Buddhist meditation
Buddhist meditation is the practice of meditation in Buddhism. The closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhāvanā and jhāna/dhyāna. Buddhists pursue meditation as part of the path toward liberation and Nirvana, includes a variety of meditation techniques, most notably asubha bhavana; these techniques aim to develop equanimity and sati. These meditation techniques are preceded by and combined with practices which aid this development, such as moral restraint and right effort to develop wholesome states of mind. While these techniques are used across Buddhist schools, there is significant diversity. In the Theravada tradition, reflecting developments in early Buddhism, meditation techniques are classified as either samatha and vipassana. Chinese and Japanese Buddhism preserved a wide range of meditation techniques, which go back to early Buddhism, most notably Sarvastivada. In Tibetan Buddhism, deity yoga includes visualisations; the closest words for meditation in the classical languages of Buddhism are bhāvanā and jhāna/dhyāna.
Modern Buddhist studies has attempted to reconstruct the meditation practices of pre-sectarian Early Buddhism through philological and text critical methods using the early canonical texts. According to Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst, "the teaching of the Buddha as presented in the early canon contains a number of contradictions," presenting "a variety of methods that do not always agree with each other," containing "views and practices that are sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected." These contradictions are due to the influence of non-Buddhist traditions on early Buddhism. One example of these non-Buddhist meditative methods found in the early sources is outlined by Bronkhorst: The Vitakkasanthāna Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya and its parallels in Chinese translation recommend the practicing monk to ‘restrain his thought with his mind, to coerce and torment it’; the same words are used elsewhere in the Pāli canon in order to describe the futile attempts of the Buddha before his enlightenment to reach liberation after the manner of the Jainas.
According to Bronkhorst, such practices which are based on a "suppression of activity" are not authentically Buddhist, but were adopted from the Jains by the Buddhist community. The two major traditions of meditative practice in pre-Buddhist India were the Jain ascetic practices and the various Vedic Brahmanical practices. There is still much debate in Buddhist studies regarding how much influence these two traditions had on the development of early Buddhist meditation; the early Buddhist texts mention that Gautama trained under two teachers known as Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, both of them taught formless jhanas or mental absorptions, a key practice of proper Buddhist meditation. Alexander Wynne considers these figures historical persons associated with the doctrines of the early Upanishads. Other practices which the Buddha undertook have been associated with the Jain ascetic tradition by the Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst including extreme fasting and a forceful "meditation without breathing".
According to the early texts, the Buddha rejected the more extreme Jain ascetic practices in favor of the middle way. Early Buddhism, as it existed before the development of various schools, is called pre-sectarian Buddhism, its meditation-techniques are described in the Chinese Agamas. Meditation and contemplation are preceded by preparatory practices; as described in the Noble Eightfold Path, right view leads to leaving the household life and becoming a wandering monk. Sila, comprises the rules for right conduct. Sense restraint and right effort, c.q. the four right efforts, are important preparatory practices. Sense restraint means controlling the response to sensual perceptions, not giving in to lust and aversion but noticing the objects of perception as they appear. Right effort aims to prevent the arising of unwholesome states, to generate wholesome states. By following these preparatory steps and practices, the mind becomes set naturally, for the practice of dhyana. Asubha bhavana is reflection on "the foul"/unattractiveness.
It includes two practices, namely cemetery contemplations, Paṭikkūlamanasikāra, "reflections on repulsiveness". Patikulamanasikara is a Buddhist meditation whereby thirty-one parts of the body are contemplated in a variety of ways. In addition to developing sati and samādhi, this form of meditation is considered to be conducive to overcoming desire and lust. Anussati means "recollection," "contemplation," "remembrance," "meditation" and "mindfulness." It refers to specific meditative or devotional practices, such as recollecting the sublime qualities of the Buddha or anapanasati, which lead to mental tranquillity and abiding joy. In various contexts, the Pali literature and Sanskrit Mahayana sutras emphasize and identify different enumerations of recollections. An important quality to be cultivated by a Buddhist meditator is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a polyvalent term w
Dharma
Dharma is a key concept with multiple meanings in Indian religions like Hinduism, Jainism and others. There is no single-word translation for dharma in Western languages. In Hinduism, dharma signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with Ṛta, the order that makes life and universe possible, includes duties, laws, virtues and "right way of living". In Buddhism, dharma means "cosmic law and order", is applied to the teachings of Buddha. In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is the term for "phenomena". Dharma in Jainism refers to the teachings of tirthankara and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of human beings. For Sikhs, the word dharm means the path of proper religious practice; the word dharma was in use in the historical Vedic religion, its meaning and conceptual scope has evolved over several millennia. The ancient Tamil moral text of Tirukkural is based on aṟam, the Tamil term for dharma; the antonym of dharma is adharma. The Classical Sanskrit noun dharma or the Prakrit Dhaṃma are a derivation from the root dhṛ, which means "to hold, keep", takes the meaning of "what is established or firm", hence "law".
It is derived from an older Vedic Sanskrit n-stem dharman-, with a literal meaning of "bearer, supporter", in a religious sense conceived as an aspect of Rta. In the Rigveda, the word appears as an n-stem, dhárman-, with a range of meanings encompassing "something established or firm". Figuratively, it means "sustainer" and "supporter", it is semantically similar to the Greek Themis. In Classical Sanskrit, the noun becomes thematic: dharma-; the word dharma derives from Proto-Indo-European root *dʰer-, which in Sanskrit is reflected as class-1 root dhṛ. Etymologically it is related to Avestan dar-, Latin firmus, Lithuanian derė́ti, Lithuanian dermė and darna and Old Church Slavonic drъžati. Classical Sanskrit word dharmas would formally match with Latin o-stem firmus from Proto-Indo-European dʰer-mo-s "holding", were it not for its historical development from earlier Rigvedic n-stem. In Classical Sanskrit, in the Vedic Sanskrit of the Atharvaveda, the stem is thematic: dhárma-. In Prakrit and Pāli, it is rendered dhamma.
In some contemporary Indian languages and dialects it alternatively occurs as dharm. Ancient translationsWhen the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka wanted in the 3rd century BCE to translate the word "Dharma" into Greek and Aramaic, he used the Greek word Eusebeia in the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription and the Kandahar Greek Edicts, the Aramaic word Qsyt in the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription. Dharma is a concept of central importance in Indian religion, it has multiple meanings in Hinduism and Jainism. It is difficult to provide a single concise definition for dharma, as the word has a long and varied history and straddles a complex set of meanings and interpretations. There is no equivalent single-word synonym for dharma in western languages. There have been numerous, conflicting attempts to translate ancient Sanskrit literature with the word dharma into German and French; the concept, claims Paul Horsch, has caused exceptional difficulties for modern commentators and translators. For example, while Grassmann's translation of Rig-veda identifies seven different meanings of dharma, Karl Friedrich Geldner in his translation of the Rig-veda employs 20 different translations for dharma, including meanings such as "law", "order", "duty", "custom", "quality", "model", among others.
However, the word dharma has become a accepted loanword in English, is included in all modern unabridged English dictionaries. The root of the word dharma is "dhri", which means "to support, hold, or bear", it is the thing that regulates the course of change by not participating in change, but that principle which remains constant. Monier-Williams, the cited resource for definitions and explanation of Sanskrit words and concepts of Hinduism, offers numerous definitions of the word dharma, such as that, established or firm, steadfast decree, law, custom, right, virtue, ethics, religious merit, good works, character, property. Yet, each of these definitions is incomplete, while the combination of these translations does not convey the total sense of the word. In common parlance, dharma means "right way of living" and "path of rightness"; the meaning of the word dharma depends on the context, its meaning has evolved as ideas of Hinduism have developed through history. In the earliest texts and ancient myths of Hinduism, dharma meant cosmic law, the rules that created the universe from chaos, as well as rituals.
In certain contexts, dharma designates human behaviours considered necessary for order of things in the universe, principles that prevent chaos and action necessary to all life in nature, family as well as at the individual level. Dharma encompasses ideas such as duty, character, religion and all behaviour considered appropriate, correct or morally upright; the antonym of dharma is adharma, meaning that, "not dharma"
Pakistan
Pakistan the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world’s sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 212,742,631 people. In area, it is the 33rd-largest country. Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, China in the far northeast, it is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the northwest, shares a maritime border with Oman. The territory that now constitutes Pakistan was the site of several ancient cultures and intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent; the ancient history involves the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, was home to kingdoms ruled by people of different faiths and cultures, including Hindus, Indo-Greeks, Turco-Mongols and Sikhs. The area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Alexander III of Macedon, the Seleucid Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, the Gupta Empire, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Afghan Durrani Empire, the Sikh Empire and, most the British Empire.
Pakistan is the only country to have been created in the name of Islam. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a diverse geography and wildlife. A dominion, Pakistan adopted a constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic. An ethnic civil war and Indian military intervention in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh. In 1973, Pakistan adopted a new constitution which stipulated that all laws are to conform to the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah. A regional and middle power, Pakistan has the sixth-largest standing armed forces in the world and is a nuclear power as well as a declared nuclear-weapons state, the second in South Asia and the only nation in the Muslim world to have that status. Pakistan has a semi-industrialised economy with a well-integrated agriculture sector and a growing services sector, it is ranked among the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world, is backed by one of the world's largest and fastest-growing middle class.
Pakistan's political history since independence has been characterized by periods of military rule, political instability and conflicts with India. The country continues to face challenging problems, including overpopulation, poverty and corruption. Pakistan is a member of the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the OIC, the Commonwealth of Nations, the SAARC and the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition; the name Pakistan means "land of the pure" in Urdu and Persian. It alludes to the word pāk meaning pure in Pashto; the suffix ـستان is a Persian word meaning the place of, recalls the synonymous Sanskrit word sthāna स्थान. The name of the country was coined in 1933 as Pakstan by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who published it in his pamphlet Now or Never, using it as an acronym referring to the names of the five northern regions of British India: Punjab, Kashmir and Baluchistan; the letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation. Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan.
The earliest known inhabitants in the region were Soanian during the Lower Paleolithic, of whom stone tools have been found in the Soan Valley of Punjab. The Indus region, which covers most of present day Pakistan, was the site of several successive ancient cultures including the Neolithic Mehrgarh and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro; the Vedic period was characterised by an Indo-Aryan culture. Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre; the Vedic civilisation flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, now Taxila in the Punjab, founded around 1000 BCE. Successive ancient empires and kingdoms ruled the region: the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Alexander the Great's empire in 326 BCE and the Maurya Empire, founded by Chandragupta Maurya and extended by Ashoka the Great, until 185 BCE; the Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander, prospering the Greco-Buddhist culture in the region.
Taxila had one of the earliest universities and centres of higher education in the world, established during the late Vedic period in 6th century BCE. The school consisted of several monasteries without large dormitories or lecture halls where the religious instruction was provided on an individualistic basis; the ancient university was documented by the invading forces of Alexander the Great, "the like of which had not been seen in Greece," and was recorded by Chinese pilgrims in the 4th or 5th century CE. At its zenith, the Rai Dynasty of Sindh ruled the surrounding territories; the Pala Dynasty was the last Buddhist empire, under Dharmapala and Devapala, stretched across South Asia from what is now Bangladesh through Northern India to Pakistan. The Arab conqueror Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh in 711 CE; the Pakistan government's official chronol
Śāntarakṣita
Śāntarakṣita was a renowned 8th century Indian Buddhist and abbot of Nalanda. Śāntarakṣita founded the philosophical approach known as Yogācāra-Mādhyamika, which united the Madhyamaka tradition of Nagarjuna, the Yogacara tradition of Asanga, the logical and epistemological thought of Dharmakirti. Śāntarakṣita was instrumental in the introduction of Buddhism and the Sarvastivadin monastic ordination lineage to Tibet, conducted at Samye. His philosophic views were the main views in Tibet from the 8th century until it was supplanted by Je Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Prasaṅgika Madhyamaka in the 15th century. In the late 19th century, Ju Mipham attempted to promote his views again as part of the Rimé movement and as a way to discuss specific critiques of Je Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Prasaṅgika. There are few historical records of Śāntarakṣita, with most available material being from hagiographic sources; some of his history is detailed in a 19th-century commentary by Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso drawn from sources like the Blue Annals, Buton Rinchen Drub and Taranatha.
Śāntarakṣita was the son of the king of Zahor. Born in Rewalsar, in the modern-state of Himachal Pradesh in India, Śāntarakṣita was brought to Tibetan Empire at the instigation of Emperor Trisong Detsen sometime before 767 CE. One account details his first trip as unsuccessful and he spent six years in Nepal before returning to Tibet. Once established in Tibet, Śāntarakṣita oversaw the translation of a large body of scriptures into Tibetan, he oversaw the construction of the first Buddhist monastery at Samye in 787 CE and ordained the first monastics there. He stayed at Samye Monastery for the rest of his life, another 13 years after its completion, this was considered significant by Tibetans that he stayed and did not return to India, it is said. In some accounts he left Tibet for a time due to the antipathy of Bonpos and interference from local spirits, he thought that a teacher possessed of super-natural powers and mystic charms would be able to move the people of Tibet, steeped in sorcery exorcism and the like.
Accordingly, he advised the King to invite the celebrated Buddhist teacher Padmasambhava to Tibet and subdue the Tibetan devils and demi-gods. Śāntarakṣita focused his early teachings in Tibet, directed to the'seven that were tested', upon the'ten virtues' and'the chain of casual relation'. The ten virtues are the opposite of the'ten non-virtues'. Śāntarakṣita's synthesis of Madhyamaka and Pramana was expounded in his text Madhyamakālaṃkāra. In the short verse text of the Madhyamakālaṃkāra, Śāntarakṣita details his two truths doctrine philosophical synthesis of the conventional truth of the Yogacara philosophy, with the ultimate truth of the Madhyamaka, with the assistance of Buddhist logic, with a protracted discussion of the argument of "neither one nor many". In his synthesis text, readers are advised to adopt Madhyamaka view and approach from Nagarjuna and Aryadeva when analysing for ultimacy and to adopt the mind-only views of the Yogacarans Asanga and Vasubandhu when considering conventional truth.
He incorporates the logic approach of valid cognition and the Sautrantika views of Dignāga and Dharmakirti. Within the Yogacara in that text he included the Sautrāntika and "consciousness-only" Yogacara views when referring to "conventional truth", one of the two truths doctrine, his view is therefore categorised as "Yogacara-Svatantrika-Madhyamaka" by Tibetans, but he did not refer to himself that way. Śāntarakṣita is known for his text Tattvasamgraha, a more encyclopaedic treatment of the major philosophic views of the time and survived in translation in both Tibet and China. A Sanskrit version of this work was discovered in 1873 by Dr. G. Bühler in the Jain temple of Pārśva at Jaisalmer; this version contains the commentary by Śāntarakṣita's pupil Kamalaśīla. Haribhadra Kamalaśīla Śāntarakṣita's philosophic views were the main views in Tibet from the 8th century until the 15th century, when it was supplanted by Je Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Prasaṅgika Madhyamaka. In the late 19th century, Ju Mipham attempted to promote his views again as part of the Rimé movement and as a way to discuss specific critiques of Je Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Prasaṅgika.
The Rimé movement was funded by the secular authorities in Derge and began to establish centres of learning encouraging the study of traditions different from the dominant Gelug tradition in central Tibet. This Rimé movement revitalised the Sakya, Kagyu and Jonang traditions, by supplanted by the Gelug hegemony; as part of that movement the 19th century Nyingma scholar Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso wrote the first commentary in 400 years about Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamakalankara. According to his student Kunzang Palden, Mipham had been asked by his teacher Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo to write a survey of all the major Mahayana philosophic shastras for use in the Nyingma monastic colleges. Mipham's commentaries now form the backbone of the Nyingma monastic curriculum; the Madhyamakalankara, forgotten by the 19th century, is now studied by all Nyingma shedra students. Śāntarakṣita. The Adornment of the Middle Way: Shantarakshita's Madhyamakalankara with commentary by Jamgön Mipham. Boston, Massa
Tibetan people
The Tibetan people are an ethnic group native to Tibet. Their current population is estimated to be around 6 million. In addition to living in Tibet, significant numbers of Tibetans live in other parts of China, as well as India and Bhutan. Tibetans speak Tibetic languages, many varieties of which are mutually unintelligible, which belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language group; the traditional, or mythological, explanation of the Tibetan people's origin is that they are the descendants of the human Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa and rock ogress Ma Drag Sinmo. It is thought that most of the Tibeto-Burman speakers in Southwest China, including Tibetans, are direct descendants from the ancient Qiang people. Most Tibetans practice Tibetan Buddhism, although some observe the indigenous Bön religion and there is a small Muslim minority. Tibetan Buddhism influences Tibetan art and architecture, while the harsh geography of Tibet has produced an adaptive culture of Tibetan medicine and cuisine; as of the 2014 Census, there are about 6 million Tibetans living in the Tibet Autonomous Region and the 10 Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures in Gansu and Sichuan, China.
The SIL Ethnologue in 2009 documents an additional 189,000 Tibetic speakers living in India, 5,280 in Nepal, 4,800 in Bhutan. The Central Tibetan Administration's Green Book counts 145,150 Tibetans outside Tibet: a little over 100,000 in India. There are Tibetan communities in the United States, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Mongolia and the United Kingdom. In the Baltistan region of northern Pakistan, the Balti people are a Muslim ethnicity of Tibetan descent numbering around 300,000. There is some dispute over the historical number of Tibetans; the Central Tibetan Administration claims that the 5.4 million number is a decrease from 6.3 million in 1959 while the Chinese government claims that it is an increase from 2.7 million in 1954. However, the question depends on the definition and extent of "Tibet"; the Tibetan administration did not take a formal census of its territory in the 1950s. PRC officials attribute growth of the Tibetan population to the improved quality of health and lifestyle of the average Tibetan since the beginning of reforms under the Chinese governance.
According to Chinese sources, the death rate of women in childbirth dropped from 5,000 per 100,000 in 1951 to 174.78 per 100,000 in 2010, the infant mortality rate dropped from 430 infant deaths per 1,000 in 1951 to 20.69 per 1,000 by the year of 2010. The average life expectancy for Tibetans rose from 35.5 years in 1951 to over 67 years by the end of 2010. The Tibetic languages are a cluster of mutually unintelligible Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by 8 million people Tibetan, living across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and Baltistan, Nepal and Bhutan the northern Indian subcontinent. Classical Tibetan is a major regional literary language for its use in Buddhist literature; the Central Tibetan language, Khams Tibetan, Amdo Tibetan are considered to be dialects of a single language since they all share the same literary language, while Dzongkha, Sikkimese and Ladakhi are considered to be separate languages. Although some of the Qiang peoples of Kham are classified by China as ethnic Tibetans, the Qiangic languages are not Tibetic, but rather form their own branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family.
Tibetans are phenotypically diverse, exhibit high-altitude adaptations. The genetic basis of Tibetan adaptations have been attributed to a mutation in the EPAS1 gene, has become prevalent in the past 3,000 years. Recent research into the ability of Tibetans' metabolism to function in the oxygen-deficient atmosphere above 4,400 metres shows that, although Tibetans living at high altitudes have no more oxygen in their blood than other people, they have ten times more nitric oxide and double the forearm blood flow of low-altitude dwellers. Tibetans inherited this adaptation thanks to their Denisovan admixture. Nitric oxide causes dilation of blood vessels allowing blood to flow more to the extremities and aids the release of oxygen to tissues. Modern Tibetan populations are genetically most similar to other modern East Asian populations, they show more genetic affinity for modern Central Asian than modern Siberian populations. Within Tibetan mythology, the origins of Tibetans are said to be rooted in the marriage of the monkey Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa and rock ogress Ma Drag Sinmo.
Most Tibetans observe Tibetan Buddhism or a collection of native traditions known as Bön. There is a minority Tibetan Muslim population. There is a small Tibetan Christian population in the eastern Tibet and northwestern Yunnan of China. There are some Tibetan Hindus who live in China and Nepal. According to legend, the 28th king of Tibet, Thothori Nyantsen, dreamed of a sacred treasure falling from heaven, which contained a Buddhist sutra and religious objects. However, because the Tibetan script had not been invented, the text could not be translated in writing and no one knew what was written in it. Buddhism did not t
Demographics of Bhutan
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Bhutan, including population density, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. The Royal Government of Bhutan listed the country's population as 752,700 in 2003. One explanation for this discrepancy is that the higher CIA numbers trace back to an inflated population number the Bhutanese government supplied to the United Nations in the early 1970s in order to gain entry into that body. According to this theory the CIA population experts have retained this original inflated number year after year while adjusting it each year for normal population growth. An alternative theory is that the western and central districts of the country wish to underestimate the populations of the southern and eastern districts in order to maintain their historical dominance over those districts; this is the claim made by some Bhutanese refugee groups. The government numbers do not include people, that were living in the refugee camps in Nepal and other persons forced out of Bhutan, which total 125,000, majority of whom have now resettled in the USA.
The Bhutanese numbers can be reconstructed from their 9th Five Year Plan documents, which lists the exact number of households in each gewog. If the Bhutanese refugee advocate groups are correct, a spot check of a southern gewog should show a massive under-reporting of population; the CIA World Fact book number has since been adjusted with a note of former inconstencies, attributes the difference to the government not including the "first modern census of Bhutan, conducted in 2005". It should be noted that in the 1970s Bhutan was one of the most isolated countries in the world and nobody knew how many people lived there since no census had been taken; the following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook. Ngalop people and indigenous Sharchop people 63% Lhotsampas 22% Indigenous or migrant ethnic groups 15% Lama Buddhism 75.3% Hinduism 22.1% Other 2.6% Tshangla 28% Dzongkha 24% Nepali 22% Other 26% Definition: age 15 and over can read and write Total population: 64.9% Male: 73.1% Female: 55% 708,427 716,896 750,125 Age structure 0-14 years: 26.27% 15-24 years: 19.21% 25-54 years: 42.39% 55-64 years: 5.94% 65 years and over: 6.2% Median age Total: 27.2 years Male: 27.7 years Female: 26.6 years Population growth rate 1.09% Birth rate 17.5 births/1,000 population Death rate 6.6 deaths/1,000 population Net migration rate 0 migrant/1,000 population Total fertility rate 1.93 children born/woman Urbanization urban population: 38.6% of total population rate of urbanization: 3.69% annual rate of change Sex ratio At birth: 1.05 male/female 0-14 years: 1.04 male/female 15-24 years: 1.04 male/female 25-54 years: 1.14 male/female 55-64 years: 1.16 male/female 65 years and over: 1.1 male/female Total population: 1.09 male/female Total population: 70.2 years Male: 68.8 years Female: 71.7 years Life expectancy at birth is 70.2 years, an increase from 66.3 years in 2005.
Women with 71.7 years lived longer than men. Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay said. Below is a table of Bhutan vital statistics since 1950 published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Structure of the population: In 2011, there were 246 reported cases of HIV in Bhutan, representing just over 0.03% of the population. In July 2010, there were a total of 217 cases detected, however Health Ministry sources indicated actual numbers were estimated at more than 500 by UNAIDS. Through July 2010, there had been a total of 40 deaths due to HIV/AIDS-related causes, one suicide; as of 2017, Bhutan has a literacy rate of 71.4 percent. The highest literacy rate is observed in Thimpu at 83.9 percent, followed by Trongsa and Chukha, while Gasa has the lowest rate with 59.8 percent of its population being literate. This article incorporates public domain material from the CIA World Factbook document "2007 edition"
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