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By Tim Girivin (www.girvin.com)
I recently toured Bhutan. And it was a long-held dream for me. Some 40 years earlier, in teaching classes on design, calligraphy and illustration to support tuition in college, I referenced some imagery from Bhutan in our exploration of design strategy. The idea of the power of writing, in prayer wheels, as a device of spiritual magnitude was part of that study – the wheel turns, the prayers unfold, visions emanate, dreams emerge, answers are found. There is profound power in that concept – and I’ll never forget that time, nor my firsthand experience of seeing this in Bhutan, finally, after all these years.
The beauty of this premise is found everywhere in Bhutan; the wheel of prayer – it’s at the heart of the spirit of this amazing land. And that’s what I came looking for – to find the spirit of the people and the vision of this explication in every detail of their lives. And this can be found in the simple, honest character of the food, the music, poetic refrains, mysticism, the deeply enriched and symbolically profound nature of the arts, the potent structures of the dzong and the stable siting and earthbound permanence of the villages. While there are surely plenty of examples of the power inherent in the cultures of the Himalayas, these characteristics are distinct to Bhutan. Continue reading The dilemma of progress!Finding the middle path