The Bhutanese Wine Offering Culture

The Culture of offering local wine to our guests as a gesture of welcoming tea in the rural Bhutanese society existed since the dawn of Bhutanese civilization especially in the eastern parts of Bhutan. It was not that famous in the western parts of Bhutan but that Culture was infused into existence lately among the western Bhutanese society with the migration of Easterners to the west in the search of opportunities and prosperous way of life. The migratory nature of Bhutanese civilization have huge impacts on the cultural exchanges and diffusion between different societal norms like southerners, easterners and westerners. Every aspect of different culture is diffused with the marriage of different background couples and such mixed culture is inherited by their sons and daughters to be further passed down the line of history where the individual culture is lost during the transition period. The new settlers have to adjust with new cultural aspect of that society to fit in beautifully. If he/she fails to seamlessly sink in with different culture gets knocked out from that society with stigmatic blames and rejections as a "black sheep."

In Bhutanese culture, the raw wine is very much needed  for the offering to our protecting deities as "Serkaem" "Wine Offering Ceremony" with recitation of prayers by the monks in any activity that we carry on to be successful and fruitful. This Culture of wine offering was introduced by second Buddha, Guru Rinpoche during 8th the Century at Tibet. Guru Rinpoche offered wine "Serkaem" to all protecting and local deities to support  and complete the construction works without any obstacles from the devils and demons. The evils spirits destroyed the Samyay Monastery constructions works during the night with its forces pooled from the universal devils. Therefore, Guru Rinpoche offered blessed wine  to all  protecting and local deities to ward-off those devils who destroys everything. The Tibetan King, Thrisong Duetshen's dream of constructions were fulfilled finally with Guru Rinpoche's support received from protecting deities' blessings and empowerment.

Based on Guru Rinpoche's teaching on the offering of wine; Kuenkhen Pema Karpo, composed the prayer for wine offering which is widely used these days in Bhutan in any small activities like playing archery, promotion  and big ceremonies like king's coronation were kick-off with wine offering ceremony by the realized monks. This is the real Cultural aspect of "wine offering" widely accepted and practiced in Bhutanese society and is living in our hearts and minds. It has already touched deep down the blood veins of Bhutanese people. Without which we all feel something is missing from our agenda of the day and we always need the support of protecting deities to achieve our dreams in life with much easier way like Tibetan King did.

In the same way, the Eastern Bhutan has strong cultural bonding of offering locally brewed wine to their visiting guests as welcome note. Every guest will be ushered in with cup of wine in the east whether you like it or not. This is another small aspect of wine offering culture came into existence in the easterner's mind set. People value this culture as part of life and living mechanism. Every households will brew local wine using maize as raw materials with yeast applied for fermentation process and people drink wine during any local festivals and celebrations. These days, the beer brand has overtaken the local wine, in the villages with new shops selling beer and other alcoholic brands like Whiskey and Rum XXX etc.  With much higher disposable income, rural people shifted to these new brands as options to drink and socialize themselves. Drinkers can get many friends with the same feathers of birds flocking together and non-drinkers are left alone in this modern days even in the rural life settings.

Nowadays, our parental culture has become dangerous to individual health that destroys our liver and many citizens got killed with excessive drinks. The fighting of youths are broken out due to alcoholic seepage. As we Bhutanese have local saying: " When wine seeps into our body; the words will pop up easily". This old saying is true as our youths are taking excessive alcohol and creates societal turbulence in the form of gang fights, looting and  murdering their enemies. The wonderful culture has been turn into more leisure activity and waste of economical resources. Many people are sent to Indian hospitals for treatment related to alcohol drinks. The health trust fund is now bleeding heavily to treat our culturally bonded illness blessed after drinking too much. The sad thing that I see during promotion of culture as offering wine in the east is highlighted in the television serial like "Pha Mai Lab Ja" ' Parental Guidance" should be continued forever and praised heavily as good. It will create positive energy to our young minds to drink more and be like others which is not proper way of life.

Therefore, should Bhutanese people now change our mind set from accepting wine offering as perennial living culture? Or Should Bhutanese people come up with much healthier and better culture instead of offering wine to please our guests but indirectly we are killing our guest finally as chronic alcoholic person. This culture is also non-sustainable to our economic health and citizens's well being in the long run. Religiously, this offering of wine is acceptable for our deities don't get drunk and die like common citizens do. The good culture is now being transformed into harmful culture by the end users with the passage of time. However, it is left to the judgement of readers to give second thought to our cultural drawbacks and hiccups to clear as learned society of twenty first century.

Mindu Wangdi