blessing. They reach it by
climbing the knoll on foot after passing through the hamlets of
Sopsokha and Teoprongchu. The valley is indisputably beautiful.
Dragonflies swarm in circles overhead. Small aqueducts feeding the
green rice paddies spin colorful prayer wheels like water
mills.
Children on their way to school in Lobesa,
passing a village house adorned with a painting of a phallus.
Credit Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
What has made the area famous, though, are the
phalluses, a must-see for foreigners who pay the $250 per day
minimum that Bhutan requires for tourist visas. And more tourists,
perhaps inevitably, mean more phalluses.
House after house is painted with phalluses.
While highly stylized, they are in some cases graphically detailed:
always erect, often ejaculating. One appears with the country’s
name, a marketing ploy by the owner of one of the proliferating
souvenir shops. The displays in some — rows of colorful wooden
carvings — would not seem out of place in a sex shop.
Bhutan’s phalluses are not considered
explicitly sexual, noted Ms. Choden, the writer.
“In essence, the phallus represents the center
of the male ego, and not a celebration of sex,” she writes. “It
reminds onlookers that if this force is harnessed properly, it will
fuel productivity and creativity rather than wanton
lust.”
Lotay Tshering, a 51-year-old rice farmer,
owns a house in Sopsokha that is adorned with two giant penis
murals. His wife’s uncle painted them in homage to the Divine
Madman, “who has blessed this place,” as he put it. He and his wife
have six children.
Over a cup of salt butter tea, Mr. Tshering
lamented the proliferation of shops and cafes that accompanied the
rise of tourism (though his main complaint for the authorities was
the sorry state of the local roads).
“When I grew up, there were no shops,” he
said. He says the trend came with the advent of parliamentary
elections in 2008, which Bhutan’s former king ordered after
abdicating in favor of his son, Jigme Khesar Namgyel
Wangchuck.
“From then on there was no stopping the
number of shops sprouting up,” Mr. Tshering said, adding that he
found the trend unseemly.
“I have no commercial interest,” he said,
referring to his display of phalluses, which have been so widely
photographed that they appear on Wikipedia. “I ask for
nothing.”
The phalluses certainly have been a boon for
the villages here, a two-hour drive from the capital, Thimphu. The
area has around 2,700 people, according to the most recent census,
in 2005. Most are farmers, though there is a growing number of
shopkeepers and artists.
Tenpa Renchen, the deputy headman of the
village, an elected post, said the gains to the local economy had
come mostly from the rents that villagers can charge to the
souvenir shops. A few more opened in the last year, as did a
restaurant with a stunning view of the monastery.
“Personally,” he emphasized, with a diplomatic
touch, “I don’t like people selling these in shops, but they have
to make a living.”
The village elders, however, are watching the
commercialization with caution. The proliferation of shops has not
yet reached a crisis, Mr. Renchen said, but could soon test the
limits of tolerance.
Mr. Renchen sounded wistful in an interview,
lamenting the modern exploitation of something with a deeper
religious significance.
“The Divine Madman,” he said, “has much more
to offer than just a phallus.