You’ll feel Bhutan’s quiet power the moment you land in Paro. I felt it the first time I arrived in 1994. For fast learners, a week or two is enough to sense its transformative potential. I’m a bit slower. I’ve lived here for nearly 30 years; the blink of an eye. I can’t say with any certainty whether I’ve made progress on my spiritual path. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m evolving. Other times, I just feel lost. Befuddled. But maybe that’s okay. I arrived here all those years ago in a mix of instinct and determination; determined to teach English to young Bhutanese people. I think I still run on instinct. I understood, in a way that defied logic, that it would be good for me to settle in a place where time moves slower, where life is immersed in nature, and where we aren’t bombarded by distractions every hour. There’s a remarkable tolerance here and not much excess, although I can be easily diverted by the smallest things. Luckily, the Bhutanese are generous and patient. So if I don’t find liberation in this life, with luck, I can die here and reincarnate. The Bhutanese believe you come back where you left off.

Bhutan is steeped in spirituality. You can feel it in the land itself—in the mountains, the rivers, the prayer flags shifting in the wind. As I often say, it’s in the rocks. From my minuscule understanding of the tantric path, I know that whatever we have can be used for self-liberation. I make it sound easy. Of course, it’s not. I’m constantly experimenting, trying on new ideas, attempting to go deeper: to exist on another plane beyond the daily routine. Going deeper is key. To do that, I try to step away from the structures and habits I’ve carried with me my whole life.

Part of my practice, part of my way of seeking self-liberation, is learning to recognize—or even live within—metaphor. Sometimes, I feel as though the universe leaves me little notes. But instead of sticky notes on the fridge, they come in the form of cows blocking the road or my WiFi failing just when I think I need it most. (Spoiler: I don’t.)

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: “Buddhism should not mean but be.” I’m not sure how to fully embody that—or even what it means. My instinct tells me to avoid over-analyzing. So I reject a lot. My instinct tells me to shed, to let go. Also, I don’t like rules, which makes Bhutan a perfect place for me. There are rules, yes, but nobody gets too worked up about them.

Symbols abound here. I know the deities that my husband, Phurba Namgay, paints are alive and real—not merely images on canvas. They are metaphors, embodiments of forces that exist in the present. They are here now.

The air in Bhutan is pure and thin. My body has to work harder because there’s less oxygen. That must be a metaphor for something. It’s not easy to live here in this rugged landscape. Breath itself is a metaphor. Sky is a metaphor. They are constants in these inconstant times.

On my daily walks to the monastery above our home, I pass prayer flags fluttering in the wind—physical manifestations of breath, of air, of prayers rising to the sky. And the sky itself? It’s always there. Vast, open, unchanging, no matter what weather moves through it. Sometimes it’s clear. Sometimes it’s filled with clouds. Sometimes it storms. But the sky doesn’t change. It’s like the mind. Thoughts and emotions come and go—anger, joy, grief, boredom—but if we remember that we are the sky and not the passing weather, we suffer less.

The mountains shift constantly, transformed minute by minute by light, clouds, and flocks of birds. Impermanence is in your face here, as obvious as the changing landscape. Rivers carve through the valleys without asking permission. Roads and bridges wash away during monsoons and are rebuilt again—a lesson in patience and non-attachment. When a bus becomes stuck in the mud, people climb out, joke a little, and push it free. No one yells at the bus. No one writes an angry Yelp review about the road. It’s understood: nothing is permanent, not even the path you were just traveling.

Bhutan teaches presence—sometimes gently, sometimes harshly—because presence is the only way to exist here. Plans unravel. What to do, la? The power goes out. The person you were supposed to meet doesn’t show up, but instead, you have tea with someone else, and that’s how you learn something you needed to know. If you insist on clinging to a fixed idea of how things should be, you’ll spend a lot of time frustrated. But if you can let go—if you surrender to Bhutanese time, to the way things unfold without force—you’ll see how much easier life is when you stop grasping for control. At the very least, you’ll develop a higher tolerance for surprise detours.

We stop identifying with every passing mood and start resting in something bigger. Self-liberation begins when we realize that we don’t have to be tossed around by every cloud that drifts through. Or, put another way: you are not your last bad haircut.

Everywhere I turn, Bhutan reminds me that I’m not separate from the world around me. In the mornings, I see monks making their way up the hill to the monastery above our house, and I’m reminded that devotion is a journey, not a destination.

Bhutan itself is a metaphor for enlightenment. The country is roughly 320 kilometers from east to west and 160 kilometers from north to south, but if you could stand it on end, it would be much taller than it is wide. This metaphor may be clumsy, but enlightenment isn’t a straight path, as the crow flies. There are infinite ways to get there, countless routes that twist and turn, rise and fall—sometimes impossibly steep, sometimes flowing effortlessly downward. The journey isn’t about finding the quickest way. It’s about embracing the winding road, wherever it leads. Even if that means stopping for tea (again) because the road is blocked by a very relaxed herd of cows.

Everywhere I turn, Bhutan is showing me how to wake up. And that, in the end, is what practice is all about. I’ll keep you posted.

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